Francis Lawrence's The Hunger Games: Catching Fire [Re-Up]

[Disclaimer] This is an attempt at re-writing this article. The original was eaten by the internet, and it will never be seen again. This is a re-imagining of the original article.

The Hunger Games excites me greatly. I am a fan of both the books and the movies, and I look forward to the new films just about as much as your average 14 year old girl. So getting the chance to explore how the sound for the film is created, and techniques used to push realism to its boundaries is something that I am happy to discuss.

For this film, we are going to explore how a hyper realistic sound track was created by pushing the boundaries of the background tracks and focusing less on dialogue and sound effects.

When creating the ambiance for Catching Fire, a great amount of attention to detail was used.  During editing, all of the vocal tracks and music tracks were muted so an immersive ambience could be created. This means that each and every location in the film was given unique and special treatment to ensure that they all were sonically different.

The Jungle Arena where the main action takes place. Lionsgate.

Catching Fire was mixed on Atmos meaning that the sound mixers could make use of an overhead array of speakers.  Seeing as a large portion of this film takes place within a jungle arena, a lot of care was given to make the audience feel as trapped within the jungle as the characters were. Every time the jungle appears on screen, all overhead speakers are filled with the sounds of canopy to enclose the audience in and give a sense of containment. This was meant to cause feelings of uneasiness and claustrophobia.

There is also juxtaposition between the sounds of the “districts” and sounds of the capitol city within the film. The capitol is portrayed sonically as being isolated yet clean. It is not connected to the environment so the sounds of animals or natural elements are nearly non-existent. Instead the audience is met with sounds of a bustling city. The districts on the other hand, while also sounding isolated, also feel more connected to the earth with the sound of nature in abundance.

The motif of the characters visual appearance is also pushed within the soundtrack. Lionsgate.

This divide is pushed further sonically when different characters speak. Characters from the capitol are seen addressing an audience on more than one occasion in large, open areas. When these characters speak, they are met with huge amounts of delay, more so than we would expect in the type of environment they are speaking in. Also, there is no sound made from the audience. In any normal situation, we would expect to here some kind of noise coming from a crowd of 1000 plus people. This helps to push the divide between the districts and the capitol, forcing the audience to feel the tension in the crowd.

Catching Fire also features many sound effects that push realism into hyperrealism, but I don’t want to discuss them here. It is interesting to look at how just using ambiance can create a hyper realistic sound track and evoke emotion in the audience. 

Naval Depth Charge

The naval depth charge. A warhead dropped by US ships during World War 2. Containing 200 hundred pounds of Torpex explosives, when released, the depth charge kept a straight trajectory through the ocean water where it would detonate with a powerful explosion. Check out this video of a test detonation to see the power of this warhead.

I have seen numerous films where these are detonated, and today we will attempt to recreate the sound of the detonation underwater. To start we need to record the flushing of a toilet. I recorded the sounds of two different toilet flushes from multiple angles and locations ranging from directly over the bowl, off to the side, and underneath near where the water rushes out. Here is the recording we are going to work with.

Now we need to edit this to make it sound convincing. First we need to stretch out the clip twice its length, slowing the playback down by half. This will bring the pitch down tremendously while keeping the wet feel to the sound. Next we want to apply ample amounts of reverb and pitch shifting to really give this effect depth. I also copied the sound to a new channel, kept it the same length but pitch shifted it up and used it to create the sound of water coming to rest. Even though our effect exists underwater, we still need to think of the audience and end the effect with the high end. 

Finally, we can add some low end rumble to really push the sound through the mix, and recreate the intensity of the real warhead. We need the effect to start with a low thud, and move towards our high end finish. This will give us a full range explosion sound. Using pink noise with a sharp envelop with a low pass filter along with more pink noise with a much smoother attack and longer envelop and a low pass filter help us to achieve our desired effect. We also need to apply distortion to all of our pink noise tracks.Sounds simple enough, but a heavy amount of editing went into this effect which will soon be evident. 

