Continued From previous page.
Aaron Glasscock 3:47
Yes, I would agree. And, you know, going into the project that I did Creed 2, I had never done a boxing movie before. So I had looked at it like, wow, how am I going to do this? You know, what, what is it going to bring? And then I realized, well, there’s so much DNA to this too. I can’t detach myself from any of that. In fact, I have to put that into it if I can, because people will have expectations. And then of course, every director is going to tell you what the rules are, what is important to them or what needs to be established or discovered. And I think with that the discovery part is probably my number one challenge on any movie is to discover what is the thing that I’m doing here, because so much of what we do is this kind of utilitarian function. It’s like okay, we’re going to make sure that this sounds right. And nobody falls off the rails here. But at the same time, I’m going to discover some playing some dimension that is beyond anything that has been described to me before or I’ve read about or that is on the page. So you kind of have to go into it and just kind of know the rules but then shed all the rules. Because what you discover is is going to become the most important thing to you in your job. Where are the weeds? I’m going to take you there. This is my journey.
Timothy Muirhead 5:09
So what’s your favorite part of working on the boxing genre? Gene?
Gene Park 5:12
I think my answer might be similar to Aaron’s, like, in the sense that I never worked per se on a fight film before. One thing for me, I was very excited to work on it. And in terms of exploring what direction or what sort of ethos we were looking for in a film. Like Aaron’s mentioning, I was just working with the director and, you know, seeing where she was coming from. And this films case, Bruised is more of an MMA/UFC type film, as opposed to a boxing film. And it was really important for her to kind of keep sort of that less glitzy, sort of romantic idea of what fight films are, and kind of go more gritty in like, she’s really done out, you know, basically, for lack of a better term, like her life’s like a shit show. But you know, she kind of like, start from the bottom and go to the top, you know, there’s different environments, where some of these events occur. We also kind of approach those a case by case and just kind of feeling out what the best like approach was for each of those scenes. And I just took it from there, you know, it’s almost like throwing spaghetti at a wall and say, What kind of works just like, for what the film needs, you know?
René Coronado 6:13
So what’s the day to day of the discovery process? Like? Is it watching old film references? Is that sitting with the director? Is it putting sounds up against picture? What does it look like?
Gene Park 6:25
For me, because I’d never worked on a five film before, I’ll just do things I try to do as well. I tried deliberately not watch other fight films, I was working on this because I kind of was, in a way not be like, because I’ve seen a lot of them, you know, over my years, you know, so I have an idea of how to triage crews occur in these kind of films. But you know, I was really excited to like, almost have like an open slate and see where I could take things in terms of like finding what works.
Jay Peck 6:49
Absolutely, this, you have to protect what you’re bringing to it. So after you kind of get in the direction, and it becomes yours, and you’re going to know this and feel it when it comes to you, but it’s yours. So you have to carry that
Gene Park 7:05
right and in terms of these films, because like, I feel like a lot of films have in a different phase sequences throughout the film. So there’s also like a contour you kind of have to be mindful of, I feel like a lot of times the building blocks from A to B is like what established early on, oh, you know, every film is different, but maybe it should accommodate to something or devolve somewhere, you know, there should be a bit of a journey. Specifically in the Bruised case, there are like different environments where the scenes occur, so kind of helped out narratively that those are already in place. Originally, we did have talks about how quote unquote realistic to keep it and I heard some feedback you know, some enthusiasts of UFC/ MMA I dont know what the right term is, but they feel like it has been corrected represented before. So I’ve definitely heard from people is like, you know, should be able to shoot like 10 seconds before the bell that should be like a clapper should be would you know, things like that, you know, that we use a starting points. And then from there that we could jump off into different directions, if there’s specific moments in sequences where like, there’s, you know, moments where I’ll say, epiphanies or places where you could like, establish more and build towards the character, what each character brings to the table, and where they can go, you know, from that moment on.
René Coronado 8:14
Olivia, what’s it like for you?
Olivia Zhang 8:16
Well, my, my approach to the fight scene was, was really just a fight, you know, is around fight. So for someone who barely watch boxing, I had to read the script first, you know, trying to find what the purpose of the scene and you know, build a arc and you know, where’s the moment that the audience is fearing fear for the character? And where’s the moment that you know, he triumph? Why is this moments here? And what’s a reason that this scene exists that lead to the next scene, so I usually build a energy arc, you know, and then find the highest moment and then build it up and protect the moment that is provoking emotions of fear and victory and you know, just kind of yield spaces for different elements will come in a crowd. And yeah, for me, it’s more about dynamic, because you know, boxing fighters, punch, punch punch, and I mean, I was thinking, okay, for someone like me who watches film, who obviously don’t care how make boxing, as you know, I would have watched boxing on a Saturday morning, just to feel relaxed. So how do I attract people to the scene to this film through my work? So I always go through the storytelling point of view.
Teresa Morrow 9:31
Olivia, you and in one night in Miami, and in the case of the fighter two, I guess, you’re recreating fights that really happened. And in the case of your movie, people may be very familiar with that fight in particular as a televised event. Did you have to look again at your work through that lens at some point?
Olivia Zhang 9:52
Yeah, as I do a bunch of research, trying to find the real fight photos and see how Ali you know Casius Clay perform What is the big difference of style of him going against Henry or Sonny? So I found that he has a specific style really unorthodox. So trying to create a sense of how different he is with all these really accomplished men in front of him through sound design.
