NEWS
'Kong' Proves 800-lb. Gorilla in Academy's Sound Categories
by Michael Kunkes
 Ethan Van der Ryn, left, and Mike Hopkins, winners of the Best Sound Editing Oscar for King Kong. Photo by Jeffrey Mayer |
When Mike Hopkins, MPSE, picked up his Sound Editing Oscar for King Kong––an award he shared with Ethan Van der Ryn––he thanked the late Murray Spivak, acknowledging the contribution of the man who created the original voice of Kong in 1933. By slowing down a lion’s roar and recording it backwards, Spivak not only created the most distinctive voice in early sound since Garbo talked, he also set a standard in sound design that would come full circle 73 years later in Peter Jackson’s remake of Ernest B. Schoedsack’s classic. And speaking of remakes, two years ago, Hopkins and Van der Ryn won this same award for Jackson’s Lord of the Rings: Return of the King.
Also a repeat winner from LOTR in 2004 was the mixing team of Christopher Boyes, Michael Semanick, CAS, and Michael Hedges, CAS, with production recordist Hammond Peek, CAS. Though this was the sound mixing team’s third show for Jackson, including the last two LOTR films, it was apparent from the start that the stylistic approaches for the H.R. Tolkein saga were not going to work for the big primate. As Boyes relates, “We had three entirely different environments, from 1930s New York to a pretty expressive and dynamic ocean voyage on the S.S. Venture to the world of Skull Island.”
For Boyes, the only Guild member on these mostly Kiwi crews, the big challenge was that every one of Kong’s three worlds was so completely packed with visual elements that needed to be addressed sonically. “To find that combination of background and hard effects and see where they sat in the bigger context of dialogue and music was a massive undertaking–– especially in a film that was three hours long,” he explained. “It was like mixing two features back-to-back.”
The parts of King Kong that appealed most to Boyes were the quieter moments. “Two of my favorite scenes take place in New York,” he recalls. “First was the scene in which Ann walks up to the vaudeville theatre and Jack sees her in the window. The ambient city sounds that we had built up were there, and the scene then went into a very dreamy, ethereal world that was fun to create.
“The other was the scene at the dock when they board the ship,” he continues. “We really wanted to sell that dock as a working shipyard and tag all the activity going on, but it’s a major challenge when you’ve got a music track and all that dialogue. My style is to work really hard to bring all those elements out just enough so that they are not stepping on the dialogue.” “Peter wanted to make sure that the soundtrack we created had peaks and valleys, so the audience could get a rest from the onslaught of sound,” adds fellow mixer Semanick. “Even after all hell breaks loose on Skull Island, we had to mix the scene in the insect pit several times over, because we’re just coming out of the Brontosaurus scene–– then we go right into the T-Rex battle scene…and Peter wanted this sequence to be mysterious and creepy, not just loud.” Jackson’s love of the sound process enabled the crew to get an early start, especially in sound design. “We started the conceptual work on Kong in pre-production” says sound editor Van der Ryn. “Most of the big action set pieces were done as previsualized animatics, so Brent Burge––one of our sound effects editors/sound designers–– did pretty complete temp sound work-ups on these pieces, and they really contained the bones visually and sound wise for the movie. From a design shape standpoint, they didn’t change radically after that. On Peter’s films, we really try to develop the soundtrack in parallel to the picture.”
 Christopher Boyes, left, Michael Semanick, Michael Hedges and Hammond Peek, winners of the Best Sound Mixing Oscar for King Kong. Photo by Jeffrey Mayer |
The story of the voice of Kong, spoken in large part by Andy Serkis, (Gollum from LOTR), has been oft told. Van der Ryn and Burge used original wild gorilla recordings from the Diane Fossey Foundation and studied them intensely. “When it actually came down to making Kong work as a character, we felt free to use Andy as the spine of Kong’s voice and used other animal sounds for sweetening as necessary,” explains Van der Ryn.