This is the type of sound that you could spend hours trying to mix to perfection. I tried numerous amounts of reverb, eqing, distortion, pitch shifring, and automation before I finally settled on an effect that I felt would be convincing played with an image. Even though this turned out to be more complicated than I first intended, the ability to recreate the sound of such a deadly weapon with a single flush of the toilet was very entertaining.

Sound Effects Libraries

Sometimes, the pro's can do it better. Actually, most of the time pro's can do it better. Not always can an amateur filmmaker or audio producer create a sound that is both of high enough quality and of enough believability to be used in a production.  This is where sound effects libraries come in. Sound effects libraries are used to quickly add high quality audio to your project without needing to create the sounds yourself. They are very useful for complex sounds (like explosions), and are also useful to add ambience to a scene quickly. But with half a million different libries available, it can be hard to know which ones to choose. Today, I want to quickly outline some of the most popular and easy to find.

Digital Juice

Digital Juice, technically speaking, is a power house. It contains over 11,500 sounds that come on 10 DVDs. This comes out to a whopping 55GB of content. More importantly each sound file is 24-bit 96 kHz WAV files. This means you get lossless files that are greater than industry standard. Digital Juice also comes with Juicer 3 which is a software program that will search the Digital Juice library to find the sounds you want, and also convert those sounds into any file format you wish.

Digital Juice doesn't come cheap. This library will cost you $499. However, aware shoppers can find huge discounts on the product, and at the time of writing this post there is a sale on their website to grab the library for a far more affordable $99.95.

Arrowhead Audio 

Maybe the above was a little out of your price range, or maybe you aren't looking to own over 11,000 sounds right now. If either are the case,Arrowhead Audio  may be the choice for you. Arrowhead offers a range of effects libraries (currently 7 to be exact) with far fewer sounds in each, but also at a far cheaper price. The interesting thing about Arrowhead is they will allow you to choose the quality of the sound you want, and they scale their price to fit (this feature isn't available on all packs, and it also appears that if you purchase a cheaper pack, you will receive less content).

Arrowheads pricing strategy is $4 for 16-bit samples at 44.1 kHz, up to $10 for 24-bit samples at 96 kHz. The samples sound great, and this modular system is a great, inexpensive way to augment your personal library.

The Library by Empty Sea: Robobiotics

Of all of the libraries reviewed today, this has to be my favorite.  This library offers sounds at 24-bit at both 48 kHz and 96 kHz.  The reason I like this pack so much, is that its robot sounds. Plain and simple, I'm just a sucker for sci-fi. If you are looking for sci-fi sounds, then this is the pack for you. It is a huge library (over 4 GB), and has a massive amount of variations of sounds to keep them unique and unidentifiable in your mix.

Robobiotics does come in at a steep $300, however. If you do a lot of sci-fi work, it could be worth it to you. If not, then you may want to check out some of their other packs. They come in as low as $100, and sound fantastic. I would highly recommend Empty Sea. 

Creating The Sound of Space Part II: Star Wars

Ben Burrt. Wired.com

Already this week, we discussed how dealing with the sound of the vacuum of space was dealt with in Gravity. Today we will look at the polar opposite end of that spectrum, and we will see what the vision was in the minds behind Star Wars.

Ben Burtt is the man credited with with designing some of the most icon sounds ever created for a sci-fi film (maybe any film? Who doesn't know Chewbacca  or R2-D2?). He, and George Lucas, have both taken a lot of heat for the direction they took while building the soundscape of their galaxy. The idea of the vacuum was thrown out the window, and space was alive and rampant with sound. Personally, in a film that has such a large amount of scenes taking place in space (and always) action packed, I encourage and welcome the hyper realistic approach to space sound. Most of the masses expect the LFE to shake their organs when the Death Star implodes, they expect their ears to ring from the shrill sound of the laser blasters, and they want to feel the rumble of the star fighters racing around in space. I think this makes the film exciting, it's enjoyable.

