Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/407863
41 NOV-DEC 14 / CINEMONTAGE by Bill Desowitz portraits by Martin Cohen I t's not surprising that director Christopher Nolan drove the sound to a greater extent than ever before on his first space adventure, Interstellar, opening November 7 through Paramount Pictures. That's because it was pivotal that the organic nature of the aesthetic worked for soundscape and imagery alike. The Audio Adventures of "Interstellar" Sound Editor Richard King and Mixers Gregg Landaker & Gary Rizzo And with Interstellar, Nolan has captured the right celestial stuff with Matthew McConaughey as a former pilot and engineer leaving behind his daughter and son to join an expedition to find another planet to colonize because ours is dying of starvation. It's Nolan's simplest and most emotional movie — a father-daughter story — ultimately about the transcendence of love across time and space. "We always talked about how Chris should do a science-fiction film, but he's found a new twist," explains supervising sound editor Richard King, a frequent collaborator and three-time Oscar winner — for Nolan's Inception (2010) and The Dark Knight (2008), as well as Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003). "He wanted a very documentary- style feeling to the spacecraft and to the film overall," King continues. "It doesn't sound like a typical Hollywood sci-fi movie inside the space ship with beeps, ambient tones and hi-tech hums. He wanted it to be familiar and believable, and to save the more fantastical sounds for the wormhole sequence. He wanted the audience to experience a new environment, so it became a soundtrack of polar opposites. But then, it's a movie about contrasts." Co-scripted by Nolan and his brother Jonathan, Interstellar is based on scientific theories by Caltech astrophysicist Kip Thorne, who served as consultant and executive producer. The discovery of a wormhole by a group of scientists provides a gateway through space-time. But the whole movie is about peril. >>>