René Coronado 10:21
And, Jay, we haven’t heard much from you yet. So as a foley artist, how do you integrate what you are performing versus what is being cut to picture with sound effects editorial?
Jay Peck 10:34
Well, in this case, we wanted to keep it. It’s interesting to have Gene here because I don’t know how it ended up after we let it go. But when we approached it, the discussions we’ve had was to keep it fairly realistic. So each fight there were different scenes, as he said that she gave she started pretty low. And started in this kind of, what would you call that fight in the basement? Gean, the
Gene Park 10:57
basement brawl?
Jay Peck 10:58
Yeah. It’s pretty down and dirty. Of this really big woman that she fought. It’s pretty gruesome scene. So each scene, you know, called for its own intensity. And I would just try to deliver that as I needed to.
Timothy Muirhead 11:13
And how did you guys divide up? What was going to be Foley? And what was going to be sound effects?
Gene Park 11:19
Well, I think in terms of for the Foley, I think Jay and Matt his editor kind of went through and just in one sense follow the film, what’s exactly happening in off camera, you know, kind of fill as needed. And then we also had discussions for the different starting points for because UFC a little bit different because there’s punches, kicks, grapples, throws, body falls, and just grabbing. So there’s like different layers of that. And, you know, as we discussed in terms of like, I guess we use words like Slappy, woofy, just depending on the characters and what they’re doing, you know, it’s sort of clear the way it’s shot, like what’s being done, you know, that helped us out. And in terms of sound effects we built around the Foley and also the production sound. It also which was really important is the utterances of the characters as they’re fighting, you know, their sounds, and putting all those arms together. But you know, a lot of ways the foley sort of the foundation, you know, we kind of built around that. And during the mix, we could kind of play with the different elements as needed. So it was like playing puppeteer.
Timothy Muirhead 12:21
So Jay, were you doing actual punches?
Aaron Glasscock 12:24
I was, yep. I’m just recovering now, actually. Yeah, you can’t see the bruises?
René Coronado 12:31
How are you approaching all the sync points in any given fight, and even in the training sequences and the training sequences, they actually move faster than in the fights in a lot of cases? And you have to be frame accurate on every single moment. So what’s the approach?
Jay Peck 12:46
Well, fortunately, well, Matt Haasch, who was the fully editor would make the clips for it. So that was it was broken up, I wouldn’t do the whole scene, I would do segments of it. And just perform it as best I could in sync. And then if I get to a point where Oh, that one needs to be harder or heavier, we’ll just go back and punch it in, per se. And that’s the thing about foley, you can really highlight the nuance of each hit or grab, that would be hard to go through sound effect library to get. So I could just give it whatever element ID needed to fulfill that punch or grab that event.
Gene Park 13:24
retired after all that? Yeah,
Aaron Glasscock 13:26
it’s interesting this work is our work, our field is so open source in how we can approach the story telling what sound problem that I think that we look at these approaches to solutions in any number of ways. And like I look at the use of Foley in a different approach, where I use it as a way of grounding everything and as a performance enhancement that is covering action in the dynamic range that is below the threshold point. So everything that glues it down and and ties action to the physicality of things is what I use the foley performances for, and then stuff like punches and body falls I don’t use fully for but that’s just a different approach. And there’s there’s so many ways to do this. I appreciate hearing that you’re doing the hits is a totally different world approach than where I’d go. But it’s really interesting. I love hearing it.
René Coronado 14:21
So Aaron, where does your source material tend to come from on the punches?
Aaron Glasscock 14:25
Well, you know, going into it, I was thinking, Oh, we’re gonna have huge sessions and all this stuff, and we’re going to record a million punches and come up with the ultimate or something. And, you know, I started in sound effects libraries when I was 15. And did that for years. So I think I’ve heard all the punches, and I know I haven’t, but when it came down to it, we had so little time I think we had five weeks editorial before I started temp mixes and previews and then going into predubs and final. So we cut the first temp you and you know it is you cover the story of each fight in an arc and build and kind of create this language. And we’ve cut it from any number of tracks that play together. And in that process, you’re kind of developing the way that courses are going to be served up. In this case, what I did is we went through the entire film and cut it that way, and I mixed it that way for the first temp. And as these are open source, you know, along the way, you change your plan. That first camp was pretty much right down the middle, I just took that center channel. So that was like a curated first class sound design pass, right? All these pieces playing together. And I took those hits. And they’re all in an arc and expressive in in the right place as far as dynamically. And I use that as my food source now. And in a design pass, I created six different chains, using that as a source, and went from one extreme to another, over six different versions and tweaked them in and laid down that six layer flavor patch plus having the original source session or channels above that. And then from that, I went into the final with the source available under a fader has needed, but then I could tune it in any direction based on the material that I had generated off of that. So it became like, as one of my designers, Mitch Osias, who did a ton of work on the crowds on that he does a lot of game work. So he said, You made a game engine. And from that, I could make it small, I could make it sound like a glance, I could make it really compact and tight, or I can make it just a waffling huge, bombastic elephant hit. And so if you look at the automation on that layer alone, it’s just like this very complex, ant trail of a mess, because I could then go in on like, oh, hit number three in this angle, I could do this and just swing it the other way. And I go in and using the pencil, I do that I use a pencil a lot in a mix. I’ll just go in on with all the automation and I’ll just like play along. And right after rolling pass, I’ll just take the pencil and just do a little brushstroke on one dimension and it’ll do what I need to do.