Ben Burrt recording a bear. retrostarwars.com

Contrary to popular belief, the sounds of Star Wars are nearly entirely organic, rarely created with synthesizers and almost always created by using filed recordings. For example, Tie Fighters and Chewbacca wails were both created using animal sounds (in particular, the Tie Fighter was created using an "elephant bellow," while Chewbacca's iconic growl was created by using a variety of animal noises including the elephant and walruses).

Tie Fighter? abduzeedo.com

Ben Burtt still works for Lucas at Skywalker Sound and has been on projects including Red Tails, WALL-E, Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade, plus the recent Star Wars  movies. Be sure to check out filmsound.org and Skywalker Sound for more info. 

Creating the Sound of Space Part I: Gravity

“[Sound] is like a comfort layer that we all take for granted… And when you remove that, it’s like a huge safety net that you’re removing."

 -Skip Lievsay describing Gravity’s sound design to The Verge.  

Ever wonder what the sound of space is like? Let me tell you. There is no sound. There is nothing to conduct sound. No way for it to travel. It’s silent. So I think it would be easy to imagine why this might be next to impossible to replicate on screen without boring your audience to death.

Think of Stars Wars for a second. It is a film that took place in outer space, the same outer space that we float around in even though it was a galaxy far, far away. Still, there were plenty of sounds coming from laser cannons, collisions, and explosions. Why? Because it is far more entertaining that listening to the sound of space.

George Clooney in Gravity. Warner Bros.

In an effort to stay true to the sound of space, but to also keep the audience awake throughout the film, the sound designers of Gravity explored unique solutions to the age old problems of films taking place outside of our stratosphere.

First and foremost (as always here), a Hyper- Realistic approach had to be taken. As an audience, if we intended to hear anything at all, we needed to experience the film through the characters. Sound is transmitted through our bodies and to our ears through vibrations, and this is the approach taken by the Gravity team.

Since it was decided that only contact noise could be used for sound, it was almost primarily only contact noise that they recorded. Contact microphones were placed on all kinds of robots and machines to create the metallic sounds heard throughout the film. Heartbeats were added to the sound track when the intention was to be intimate with the character.  The vocal tracks were distorted to replicate the sound of a voice being transmitted through a radio (Unless, of course the purpose was to make the character feel isolated. Then a nearly clean vocal was used allowing us to enter their suit with them.). Even the score had to be adjusted for playback in space, and it received a lot of the same treatment as the vocals did.

Clooney and Bullock on the set of Gravity. Entertainment Weekly. 

All of these effects add up to create a sound that is both interesting for the audience to listen to, but also incredibly intimate and nearly true to real life. And all of this happened before the team even took to the unique style of vocal and effect panning. Sounds will swirl around the audience, trying to mimic the action on screen. Gravity offers a life like experience that, unfortunately,  is often disregarded because it has been deemed “too distracting.”

Be sure to visit The Verge and Sound Works Collection for more information on the sound of Gravity. 

Cutting Flesh! (And Violating Fruit)

There is something beautiful about watching skin and flesh get cut open on the silver screen. The image alone is usually enough to get stomachs churning in the audience, and my girlfriend usually can't even watch it happen (I'm pretty positive she isn't the only one to bury her head in her hands to try to avoid the gore). I think it's because it is a pain that we all can imagine. We all know the feeling of getting cut, so watching it happen to a character on screen, slowly and methodically exposing his innards, isn't hard for many to quickly imagine the same happening to them.

Unfortunately for us sound people, the sound of cutting ones skin is kind of a silent affair. It's dull and somewhat disappointing that something that visually looks disgusting can, at the same time, sound so normal. Luckily for us, we are Hyper Realists and we ignore what is normal and do what we can to intensify emotion through sound.

For this sound effect, we will wrap, stab, slice, squeeze, squash, scratch, and bite fruit. Fruit is a great body sound substitute, because it has skin that we can pierce, and is filled with flesh that is moist and happens to make some nasty sounds.

