kagablog

Q: How did you get involved in the project, Warrick?

Right place. Right time. I was up from Cape Town, phoned kaganof at the exact time that he was having discussions over who to use to design the sound track. As a sound artist I had also exhibited audio works exhibitions like Faultlines , The Brown & theGreen, and Adelaide Arts Festival. I had also done special SFX , design and mixing for various TV and Film commercials as well as a few specialist things like Tobe Hooper’s “Mangler” and Boormans “Country of My Skull” – my interest lies chiefly in the area where between music and sound manipulation. It is more satisfying for me to take overall responsibility for the soundtrack rather than just the music composition. Some one needs to be a bridge between the actual and the invented. I like the skill that people like Chris Watson can bring to the field of super real audio capture but I am more interested in the manipulation of those events to enhance the given action (or lack thereof)

Q: How did the shooting of the film on mobile phones affect your approach towards the Sound Design of the film?

There were 2 versions of the film and the approach to each was different.
The first version was very free and experimental; the plot floated in and out of focus – we tried to see how far we could manipulate picture and story with sound. The brief was to do a big Dolby stereo soundtrack which would knock people out .. and it did. It was great, we had time to do a good job.
It didn’t, however, enhance the story.

Version 2 saw a completely different edit and a narrative emerge which was clearer and more linear. We stripped out all extraneous sound and rebuilt the track to underscore the emotional drama. The cellphone thing became a dialogue about whether or not to do a huge sound mix or something more in keeping with the form ie something that used not so much the very fine work of Nico but more of the cameras own sound. More camera sound made its way into this version and we downgraded things. I really like a voice over we had going for a while which sounded like it was coming from a phone – we played with this a lot. It felt like you were hearing the conversation Sugar man was having with himself as if he’d phoned himself.

Q: What exchanges did you have with Kaganof – how did the two of you approach the Sound Design? How did you collaborate?

He had already laid down everything he wanted onto tracks in Final cut Pro , some very detailed music tracks were built up from the composed score and found music. I like the way he often used 2 or 3 pieces of music over each other to create a new piece. We used this as a way of developing the sound track throughout. I found often that the composers string score worked better reversed and pitch shifted and abstracted. This was more the case in version 2 where we tried to work with and tried to create an emotional dialogue. I was left to my own devices for 2 weeks and then we got together for a week and hammered everything into place.

Q: You are known for being very thorough and detailed. That you go and record strange sounds that can be used in many unique ways. Did you do this on SMS Sugar Man?

I have an extensive library of my own sonic work both real and composed. I have an eidetic memory of where everything is on my hard drives so when I work I can solve problems very quickly. The source sound in the movie was very good

Q: The images are very emotional. What specific sound did you try to achieve, what emotional counterpoint did you aim for?

In version one the composed music was designed for this particular purpose. It was often a case of taking a piece and adding a low frequency drone to enhance the feeling.

Q: The film is part narrative, part emotional diary; the sound plays a vital part in layering the story, in giving the film its unique feel. It is clearly the sound in his head, as much as it is representative sound that you see. Is this correct in understanding your approach to the sound?

More so in version one where the “real world “ is always ambiguous. We tried to play that up through the sound track. Even the voice-over was treated.

Q: You are well known also as the “Kalahari Surfer”, an original musician of many years and fame. Did you use any of your own music in the layering of the sound?

There was a need for a new composition in Version 2 ( much of the original score was not working or was axed with the scene for which it had been written) so we had to swop things around a lot.
There was a song I had done a few years ago and had put a poem read by Lydia Lunch over it. We used that track. “ The Human Animal” a great piece and this probably the one movie in the world where it would work.

Q: Part of the film is set in a hotel, which has a distinct affect – the sound of the hotel, its disturbing and consistent hum and buzz. What was your thinking in creating an almost horror aesthetic underneath the reality of the characters lives?

One of the first things I did was to go through all Nico’s sound and pull out the atmos tracks. I then spent a few days making new compositions from them; enhancing frequencies, beefing bass. dropping pitch. Combining them etc .. everything I could think of in an experimental sense. I put all these in a folder and kept them there ready for use. Often to combat room aircon noise in a dialogue scene I’d run 3 atmos tracks simultaneously. The very first thing was to get all the dialogue working in a premix situation. I work on Digidesign Protools software which is an industry standard and has great strengths in the area of film sound. Much of this work was done on this platform. I did it all myself and spent weeks on it. Especially tough were scenes with live sound inside a moving car. I am a fan of post synch films. I believe Americans make great movies because they treat the soundtrack as 50% of the film. Everything is created afterwards and time is budgeted for that. I respect this movies producers however for going the extra mile in the sound department route. Getting a top sound recordist in to do it and giving me the time to work it all into shape. The really experimental time shift morphing sound work was done with Ableton Live software all working through a dual core Intel Xeon Mac

Q: What films did you reference?

All David Lynchs movies and television works , I feel, are still relevant to todays sound creators. (even his weekly cartoon Angriest Dog) I think his partner , the late Alan Splett, was one of the greatest sound designers and possibly one of the first to be credited as such (along with Walter Murch whose work on Coppolas Godfather and Apocalypse Now movies I also find inspirational ) . More than watching movies, though, I found the book “Lynch on Lynch” by Chris Rodley a good reference to following ones own vision (it is a series of long biographical interviews.)