René Coronado 17:21
Are you mousing dad? Or do you use a Wacom tablet or something?
Aaron Glasscock 17:25
Know that trackball is under my right hand and the faders are under my left hand.
René Coronado 17:32
Cool. In any given fight scene, there’s a lot more than just the punches going on. There’s breaths. There’s obviously crowd which we’ll talk about in a second. You know, one thing I noticed in these films is I didn’t hear a lot of really pronounced footfalls, and feet are very interesting in boxing, because a boxing ring is like a plywood thing. But they can also be a little bit distracting. So how did you approach the non impact parts of the fights? Olivia, I’ll start with you.
Olivia Zhang 18:01
My fight has a lot of them just jumping and bouncing about and trying to dodge each other. I find to keep the energy up what I use the most the whooshes of their swings, and it keeps the energy of it keeps the fight active. And you also kind of amplifys the speed, you know the alacrity of Casius Clay constantly in the mode of fighting. And in terms of the feet you just mentioned, which is interesting, because we have fantastic Foley team, Dan O’Connell and his team, they created a beautiful layer of feet. Because Regina King shot the two fights in a really intimate way. We have I think was a steadycam it was kind of circling around the fighters. And we have a lot of extreme close ups. So down credit, beautiful layer of almost feels like subharmonic pass of the feet. And it just kind of you feel the threat, you feel the sense of danger, it doesn’t compete with the reality that’s above the feet. So that movement, the wishes the feet, and then you know, the rope does have this kind of movement with the metal and then the creek in the rain, keep it active. And then you know, once in a while we have the space for the crowd, to be upset to be happy. So it would keep a full dynamic. There’s a lot of going on outside Well, there’s two persons doing.
René Coronado 19:32
So to throw a little confession out here as a sound designer, I mean not really as a sound designer, but I’ve actually laced up the gloves and gotten the ring and gotten punched in the face by somebody before. It’s crazy. The thing I noticed when I was actually in there is that it was really really loud. And the way that it was loud was when we were stomping around in the boxing ring because the way that a boxing ring is built is it’s plywood wood on top of like a metal frame with Canvas on top of that, and the sounds that were actually happening, like, Yes, we were impacting, like when we were landing punches and stuff like that. But our feet were like four times as loud as our hands were.
Now, you know, where we’re just like barely boxing out there. We weren’t hitting with any professional force or anything like that. But it was striking to me like going back and watching the video of myself, and then replaying it in my head, like my own personal experience, how much it was, like startling to me how loud it was like just to approach somebody with my feet, and how not loud it was going to actually start throwing your brain like does the thing that happens in cinema, where like, everything else goes away. And there’s all these moments in there, where crowd goes away, and everything goes away, except for your own breath is that like, actually truly, really does happen. Except for one, like, you just kind of stopped landing blows and just like banging around in their feet. And it’s like the craziest thing when you’re in there doing it for real. And I guess that’s the striking thing about it to me, like the reality of it, versus the cinematic interpretation of the thing. Every single fight has these moments where everything goes away, and you’re doing slow mo stuff and all of this, how are you approaching that? Like, how are you collaborating with your team on that? What’s the execution of those hyper real moments like,
Timothy Muirhead 21:48
Gene Do you want to make?
Gene Park 21:50
Su re, in the film I work on in particular, there are a few moments throughout the film where those events are currently more slow, or flashbacks or memories. And for us, it was kind of a case by case basis, I think, at some points, it would be like in terms of hyperrealism. Sometimes that can mean a couple different things. But I feel like things get too intense for the person, you know, the subject who is experiencing something like that, we would talk it through and just shoot some ideas to each other about how to approach it. And then for me, the way things add up as certain scenes will be like expressionistic, just almost nonlinear, like noise, it seems like you know, the kind of emerges or dissolve from something. And there’s other moments, we’re just going to silence and then maybe the music would be the one sort of taking the lead there, you know, and then slowly bring sounds back in that was occurring before, you know, so it’s almost like time stoppage things like that, that were occurring. It was fun to play with. And I’m going off what they were saying a little bit earlier is in terms of the hyperrealism. What actually happens like I found during the mix, there was a lot of clutter, just from all the sound editorial it’s like too many footsteps or too many sweeteners or punches, you know, a lot of was kind of stripping away at that point. And what I ended up doing is I would have these separate groups of like, see the whooshes of the swings, just how those on a separate groups VCA. And you know, and it was like a pencil tool, like kind of engage in and out to push things or pull things out. And that’s the way we kind of got the weeds got lost in a try, like clean stuff up and get to a nice cohesive product in the end. And you know, Jay and Matt, we went back a couple of times, I think we ended up using the recent pipe hits on meat or something just for like, some extra month for a couple bigger moments.
Jay Peck 23:24
There were a couple things like that. Yeah, that we pulled out. Yeah.
Gene Park 23:28
Yeah. So I did have some groups where I was almost called the group like hyperreal A, hyperreal B or something, you know, and then kind of bring them in and out as needed. So it also would it be too repetitive, or loopy sounding you know, because there’s a lot of footsteps, a lot of punches, a lot of moves, you know, and the crowds and commentators and all kinds of stuff going on, you know?
Teresa Morrow 23:45
Does anybody have a take on? What’s the difference between cutting effects for fight where your protagonist is winning? And how does that sound different from when your protagonist is getting creamed? Did you have kind of a rule of thumb about the different types of hits or the different combinations of sounds that were telling that aspect of the story? Aaron, what’s your take on that?