You will need some fruit of your choosing (probably a firm fruit like an apple and a squishy one like an orange), saran wrap, a knife, and some paper towels to keep the work space clean.

 We start by wrapping the fruit (in this case a Golden Delicious apple) in saran wrap. This adds to the outermost layer and helps us get more of a "skin" sound. We need to get a base sound, a nice slice to start things off. I might have recording about 10 different slices and used the one I liked the best. You might want to try stabbing (carefully!) the fruit a few times to get an entrance sound, but it all depends on the image you are trying to match. After I had my slice sound, I cut a whole into the fruit and used my finger to scratch the flesh. I also decided to bite into the apple to see what that could sound like. You want to be careful if you use this sound to not let it sound like someone biting into an apple, this is a distinct sound that is easy to pick up on.

Once you have all of your sounds, layer them together in your DAW to your liking. I attempted to have them start at different times to get different texture throughout the slice. I also needed heavy eq'ing on each effect to really achieve a nice blend. A problem I ran into was the saran wrap causing a popping sound. Compressing the track solved the issue, and the pops became more nice texture.




The only problem I had with my sound effect, was that it wasn't gross enough. It needed a bit more wetness to really feel human. Cue the orange. All you need to do is peel it, and squeeze it a bit. Again, this all really depends on what the image on the screen looks like, and the image and the sound will play off of each other to really create something amazing and grotesque.

Paul Ottossonn and Zero Dark Thirty

Sometimes a film just sticks with you. There is something about it that grabs your attention and doesn't let go. I remember sitting in the movie theater, it was dark and quiet, what we were watching had been ok up to the point we were at. I also remember the moment when I knew I wouldn't forget this movie by the end of next week.

The screen exploded in gunfire. Gunfire that had never felt so realistic to me. I wasn't just listening to a gun be shot, instead I was feeling it. Like the butt was on my shoulder and I was pulling the trigger. The sound design of Zero Dark Thirty had the sole intent of pulling the audience into life and war in the middle east. It was meant to put you at the edge of your seat and maybe even to make you a bit uncomfortable. The dynamics were, and to this day still are, unforgettable to me. Even when some of the plot points and characters have faded away, the stark difference between moments of near silence and the seat shaking explosions have never left.

Paul Ottossonn, Supervising Sound Editor, described some of the techniques he used to build the special effects tracks. First, the score in the film is very sparse, leading to a lot of empty space to fill with SFX (as I noted earlier with the difference of loud and soft, a lot of this was achieved by not having music involved.) He also used mostly mono effects for the purpose of keeping the separated so you can pinpoint them in the mix. A great deal of effort was to create a soundscape that captured the area surrounding the scenes, to the point where they had to imagine what would be happening blocks away from the action. Ottossonn also describes the thought process behind the character driven scenes. If an actor was supposed to be stressed, he would narrow the mix and make everything feel confined, where as all environmental sound would be stripped away completely if a feeling of aloneness or solitude was being conveyed.

ADR was limited in the film as well. If you remember my first post, I said artificial mistakes are sometimes included or a gritty look is tried to achieve realism. Production audio was mostly used because it sounded grittier than ADR. The actors were stressed and tired and this would have been difficult to fake in the studio later on. Almost every scene in the movie also had foley added to it. This included sound effects for each character present, and then was panned and shifted accordingly to create an even more in depth environment. One of my personal favorite effects in the film was the sound of the stealth helicopter. The only time you ever hear the sound of a real helicopter is when it is far off in the distance and is more of a humming sound. This is what the real helicopters sound like, but they aren't very action movie oriented. The sounds of blades and rotors had to be synthesized to raise the intensity.

Ottossonn is the truest form of a Hyper Realist sound designer, and he is always thinking about how to toy with realism to elicit emotion from the audience and to push scenes as far as possible. I would recommend seeing this movie if you haven't to really get a sense of his style, or check out The Hurt Locker (which was also his work) for another similar experience.