Sound design

One of the sexiest women around. This was taken right from the Farewell My Lovely. Exactly. With the one with... And it was Robert Mitchum playing the Priscilla Presley part. And who could forget that? A lot of people don't know that. Yeah, it's the old off-camera sound effect joke. Rarely works, but it did this time.

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There was a makeup on that guy's face, too. But it was hard to see. Well, that's a classic example of less is more, like the hugger in the original Alien. It was a few frames, but it sticks with everybody forever. Yeah, that was great coverage and editing. It really makes the puppet work well. We always depend on editors and sound-effects people to make us look great. You watch this stuff in dailies and you go "How's it ever gonna work?" And then the sound effects of whipping tails... Jim Cameron used to say that as a way to make us feel better after a shot - I think he thought he made us feel better - "Don't worry. This is all 70% sound effects." I guess that means we only accomplished 30% of our goal!

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Fred Dekker

Although it's funny, our sound mixer, Kirk Francis, you know, he's got his headset on all day, so he hears everything. And we had a lot of looky-loos. We had a lot of onlookers, and some of them were sort of inner-city folk, and they would say amusing things at the periphery of the set, and he would write them all down. And I think we actually had a crew T-shirt. I love this shot of Nico when it goes back to her. You know, looking at this again recently, I mean, she's good. Look at her.

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Randy Tom, the sound designer there. And just this handful of people, we put the movie up on the, because actually this movie was edited on film. This is the last movie I edited on film, actually. So we actually had film. So we projected the movie from beginning to end. And it was like Alan went home that night and started writing. And it was interesting, because I put temp music in when I show the movie to Alan.

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So emotional. This feels very E.T. and Girls in the Mist kind of a shot. Yeah. Because we're coming up to the ending, I'm just going to slip in a little piece of trivia. Well, not trivia so much, but just one other person I wanted to mention whose work you don't necessarily... Well, basically, we haven't really talked too much about the sound design in this movie. And I want to mention the re-recording mixer on this movie, D.M. Hemphill.

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Boom. Ouch. It's amazing what a sound effect can do to an otherwise terrible, like, little, what was that, a cap inside that gun. This is, uh, don't shoot, don't shoot. Ha ha. I think the lens got sprayed or something. I love the little look. Sorry, kid.

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Sometimes you just don't go beyond a special thing. It's just not right. But the sound effect was just plenty. And then this scene right here. Yes, this is tough enough to see this, you know, and the girl, you know, crying and so, so. I think that's really enough. And also I have the tendency at some point really to say, okay, leave this to our imagination. Don't dwell on it. Don't show it. Did you have a body count on this film?

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This is an idea of myself. A stupid idea, you know, to open the door. But I am pretty proud about this stupid humor. Jean-Pierre loves little gags and tidbits of funny ideas. I think he dropped quite a lot of them. This was definitely one of his. We will discover the queen. For the queen, I remember, we didn't build the queen. We used the old queen from the second film, and we had to find it. A fan kept it - the queen - in a garage, and we had to bring it to use it. We had borrowed it from Bob Burns. Jim Cameron had given it to Bob Burns - a famous movie memorabilia collector - and Bob was gracious enough to loan it back to Fox. We repainted it, put some iridescence and interesting colors going on in it, and rebuilt it and refurbished it for him. But thank God for Bob Burns. It really saved the day. I love this shot. I love the sound. The sound effects are amazing. Leslie Shatz made the sound of the aliens with sounds of monkeys and lions and something like this. And pigs? - Maybe, yeah. All the crew were French, almost. It is a French film. - It was. Made with American money, but French. - Absolutely. Everybody spoke English except me. Your main worry on the film was not to understand every word that the actor was saying. You were very preoccupied by that. To be sure that... You were happy when you saw the film with subtitles. When I saw it on DVD, at the end, I understood the story. I thought "Oh, it's pretty good." It's a joke but - you remember, Herve - sometimes I asked you: "What does he say?" in the editing. I think that whole kitchen set, if I'm not mistaken, at some point doubles as a basketball court. So in the tradition of good English movies, basically, a lot of stuff is being reutilized. Which is a terrific way to expand your sets. I used, like all my films, very short lens. I love the short lens. And I love to put the camera very close to the floor. Sigourney is a great actress. I remember, when I met her for the first time, I did a stupid suggestion: "Maybe you could act like this." She looked at me and she said "No, Jean-Pierre, I'm going to act like this." She showed me, and I thought "OK. I have to follow her." And all the time I modified the script to help her. It was a good relationship. She helped me all along the shooting. Obviously, she knows Alien by heart, she knows Ripley by heart, because she made the four. I saw JE Freeman, this guy, in a Coen brothers movie, too. I think he was in Miller's Crossing. Before the shooting, we made together a reading, and it was the best lesson in my life. He was so professional. I would like to have a tape today of the reading. He was perfect. The thing about this film, which I found staggering, is the premise - I'm not sure what the point is - the premise is that this is 200 years after we last saw Ripley.