Aaron Glasscock 24:08
I think that if you do a lot of sound effects cutting and then especially if you go into a fight situation, you become super aware of contrasting elements, especially when you start looking at crowds. It’s all relativity. And you know, you run out of headroom and road fast if you don’t keep track of that. And I would say the winning or losing thing you’re playing off the crowd because you’re signaling that call and response. I mean, that’s the real time facet that the spectator feeds off of that’s the dashboard, the hits as they progress. You know, you’re always kind of tuning so that you become super aware of samey-ness. You go oh no, no, no, that was killing me that just sounds like recycle or something beyond you know, all the layers of the source material, and the sweetener tracks that make This incredible roadmap of events, one after another. After that, you’re then going, Oh, this one hit, I can’t, I have to, you know, I’m looking to replace this one hit. And you’re looking at the beginning of your movie, the end of your movie. And you finally you find the one or something that you’ve constructed just for that, and you’re curating that one spot to get it just right. And this cadence of stuff, which is one color, then another color, another color of hit, that’s changing up against the background of this crowd that is doing this other thing. And the announcers, talking all through the whole thing, you’re going to feel a ramp or this build, that is going to make one person win, or get pummeled and killed. So it’s, you’re making a song, you know, these are notes that stack up and make a song. And, you know, if you’ve been watching this thing from the start, as a viewer, one part of you says, oh, yeah, I’m looking at what’s right in front of me, another part of you has been fed everything up to that point, and you’re like, a gumball machine that’s just full of 1000 hits in your head. So it all adds up. And each one is assigned differently, depending on what the dashboard is telling you. I don’t know, I don’t think there’s a formula. But I think that if it’s done, right, you’ve been instructing,
Gene Park 26:20
Just to jump on to I feel like a lot of that, is a combination of also the editorial work and a sound editorial work, you know, just using the picture edits also, I mean, it’s always a collaborative effort, but especially there, you know, just the way, way cutting is done, you’re in a fight, you know, just a different style. You didn’t like a kitchen sink, film, you know, in terms of like, what you’re asking about good versus bad, almost, for me, it’s like every little moment is almost like a little story. So it’d be like someone approaching the other person to like throw a punch, maybe they’ll be the one footstep approach, maybe they’ll be come up a bit, and then almost like arcs that continually happen. And then one thing I was mentioning earlier about the clutter is that yeah, when you have you want to get to a peak to have these dynamics, and it was too much going on, and there’s no more headroom left and it just like oh boy, and you know, just found stripping away but having all the elements there helps out a lot also, because, you know, in the back your mind, it’s work previous scenes, you know, or some situation maybe, yeah, maybe just one hit that you need to bring back here, things like that.
Aaron Glasscock 27:16
Yeah, you’ll find this place. I think in every fight movie, where you’re carrying it along, and you have all of the beautiful supporting Foley and the dancing and it’s just right, and then all of a sudden, everything is just wiped out and the hit just goes in silence kablam and that moment of clearing out is next level. It’s you know, you’re on the top floor there. You’ve made all that room. And it’s all elevens
Teresa Morrow 27:46
Yeah, or it’s not that punch. Yeah, like Olivia in your film, it sort of plays out differently. story wise, right?
Olivia Zhang 27:53
Yes, Ali has this kind of signature continuous punch, like bam, bam, bam, bang, and definitely it was great opportunity to create a sonic crescendo
There is a buildup in term of pitch and rhythm and energy. So to answer your question, Teresa this film I’m working on does give me, the picture give me a lot of opportunity to create this kind of formula that Aaron, Jean probably don’t really have a lot, liberty and space in Creed and Br uised, For me is really you can tell that when he does throw that kind of punches he’s gonna get there. So you know, there’s definitely a build for a “One Night in Miami” fight that the biggest punch, the last punch the hero punches the top of the crescendo and then when he is you know, being thrown down in the ring on the rope that was usually not as strong and you know, it’s pretty obvious rule that even the audience can tell Okay, he’s not going to make it so there’s this energy you have to kind of just let it go you know, don’t build every punch that’s bigger than the previous because then you’re going to get that fatigue you’re not going to make that hero moment.
Teresa Morrow 29:26
Yeah, in case anybody doesn’t know the story, Ali wins there’s no doubt about it. He was the greatest and he was gonna win.
Gene Park 29:37
Is that the Phantom punch fight where you actually didn’t get punched the Sonny Liston fight wasn’t there to I was kind of
Olivia Zhang 29:44
just the one that you know right before he changed his name to Yeah,
Gene Park 29:48
that’s the Phantom punch one. Right. Well, he. I guess he wasn’t punished.
René Coronado 29:52
You know what the funny thing is, though he did catch him. He caught him like right on the tip of the chin.
Unknown Speaker 29:56
H e did hit okay, I’m not an expert, I’m reading about the Phantom punch.
Teresa Morrow 29:59
The Myth!
Olivia Zhang 30:00
You know more than me, but I find it interesting that because the picture of the film I’m working on gave me a lot of close up during these hero moments, so I was able to, you know, really natural way to use stereo punches instead of mono ones to open up the energy because traditionally, there’s a wide shot and you have this martial art happening with a full body movement is kind of weird that every punch is stereo. You know, you feel like this is kind of like what Tim and Teresa and Rene said has a little bit to impressionistic. But the picture, I think is everything you just have to be loyal to the picture that you embrace moment it gives you and if the picture presents you a great emotional and impressionistic opportunity, I would take it and you know reach higher.
