Sounds of the Sea

Sidebars
Fun With Cannons
Creating the Perfect Storm

The epic sea adventure is as old as film itself, spanning the silent
years up through various remakes of Treasure Island and
Mutiny on the Bounty, the unforgivable turkey Cutthroat
Island and last summer's surprise smash hit, Pirates of the
Caribbean. But there's something remarkably fresh and different
about Peter Weir's latest film, Master and Commander: The Far Side
of the World, which is adapted from Patrick O'Brian's beloved
series of books.

Many of the film's shipboard sounds came from recordings made during a number of sailing expeditions off the coasts of Ensanada and Los Angeles.

Yes, the film contains the requisite cannon battles, gruff lads,
claustrophobic quarters, a savage storm at sea, and a good, bloody
flogging. But Weir's take on the genre also steers clear of many of the
clichés while providing a realistic, almost documentary approach
to life at sea, the cruelty of ship battles, and the courage and
compulsions of explorers, mercenaries and seamen of every stripe. From
the opening shot to the film's conclusion, there's barely any time
spent on land: You can be forgiven if you don't have your land legs
after two-plus hours aboard the HMS Surprise. It's a hard, harrowing
voyage.

On the day of my visit to the John Ford Theater on the Fox lot in
Los Angeles, Weir and the post team are tweaking the final mix for reel
6, a climactic battle scene. It's a stunning action sequence, with
lines of cannons aboard the two ships firing broadside at each other at
extremely close range; their ordnance screaming and whizzing through
acrid, obfuscating smoke, smashing (with subwoofer-rattling force) into
decks and masts; and sending a hail of splinters, shrapnel, and bodies
flying. Musket fire and the shouts and screams of the crews add to the
overwhelming chaos. There is a moment of near silence, where the firing
has stopped and the damage aboard each vessel is no doubt being
assessed, and then comes the chilling craaaaaack of the
Acheron's mast, and in a long shot through hazy, swirling smoke worthy
of a J.M. Turner painting, we see the French ship's mighty main sail go
toppling sideways into the water as the British sailors cheer.

One of the targets for the 12-pounder and 24-pounder cannons uprange, a rig of wood planks awaits the cannonball crash that will serve as one of the many effects predubs for the final shot.

Across the length of the stage's huge Neve DFC console, rerecording
mixers Paul Massey (dialogue, music) and Doug Hemphill (effects) make
minute adjustments to the scene, occasionally consulting with music
editor Simon Leadley, who sits at Massey's left at a Pro Tools station,
dialogue editor R.J. (Bob) Kizer, whose Pro Tools rig is behind the
console, and picture editor Lee Smith, a one-time sound
designer/supervising sound editor who knows every frame of the film and
also knows director Weir's inclinations on most technical matters: This
is his eighth film with the director, and they clearly have the sort of
intuitive telepathy that comes in the best director-editor
relationships.

Weir drifts in and out of the room, listening attentively to the
adjustments and making suggestions. At one point, he asks if there is a
way to bridge the gap between the last cannon shot of the battle scene
with the subtle music cue that foreshadows the imminent collapse of the
mast. Hemphill brings in some ominous, almost inaudible LF rumble and
that seems to do the trick. Then, Weir thinks the celebration of the
British troops after the mast falls sounds “too
controlled,” so Kizer is called upon to provide some wilder crowd
elements from his vast storehouse of ADR and production sound elements.
He finds a lusty, celebratory “huzzah!” and Massey artfully
blends it in with the existing track.

There is an easy camaraderie among these consummate professionals,
and the hard work is peppered with lighthearted joking and, in keeping
with the spirit of the film, unending nautical references and puns.
Weir seems to be as popular with his crew as Aubrey is with his —
to a man, the mixers and editors speak admiringly of Weir, and he, in
turn, has the utmost confidence and respect for his technical team.

Among the many period firearms and artillery pieces used, a Hotchkiss gun, recorded in a canyon near Santa Clarita, Calif., contributes to the sounds of naval battle.

During a break in the action, Weir talks about his sonic approach to
the film: “I wanted to do something a little different with this
dusty genre, which hasn't really been touched much in recent years
other than Pirates of the Caribbean, though that belongs in the
branch of sea films that is more on the fantasy, less realistic side.
To do something like this film, which is true to the detail, you
probably have to go back to something like Das Boot, which was
quite inspirational, though not particularly relevant, of course. I
wanted it to have its own unique sound. I also wanted the music to be
used sparingly so the audiences' ears would have lots of time to adjust
to the sounds of the ship. If you put music from one end of it to
another — and that would be an easy thing to do — you
wouldn't get to know the sounds of the ship.”