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Peter, that the ring doesn't just fall, it almost adheres. It almost sticks to the palm of his hand, and then only reluctantly. And then when the ring lands, we wanted to put this big, heavy sound effect on, so it goes thump, like it weighs a hell of a lot more than what it really should. This was so beautifully done, this scene, I believe. And it is one of those moments as a Tolkien fan, someone who's read the book, where these two actors truly are Bilbo Baggins and Gandalf the Grey, I believe.

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Barry Sonnenfeld

All the sound design is done by Skip Lievsay... ...who's done the sound design for every movie I directed... ...and all the ones for Joel and Ethan Coen. And he mumbles. I've done these bike guys in several movies. They were in For Love or Money and Men in Black I. I just like them. I don't know if they're aliens or just weird guys... ...but I just like those guys. I feel they blend... ...Into the surreal sense of what New York is real and what isn't. Here comes a really funny, cheesy thing.

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Len Wiseman

That's what my brother calls my bad-gas moment. This one here? Were you harnessed in? Insert sound effect there. - The extended version. You were way up in the tower, right? You were harnessed in? No, because eventually, I didn't. There was some... That's right. That was green screen. - No, it was just somebody else. Oh, okay. You refused. - I didn't. There were some shenanigans going on. Somebody made me feel unstable, and I wouldn't get on it. It is a bit bad-gassy-looking... - It is, isn't it? Now come think of it. We went up there. It ended up being Nicole. That first shot is Nicole. I can't believe she did that, jumped off. She did not. That's a rumour. I totally did it. Oh, I'm sorry. The funny thing is, so many people get fooled by that. That shot that's coming up, they do think it's me. I'm sure it was you. You did it a couple times, she did it once. That's not me. - There's you, in the hoodie. Oh, yeah, I'm brooding in the hoodie. Now, he's a potato farmer, apparently. - Really? He is, from Idaho. - Slash vampire? Yeah, apparently he is. My makeup artist was keen on him for a minute. Lovely strong hands. There he goes. But he didn't speak any English, right? - No. As did, like... Eighty percent of the crew didn't. Right. I mean, you barely spoke English. - I tried. Neither of you speak English. Thank you very much. - Okay. There I go. I really like how she did that. - Good knees on that. They're not my knees. - Those aren't your knees, no. This is where we just drenched you for hours. I was miserable. - The rain machines wouldn't work. I felt like they worked really well. I was soaking wet. All the people running up to you wearing 15 coats... I thought it was still cool that there were rain machines... ...and I was going to get wet. By the end, I was cursing water. I Kept falling there, slipping down. This is like-- Inside the subway was the very first week we did. Yeah, we did that fake set, right? - Yeah. Was that a fake set or a real set? - Wasn't it real? It was real. - No. You were there, weren't you? I was there. It was a subway station, but didn't we build something too? Well, yeah. It was actually... lt was a repair yard for the trains. Then we built that set around the train. - I knew I was on to something. There you go. - Here's love. Immediate love. - Damn it, I have a pimple. Do you? - You don't see that? I see it first. I thought we wiped that out. - No. Oh, my God, it was so tense. lt was so hot in that subway. Yeah, it was brutal. Boiling hot week there was in Budapest before it became arctic. And everybody's in these leather coats. This was the first thing we shot, right? - Yeah. Yeah, this was the second day of filming. The first day of shooting was you in the hospital. Then I came in with those horrible boots and tried to get your approval. Yeah, that's right. I remember I did not want to shoot that scene first. That moment I won't talk about. - No, neither did I. I felt like I'd had absolutely no preparation on firing the guns. They told me, "We're going to do a take." I said, "Oh, my God." Literally almost shook, afterwards. Felt like I'd drunk, like, 20 cups of coffee. I was worried I was gonna get in trouble, because it was a cheap movie. "You have one chance. We don't have money for another pillar." Like, "Oh, great." - You did great, though. No, there was all that stress... ...because we really didn't have a chance to re-squib things. He says, "No pressure, Kate, but we only got pillar with squibs in. The thing's going to be ruined if you mess It up." This sequence is still pretty much the same. Yeah, this stays the same. Here I go, panicking. I remember all this. You did an amazing skid. Did that make it? Yeah, it did. - That was fantastic. But I do grab her crotch, unfortunately. Right. I ass-grab her. - You did that in rehearsal too. She cried afterwards. Is that why? - Probably, it was real claw. She was terrified with this squib. She had never done one before. And she was horrified. - Yeah, she had a real sob after. There she is. I did not mean to. That was unintentional. They're all looking at it now. Remember when we were shooting that scene... ... for you peeking your head out, to get the reaction, I kept firing guns? Yeah. Yeah. I was asking you to do that, yeah. We ended up doing that the entire film. - Here I go. Ass-grab! She was really cute. Everybody was harassing her because of that. Really, everybody was harassing her. - Yeah. But not after my grubby hands got all over her. Oh, my stunt guys. Look. Hank, he's always the one who was, like, pulling. He was my favourite one to pull wires. - Oh, this is where you save me. Thank you for that, by the way. - Kind of a lady-boy.