A major contribution was also made by producer Fran Walsh, as Semanick points out. “Fran was instrumental in the development of the Kong vocals, both in determining how much of Andy to use and in picking selects from the pre-dubs.” Hopkins adds, “Dinosaur vocals had already been well established with audiences, thanks to Gary Rydstrom’s groundbreaking work on Jurassic Park. Kong had to be new and very special, both as a monster and a compassionate character.”
To help create the reality of 1933, a huge amount of recording was done from scratch to create ambient tracks; for the engines of the S.S. Venture, an old coalfired steamship with reciprocating engines was recorded, in addition to guns, old planes and cars. For Skull Island, Van der Ryn and sound designer David Whitehead went to Borneo and recorded jungle and animal sounds in three different national parks, as well as lions and tigers in a private animal park in Australia. “Ethan got to throw cars off cliffs, then decimate them with enormous boulders,” says Hopkins, whose role was mainly on dialogue. “One of the keys to big action movies is to have a fresh palette of sounds to work with. It helps keep the audience involved.”
No library effects or sounds were used. “Part of the recipe for King Kong was to work it from the ground up,” says Van der Ryn. “People never talk about using stock footage on the visual side of things, so why should sound be any different? It’s kind of a disconnect.”
Recordist Peek had his hands full recording production sound with the usual special fans, smoke and wind machines that Jackson likes to use. Wave generating machines and rain machines were added to the Kong set, as well as planes constantly flying overhead on the back lot. Peek found himself not only being a sound recordist, but also a director of sorts, since in addition to recording usable production sound, he was also tasked with providing a suitable sound mood that would help the beauty connect emotionally with the beast.
“The most interesting challenge was how to create an audio presence for Kong that actress Naomi Watts could bounce off of,” says Peek. “The post sound guys came up with a package I dubbed ‘the Kongaliser’; it took a radio mic feed from Serkis, and fed it though a G4 Mac that pitch-dropped his voice about a third of an octave. We added a few other treatments, then I fed the resulting low-pitched Kong ‘voice’ out to two strategically placed speakers,” he recalls.
“Often, Andy would end up atop a 25- foot-high scissor lift with one of the speakers strapped underneath it, so that not only could Naomi play to the right eye-line for Kong, but react to the voice from his actual size and the largeness of sound as well,” he continues. “This proved really helpful for her performance throughout the shoot.”
As with LOTR, the mix was worked on in acts, rather than reels. “Peter works in sequences, and I think more and more people are doing that,” says Semanick. “Personally, I would love to mix in acts, but at this point, ProTools can’t handle that much information, and optical and sound departments are bogged down just from the load that reels create. I think this is a way to work that most directors would love.”
Boyes prefers to do his temp mix on a real console, rather than on ProTools because, as he says, “I spend countless hours trying to get clients to do a proper temp mix, because of the education the whole team gets in learning the strengths of the cut tracks. When you are moving that amount of sound, and your technology in the audio path is being taxed to its limits, your sound can get closed off in a way that doesn’t feel like it’s breathing.” That said, Boyes adds, “It’s in the final mix that I find the language of the film, and Kong was very much that way. On a console in a big mix theatre, I am able to find a place of clarity, where the sound, music and dialogue is telling the story––and nothing is taking away from that.”
Kong’s mix team was also an increasing rarity—the three-position unit, with Boyes handling effects, Semanick the dialogue, and Hedges the music. “I still think the three-man team has a tremendous amount of value and gives clients the ability to have a person who specializes in just one area,” Boyes says. “On these big shows, if you have a three-man team sitting at a huge console, you count on the nuances of glances and hand and eye movements to communicate. Mixing is a performance, and you’ve got three people trying to play a collaborative and mutually appealing tune on a massive instrument. It’s a constant hand-off.”
Reflecting back on the show, Boyes concludes, “The original King Kong was a seminal work in a lot of ways––but no more so than in sound and sound effects. It was important for us to honor that in everything we did.”
Michael Kunkes is a freelance editor and writer specializing in animation, production and post-production. He can be reached at writermk@sbcglobal.net.
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