How did Weir form his views on shipboard sounds? Is he a sailor?
“No, I'm not a sailor, but before I made this film, I took two
cruises on the Endeavor, which is probably the most accurate recreated
vessel there is from this period — the 1770s; it was Captain
Cook's vessel. I spent three days on one voyage, four on another, and
you work the ship. It's not just museum-accurate on the top; it's also
accurate below, so you sleep in hammocks and everything is as it would
have been in the time of Cook. What I learned on those trips became the
foundation for everything I did from then on — the script through
to the shoot, to the post — and I made extensive notes about the
sounds I heard. Everything was always moving, including the timbers of
the vessel. A lot of times, you couldn't even identify what the sounds
were; you couldn't determine what was rubbing against what. But there's
almost always this great creaking and groaning and noises of
indeterminate origin.

“Then, out on the top deck, you've got all of the sounds of
the rigging and the sails and, of course, the water. I'm fortunate in
that Richard King [supervising sound editor and effects recordist] is a
sailor, as are Paul [Massey] and Bob [Kizer], so they're particularly
sympathetic to the sounds of the sea. I really wanted this to be a
sea film. It opens at sea and ends at sea, and there's no
architecture in it at all, or the usual frames of references to settle
into: the barrel on the quay, the carriage pulling up, the crinolines
of the young lady saying goodbye to her officer. I didn't want any of
that. I wanted the viewer to have the unique experience of joining the
voyage and really being a part of it, because that was my favorite
experience of reading O'Brian.”

Principal photography took place over a five-month period in
Ensenada, Mexico, using the same mammoth sea “tank” that
James Cameron employed for Titanic, except this time around,
there was a full-size working replica ship, the Rose (which became the
Surprise), as well as another ship on a gimble and other portions of
ships on gimbles on soundstages. Weir is a stickler for authenticity,
and he had a series of notebooks filled with pertinent information for
various crewmembers. “He had one pertaining to sailing, another
to armaments, all different subjects,” says King. For dialogue
editor Kizer, the loose-leaf binder included a list of cannon commands,
an English-French sailing dictionary, charts on saber combat,
historical background on the period of the film, and a 26-page glossary
so he'd never mix up a “clew” with a “leech” or
a “luff.” Even the right-hand wall of the Ford Theater was
adorned with a giant schematic of the deck and interior of the
Surprise.

Only a portion of the production sound from the shoot was usable,
says Kizer, “because you have scenes like the storm sequence
where they're using giant engines to get the wind and water going.
Another problem is that everybody had radio mics, but they didn't
respond that well to humidity or water, so sometimes you only got half
of the words, and even then you could only hear one or two over the
din.” Well over half of the dialog had to be looped later at
studio sessions in London, Paris, Vancouver, and in Russell Crowe's
case, Australia. “A lot of it was group ADR,” Kizer says.
“We had these loop groups of 12 in England, and we'd have them
choking each other and fighting to get the mayhem we needed.” It
was also a very Foley-intensive film, with Gary Hecker supervising that
aspect — which also included considerable swordplay — over
at Sony in L.A. Location Foley was also performed on the set.

When it came to effects, Weir wanted realism over Hollywood bombast.
“Fortunately, O'Brian is very detailed in his descriptions of the
sounds of the ships and the battles, and, of course, there are some
recreated vessels. So we had a good starting place, but then Richard
[King] went to some extraordinary lengths,” he says with a
laugh.

Indeed. King and fellow effects recordists Eric Potter and John
Fassal ventured far and wide to capture authentic sounds for the film.
One excursion found them in the snows of Michigan in January recording
cannon fire on Zaxcom Deva 24-bit 4-channel recorders, stereo Nagra and
DATs (see “Fun With Cannons,” page 32). Muskets and other
guns required a whole other recording environment.

“We did several musket sessions in this small but contained
canyon out near Santa Clarita [outside of L.A.],” King says.
“We did some Blunderbusses, which have the flare out of the
muzzle, a seven-barrel volley gun, and a Hotchkiss gun, which is like a
small cannon. I was running three machines and had mics in different
spots in the canyon, including a set of Schoeps maybe 100 yards away
from the guns, facing away toward the hills. After every shot, I'd go
back and listen to a little of each one to hear how it was coming out,
and we found that the machine that had the two Schoeps facing away
sounded so great. At one point, I went over to check to see
exactly how the mics were positioned, and it turns out that the mic
stand had fallen over and the mics were flat on the ground! But it gave
the sound this great low end; maybe, it was from the sound traveling
along the ground. You sometimes get those kinds of weird accidental
acoustics. In general, though, we found that the best stuff was from 50
yards away and up. You need the close mics for the detail of the flash
and the crack, but you get the boom from farther away.”