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In the mid-'80s, my weapons were represented... This cheap piece of sound design here... ...where the bullets turn into sort of cash registers... ...sort of again says everything about Urey's perception of his business. I actually had some of the best sound designers in Hollywood. Dane Davis and Eric Lindeman, who worked on The Matrix. Urey back in New York. These contrasts are great.

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James Mangold

One of the things you try and do with sound in a movie is decide when you wanna do, I think, make a really good sounding film, is you have to decide whose turn it is to sing, if you will. And this is one of the moments where we decided that sound effects were gonna become less important, and we were gonna let Marco Beltrami's score really come front and center. In the previous parts of the gunfight, we had had hardly any music, and he had played a secondary role to the sound effects. But here it's his turn.

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Well, here's one of those subtle sound effects that you hear this small change in his pocket falling down when he's turning upside down. It's one of those small touches that make the soundscape interesting. And here also you get the first hint of something that I know we discussed and you talked about.

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All that stuff you hear in the soundtrack was stuff that I did with sound designer and sound effects editor Bruce Stambler, who's done Triple X, Fast and Furious, Stealth for me, the wonderfully vivid sound environments that are created around those films. The soundtrack is literally half of your impact in the viewing.

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Patrick Tatopoulos

How vote you? The sound design in this scene is great too. SO, like, Lucian here is a little dizzy, obviously. He's got the two arrows in his back. That's why he doesn't have the energy to do anything at the time. And you always wish, you know, that you could... I wish we could have explained that a little bit more. But you get to a point where you... ... you know, If you do explain it, you've got this dialogue that... "Put the silver arrows in him so that he can't change." You know... - ls anything worse? And you hope that by focusing in on them... ...and doing close-ups later on... You get the idea why. People know then what's going on. Another one also. This is a pretty rough scene. The father just... This shot of Viktor, this is such a great shot. This is real statue-like. It's like so... But you see the sorrow sort of... It's just great.

