“I’m the first [listener], so I always pay attention to how the performances, the transitions, the arc will be experienced by the audience,” says veteran production sound mixer Mark Ulano. In the case of Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon for Apple/Paramount — about a series of murders that took place in the Osage Nation in the 1920s — that included the tonality of the main characters.
For instance, Leonardo DiCaprio’s Ernest Burkhart is “filled with conflict and ambivalence over … his marriage and his fundamental, amoral betrayal [due to] fear of his uncle [William King Hale, played by Robert De Niro],” says Ulano. “You could hear that — I mean, Leonardo disappears into this character.”
Ulano also praises De Niro and Lily Gladstone as Ernest’s wife, Mollie. “[She] had identifiable metaphors in her tonality that really spoke to the dignity and calm, super intelligent nature of the Osage community at large as they were under siege of this genocidal tragedy. She represents that counterpoint to the chaos that’s in Leo’s character.”
The movie was filmed in Osage County in Oklahoma, providing opportunities for authenticity in the soundscape. For Ulano, a memorable day on set occurred while filming the scene where Osage leadership decides to ask the federal government to investigate the murders. “There was a moment where we were transitioning from one camera setup to another,” he remembers. “One of the leaders stood up and started a spontaneous expression to the assembled, who were primarily of his community and the film crew, about how significant this was, how much it meant and how powerful this medium is for that story to be expressed to the larger social community of the nation.”
Ulano quickly asked his team to place a mic nearby, and he recorded the moment. After bringing it to Scorsese, “[He] decided on the moment right there to include that in the [movie].”
Making his biographical drama about Leonard Bernstein, director Bradley Cooper, who also stars as the famed composer and conductor, reteamed with his Star Is Born production sound mixer Steve Morrow to once again record the film’s music live during filming.
This included a showstopping performance recorded at Ely Cathedral in England with the London Symphony Orchestra and London Symphony Choir. “There were 100-plus players, plus 150 choir singers. Bradley’s goal was always authenticity,” says Morrow. “He said, ‘Look, when we’re doing this movie about the world’s most famous conductor, let’s strive for realism. Let’s try to get everything live on set … so that the audience feels like we’re not fooling them with the sound.’ We’re actually involving them.”
After two days of filming, Cooper had another idea he wanted to try: “Put the camera back here,” Morrow recalls the director saying. “Let’s just do one long shot where we do the entire song. You come around and by the end of the shot we’re over Carey Mulligan’s [who plays Bernstein’s wife, Felicia] shoulder, and that’s when the song ends.” Morrow adds: “That’s what made it into the movie, the final take.”
To record this performance for an immersive Dolby Atmos mix (the work of Star Is Born rerecording mixers Tom Ozanich and Dean A. Zupancic), 62 microphones were used. “For most of the movie’s music performances, we ended up hanging the microphones from above, and if any of them popped in the frame, visual effects would paint them out. That way you get the authentic sound, but also not ruin the picture to give away the game to the audience,” Morrow explains. “We want the audience to just be as mesmerized as we were just standing there watching it.”
Ridley Scott’s historical epic for Apple traces the start of French general, and later emperor, Napoleon Bonaparte’s (played by Joaquin Phoenix) military career until his death, and the sound team aimed to support the journey through the film’s sonic arc. This included the various battle scenes, including the Siege of Toulon in 1793. “Napoleon’s very anxious,” says supervising sound editor James Harrison. “He’s almost hyperventilating. His horse picks up on that as well. His horse becomes nervous, and so we wanted that to come through in the sound as well.”
Creating pandemonium on the battle field also was key. “The sounds we were creating and choosing, especially in terms of muskets and cannons … they were mucky and a bit dirty and not extremely well ordered,” Harrison says.
He adds: “Usually you’d sort of clear things out and definitely lead the viewer and the audience through a sonic narrative. And that’s something we wanted to almost veer away from and just have a real muddle and a cacophony of sound. So, it was extremely chaotic.”
By 1805 and the Battle of Austerlitz, Napoleon’s army is well prepared. “They knew exactly what to do. They knew they’d done it hundreds of times before,” Harrison says of the sequence in which Napoleon tricks the Russian and Austrian armies onto a frozen lake. “Everything was precise and neat. That comes through with all the cannon fire that we created and the muskets, and even the sounds of the horses’ hooves and breaths. And when you’re getting it from the enemy side, when you are having cannonballs firing down on the ice, that’s still terror and chaos incarnate for them. But definitely from Napoleon’s side, it’s extremely well ordered.”
For his final battle at Waterloo in 1815, the sound team created a hybrid of these approaches, starting with precision. “But as the battle progresses, as Napoleon struggles to really get into the fight, and he senses his time is running out and that he may actually lose this battle, that’s when things start to fall apart again,” says Harrison. “And the nature of the sound design really starts to delve into chaos and cacophony once more.”
Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest, from A24, presents a chilling look at the life of Auschwitz concentration camp commander Rudolf Höss and his family, whose home is just across the wall from the camp. “Jon and I always saw this as there being two films — the one you see and the one you hear,” explains sound designer Johnnie Burn. The resulting contrast forces the audience to be “subtly but acutely aware” of the family’s indifference to the plight of the prisoners.
Burn and his team spent months researching sounds that would have been heard at Auschwitz in 1943, as well as how they would have been heard. They created what Burn describes as an “acoustic geography map, noting locations of sound sources such as the execution block, prisoner nationality by camp building and, of course, the crematoria.”
The team also created a 600-page document about what would need to be recorded and reenacted, including the sounds of specific guns and vehicles. “This document included much witness testimony of atrocities and how to respectfully and accurately represent that so as to bring about the extraordinary juxtaposition between the mundaneness of the Höss family’s life and the distant yet persistent unseen tragedies,” he says.
In the end, the mix included production sound (roughly 50 microphone positions placed around the house and garden), period-specific recordings and Foley recorded in the original Höss villa. “We felt that the marriage of the camp sounds [with] the family drama should be a final process, where ‘film two’ does not inform ‘film one,’ ” says Burn. “Because, after all, they were ignoring it. Only then did we move on to a further four months of editing the sounds that we hear from the camp.”
Adds Burn: “Although we had achieved what we had logically set out to do, the process of making it was disturbing, and the effect of finally seeing it was considerably more impactful than I could have possibly imagined.”
This story first appeared in a December standalone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
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