What Sounds May Come: Soundeluxe Hears Heaven and Hell

Although most technical acclaim for Vincent Ward's What Dreams May Comelauds the film's stunning visual depiction of heaven and hell, the sounddesign that accompanies those visuals was every bit as delicate andpainstaking. In fact, it took sound designer Peter Michael Sullivan atSoundeluxe Vine Street Studios, Los Angeles, about nine months to designand mix all the sounds featured in the Polygram release.

The key challenge, according to David Kneupper, the film's supervisingsound editor and president of Soundeluxe, was the fact that Ward wanted thefilm to depict a personal view of the afterlife as seen through the eyes ofprotagonist Chris Nielsen (Robin Williams). For example, from Nielsen'sPOV, heaven consists of both classical paintings and those paintingscreated by his wife, Annie (Annabella Sciorra). Therefore, early in thefilm, Nielsen's visit to heaven is a visit to a literal world of paint.

Director Ward says that required "a sound palette that, like the images, istied to Chris' perceptions." Ward elaborates: "He perceives things throughhis incredible love of classic painting. It is a very subjective kind ofstorytelling, and sound played a crucial role in that." But, as Kneupperpoints out, it meant Soundeluxe had a very delicate sound design job on itshands. "It's not like anyone had the sounds of a painted world-stepping inpaint, touching trees made of paint-in their sound effects library," hesays.

To head the design job, Ward and Kneupper brought in Sullivan, a veteransound designer, and the three collaborated to create a unique audiolanguage for the movie. A key example is a sequence in the film in which atree appears in Chris' paradise, essentially inside a painting Annie hadbeen creating for Chris at the time of his death. The tree, however, wasnot part of the painting when Chris died, but shows up after his death whenAnnie, back on Earth, paints it.

Ward says, "The idea was to show that Chris and Annie are soulmates,connected even after death." Sullivan adds that the team designed thesounds associated with the tree to convey the couple's emotional stress ofbeing apart and longing for each other. "We took library sounds of a treebeing cut in the forest with lots of cracking and stressing," explainsSullivan. "Then, to convey the emotional aspects, we mixed in sounds ofcertain animals-monkeys, coyotes, whales-to reinforce the subtext ofmoaning, sad sounds. I then processed female sighs that we recorded to showthat Annie is crying on her side of the canvas. So by the correct mixtureof these types of sounds, we were able to convey the idea of connecting thetwo characters emotionally through this image of a tree."

Later in the film, Sullivan adopted a similar approach to the sounds of theruined home Chris and Annie once shared, which becomes Annie's hellfollowing her suicide. In a crucial scene, Chris confronts Annie there inan effort to re-establish their connection and, hopefully, to bring herfrom hell to his own paradise.

"Annie's particular corner of hell is a place familiar to the both of them,but ruined, destroyed," explains Sullivan. "We decided the house itselfshould be moaning, crying, sighing, suffering. But it had to be very subtleso as not to interfere with the dialogue of an important scene. So werecorded emotional sighs and then reversed them, putting a long reverb tailon it and then flipping it back again so that the sigh now plays forward,but with the reverb preceding it. Then, we put another, long reverb tail onthe end of it, so that the sound comes out as reverb, sigh, reverb. I thentreated the whole thing with a Doppler effect, to move those sighing soundsaround in the house. The idea is that it is a constant reminder of Annie'storment and suffering."

Detailed Foley work helped create these "mental landscapes," says Sullivan,as did extensive use of Soundeluxe's large sound effects library. Inaddition, Sullivan used unique sounds that he had recorded in recent years.Among them: the sounds of bubbling lava and oatmeal, which were used tosweeten a key beginning scene in which Chris and his guide, Albert (playedby Cuba Gooding, Jr.), walk on water made of paint.

"We needed something that could realistically sound like water lapping in alake, yet have a more viscous character to it," says Sullivan. "Therefore,I used a technique called 'envelope following,' in which we combined soundsof water with bubbling lava, oatmeal, and other things. I took the originalsource-the lapping waves-and combined them with these sweetener elements.That way the main sound, of water, rises and falls surrounded by theseother elements. It's then recognizable as an impressionistic wave of water,rather than any wave you would ever see in the real world."

Kneupper says that such subtle combinations of sounds would have beennearly impossible had Soundeluxe not been able to keep the same crew on thesame stage for the entire project, which took 10 months. "Good soundcompanies always try to tailor the service to the requirements of theparticular film, but it is often hard to keep the entire crew intact if theproject is a long one, since these people are in very high demand," saysKneupper. "But Vincent Ward and Polygram really supported the sound workand were very sensitive to how important it was to making the movie work asa whole. That allowed us to keep the crew together, even if it meantchanging schedules around. "