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And this, you know, unbelievably is sort of done in one take. It's live. I mean, Simon Hayes, the sound recordist and his team are so extraordinary that, I mean, there was so little sound of the carriage, we actually had to put a little bit on in the sound effects because it almost didn't seem real that he was actually singing for real, but he was. And early on, I had this idea that Gavroche would take us on a kind of journey from the elephant

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By the way, there's my daughter, I should say. In the car. Ashley McQuaide, her big cameo. She's great. She's gonna go do good. She's very sought after in Hollywood. The one thing I can say is this. This crash coming up was a bit of a fuckup. The taxi was supposed to fly over the other car. SO we were disappointed... ...but I think that the shot still looks pretty bitchen. It looks fantastic. Your eye is drawn to the Lycan. Which is what it should.... - Could have been better. And here-- You know, Paul Haslinger did the music here. I love this, you know, how we changed into this new... ...Style in the music exactly when we get into close combat here. Paul, being an old hand... ...having done the score for Underworlds 7 and 3. He did an amazing job. - Amazing job. Yeah. - Yeah. Every-- All these Lycans are CG Lycans... ...but they mostly are.... There were guys dressed in blue with funny heads. So they look like really big... - Suits kind of looking like... This was a big moment. - Looks great. And India's face.... We really didn't do anything to it. She was able to scrinch up her face. - Yeah, she's a badass. Well, there's a bit of CG going on. We changed her eye shape and the color of her skin, obviously. But she was good. - This is an old trick, you know. The guy dry his fist across his mouth. I told Theo to do that. But it really always looks good, I think. It's the moment too, where Selene realizes... ...that this creature back there has... ls connected to her. - ls connected to her. She saw a level of power in there she hadn't imagined. Here's the Kris Holden-Ried introduction. Yeah. Here's where he comes in. Might have... And it's not even the last new character. In the script, this is the third time we see Kris... ...or Quint. - Quint. And here, we talked about that scene... In the apartment when she throws the guy out of the window. If you look at the monitor, there's actually a shot from... ...coming out of the club... ...which was Prey. So we used footage for that as well. lt was not a waste of time shooting there. Very expensive stills. - Those two days... ...that we spent shooting there. - That town is all CG, and then we.... Somebody gave us that in the last... There were so many people working so hard... ...for no money for this one. I love it. - Yep. How did you find me? Now we have an actual conversation. An actual dramatic scene. Yeah. - The first of the entire film. There's not a lot of talking. - Yeah. I think Michael Babcock, who did the sound design... Which is so beautiful, I almost cry when I think about it. When we heard about... "What did you do, Michael?" "I did Inception and Dark Knight." We're like, "Okay, good." And I think when he showed us the first reel... ...we had, like, no notes. lt was perfect. Anyway, he said... ... after we'd done this, "I really enjoyed working with this. ll even do a talkie with you guys." That's nice. - Yeah. I remember at the end of this scene, when we did India's side... ... that Kate went up to her and complimented her and said: "You did a really great job." - Yeah. And it was a.... It shows Kate's consideration... ...for other actors, and really the.... The person that Kate is. You know, because here's this young girl... ...who was clearly a little bit nervous acting... ... against a movie star, and an actress of Kate Beckinsale's quality. Yet Kate was very generous with her. The funniest thing-- Not funny, but extraordinary thing about India... .IS that she is like a very old soul in a young body. Oh, my God, yeah. She's 17 when we shot this movie. But she's incredibly mature. - Yeah. Incredibly. And sometimes when I talk to her, I feel very like a kid... ...and she's the old-- Yeah. Yeah. - She's the grownup. But she knew this character. And so many times, "No, let's do it like this." And she always stood her ground, saying, "No, she wouldn't do that." And I love being told that... ...because that means the actor knows. Are your fingers crossed? - No. No. No. Okay. All right. Okay. No, I like it when the actors know their characters, so they... Yeah. This is also our first day shooting. I loved shooting this scene. Oh, God. This scene. "Blight of nature." That's, you know, epic Underworld dialogue. It's one of those scenes that in 2D doesn't look great. In 3D, it looks spectacular. - Yeah. Why is it raining? Because it looks nice. Why is it thunderstorms? - Because it sounds nice. Theo James, stunt