Sound Designer: James Boyle
Supervising Sound Editor: Julian Slater
Dialog Editor: Zak Melemendjian
Sound Effects Editor: Ben Meechan
Re-Recording Mixer: Chris Burdon
Re-Recording Studio: De Lane Lea Studios
This weeks mix analysis for myself comes at a pretty timely time following the Academy Awards. Yes it is true that Inception had amazing sound, but the same time re-watching “Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World” I realize that the Academy really missed the boat on something that is truly unique. All the nuances of this sound mix really pop out at me now, and the fact that this was snubbed really is such a shame.
What really stands out for the sounds in “Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World” is how it blends 8-bit sounds with realistic sounds to create a very unique take on what we would consider a punch to sound like. The entire plot of the movie is pretty much a video game with Scott having to go from one boss fight to another in order to earn the love of Ramona Flowers. Supervising Sound Editor Julian Slater described the reasoning for this as “We knew from the outset that using real 8 bits punches etc were not going to cut it within a modern cinematical soundtrack. Not only because they would not have the weight and low end required but also because we needed to come up with a bunch new variants.” (http://designingsound.org/2010/08/scott-pilgrim-v-the-world-exclusive-interview-with-julian-slater/)
To create some of these 8-bit sounds they modified an ancient Atari game machine into essentially a synthesizer that they could generate sounds from along with doing a human beatbox vocal sounds. These techniques helped to create a unique take on video game sounds, while even though they did lift some sounds from games like Sonic the Hedgehog or The Legend of Zelda, there was a fresh quality to everything about “Scott Pilgrim” Each of the 8-bit sounds in the fight would also be manipulated differently to give each fight its own unique flavor, since they are all completely different types of encounters.
Moving away from just the 8-bit side of the sound effects, actual post production effects like reverb and delays played a huge part in the film. There are plenty of times throughout the film where a characters voice would be echoed and repeated as if they were in a great hall with a giant ceiling. The selection of the movie of the movie I looked at, the fight with Roxie, made great use of these effects. In multiple occasions Roxie would flip around and her voice is given dominance by having it echoed in the space of the club they are fighting in. It adds to her character in the sense her powers verge on telepathic with her ability to disappear and be invisible.
Another interesting thing about the sound mix for this fight was the tremendous use of pans for Roxie and Ramona’s weapons. With the weapon of choice for Roxie being a chain metal whip there is not a moment where it isn’t in the same location for a second. With it moving throughout the space it is paned all around in the mix. The Re-Recording Mixer Chris Burdon mentioned in an interview with SoundWorks about how this scene provided them “an opportunity to go crazy with the surround, or really go surround heavy.” (http://soundworkscollection.com/scottpilgrim) The craziness really comes through in this scene with your ears being assaulted with sound from all over. It really helps pull you into this space and make you feel like you are in this club watching the craziness ensue.
While not really pertaining to this scene, there are very unique takes on the idea of a “woosh” camera move in the film. Instead of just using a traditional “woosh” sound effect to go along with the fast move, in this film it was decided to use diagetic sounds for the space that they are in for a particular scene. There was this scene in a coffee shop and the camera pans from Scott to Ramona and the sound that accompanies this camera move is a coffee machine. It just is a very unique approach to sound on a film and really adds a fresh and just fun vitality to the film as a whole. It really is hard to find a film to compare this sound mix to, if anything it bares in feeling at least resemblance to Edgar Wrights other two films of “Shaun of the Dead” and “Hot Fuzz” for the sheer fact that sound is such an important element to the films overall feeling.
Other work done by Chris Burdon as a Re-Recording mixer includes Kick Ass, Gnomeo and Juliet and the upcoming film Paul (featuring Wright regulars Simon Pegg and Nick Frost)
A film like this makes me want to sit down in MC006 and go crazy with the surround sound and pan sound effects all over the place. While it does seem like a crazy prospect, I am confident that I would be able to do the circular type panning effect through a tedious process of sending sounds to specific speakers.
