Public Enemies Sound Design Article

I read an article on MixOnline (http://mixonline.com/post/features/audio_public_enemies//index.html) about all the different aspects of the sound for Micheal Mann's film Public Enemies. I found it a pretty interesting insight into a director that takes sound very seriously.

The article interviewed different people involved in the creation of the sound for the film who described how they recorded specific sounds as well as working with Mann himself. Jeremy Peirson, co-supervising sound editor, describes how Mann's "got a mixer in front of him and he'll audition things and try things himself, so you'll get very specific notes about where he wants to go". I find it interesting to read about a director who is so ingrained with the sound design process. I haven't heard of it too much.

Re-recording mixer Beaus Borders describes how Mann will get as granular as syllables in the dialogue mixing. “If the line is, ‘Let's go!’ he might say, ‘Raise the attack of the “g” on “go,” but leave the “o” exactly where it is, and on “Let's,” I want you to do a rise on the “s.”’ It's not so much for intelligibility reasons; it's because Johnny Depp is supposed to be very forceful in the scene so he wants the attack on the ‘g’: ‘Let's go!’ He alters performances in minute but important ways"

There some detail on how the sound designers and recordists visited the actual places where the real events from the film took places in order to get an idea of the ambience etc. There is also a good part on recording the guns for the film, but what I found most interesting was the description of how they use those gun sounds. Beaux Borders describes:

" There's one scene where Michael is trying to show how the bad guys have the better technology, the faster cars, they're more organized and they're much more aggressive than the cops. In this particular scene, we relied on the original recordings that Laurent and Jeremy provided, and that's where you hear the machine guns being aggressive and scary and startling. They're in the subwoofers, they're coming out of the surround speakers. You cut to a cop and he's got a little .38 gun that sounds like a peashooter compared to these Tommy guns.

“Now, fast-forward to later in the film — there's a scene where there's a bank heist that goes wrong. It's another quick scene, but this time it's all about disorganization, about the plan falling through — chaos and disorder. And when you hear the sound in this particular scene, you're not going to hear giant, lush recordings; you're going to hear an amalgamation of production recordings and sound effects, you're going to hear things chopping off on cuts, you're going to hear breathing and the re-loading of a gun louder than a gunshot. You're going to hear things out of balance from the way you would normally perceive a machine gun battle, and it makes it feel disorganized."

I definitely find this the most interesting part. Hearing sound designers talk about the specifics of their craft is very interesting to me. I like how much thought has gone into how to use the recorded sounds. It's not good enough just to have good recordings. You have to use them appropriately and interestingly.