Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/691665
SOUND DESIGN www.postmagazine.com 30 POST JUNE 2016 floorboards," Campagna says. "These sounds were added to enhance the tradi- tional Foley in the film." At the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy, MA, where the Formosa team went to record a giant wave machine on-set, Campagna found a big shipping contain- er that he recorded using stereo-config- ured Sennheiser MKH 800s. He says, "I had the mics really close to the hinges and that produced amazing hyper-reality sounds. I also placed the microphones against the metal of the container. The vibrations carried onto the microphone itself so it was translating the vibration through metal, not just through air. It almost makes the microphone like a con- tact mic." Campagna recorded the hinge creaks at 192kHz, which gave Stoeckinger flexibility when manipulating the pitch in post. Stoeckinger says, "Those hinges ended up being a component of the ship's hull creaking." Since December is Chatham's off-sea- son, Stoeckinger and Campagna got to mingle with the locals who populat- ed the pub in the evenings. "The local charm was so welcoming that when they overheard us talking about trying to find a boat horn, they offered, "Johnny down the street has a boat horn. What kind of boat horn do you need?" So we made plans the next day to record a boat horn," says Campagna. Stoeckinger notes that field record- ing is more than just capturing the real sound of an object. It requires capturing other elements to enhance a sound. For example, the original Coast Guard boat from the '50s would have had a gaso- line engine, but the boat they recorded in Chatham was updated with a diesel engine. Stoeckinger felt it lacked the ex- citement, and authenticity, of a gas-pow- ered engine. "In the film, there are quick cuts where the actor jams the throttle to charge ahead. The boat we recorded sounded powerful but it didn't sound like it was racing ahead," he says. They were able to locate an inline six cylinder gas engine like the boat would have had in the '50s. "The boat was in Victorville (California) of all places, on a small private lake. We had them do crazy things with that boat, like putting it up on the shore and moving the exhaust in and out of the water," Stoeckinger says. In post, they layered the two com- pletely different engines. If the engine needed to rev really fast then the gas engine prevailed, and if the boat needed to power through the ocean, the diesel engine worked best. "It worked really well because the diesel engine has a nice low frequency and it feels substantial, but the gas engine feels more aggressive," explains Stoeckinger. The Coast Guard faced more than just the nor'easter's violent seas. Before rescuing the tanker crew, the Coast Guard first had to breach the sand bar blocking the harbor's entrance. Thirty-foot waves pounded the sand bar like enemy artillery. Director Craig Gillespie, who grew up near Sydney, Australia, remembered the powerful waves from his childhood and wanted the film's sand bar waves to have a similar sound. Stoeckinger says, "We took both concepts of having that big wave pop and artillery impacts, and even- tually amalgamated the two." Working with Alan Rankin, primary sound designer on The Finest Hours, they used Campagna's wave recordings from The Wedge (in Newport Beach, CA), and waves recorded in Cabo San Lucas as the primary real waves, which they embellished with artillery impacts and explosions. To create the big wave whooshes, they manipulated the speed of water recordings, some of which were captured on their trip to Massachusetts. Campagna says, "Hearing the impacts of these huge 30-foot waves in the Dolby Atmos environment really takes you on a ride sonically. The experience is very different from recording the ocean in its natural state. Mark and Alan's beautiful- ly-designed waves made me feel that I was on the deck of the CG-36500!" WARCRAFT Blizzard Entertainment's CGI-reliant film Warcraft, distributed by Universal Pictures, was filmed primarily on a sound- stage in Canada but the filmmakers don't want the audience to know that. They want the audience to believe that the CGI world on-screen (crafted by Industrial Light & Magic) is a massive, natural ex- terior environment with everything from lush forests to rocky canyons, capable of hosting hordes of horses and battle scenes, and giant portals to other worlds. Supervising sound editor Wylie Stateman and his sound team at Twenty Four Seven Sound (www.twentyfoursevensound. com), located in Topanga Canyon, CA, were tasked with helping to forward that filmmaking sleight of hand. Stateman says, "Every inch of the film was re-de- scribed with sound to allow the audience's Stoeckinger and Campagna traveled to Chatham, MA, to capture The Finest Hours' maritime elements.