Sound Design: Christopher Boyes

An interview with Academy Award–winning sound designer and mixer Christopher Boyes

Christopher Boyes is arguably the most successful sound designer and mixer at work in America today. Based at Skywalker Ranch in Northern California, he has worked on a host of major motion pictures during the two decades since he graduated from San Francisco State University with a BA in cinema. Boyes has won four Academy Awards® and was nominated in 2007 for a further two for his work on Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. He has worked with directors like James Cameron (Titanic), Peter Jackson (Lord of the Rings, King Kong), and Clint Eastwood (Million Dollar Baby).

Can you tell us a little about your experience as sound rerecording mixer on King Kong, for which you won an Oscar®?

It was a collaborative effort among a group of talented people. Foremost among them Peter Jackson, who is really keen on using sound. Specifically, the jungle: he wanted to make it feel very visceral and alive, so we could believe that this was the place where Kong lived—lonely, but in a symbiotic relationship with his world.

I was influenced by the story of the original King Kong [1933] rather than the sound, the story itself and the way they told it. In terms of sound, we had an approach that was intended to really sell this place as a lush, alive environment, in contrast obviously to New York, which is a lush environment itself but a very industrialized one. And in contrast to the voyage across the ocean, which we wanted to make very nautical, but also at times very eerie, specifically around the time they're approaching the island, with the fog, and the ocean sort of falling away into this ethereal world of moisture and the object that gradually emerges as the island.

King Kong offered so many opportunities for sound to play a really dynamic role. The brontosaurus stampede almost killed me! But it defined size and enormity more so almost than any section of any other film I've worked on. It was massive, and it goes on for quite some time. It posed a huge challenge, I must say.

You've had a long collaboration with Peter Jackson?

I started working for Peter on the first Lord of the Rings [The Fellowship of the Ring, 2001], when we were in a really small mix stage outside the city of Wellington in New Zealand. By the time of King Kong, he had built one of the finest dubbing stages on the planet. It is a big room, not cavernous, but interestingly enough sort of a big version of the room that we had liked so much when we'd started out together. It has quite a rake to it. We did Foley work next door. Peter has built Park Road Post, with two big dubbing rooms. It's an amazing facility. You walk into it, and you quickly recognize that there's a deep respect for sound, and a real knowledge of how to use it as a component of his storytelling.

Is the sound pretty much indicated in storyboards, or does it emerge from the scenes as they're shot?

It mostly emerges from scenes that they shoot. But these days they prepare pretty elaborate previsuals, which become storyboards, and that gives something for us to bounce off from, where the sound's concerned. When I'm wearing the sound designer's hat, I read the script for descriptive adjectives, and with Lord of the Rings, although I was only sound rerecording mixer, I was given a script, so I knew where the film was going early on.

You have been sound designer or sound rerecording mixer on a lot of Clint Eastwood's films—Space Cowboys, for example.

Yes, on Space Cowboys I did the sound design, and then on some other of his films I was just mixer. Some of his films don't require sound design so much. I really love working with Clint. What an honor!

Do you feel you can place sounds anywhere you want to in a cinema environment with the technology that's currently available?

No. About 90 percent of the time I can place them wherever I want. But would I like more speakers? Yes!

Would you like an overhead one, like "the voice of God," as Ray Dolby called it jokingly?

I think that would probably be my first choice, yes. I love Dolby^® Digital Surround EX™, and I've used that on all of Peter Jackson's films, and I used it on the first installment of Pirates of the Caribbean. I like having that discrete Center channel, and I think having a Top Center discrete channel would also be very advantageous to me.

What's your advice on the use of surround channels? How does it enhance the experience?

It's a very delicate issue. I build the background world—the “atmospheres”—using the surrounds and to a large extent the Left and Right Front. Right now, as we speak, I've been working on quad ambiences. I like the discrete nature of the Left and Right signal. I very much appreciate stereo. So with the surrounds, I like to think of the Left and Right Front and the Left and Right Rear as two opposing stereo fields that I can oscillate between. So frequently, if I have an atmosphere, I'm trying to create a component whereby the Left and Right Front complements the Left and Right Rear, as opposed to them both playing the same sound. If I do put the same sound in the Left and Right Back, I will do so with a significant portion of delay, way more than technically needed. I want them to merge together to create a three-dimensional world as opposed to just filling the room with sound. So in terms of using them as a discrete element, I do that very gingerly and very delicately, because I never want to pull the audience's eyes away from the screen. That's one of the reasons I like the Center Surround, because it gives me a discrete channel back there as well.

If I'm using EX, for instance, I never put ambiences in that Center Surround, because I want to create that wide, larger-than-life stereo field back there. But I'll use it for discrete sounds. Anything I put back there is usually a response to a sound on the screen, or it's a very short-duration discrete sound, which ultimately delivers a message onscreen. If you listen to any of my films, and to the surround specifically, you'll find all kinds of stuff back there. In a perfect world, 90 percent of the surrounds don't really get noticed by the audience. All they know is that they are simply immersed in an environment.