René Coronado 30:52
So when you’re using stereo impacts, are you also putting center channel you’re also doing LFE? Like how big is this design feeling? Or is it still just
Olivia Zhang 31:01
I use full spectrum when they’re just the face being punched, and blood splashed all over the screen. You know, there is center speaker for the realistic element of skin, gloves, the texture, and then you have the LFP and a stereo to give you the feeling of you know, being punched in the gut, you’ll feel the pain, you feel the speed of whooshes. But definitely I don’t overuse it as in a way that okay, it does speak when next slide speaker when you leave the scene, you’re not going to remember the biggest punch he received. That was biggest defeat. So you protect that big moment and go go for the smaller one right after it.
René Coronado 31:41
That’s almost a similar technique to like what people do with weapon fire and rifles and that kind of thing. Aaron, did you do any of that type of stuff in Creed?
Aaron Glasscock 31:50
Well, basically, the spectator POV is of the fights were all treated the same as the Foley in that it’s meant to stick to what’s going on screen. So we keep that a mono and it’ll dance around and move across the screen, depending on the framing. And then when we get in the ring, and we’re first person, then it goes wider and wider and wider, and then ultimately into the room to really cross into this new immersive dimension. So yeah, we’d go as far as we could, when that opportunity arose. Yeah, it is like a gunbattle because you kind of want to keep it. It’s sort of your perspective, headroom. You know, you want to have everything sitting in the middle, we’re down in that safe zone where you’re dealing with single point events so that when you are right on the muzzle or something then you can go wide.
Creed Clip 32:42
And we’re underway, when trouble comes out swinging with two hooks to create a void. And a Big right hand right out of the gate surprised as Creed sets that punch up. Drago was pressing hard, but Creed is not backing off. Keep moving, keep moving Creed working a little bit closer to Tahoe tonight. That is a vicious combination by Creed.
René Coronado 33:12
And then you have to deal with dynamics to like punches or like guns, it’s a sharp little transient. And then it kind of goes away. And so a lot of the interest is the stuff that’s wrapped around it. So how did you approach that?
Timothy Muirhead 33:25
Gene, you want to start that?
Gene Park 33:27
Well, it’s funny because in terms of the punches, like you’re mentioning, I think like in a traditional film boxing fight, you know, we’re just like segments of each round, you know, it’s almost like punches, like a baseline punches almost seems like just breathing or footsteps, it’s just kind of a repetitive movement occurs over and over. You know, so eventually there’s gonna be a baseline, I think it just a human condition is you’ll start getting accustomed to the sounds and like, it’ll be an environment where Okay, so this is like the baseline, you know, keep hearing the exact same sound for 10 minutes, it’s not gonna really sound like much anymore. We’ve gotten used to it It’s almost like people in New York City get used to Subway sounds next to their apartments, you know, it kind of becomes just part of the palette, you know, it’s cool to be able to use that to your advantage too, because then nuances and changes or even fast changes can like really shift the perception of the audience member and almost like going off in terms of perspectives like it’s outside the ring or inside the ri ng, in terms of the MMA, it’s like the octagon, so it’s actually fencing. It is almost like a gladiator match. You know, I guess boxing is like that, too. And I guess it continues on the theme at earlier live, but just really making sure everything’s in place where it’s really about the dynamics to me and builds in ebbs and flows that really create, like, I think Aarron mentioned before, like a composition, it’s like a you know, it’s like a long composition, you know, and you can’t have everything static the whole time. So for me, it was kind of discovery, like a baseline, basic sound and building from that, you know, let us like really just go different directions that way, which is pretty interesting.
Teresa Morrow 34:53
Jay, do you ever take on that in terms of building that concept of default? I just saw you nod when he was talking about building very variation into your track.
Jay Peck 35:02
Sure. I mean, that’s kind of constantly trying to get variation in everything footsteps and touching and hits. And after a while when, uh, you know, I’m using different parts of my body and different parts of gloves and, and get a lot of variety. But obviously there’s going to be some that sound the same. But I guess the short answer is yes, we’re always trying to get a variety of sounds,
Teresa Morrow 35:23
you sort of saying like in Foley, that just kind of happens because you’re performing and, and fully that variation happens naturally, because you’re doing each move differently.
Jay Peck 35:32
Well, I’m always attempting to make it happen. conscious of it anyway.
Gene Park 35:37
What really helped for me, it was like tying in production sound of the efforts and also like, at our passes of the efforts in those slight nuances and changes in the attack of those grunts and efforts, you know, it also played a part like with those little scene builds, and like triumphant moments and moments of impending doom, something bad’s about to happen, and law that also is helped by the actors themselves, you know, with their utterances. Because, you know, a lot of times it happens right before a punch right after punch or during a punch, you know, so just slight even milliseconds a, you know, a little bit makes a huge difference found in terms of dynamic pilot of a fight scene.
René Coronado 36:13
Yeah, and fighters are supposed to, I guess, clench their diaphragm when they throw a punch anyway, so it makes that “sss” it makes that kind of sound. That’s how fighters are trained in the first place. So like, I imagine a lot of that coming from the set ended up being hyper important to the cut. But, Jay, we’d be remiss if we didn’t ask you what kind of props you were breaking out outside of normal MMA gloves to do the thing.