driver. - Yes. You can actually see that a bit. Yeah, and if you look at the van, I mean.... All the.... We wanted everything to be low-tech... ...as all the other movies. The low-tech is very important. That combined with the Vampire aesthetics that you see. The Celtic signs of Kate's corset... ... the weaponry and stuff like that. This area here is actually shot in that dam. In the actual hydroelectric dam. What's the name of that dam, Richard? I can't remember. Spencer Dam or something? - I don't know. It's outside... Up above Vancouver. - Up above Vancouver. Nobody shot there. Like, 20 years ago... ...someone shot there. I can't remember what film. It's been closed down, so.... We were the first to... - Part of the water supply. Amazing location. - Yeah. Absolutely beautiful. And brutal. - And remember how it--? Brutal as well? - Brutalism. But it also rained... ...torrentially before we shot. We thought we'd get two streams of water... ...and we got the whole megillah. lt was fantastic. This is one of the things I love about Underworld. These, you know.... The looks. And it feels... It makes me believe that this world exists. Now we're also back in... This is Underworld. We've been in brutalism. - Yeah. Now we're back in-- Oh, yeah. This is a wonderful set that Claude Pare designed. Our production designer. Wonderful production designer. Award-winning production designer, might I point out. And this, actually, was fun... ...ecause I was walking the streets and suddenly: Here in L.A. before we started shooting. I started talking to Kate and Len, and Len... And Kate says-- I don't know how she came up with it... ...but she says, "I know Russian." So I said, "We must get some Russian in, then." So.... Because I think it's so sexy. - Yeah. Of course that means Charles Dance... ...as to Know Russian too. Yes, and Theo James. That's Kate's mother, by the way. The Sony people, when they heard that, were excited. Because internationally, Russia is now a big territory. So.... At a certain point, they said, "Can you have more Russian in the movie?" This, again, being Charles Dance... ...a well-known British actor. Charles Dance is one of those fantastic old-school actors who... ...when you give him direction, he looks at you and he says: "Thank you, sir." Then he does exactly what you asked him to. He does exactly what you ask for... ...and It's such a pleasure to work with him. Listen to me. I start speaking British. And the actress here playing the doctor is... Her character's name is Olivia. Is Catlin Adams... ...who is Kate's.... Acting coach? - Occasionally. Kate recommended her. - Happy family. That's how Underworld is. - Yeah. Or SCars. I've never seen a child... We should have had more Swedish in the film. We have a little. Underworld 5, actually, I've heard that there's a big Swedish subplot. I had Kate say: Which all Swedes will understand, but she said it. It's very cute and.... So she, you know.... Because she's.... The musicality of it here. Her Russian is perfect and it... She speaks, I don't know, how many languages? Five languages. - A lot. Yeah. And she could just start speaking Swedish. That was insanely fun. I love this sequence... ...because it's so many things at the same time. I think it's terrifying, but I also think... ... It's, you know, touching, but also sexy. I think it's one of the most disturbing scenes in the movie though. Where you realize that this girl... ...who you thought was this innocent child... ...now has this voracious taste for blood... ...and has now gone to a different place. She is a creature of the night. - Yep. The blood on her face was great. You added that afterwards, James? - It was all CG, yeah. Good.

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Right at the end. Way later. As you just kept honing the music and honing the story. Incredible work. A big thank you. A big thing about this sequence is the sound design and the music and how they're mixed together. We were getting a lot of notes that the sequence was too long. And we couldn't understand why. And we realized that the music and the... That moment there. Yeah, it's great. The music. That it was all coming at kind of the same volume. And you were exhausted by the time you got here.

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Nia DaCosta

Okay, that was, like, one of my favorite parts of the movie. That sound effect when he, like, sends his soul up to whatever. I'd asked Jack, I was like, "Jack, can you do something when he dies? "Like, you take his soul and put it somewhere, "you know, you're, like, giving his soul a rest." And so he did that, which is hilarious. And then when we turned around on Mo, they looked up to where Jimmy had been putting his soul or whatever, and I thought it was, like, the funniest thing ever. So I was really excited to see that little note I gave turn into something really, really fun in the final product. Howzat? - Howzat.

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