Do you think that sound is 50 percent of the experience?

I love it when people say that, but I can't say so. It's like asking the baker who makes cakes if cakes are the best things around! What I do believe is that sound in filmmaking is an enormous bang for the buck, and for some reason I don't think that we [technicians] quite get the respect that we deserve, given the value that we add to films. I have, arguably, one of the best home theater/studios on the planet, but I still believe that there is no substitute for going to a movie theater that's properly tuned by Dolby. You go into this dark room, and the only thing that you're doing there is focusing on this picture. That's the most respectful way to watch a movie, and I hope we never lose it.

In Broken Arrow, there's this scene where the A-bomb goes off and the ground sort of heaves up in a wave toward the audience.

That's one of the sections that I designed. It was one of the films I enjoyed working on the most, and it marked my first collaboration with George Watters, who was supervising sound editor. To get that effect you mention, I sort of wrap my head around the technical issue of what happens when. And as with any time when you need to do something cataclysmic, you really need to play with violence versus loudness. I think of an atomic bomb as pulling sound out of the world, as opposed to putting it in.

This kind of thing is always a big challenge, because so often the production wants to arrive at the major climactic moment, and they've already brought a freight train of sound. So I have to try to figure out a way to work against that. You can't be in a battle that's really loud, and all of a sudden introduce a cannon and make that louder.

When you're creating the sound for a film, do you give consideration to the home audience?

Of course. After I've finished the print-mastering phase of the mix on a new release, then I make a big point of being the one to do the DVD mix, more so now than in years past. I don't want anything destroyed in terms of what the director's intent was. In other words, I want to be sure to deliver the director's mix into the home as well as we did for the cinema. In terms of mastering for the home, most often we go too far. We do too much to it. And the truth is, I believe, that your theatrical mix should, without too much manipulation, translate to the home environment.

How have you found working with Dolby? How have the sound consultants helped you over the years?

For me, Dolby is a key component in the process of making movies. I feel as a mixer that all rerecording mixers owe an enormous debt to Dolby. Usually I'm very particular as to who Dolby sends over for the mastering phase. But the truth is that at the same time I'm appreciative that they send someone, and that this person is knowledgeable, and when I'm mastering I constantly look over at the consultant to get his take on things.

Let's be honest: I love to make quiet movies. I love to work on movies that are just dialogue-driven. A lot of the movies I work on are larger than life, therefore the sound is larger than life, so we're pushing the technical limitations of the medium. So I count on Dolby to give me the assurance that we're within the specifications. I don't much like making loud movies. I always think there's a difference between power and loudness.

I notice that your background includes a lot of Foley work, and that must have influenced your career, and that you must have always given attention to those Foley details.

You're 100 percent dead-on there. I love Foley. As a sound designer I create all sorts of supernatural sounds, ethereal sounds. My feeling—and it was something that Gary Rydstrom always taught me—is that Foley really grounds everything in reality, almost giving an honest base to everything else. You can do this wonderful job of sound design and effects work, but until you have the Foley there, it doesn't really glue everything together. Having said that, I know that directors are very sensitive about Foley, in the same way as they are about ADR, because if it sounds like Foley, it sounds wrong. My mission nowadays, in this competitive world of tight budgets, is to give my Foley crews sufficient time to do their job.

Are there any sequences you are particularly proud of in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest?

I love the scene where we go down into the Rum Locker and meet Bootstrap Bill for the first time. On the Rum Locker I worked with Shannon Mills, who's been with me since Titanic and Volcano. The director, Gore Verbinski, requested me to create this almost vacuum-esque world, with Jack Sparrow in a dark, claustrophobic place from which he can't escape. So we worked hard to create this atmosphere that's like the inside of a giant, wooden, dark, wet world. Then I love just the components of the movements of Bootstrap Bill, this encrusted creature. I love it when he takes his arm out to hand them a bottle of rum, and you hear this crunch. All this to me is just fun, and it really helps to sell the character.

And I also love the scene when we meet Wyvern for the first time, the character who's kind of embedded in the hull of the ship and then pulls himself out.

Where do you see the future of cinema—sound and picture? Do you think digital is going to change everything over the next five to ten years?

I think that digital is going to give us the ability to have a better dynamic to sound without having to be as loud. We have run up against the limitations of the medium right now. I'm going to be working on Jim Cameron's Avatar, and that of course will be 3D in many theaters. My feeling is that given the higher bit rate and the higher sampling rate you are able to achieve with sound, the more elegant a dynamic you're able to achieve, and thus you can devise more of a nuanced track that doesn't need to be loud.

So I'm hoping in the future for a clearer, more defined sound, subtle but maybe not as loud. A cannon can sound really powerful and exciting, but it can be comfortable to listen to as well, and I think that technology will help us achieve that. And it will be incumbent upon us as mixers (and on the directors who direct us) to be responsible with that new technology.