Many of the shipboard sounds came from a number of sailing
expeditions the trio made aboard the Rose off Ensenada and on another
ship out of L.A. “We'd go out when it was calm or just a light
swell, and that was great for getting all of the creaks and groans we
needed,” King explains. “We got some amazing discrete
noises. Eric had the Deva below deck — four-channel, which is how
it is [mixed] in the movie — and it really puts you in the room.
You have a creak in the right front, and it will move to the right
surround; you really feel like you're inside of something. We did all
of the sail drops and raising of the sails and the rigging; we did that
for three days. I also wanted to go out on a day that was really windy,
so we picked a day when there were 12ft. seas and small-craft warnings.
We got great thundering crashes and waves smashing against the side of
the boat and so on; it was very dramatic.”

Yet another effects adventure took King, Potter, and Fassal to the
desert east of L.A., where they recorded “discrete sail movement
and wind over sails, without all of the water noise and
atmosphere,” King says. “We borrowed some sails from the
Rose and rigged a mast in the desert.” They also went to great
lengths to record some unusual wind sounds in the desert for the film's
incredible storm scene (see “Creating the Perfect Storm,”
page 34).

As post work progressed, other challenges presented themselves to
King and Hemphill. “We were looking for sounds to augment the
cannon shot flying by,” King says. “I was looking for a
low-end component to convey weight — that's from O'Brian
descriptions of hearing the hum of a cannon ball passing over deck. So
I got some crossbow arrows and fired those over mics and pitched them
down significantly, and that was perfect. It was this very organic
sound.

“We also didn't feel like we had strong enough impacts; they
didn't have enough splinter to make them visceral,” he
continues. “So we spent two or three days firing a sling shot
filled with various pieces of wood — dowels and cut pieces and
jagged pieces and other objects — over a microphone. In the end,
we probably had 20 to 25 separate effects predubs: The cannon shot is
one predub; the ordnance passing through the air is another; hitting
the ship is another; splinters is another; the sound of splinters
dropping onto wooden surfaces was another. We had as many as six Pro
Tools running when Doug and I were doing the effects predub
together.”

While King was collecting, assembling and fine-tuning effects, music
supervisor Simon Leadley was hard at work recording the unconventional
score at The Village in L.A. “I was sort of composer wrangler in
a way,” says the genial Aussie, best known for his work as
supervising music editor on Moulin Rouge, “because there
were three of them working, and each is very different from the others,
and they all had equal input into the score. There's Iva [Davies], who
was in [the Australian band] Icehouse. He was classically trained and
became a pop star. Then you've got Christopher Gordon, who's more of a
regular film music person, and Richard Tognetti who's the artistic
director of Australian Chamber Orchestra. You've got these three
different strains coming together in really interesting ways. There are
a lot of high strings mixed with synths and lots and lots of
percussion: taiko drums and bells and various metallic things that are
very interesting tonally.

“Peter didn't want a traditional score,” Leadley adds.
“That's been done to death. He wanted something that would convey
urgency and spirit. That's why anytime there's an inference of going to
battle, there are ‘war drums,’ if you like. People probably
expect a certain kind of music in this sort of film, but they're not
going to hear it here.”

So instead of string swells, there is shakuhachi and drums and
Richard King's strange winds. There are also fairly long stretches with
no music at all: “Peter wanted to allow plenty of space to let
the film breathe,” comments mixer Paul Massey. “This is not
a film where the audience is pulled along by a constant barrage of
effects and music. It's a film where the director wants the audience to
sink into it and become part of the world — sort of
documentary-ish in style — and live the day-to-day aboard the
ship.”

Widely regarded as among the top rerecording mixers in L.A., Massey
and Hemphill have worked together on numerous films since first teaming
up in the mid-90s following stints at Todd-AO. For a few years, they
plied their trade at Sony, opening up the William Holden stage there.
Then, in 2000, they moved over to Fox when the John Ford stage opened.
“Even though we're still independents, I feel like we need to
have a room we're familiar and comfortable with,” Massey says.
“I like the boutique feel at Fox.” And though he says he
has some “operator issues” with the Neve DFC,
“overall, I love the sound, particularly of the EQ and
compression.”

Of his working relationship with Hemphill, Massey notes, “My
approach and Doug's approach is always, ‘What can we take out?
What can we clear so that we can hear everything we need to
hear?’ It's so easy to get too busy and to think that you have to
have a sound for everything that's going on. As a mixer, you can't
allow that to occur or you end up with this big mono mush. So the
challenge becomes highlighting the effects you want to hear, the
dialogue you have to hear, letting the music do what it needs to do,
and take everything else out.”

