Huffington Post — How Alfonso Cuarón sculpted authentic-sounding audio for “Gravity” ‘s silence-filled space

Jim Hill

11 years ago

There's a heated debate going on right now among cinéastes about
the proper way to see "Gravity." Some say that the very best way to
experience Alfonso Cuarón's incredibly intense space epic is by catching the 3D
version. While still others insist that — in order to feel the full effect of
(SPOILERS AHEAD) being stranded 375 miles above Earth — you really need to see
the IMAX 3D version of this movie.

Well, according to sound editor Skip Lievsay, if you want to
have the ultimate "Gravity" experience and see this film in all its
claustrophobic glory, then you really need to seek out a cinema that has a Dolby
Atmos sound system. That way, you can see & hear this movie as Cuarón
actually wanted audiences to experience it.

"Alfonso spent 4 1/2 years researching and developing
'Gravity.' He wanted this movie to be as authentic as possible when it came to
recreating the terror that an astronaut would experience were they suddenly to become
untethered and then go hurtling through space," explained Skip during a
recent phone interview. "But the problem with going with ultra-realism
when your movie is set in space is that sound doesn't actually travel in a vacuum.
So you're now extremely limited when it comes to what elements you can build
your film's soundscape around."

Luckily, Cuarón had recruited Glenn Fremantle, one of Britain's
top sound designers, to come work with him on "Gravity." And while
Alfonso was at London's Pinewood
and Shepperton Studios shooting Sandra Bullock & George Clooney in performance capture outfits, Glenn then came up with an extremely clever conceit when it came
to creating audio elements that would actuallysound as though they'd been recorded
out in the depths of space.

"Glenn established the idea that — since an astronaut
has air in his or her space suit — that if they were to touch something, the
vibrations inside of their suit would then allow this astronaut to hear things,
that the sound could then travel to their ears through touch," Lievsay
continued. "This is why a lot of the audio for 'Gravity' wound up being
recorded through a transducer, which is this microphone that records
vibrations."

Using this recording technique to collect a lot of "Gravity" 's audio
elements gave this movie's soundscape a very unique quality. A muted sound that
then made its characters seem that much more vulnerable & isolated as they
floated out there in space.

"And then you have to talk about how Alfonso & Glenn handled all of
the transmissions from NASA to the space station or the shuttle and then the
transmission between astronauts so that they all sounded like separate devices.
That it was then easy for the audience to understand who was talking to who
while still preserving the emotion & drama in each scene," Skip
stated. "This became a real challenge for 'Gravity' 's sound design team.
To try and maximize the fullness of Sandra & George's voice while still
making these recordings sound like authentic radio transmissions. Because — as
it turns out — a certain amount of emotion is lost, the edge that a human
voice can have gets taken away the more that we try and make a recording sounds
like it's coming in over the radio. That kind of filtered effect can really
undercut into the energy, emotion, & drama that one gets from listening to
a human voice."

But once shooting was complete and Cuarón & Fremantle
had collected all of the elements that they thought were necessary to build an
appropriate soundscape for "Gravity," it was then time to head on
over to Warner Bros. Which is where Alfonso & Skip then began to remix
these elements on that movie studio's new Dolby Atmos stage.

"Ever since Dolby Laboratories first made Atmos
available in the Spring of last year for filmmakers to use during their final
sound mixes, Alfonso has been very eager to experiment with this new
technology," Lievsay said. "Given that this new theatrical sound
system enables the placement of sound overhead, you can now make it seem as
though a character were floating directly over the audience's heads. Which fit
in perfectly with the sort of story that Alfonso was trying to tell with
'Gravity.' "

So for a week, Alfonso & Skip took the elements that
Glenn and his team had created in the UK.
And they then experimented with repanning & repositioning this audio to
create a deeper & richer soundscape for "Gravity." And the end
result was a motion picture that was so much more exciting, so much more
gratifying.

"Honestly, if you listened to the original mix that Alfonso & Glen put
together for this movie and then compared it to our Atmos remix, it's like
going mono to stereo. The obvious jump in quality that you got when movies went
from VHS to DVD. Or from DVD to Blu-ray," Lievsay enthused. "This
movie sounds so much better — more importantly, it plays so much better —
when you see it screened in a theatre that has a Atmos sound system."

Mind you, the real irony of this whole situation is that —
based on the $55.6 million that "Gravity" earned over this past
weekend (which gave this Alfonso Cuarón the biggest October opening in
Hollywood history) — a lot of Hollywood helmers are now supposedly going out
their ways to find theaters that are showing this intense space epic which are also
equipped with Dolby Atmos. So that these directors can then decide if they too
should be making use of this dramatic sound system when it comes time to do the
final mix on their next motion picture.

"So in a weird sort of way, the production of 'Gravity' turned out to be a
mutually beneficial thing for both Alfonso and Dolby. Given that the dramatic
sound that you can get out of Atmos seems to work really, really well with "Gravity"
while — at the same time — "Gravity" wound up being this tremendous
showcase for what filmmakers can do, how they can heighten the drama &
excitement of their movies if they do their final sound mix using the Dolby Atmos
system," Skip concluded.

Which is all the more bizarre. Given that one of the things
"Gravity" hammers home over & over again is how scary silence can
be.