By Patrick Birk
With our 2022 Oscars coverage now behind us, we took the opportunity to look back at the film A Quiet Place Part II and the line the sound team had to walk to ramp up the horror. Director John Krasinski’s follow-up to 2018’s A Quiet Place was nominated for a BAFTA this year in the Sound category. It features Evelyn, Regan, Marcus and Beau Abbott on their quest for safety after an alien invasion all but destroys civilization. As the four traverse dense woods looking for a settlement, they must do whatever they can to remain silent… and weaponize whatever they can to defeat lurking extraterrestrials.
Brandon Proctor
What is the role of sound design in a film where silence plays such an important role? Beyond that, how can sound design allow the viewer to enter the perspective of Regan, a deaf teenage girl? Skywalker Sound re-recording mixer Brandon Proctor sat with postPerspective to explain the process.
Tension and release play a big role in the sound design for horror. A Quiet Place Part II’s entire goal is to be as quiet as possible in order not to alert the monsters. How did you play this up?
My goal was to see how far I could take it in adding to the viewer’s expectation or enjoyment of the film. And we do take the soundtrack to absolute digital silence. We go from degrees of quiet moments and soft levels all the way to being as loud as we can get away with. So it’s binding with the story points themselves, like Regan’s point of view, for example. John Krasinski would call them “sound envelopes.” Basically, we’d go into her sonic perspective — like the sound of blood rushing through your body and then, when she takes her cochlear implant out, complete silence.
Then we have to figure out how far we can go with that technique before bringing the viewer back in. We don’t want to take the audience out of the film, so it has to serve the story the best it can without distraction. There was a little trial and error in the process. We could only judge some of the moments of silence if we watched the whole film down. Then later in the film, we would break those rules to help push the story along in a different direction.
We also couldn’t have music in Regan’s sound envelope, so we had to find creative ways to either get out of the music or not have music at all.
What went into creating Regan’s envelopes?
There was the central nervous system design, the sound of blood rushing through the body, and then I would add a little filter to make it seem more internal. Then we experimented with how low in the volume we could get the sound so that you could actually hear the difference between it and digital silence. We were always talking about how low we could go on that sound. “Is that the right level? Let’s turn it up a decibel.” Literally just shaving the volume in one way or the other to help sell it. It might even be just feeling it.
That quietness is contrasted with sudden attacks by monsters. How did you make those attacks punch as hard as they did?
Depending on perspective and location in the room, it would vary between volume, compression and limiting the attacks. I could get more volume by using more speakers, giving it as much weight as possible, depending on how close we are to the attack. It helps coming from a quieter perspective, which makes the loud moments feel louder.
The filmmakers were always asking, “Can you make it louder?” That just made the home theater mixes harder. I’d have to look at the stereo and the 5.1 versions and try to get that same impact or emotional response. Every streaming network has their own requirements. You could create something and give it to them, and then who knows what they’ll do with it at that point? It’s not as bad as broadcast because they might use compressors, limiters or even expanders, so they’re actually changing the noise floor. That happens all the time.
What compressors are you using to gain more punch? And what compressor settings did you use for the sound of the creatures descending at the beginning of the film?
For the most part, I’m using the FabFilter compressor, and then I’ll use some multi-band compression as well. I’ll also use the Avid compressor, so I’ll go back and forth between both of those. Then I always have Avid limiters as well, and now I’m trying to use that in conjunction with the FabFilter limiters. The Avid limiters are kind of set on everything, just at a minus one/minus one situation. Just help the top a little bit. The compressor settings, though, I’m constantly changing them depending on what the sound is. Sometimes I’m just crushing ambiances to try to make them feel farther away. Or if there’s a creature that’s around the corner and I want it to sound like it’s really far, I’ll just crush it with a crazy setting.
As for the creatures’ descent, that’s a combination of Erik Aadahl’s sound design and the mix. I don’t remember offhand how I had the compressor set for that stuff, but then it’s also about speaker placement. And in that one, when we were in Atmos, we’re using a lot of ceiling speakers. The other nice thing about the Atmos is having the subs for the surrounds as well. So we used that as much as possible, which also helped with a lot of impact sounds, especially if something’s dropping behind. I’ll pan something into the room so I’m using those subs, and then I’ll use a subharmonic generator to add more to the main sub. That can give a distant-earthquake kind of vibe.
It’s almost like the creatures are entering the atmosphere; there is a sonic boom-type sound. I don’t remember my settings on those compressors, but it would be kind of crushing them to give it some distance. I hardly even look at the numbers; it’s more listening. Usually on something like that, when I want more distance, I would hit a fast attack and a slower release. I have most of my stuff starting on a fast attack and a faster release just to grab stuff, and then I’ll open it up if I need to. Normally, I’m hitting stuff pretty fast.
In a film like this, I’m sure there are a huge number of elements that you have to keep track of. So how do you organize?
You have your basic food groups — dialogue, music and effects — and then within each one of those food groups, you split it up into things like Foley. So you get your footsteps together, and you’re going to start with your principal character’s feet, and then from there whittle it down. The same goes for all the effects. There could be a category of creature sounds and a type of creature sounds, like mouth or wet things. Or maybe it’s growling-type vocal elements. By just organizing each element into those groups, you can find the proper balance between those four elements and then turn them up or down together.
These days, when I work, I normally have everything live so I have the option of going back. For example, “Is there a bird in that ambience we want to get rid of?” Then I can go find the birds and get rid of them or turn them down. Each element is always available. In the past, we’d have to record each moment and then put 5.1 blocks of just ambiences or backgrounds together. It was all baked. Then if you wanted to take it apart, you’d have to dig back into an earlier session.
Was there anything about the earlier committing process that helped the creative process?
Sometimes if you have less choices, you make different decisions. Or if you already made a decision that you’re living with, then your behaviors are going to be a little different when you’re mixing it. Also, when there’s a picture change, it’s a little easier to deal with. You can alter a block instead of altering a couple hundred tracks or whatever it is. That’s not really creative, in a sense, but if you have your hands tied, you might make different decisions. I like having the flexibility, but I’m sure there are some creative advantages to having everything pre-recorded.
Where was the Foley recorded for A Quiet Place Part II?
The Foley team was Foley One out of Toronto. They are a really good team. A great thing about this project was that everybody was working at their best to give me the highest-quality sounds, from the sound design to the Foley to the music. It’s hard to mix awful sounds and make them sound good. The team was very good.
Where did you do the mix?
I did the premix at Warner Bros. LA and the final mix at Warner Bros. New York. Then I went back to Warner Bros. LA to finish it, with some last-minute updates at Technicolor.
Brandon Proctor and his tiny assistant
What was your favorite challenge while working on this film?
It was just seeing how far we could take it. It really is the most dynamic film I’ve worked on because we were going from digital silence to as loud as we can go. Then toward the second half of the film, the music’s driving constantly. So just the idea that this movie changed from almost no music in the first 15 to 20 minutes all the way to nonstop music and effects in the second half of the film, you almost feel like you’re mixing two movies. I also really enjoyed how delicate and gentle I got to mix certain things.
I did a lot of manual transient shaping of the feet to only hear the release of the footsteps. There is a lot of small detail.
Where was technology at when you began your career?
I started when it was film, just when things were changing from analog to digital. I felt like I grew up with the digital change. Every year or so there’s a different flavor or a different hurdle you’re going through.
If you were going to have to pan something, you’d line up six people on a console and all pan together. We’ve come a long way since those days.
Patrick Birk is a musician, sound engineer and post pro at Silver Sound, a boutique sound house based in New York City. He releases original material under the moniker Carmine Vates. Check out his recently released single, Virginia.