“As mixers,” Hemphill notes, “we're thinking,
‘What are we asking the audience to sit through?’ In this
film, there are three set pieces in a row that are combat — big
battles. And in the final one, we ended up going more for the general
impression of what's going on, because it's just overwhelming
otherwise. In a couple of scenes, we even lowered our cannons a
dB-and-a-half because we decided that you aren't gaining anything
story-wise to make them that big. On one hand, we're mixing for the
drama and the pacing, but on the other hand, we're saying, ‘What
can the audience take?’ I've got to tell you, where I live in
Missoula [Montana], people are always saying, ‘Why do movies have
to be so loud?’ You have to rein it in every once in a while.

“And, actually, some of the stuff I'm most proud of in the
film are the backgrounds Richard put together and the way we mixed
it,” he concludes. “It all becomes part of the story. The
ship ‘responds’ to the characters. Telling a story is
always paramount to me, and Peter is the same way. I think that's one
reason this all went so smoothly. We're all on the same page. We all
want to use our sensibilities to tell a great story.”

At a National Guard artillery range, a 12-pounder cannon stands, ready to fire.

Supervising sound editor Richard King: “At first, we couldn't
find any large-bore cannons — 12-pounders and 24-pounders —
that we could fire. Then, through one of the technical consultants, we
found these historians and collectors in Michigan who had [the cannons
we needed] and also had a relationship with a National Guard base in
northern Michigan that has a howitzer range. It was January, and the
base was basically closed for the winter, so John Fassal, Eric Potter,
and I flew to Michigan for four days, and we fired cannons. If you read
back in the history, you find that they fired all kinds of things out
of the cannons: not only round shot, but also chain shot, bar shot,
grape shot. These collectors did the research to find out how the shot
was constructed and then they actually made it for us; they spent a
month casting shot. They were really into it.

“For every shot, we had up to six machines rolling. We had a
Deva four-channel 24-bit machine and several DAT machines and an analog
Nagra because we were curious to see what kind of crunch we could get
by really hammering [the analog machine]. With loud sounds like
weapons, you can sometimes get good analog distortion. So we had the
Nagra and a couple of DAT machines set up close to the guns and various
mics — some large-diaphragm mics, some PZMs — set up at
different distances. Eric would be downrange 300 or 400ft., and he had
mics set up in the line of fire and then very long cables back through
the snow.

“I was on a snowmobile with a portable DAT rig and a Neumann
190 stereo mic. I drove around getting distant shots to get that low
end. Later, we went back to the cutting room, and we lined up the
[recordings of each shot] in Pro Tools and got this incredible range of
colors: from the crack from the close mics, to the great, deep boom
from my roving half-a-mile-away mic, and the shots going overhead from
Eric's mics. The scream-bys are amazing. And the bar and chain shot
whizzing through the air at various speeds is something most people
have never heard. It's very powerful.”

Driven into 35MPH winds, this pickup truck and wooden frame played a vital role in creating the onscreen illusion of gale-force winds tearing through a ship's sails.

The Surprise encounters a fierce storm as it rounds Cape Horn at the
tip of South America. Richard King: “We wanted the sound of
gale-force winds, but after doing some research, we decided we were
going to have to make the stuff up. So we built this big wooden frame
with these cross-members on it, and a thousand feet of 1in. and
½in. hemp line up and down and around it, tightened with
turnbuckles. Then we rented a pickup truck, put the frame 5ft. or 6ft.
above the cab, and drove that truck at 70 miles an hour into a
30-mile-an-hour wind up in the Mojave Desert, with a directional stereo
mic lying in the bed of the truck, which had been dampened with sound
blankets and foam. The mic was shooting up into the rigging, so we
didn't get any of the truck sound, and we ended up recording all of
these really interesting, weird, organic noises to the 24-bit Deva. We
also had this ‘wind harp,’ a lyre with gut strings that
we'd detuned and stuck out in the wind on the truck.

“Later, when we mixed the storm sequence, we did add some
electronic elements and some vocal stuff. When you read descriptions
[in O'Brian], it says that a storm could sound like ‘a thousand
animals being tortured.’ So we took off from that,
too.”

Doug Hemphill: “Peter was very intent on the wind changing
character when the ship changes course [as it goes around the Horn]. We
used a variety of low-frequency and high-frequency material, very
pitch-oriented. Then there's another component as you're going around
the horn. It's not just rain, it's freezing rain, so you have to
have that stinging, brittle water hitting you, and that's very
frequency-oriented, too. The challenge was to make it all into an
organic whole: a big, single monster storm, instead of specific
moments. Years ago, I worked with a director on a huge battle scene,
and he told me something I've never forgotten: He said the more detail
you put in, the smaller the event begins to seem. So that's the
paradigm for the storm. There are instances when you want to hear the
detail and you focus on something, but the way you make it more of a
whole piece is to make it more impressionistic, staying away from the
fine detail.”