Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/407863
42 CINEMONTAGE / NOV-DEC 14 I t's a very real world, so we relied on production sound a lot on Earth and inside the ship, where the sound is sterile, identifiable and not distracting," King explains. "There's almost no looping whatsoever. For the scenes in the wormhole, we hear how the ship reacts to being in this space [the push-pull of gravitational waves]. But Chris wanted natural sounds — nothing obviously synthesized — emphasizing very low frequencies. It was a process of trying out different sounds and then road-testing reels in various theatres to see how the sound would play back. The new TCL Chinese Theatre's IMAX turned out to be the optimal theatre in LA. It conveyed the feeling of being in a sound soup that's powerful but not oppressively loud." It was an unusual sound editing experience, to say the least, according to King, who took a couple of big PA speakers and oscillators to an aircraft graveyard in the Mojave Desert, put the speakers inside an empty jet liner and played the sounds back at a level that shook the fuselage. The oscillators were modulated so they went below an audible frequency. "We did a performance of various oscillator sweeps, blasts and bursts of low tones inside the fuselage of a decommissioned DC-9 to simulate the spacecraft," King adds. "We offset the two oscillators slightly so the frequencies would beat against each other, making the plane shake and vibrate. The shakes make you identify with being in your car or on a train, but 100 times more intense. This jeopardy makes you identify with the plight of the characters." He also used something called a "sand groan." According to the sound editor, "A large amount of sand sliding down a dune can create a deep, moaning sound, and burying the mics accentuates this. It goes below 20 Hz and not much above 200 Hz. It's an organic, undulating, animalistic sound, but definitely of the environment. Our goal was to simulate the enormous gravitational forces and to make the audience actually feel — and hear — its Interstellar. Paramount Pictures