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Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse:
sound editors talk ‘magical realism’
By Randi Altman
Sony Pictures' animated Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse isn’t your ordinary Spider-Man film — from its script to its look to its sound. The filmmakers took a familiar story and turned it on its head, letting audiences know that Spider-Man isn’t just a guy wearing that mask… or even a guy… or even from this particular dimension.
The film focuses on Miles Morales, a teenager from Brooklyn, struggling with all things teenager, while also dealing with the added stress of being Spider-Man.
Audio played a huge role in this story, and we recently reached out to Sony supervising sound editors Geoff Rubay and Curt Schulkey to dig in a bit deeper. The duo recently won an MPSE Award for Outstanding Achievement in Sound Editing – Feature Animation… industry peers recognizing the work that went into creating the sound for this stylized world.
Let’s find out more about the sound process on Spider-Man: Into the Spider Verse, which won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.
What do you think is the most important element of this film’s sound?
Curt Schulkey: It is fun, it is bold, it has style and it has attitude. It has energy. We did everything we could to make the sound as stylistic and surprising as the imagery. We did that while supporting the story and the characters, which are the real stars of the movie. We had the opportunity to work with some incredibly creative filmmakers, and we did our best to surprise and delight them. We hope that audiences like it too.
Geoff Rubay: For me, it’s the fusion of the real and the fantastic. Right from the beginning, the filmmakers made it clear that it should feel believable — grounded — while staying true to the fantastic nature of the visuals. We did not hold back on the fantastic side, but we paid close attention to the story and made sure we were supporting that and not just making things sound awesome.
How early did your team get involved in the film?
Rubay: We started on an SFX pre-design phase for about a month. The goal was to create sounds for the picture editors and animators to work with. We ended up doing what amounted to a temp mix of some key sequences. The “Super Collider” was explored. We only worked on the first sequence for the collider, but the idea was that material could be recycled by the picture department and used in the early temp mixes until the final visuals arrived.
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