The sound design was a collaboration -- Dave Paterson, who gave us incredible foley and sound effects and Benny Mouthon, our mixer and longtime friend and tech advisor on the film. I was most interested in using sound as metaphor as well as realistic sound. For all of the shots in Laos, Dave re-created the sounds for the visuals, because I shot all of the Laos material at 32fps to give it a feeling of memory. Importantly, we also wanted to use silence as a sound. After the bombing sequence, the silence of the monk walking up the stairs makes the moment that much more pregnant, reflecting on the roar of the B52's that came before. Howard Shore, our incredibly gifted, brilliant composer, also crafted silences into his score. One clear example of sound metaphor is at the end of the market bombing scene when we see an archival shot of wind blowing dust across the plants in the dirt. Instead of having the sound of a huge wind blowing, I wanted the sound to be a whisper of the wind, almost saying that this is what we become after we die, a breath of dust.
Read more at the link above. And remember, you can hear Kuras, Shore and a host of others discuss the work this coming Friday, January 9. Click here for more info.
