Julian Slater discusses how they were able to put together such a challenging mix. The synchronization of music and sound with picture edits and VFX/GFX appear effortless but behind the scenes there was a ton of communication and experimentation.
One of the takeaways is the music and SFX were baked into the script. Makes sense because we're experiencing the movie from Baby's POV but that's not much different than any other movie if you think about it. Sound shouldn't be an after-thought, it should be part of the creative tool bag from pre-pro. Thomas about this in further detail on a separate post found here.
Julian also explains how they went about synchronizing the SFX with the music. It seems like a daunting task but if you break it down it comes down it comes down to:
- thinking about sound and music in pre-pro & shooting with the music playback
- clear direction from Edgar Wright in post but with trust and leeway to let the team experiment on their own
- allowing enough time for music and sound team to communicate
- using tech to help tempo-map the songs (composers use this all the time, not so much sound editors!)
Julian talks about having a friendship with composer Steven Price, which is paramount in collaboration. You have to create a creative "no ego allowed" zone, where the best idea wins. Steven was able to pitch the SFX and tinnitus to match the music, and Julian vise-versa. This rarely happens but with trust, time and communication it's absolutely thrilling to be able to experiment with!
Thanks to MPSE for hosting these panels.