Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1512183
M OT I O N P I CTU R E S O U N D E D I TO R S 35 the challenge there. Korey: Was there anything else memorable about the audio process on Waves? Johnnie: Yes. Waves featured an awful lot of 360 camera rotations. There were also quite a few shots in different vehicles where the camera would spin 720 degrees and there'd be people talking and shouting with dialogue happening. There were at least five points in the film where I'd actually spin the dialogue all the way around the room in the mix. When I came to do the DCP check in New York, the guy from Dolby said, "Sorry guys, the show's off so we can't run it. The dialogue's coming out of the rear speakers." I said, "No, that's creative license." Korey: So, was this your first time working in Dolby Atmos? Johnnie: Yes, it was the first time I finished a film in Atmos. Having heights is fantastic, but having the bandwidth at the back of the room and having a lot more confidence in the reproduction of the mix in any given room is the best thing about the format. For the same reason that Kubrick only wanted to work in mono, as mixers we try and make things as down-the-line safe as possible, don't we? Working in Atmos makes your mixes more agnostic. I feel like you can do a big, nice mix on a stage, but it translates a lot better just because of the root technology. Korey: I can't agree more. My COVID project ended up being upgrading my home studio to 7.1.4. Another film I sat down to watch and was really impressed with the sound ended up being your work as well. That film was Ammonite. Can you talk about the process of working on that one? Johnnie: I worked Ammonite, which unfortunately released in the cinemas at exactly the moment that we all went into lockdown. Because of that, it did not have the most successful run, but it was truly beautiful. Set in 1840, it starred Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan and was directed by Francis Lee. It was a film with very little in the way of dialogue. It was all built around seascapes on the English coast as we learn the story of a fossil hunter, Mary Anning. So, much of the mood of the film came from the natural ambiences of the field recordings that I did. It is a wonderful film that needs to be watched more. Korey: So, what came next after Ammonite? Johnnie: Jordan Peele's Nope, which was a brilliant experience for me. It was a fantastic film to work on. I got a call from Jordan Peele asking if I was interested. I asked him where to sign. When I first discussed the film with him, he explained how much the narrative would be coming from the soundscape. It was such an exciting offering. He sent me the first draft of the script and I sent him back 10 ideas for how to embed the sound further into the narrative. I spent six months working on that remotely, just talking about the script and then sending him ideas. Before he went to shoot, I'd pretty much done a whole soundscape of the entire film. Then I went to LA for five months to complete the edit and sound design process and do the final mix at Universal. Korey: When you start working on a new project, how do you approach creating a world like that and keeping it interesting? Johnnie: I think a lot of it is that you've got to start by recording all your own stuff and going out and experimenting because if you just sit there with a search bar and type in what you can imagine, then your imagination isn't going to give you any of the happy accidents that happen out in the wild. For me, I don't start editing sound onto a picture for a good few weeks into a project. It's very much about gathering a palette of really unique sounds that are bang on interesting for the thing that you're looking at. As I'm recording them, I'll think, "Oh, that's good for that." I'll think