Jay Peck 36:37
Well, some pieces of leather, some shoes, actually leather shoes, let’s have a punching bag that I was using that usually was just for the prop itself as them hitting a punching bag. One sound I did I don’t know if you ever use this Gene or not. But there’s a point where it’s kind of a surreal moment where the reigning champion, she comes into the ring, and you wanted something kind of surreal and so I worked on this thing. I don’t if you ever used it, but I used a bass drum and did like a sweetener for her footsteps. I don’t know if you ever use that. But that was
Gene Park 37:10
Yeah, we did use that. Well, you did actually had a weird idea for that you want to use drum replacer and like sync up all these different sounds every punch? I didn’t have enough time to do that. But we did use that. Oh,
Jay Peck 37:21
good. Yeah, had fun with that stuff. You know, the mic inside the drum and just did a little tap, but good. Cool.
René Coronado 37:28
And how were you landing on like, body versus face? Like, what kind of props were you using on as far as what you were impacting?
Jay Peck 37:35
Most of the time when I was hitting a face it was with a fist into my, into my wrist or my hand. When it’s a body punch. I’ll use my body. Like more in here or stomach. I can get a real deep in non skinny I get a nice deep sound when I hit myself.
Gene Park 37:53
Nice resonant cavity there.
Jay Peck 37:55
Yeah, there you go. So yeah, just trying, you know, again, for variety, just trying different places all over my body. Yeah,
René Coronado 38:04
yeah. So you ended up beating yourself up?
Jay Peck 38:06
Kinda? Yeah.
Teresa Morrow 38:09
Sounds rough.
Jay Peck 38:10
This wasn’t too bad because there was a ring to fall on. But when you doing body falls on cement that’s gets a little sore. Yeah.
Timothy Muirhead 38:18
It’s interesting when as a sound effects editor myself when I’m working on something, and the music is being written independently, and I don’t have any kind of score. It’s a kind of a thing that’s a glue that can come in and pull everything together when you get that score. For boxing films. I feel like the crowd noise can do the similar thing, pull all these independent hits and shuffles on the ground. And then all of a sudden you get the crowd noise and everything is super real all of a sudden, how did everybody go about getting those crowd sounds in the getting those crowd reactions? Let’s start with Olivia this time.
Olivia Zhang 38:53
We have a fabulous vocal team Bryan Parker is the one that designed our crowd. What I found is very wonderful he did is our crowd is full on crowd that never stop vocalizing to the end of the fight. So of course we have a big surround bed that constantly keep them going. But then what Brian did is he kept the centre speaker and almost left on right for me so that the fight is not going to be we’re not competing each other but we’re complementing each other in terms of channels. And he did a really delicate he manipulated the crowd responds to the plot basically just you know, you can tell whose crowd does belong to does it belong to you know the British or American or Sony or Ali so is I think from both effects on group side. You just have to be mindful that which is their main frequency, you know, for human vocal and also music. Luckily, we had piano which is not like cello, which is kind of really different than human vocal. So when he designed He had my sound in mind I Okay, how I’m gonna design the crowd that will stay in the mix, you know, we’re not gonna compete each other when I design it, I was mindful that, okay, is this punch too much sound like, you know, one can took a kind of human reaction. So we both had designed in, you know, have each other’s element in mind, both internal audio spatial relationship, and frequency. So that’s how we work those two things together. And, you know, we have wonderful mixer and that kind of balance and tucked everything in, so it was a pretty well, thought out process.
Aaron Glasscock 40:40
In Creed 2 we had one of the plans that we were sticking to was that each fight was different. So they each had completely different fight properties, and especially crowd properties in the way that we’re presenting them. So that there’s a different on one fight, you’re watching the terror of this guy, just slaying people, and then another fight. It’s like an easy fight for our hero. And it’s kind of like everything just kind of flies by like, nothing’s going on. It’s just his fight. And it’s just like, boom, boom, boom, it’s over. And then there’s a fight that is way more immersive and with like, more shout outs, and it’s aggressive, and he gets wiped with that one. And then there’s the final fight. So all of these are different and have different dynamics. So there’s a very different arc within them of what the events are that the crowd is following. So they all have totally different needs. And they vary each reaction. If you’ve ever cut crowds from crowds, you know, it’s really hard to get reactions and to kind of like build these little apexes and events that cover right. So that’s probably the hardest part of this thing.
René Coronado 41:50
Yeah. Well, and Creed 2 also had like wildly different crowd sizes, right, because Drago was fighting in these like little Boxing Clubs that only had a couple 100 people all the way up into this massive Russian arena.
Aaron Glasscock 42:03
Yes, yes. So we scoured every possibility for like, where to build stuff and where it was coming from. And we were getting we had some stuff that came from, gosh, I want to say it came from ESPN or something. And there was a relationship with the production for that. And so we got some of that we got you know, we’re using pieces from soccer matches or something just different. We’re looking for like really unusual little things that would just fill a spot that would have the right kind of life for an event. And then you know, once you go into Atmos, you got to be able to kind of have stuff everywhere. So
René Coronado 42:40
yeah, Gene, how’d you approach it?