Mix Analysis:
Scott and Ramona have a conversation in a club setting. The music is EQ’d to appear diagetic and mixed with background ambiance. There is some reverb on their voices (1:14:10-1:1:4:18)
Roxie teleports in with a distorted sound and punches Scott with a punch and impact sound of glass breaking. There is reverb on Scott’s impact to the ground that leads to a drone (1:14:18 - 1:14:25)
Scott has a voice over moment in his mind with some heavy reverb (1:14:26 - 1:14:28)
Three way conversation between Scott, Ramona, and Roxie with the background ambiance repeating itself with the same effects (1:14:28 - 1:14:36)
Roxies voice gets repeated over and over again, most likely with a blend of delay and EQ to create this underwateresque sound, and some reverb mixed in as well (1:14:36 - 1:14:38)
Roxie moans and gets her voice reverbed and leads to another drone (1:14:40-1:14:43)
Scott’s mind is seen visually with a meter and a woosh sound and drone accompany the cash register sound when the arrow moves over on the meter (1:14:44 - 1:14:46)
Same setup repeats as both for another three way conversation with Scott, Ramona, Roxie (1:14:46 - 1:14:56)
Roxie’s voice gets some delay on it while she flips around. During this flip the music in the background looses its EQ and goes from being diagetic to non diagetic (1:14:55- 1:15:02)
A brief moment of silence through some EQ minus the club beat that is fully audible (1:15:03 - 1:15:05)
An 8-bit sound appears for the Fight title (1:15:05)
Roxie’s voice recieves some more delay as she once again flips around (1:15:06 - 1:15:08)
Roxie and Ramona have a conversation and the music stays non diagetic (1:15:09 - 1:15:15)
Roxie pulls out her whip with lots of pans of woosh and impact sounds to go along with her movement (1:15:15 - 1:15:20)
Ramona pulls out her hammer with its own woosh sound and is mixed with some reverb and an 8 bit sound (1:15:20 - 1:15:25)
Roxie and Ramona begin their epic fight and there is lots of panning of their weapons sound effects in the space. The musics level rises as well to help create the beat for the action (1:15:26 - 1:15:40)
Supervising Sound Editor: Julian Slater
Dialog Editor: Zak Melemendjian
Sound Effects Editor: Ben Meechan
Re-Recording Mixer: Chris Burdon
Re-Recording Studio: De Lane Lea Studios
This weeks mix analysis for myself comes at a pretty timely time following the Academy Awards. Yes it is true that Inception had amazing sound, but the same time re-watching “Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World” I realize that the Academy really missed the boat on something that is truly unique. All the nuances of this sound mix really pop out at me now, and the fact that this was snubbed really is such a shame.
What really stands out for the sounds in “Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World” is how it blends 8-bit sounds with realistic sounds to create a very unique take on what we would consider a punch to sound like. The entire plot of the movie is pretty much a video game with Scott having to go from one boss fight to another in order to earn the love of Ramona Flowers. Supervising Sound Editor Julian Slater described the reasoning for this as “We knew from the outset that using real 8 bits punches etc were not going to cut it within a modern cinematical soundtrack. Not only because they would not have the weight and low end required but also because we needed to come up with a bunch new variants.” (http://designingsound.org/2010/08/scott-pilgrim-v-the-world-exclusive-interview-with-julian-slater/)
To create some of these 8-bit sounds they modified an ancient Atari game machine into essentially a synthesizer that they could generate sounds from along with doing a human beatbox vocal sounds. These techniques helped to create a unique take on video game sounds, while even though they did lift some sounds from games like Sonic the Hedgehog or The Legend of Zelda, there was a fresh quality to everything about “Scott Pilgrim” Each of the 8-bit sounds in the fight would also be manipulated differently to give each fight its own unique flavor, since they are all completely different types of encounters.
Moving away from just the 8-bit side of the sound effects, actual post production effects like reverb and delays played a huge part in the film. There are plenty of times throughout the film where a characters voice would be echoed and repeated as if they were in a great hall with a giant ceiling. The selection of the movie of the movie I looked at, the fight with Roxie, made great use of these effects. In multiple occasions Roxie would flip around and her voice is given dominance by having it echoed in the space of the club they are fighting in. It adds to her character in the sense her powers verge on telepathic with her ability to disappear and be invisible.
