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www.postmagazine.com 33 POST MAY 2017 SOUND DESIGN ing, and allowed us plenty of time to carefully re- search our recording locations and to start to think about sound design," shares Gibbs. Gibbs and his sound team captured ambience of rain and wind in Snowdonia, Northern Wales. Since animals feature heavily in the film, they sourced and recorded horses, farm animals and falcons. They also captured all new sword sounds, both in the studio and in the field. To help establish the atmo- sphere of Londinium/Camelot, they recorded new crowd sounds with a cast of roughly 40 actors in in- terior and exterior locations at Shepperton Studios in Shepperton, UK. The larger crowd sounds in the film were built from location recordings they cap- tured of a local rugby crowd with over 500 people. Gibbs says, "We have been using a Soundfield mic to capture ambisonic surround recordings, as this gives us total flexibility for our design and translates beautifully into the Dolby Atmos mix." Gibbs begins all his sound design with the best organic sounds he can get — either original record- ings or sourced sounds, before working with any plug-in processing. This philosophy was essential in creating the numerous dialogue treatments for the film. "In every case, starting with the right perfor- mance was integral to the final product," he says. To find the right performance, they experi- mented in the cutting room with versions they performed themselves then played those ideas for Ritchie. After settling on a style of performance, they presented it to the actors in ADR. "Once we had the right performance, then we'd start playing with morphing using Zynaptiq's Morph, pitching with Celemony's Melodyne and adding delays with Slapper by The Cargo Cult," says Gibbs. "The Syrens voice treatments were created by layering multi- ple ADR performances from each character, using both spoken and whispered performances to create complex delays." Once shooting began at Warner Bros. Leavesden facility, Gibbs was on hand to provide picture editor James Herbert with sound sup- port, from designing large sequences to making dialogue fixes. Gibbs learned early on that magic would play a key role, and so wanted to create new and original material that avoided the cliché, high-frequency sword shings and magical sound design that prevail in this genre. One of Gibbs's favorite design sequences was the Bath House fight, which was built using complex layers of background activity and designed effects that come at the audience in waves as Arthur picks off each Blackleg, explains Gibbs. "This included lots of debris recordings, sword and magic design elements, Foley recordings, Doppler processed screams and much more." Another favorite was the Excalibur-Time sequenc- es, which allowed them to get inside Arthur's head. "There is slow motion, cranked shots, sword mo- ments, wind, dust, screams, shouts — the lot. As with several other areas in the movie, these developed visually throughout post production," notes Gibbs. Giant creatures also feature heavily in the film. "From day one, we worked hard to create ideas which gradually evolved into the sounds you'll hear in the finished movie. The challenge lay in transforming some familiar creatures into the giant beasts of war that we see on screen, trying to bring them to life with organic animal record- ings that were twisted and manipulated into something befitting the King Arthur universe," concludes Gibbs. Animals are featured heavily in King Arthur. Ritchie and Gibbs discussed how to enhance Arthur's different environments with sound. Crowds were built from location recordings.