Gene Park 42:43
I found firstly, I found the crowds probably being the most time consuming part of the editing process. Yeah, I mean, you’re just like, really, I’ll just come into sort of envisioning like having we talked about having like a more rowdy ish crowd that was sort of typical, just given the gift of being UFC MMA. Just looking for like, yeah, the shout outs and like reactions for a move. If the tables are turned, opponent, like takes advantage. And what does the crowd say every little bit of a tells a story of how the fights going. Unfortunately, for me, like COVID lockouts had just hit as we’re starting. And I had like, all these ideas, I was gonna go to training jams, record them, talking to people, at UFC go and record some matches and things like that. None of that ever happened. So a lot of that was sort of like putting on APB to everyone I knew and trying to cobble together as much source materials to like kind of go through and sort of come up with a palette. And you know, it was pretty challenging. And we’ve mentioned before, oftentimes crowds can become overwhelming. If it’s just, if you’re not paying attention to like, the way, things are moving, you know, but also find it in a lot of ways. It’s very much a kind of throwing, but like it’s also felt good. And like oh my god, it’s works like this little reaction, just shout out from here to there. And then we had this person Dan, the loop group coordinator, who also brought in his team. And that was also a bit tricky given COVID recording on a loop group, but it worked out. So being able to have individual shout outs and things too. So that was cool.
Aaron Glasscock 44:07
With a really big crowds, you have to be very careful because it eventually turns into like a 10k sandblaster. So again, this idea of relativity and being able to come back down so you can go back up. And you know, a few years ago, I did this recent version of Ben Hur with the crowds and the chariot racing and, you know, that’s just constantly going the whole time. So I learned some lessons with that on like how to, like, undo that or reel it back and bring some of that and figure out some ways of artificially getting a sense of space and activity without actually creating this rush constantly. Because that kills you. Yeah, nobody really wants that. You think you want that for the energy? That kind of energy is like,
Olivia Zhang 44:53
Like noise…
Gene Park 44:55
painful.
René Coronado 44:57
One little secret weapon that I’ve had forever as I do A ton a ton of hockey crowds. Because in hockey, they can’t play the PA during play per NHL rules. And you know, anyone takes a really nice check, you get all these big awesome just like, oh, you get these big reacts that I can use and just all these different contexts so hockey crowds are my secret weapon and all these different things.
Aaron Glasscock 45:28
That’s a hot tip. Yeah, that’s cool.
Timothy Muirhead 45:31
So a few years ago, our Co-host here, Teresa was the sound supervisor and mixer on a documentary about Olympic boxing. And she hired me to go to a gym locally and do a bunch of sound effects recording for it. And what I found during those records was a the gym wasn’t an ideal place because it was a big cement box. And all you got was just huge reverb and echo. But what we did get recorded that was mind blowing for me, because I’m not a regular person involved in boxing was recorded the boxers shadowboxing while practicing their breath. And that was an amazing sound.
And it made me realize just how much the breathing and the grunts of all the actors adds to everything as well, as we mentioned the crowd before. So how much of that? Is everyone mixing in and doing ADR? For? Can we just do a little bit of talking about the actual vocalizations of the people in the ring? What about you, Aaron?
Aaron Glasscock 46:36
If I recall, when those actors came in, we made them do the fights a version of that? I mean, it’s not the same thing. But you got to get that. And, of course, I think for the first temp, that was me going. I don’t think that made it in the movie.
Teresa Morrow 46:54
It’s now your secret sauce?
Gene?.
Gene Park 47:01
Yeah, I did a similar thing, we had a Halle and the other fighters, like they’ll just do a pass in the studio, of the fights, you know. And then we just kind of went through and either use the production sound, or the ADR depending on, you know, what we felt was best. That’s what we ended up doing for that.
René Coronado 47:16
So Olivia, what do you think,
Olivia Zhang 47:18
Production sound of I think the fight vocal is, is really hard to amplify, I don’t know you Gene, how’s the stunt co-ordination happening in Bruised? My was fully stunt coordinated, you know, there’s no real punch, you know, there’s no real blood. So it was for us how I usually approaches, you know, we use as a sync point, but almost for all the intimacy you want to create for fight scene, like Gene and Aaron said, you have to record it, you know, in ADR or group session, and then you put it in, for me as a effects editor. When there’s obviously in the production track various vocal. And when you see that they’re being they’re vocalizing. When they perform, you leave a little bit space, after right after the punch or a little bit before. And you definitely keep the communication open with the group editor, you know, I do our work, do our cut work together? You know, I’m on top of the vocal the effort? Or how should we move each other stuff so that everything played together?
Teresa Morrow 48:22
I love to hear that, like the editors thinking about what am I not hearing in the track here, but that I need to keep in mind is going to be there or should be there. So I should be leaving room for it. Like I love hearing that as a mixer like that people are thinking about what they’re not hearing. Yeah.
Aaron Glasscock 48:40
On a similar note, the idea of making that pocket for the breath or the reaction relative to the transient of the hit event, you know, it’s all one sound, right? The feet, the hit the body fall the reaction. So we have to figure out, you know, what, that the way they interleave is, and when you look at that hit, that hit may not be perfectly aligned to get the most out of it. You may be doing like this little stagger, like on a to bring that life into it. So that within that one event, it’s telling a story, it’s instead of like going, it’s going wow. You know, and I think a lot of people get overzealous on tightening the waveforms up to be one event, you know, sometimes that’s right, but take advantage of the ability of owning the footprint over time, just like putting the vocal reaction right in the right place, you know, with two frames between them or whatever, or cutting two frames between gunshots or whatever so that there’s a whole and there’s timing and, and there’s an arc to that single event.