Another interesting thing about the sound mix for this fight was the tremendous use of pans for Roxie and Ramona’s weapons. With the weapon of choice for Roxie being a chain metal whip there is not a moment where it isn’t in the same location for a second. With it moving throughout the space it is paned all around in the mix. The Re-Recording Mixer Chris Burdon mentioned in an interview with SoundWorks about how this scene provided them “an opportunity to go crazy with the surround, or really go surround heavy.” (http://soundworkscollection.com/scottpilgrim) The craziness really comes through in this scene with your ears being assaulted with sound from all over. It really helps pull you into this space and make you feel like you are in this club watching the craziness ensue.
While not really pertaining to this scene, there are very unique takes on the idea of a “woosh” camera move in the film. Instead of just using a traditional “woosh” sound effect to go along with the fast move, in this film it was decided to use diagetic sounds for the space that they are in for a particular scene. There was this scene in a coffee shop and the camera pans from Scott to Ramona and the sound that accompanies this camera move is a coffee machine. It just is a very unique approach to sound on a film and really adds a fresh and just fun vitality to the film as a whole. It really is hard to find a film to compare this sound mix to, if anything it bares in feeling at least resemblance to Edgar Wrights other two films of “Shaun of the Dead” and “Hot Fuzz” for the sheer fact that sound is such an important element to the films overall feeling.
Other work done by Chris Burdon as a Re-Recording mixer includes Kick Ass, Gnomeo and Juliet and the upcoming film Paul (featuring Wright regulars Simon Pegg and Nick Frost)
A film like this makes me want to sit down in MC006 and go crazy with the surround sound and pan sound effects all over the place. While it does seem like a crazy prospect, I am confident that I would be able to do the circular type panning effect through a tedious process of sending sounds to specific speakers.
Mix Analysis:
Scott and Ramona have a conversation in a club setting. The music is EQ’d to appear diagetic and mixed with background ambiance. There is some reverb on their voices (1:14:10-1:1:4:18)
Roxie teleports in with a distorted sound and punches Scott with a punch and impact sound of glass breaking. There is reverb on Scott’s impact to the ground that leads to a drone (1:14:18 - 1:14:25)
Scott has a voice over moment in his mind with some heavy reverb (1:14:26 - 1:14:28)
Three way conversation between Scott, Ramona, and Roxie with the background ambiance repeating itself with the same effects (1:14:28 - 1:14:36)
Roxies voice gets repeated over and over again, most likely with a blend of delay and EQ to create this underwateresque sound, and some reverb mixed in as well (1:14:36 - 1:14:38)
Roxie moans and gets her voice reverbed and leads to another drone (1:14:40-1:14:43)
Scott’s mind is seen visually with a meter and a woosh sound and drone accompany the cash register sound when the arrow moves over on the meter (1:14:44 - 1:14:46)
Same setup repeats as both for another three way conversation with Scott, Ramona, Roxie (1:14:46 - 1:14:56)
Roxie’s voice gets some delay on it while she flips around. During this flip the music in the background looses its EQ and goes from being diagetic to non diagetic (1:14:55- 1:15:02)
A brief moment of silence through some EQ minus the club beat that is fully audible (1:15:03 - 1:15:05)
An 8-bit sound appears for the Fight title (1:15:05)
Roxie’s voice recieves some more delay as she once again flips around (1:15:06 - 1:15:08)
Roxie and Ramona have a conversation and the music stays non diagetic (1:15:09 - 1:15:15)
Roxie pulls out her whip with lots of pans of woosh and impact sounds to go along with her movement (1:15:15 - 1:15:20)
Ramona pulls out her hammer with its own woosh sound and is mixed with some reverb and an 8 bit sound (1:15:20 - 1:15:25)
Roxie and Ramona begin their epic fight and there is lots of panning of their weapons sound effects in the space. The musics level rises as well to help create the beat for the action (1:15:26 - 1:15:40)
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