Olivia Zhang 49:45
Well, so
René Coronado 49:46
Are you making judgment calls with regards to like not putting sounds on specific punches once the action gets up to a certain rate of speed?
Aaron Glasscock 49:54
Sometimes you you drop stuff out. We really don’t hear three things. happening at one time. And it’s better if it’s one thing and for the same reason that eight people on screen is covered by four people talking or five people talking ……if that. You want the brain on the story not overwhelmed.
Gene Park 50:15
Yeah. No, I agree with 100%.
René Coronado 50:18
Cool.
Jay Peck 50:19
Yeah, the footsteps if there’s any more than like three people walking, it starts to become a
Gene Park 50:24
Yeah, like stampede.
Aaron Glasscock 50:26
They start deleting. Yeah,
Jay Peck 50:28
take that out.
René Coronado 50:29
So I guess we could just wrap by asking everyone here, if there are any specific things you learned while we’re working on the films that we’re talking about here. Like with regards to workflows, or mixing or collaboration or anything like that, that you would take into the next fight film,
Aaron Glasscock 50:44
double the mix schedule?
René Coronado 50:48
Well spell that out?
Aaron Glasscock 50:49
Double the budget, double mix schedule. For everybody.
Gene Park 50:53
I saw a lot of problems for everybody.
Jay Peck 50:56
Yeah. Good use that.
Teresa Morrow 50:58
What’s your take on that? Olivia?
Olivia Zhang 51:00
Working on One Night In Miami is really your….. different departments. sound effect department, Foley and dialogue and also music, you got to keep the conversation going keep communication on what is the music like what kind of you know was the main instrument featured, what’s the mood it was a more like realistic is that like drums, is an orchestra or is it a piano solo. So that really impact how the style that effects do. And also, I think is really important to keep communication open with dialogue department and you know, or ADR department, because is human fight and they make sound and nothing heard more when the person screams, you know, you can get so much such a big punch, but it doesn’t sound as hurt when he screamed. So I would say four effects editor always keep in mind that vocal is very important. And don’t underestimate his power building a good action sequence.
Timothy Muirhead 52:01
Gene.
Gene Park 52:03
It’s interesting, because you know, boxing or fighting is like a it’s a conversation as two people, you know, there’s a question and answer. So if the person who’s taking initiative and throwing a punch, there’s always the reaction like Olivia saying how the other person’s reacts, you know, knows the other end of sort of the one little sequence of sounds and each sequence of the punch the hit reaction, you know, fall, it takes both sides. I feel like that helped out a lot. You know, having all the actors be really game to redo those things.
Jay Peck 52:32
One thing I know that I always feel like I can do something better. Or Gosh, I wish I had a little more time or it’s never really ever perfect. You got to let it go. But in this case, we get to go back into Bruised, because we’re going to revisit that in a little while. Right, Gene?
Gene Park 52:48
Yeah.
Jay Peck 52:48
So I have an opportunity to at least I will and everyone will have an opportunity. I know there’s a couple things I’d like to have another go at. And so I’m looking forward to that. It’s not often get that opportunity to give it another try
Gene Park 53:00
It isnt often how, because it was presented TIFF as a work in progress screening. So it wasn’t finished. So I guess my experience is where we get some time, like months, you know, yeah, doing the schedules of the same film.
Aaron Glasscock 53:13
Right. That’s great.
Teresa Morrow 53:15
Yeah, I’m psyched that that film got picked up the way it did. So looking forward to that coming out on streaming services when it does.
Aaron Glasscock 53:23
Hey, Jay, I realize we work together. We both did Mid 90s.
Jay Peck 53:28
Oh, wow.
Aaron Glasscock 53:30
Right.
Jay Peck 53:30
That was great. I love that movie.
Aaron Glasscock 53:31
I love that. I loved your work on it.
Jay Peck 53:33
Oh, thanks.
Aaron Glasscock 53:34
One of my favorite films.
Jay Peck 53:35
That was a really fun movie. Yeah.
Timothy Muirhead 53:39
Cool. Well, thank you very much, everybody, for joining us today. This is a really fun talk. And I think that our listeners are gonna really enjoy this because boxing is or MMA boxing. It’s one of those genres that everybody hopes they get to work on one day. And now when our listeners do get that chance, they’re going to have some thoughts to think about thanks to your expertise. So thank you very much.
Jay Peck 54:01
Thank you.
Gene Park 54:01
Thanks for having
Aaron Glasscock 54:02
fun. Awesome.
René Coronado 54:04
Thanks, everybody.
Teresa Morrow 54:05
Great, thanks so much.
Narrator 54:07
Tonebenders is produced by Timothy Muirhead, Rene Coronado and Teresa Morrow. Theme music is by Mark Strait. Send your emails to [email protected]. Follow us on Twitter via @thetonebenders and join Tonebendors podcast on Facebook. Support this podcast. You can use our links when you shop at Amazon or b&h or leave us a tip. Just go to tonebenderspodcast.com and click the support button. Thanks for listening.
René Coronado 54:39
Before we wrap this episode, I have to give a huge shout out to sound designer Luke Smiles who did heroic work with the edit on this episode. Editing round tables is always a challenge because you have to keep multiple people in sync. And Luke did an amazing job and he did it quickly. So go check out Luke Smiles @LukeSmiles on Twitter and thanks again!
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