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The following is a lightly edited and repaired, A.I. generated transcript of Tonebenders episode 196 – The Sound of Moon Knight. Please excuse any typos or translation mistakes made by the algorithm. It is not meant to be read like a polished blog post.
Tim Muirhead/Host
Mark Kilborn/Host
Kim Patrick/Sound Designer
Bonnie Wild/Supervising Sound Editor & Re-Recording Mixer
Mac Smith/Bonnie Wild/Supervising Sound Editor & Re-Recording Mixer
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Timothy Muirhead 7:02
One of the tricky things about a signature sound that happens so quickly, is finding ways to make it play through possibly music and other things going on, inevitably a jackal screaming in the background or something like that. How did you tackle mixing the suit transformation,
Bonnie Wild 7:18
Kind of a lot of ducking and weaving and like picking moments, I mean, Hesham Nazih’s score was majestic. I mean, I think that’s, you know, fair to say. And so there’s, there’s always an element of like, not wanting to feel the music pullback to push something through. So some cases was just like a kind of delaying the push into it. So it’s like slow build, slow build, slow build, slow build, and then afterwards pushing it. But I mean, we did have moments, but we’re just kind of a case of having everything going as loud as you could possibly make it all at once. Because you can’t, sometimes you can’t avoid that. And you’ve got to just like elements of this suit transformation. And it’s like picking one that’s going to push through, so up, you kind of just like picking what to play, and even, you know, the VFX, the VFX would be updated and updated. And so sometimes you then you get lucky. And there’s a particular like movement in the suit that’s going to hit like between big hits in the music and stuff like that. And sometimes it’s cheating it just to delay it. So it might be a little bit out of sync, but you can just like get away with it and make it work. So you’re just kind of creating a rhythm between the music and the effects. Usually a different trick every time. You know, you’ve got to just like figure out what’s going to work for that one build. Like we had an instance in Episode Six, when we were spotting, where they were, like, you know, here, maybe what we could do is just play the music really low, and have the sound effect really loud. And even at that point, me and Mac were like, even at that point, don’t think that’s gonna pass. It’s when I am it is like revealing from the thing. It’s like, that’s gonna be a huge piece of music and you’ve just got to kind of suck it up sometimes. You know, sometimes when you’re doing it, it’s like, okay, well here, it’s gonna be music. And sure, we’ve done a lot of work with sound effects here. But, you know, there’s other places where, kind of where you get a win where it works the other way and you’re like, No, here, we’ve done a lot of effects work. You gotta remember the composer’s done so much work as well. It’s not like, you know, so that’s the I always try and be like, not biased. I like trying to remain like bipartisan in like the music and the effects world because you just really, it’s always the story. You know, that’s what you’re always going to go with is always the story. It’s always like, what’s going to give you chills up your spine. You know, what’s going to be the thing that works there and it’s never because like one thing is better than the other it’s just because of what’s going to like play right in that moment. It was big everything, but was fun.
Timothy Muirhead 9:58
I stumbled upon a strange accident when I muted Moon Knight because my son had walked in the room and I was asking me a question. And it was the scene where Harrow was trying to get the Scarab, from Oscar Isaac, and he can’t open his hand and he’s shooting his hand around. And without the amazing sounds that you guys put in,
Clip 10:17
You will give him nothing. I strongly encourage you to return that. And not strange sorry about that will not ask again, but didn’t do that on purpose. Don’t know what’s happening.
Timothy Muirhead 10:38
That scene doesn’t work in silence at all, like you’re like, it just looks like a crazy person. And I was really glad that I stumbled across this because the sounds that you guys all put in. They’re not massive, super reviewing sounds, but they’re telling a story that the visuals are not telling at all, that there’s this higher power coming through him?
Bonnie Wild 10:59
Well, that’s the story point is what is happening in that moment. And so I think there was a discussion as to like, how much Scarab to hear, or, you know, also, these guys went through a few versions of, you know, “Scarab making”. That’s a thing? But what we definitely like the overall note for the series was like, not Hollywood, like Egyptian, like not The Mummy, not Scorpion King. It is like grounded. It is, you know, it’s magical. But it’s like very grounded, very real, you know, organic, because it was a favorite word. In scenes like that. It was to like not overdo that moment, because he’s also we got to tread the line as well between all the psyches. So we’re not dealing with Mark in that moment who is stronger, we’re not dealing with Moon Knight, so we don’t want it to sound like he is physically super strong, you know that he’s making that movement. But it’s definitely the Scarab that is like the driving force there. So
Kim Patrick 12:03
Yeah, I feel like an early note was they didn’t want the Scarab to sound mechanical in any way. But we have to obviously have it sound metallic in some way. So finding that balance between getting the hint of metal, but it’s still has magic in it. The tests I did, I tried using a lot of bells. I have just a really small set of bells, that have a really nice ring out to them. And I have wooden mallets for them. And instead of hitting it with like the ball end of the mallet, I just use the stick end and sort of would like run it over the bells or like do rapid hitting and then taking out a bunch of frequencies from that so that it doesn’t sound like just a normal bell, musical Bell. It has those weird quality to it that feels like magic, feels like metal. Also, the Scarab needed to have a sense of hovering because it was sort of the compass for them later on so and to get a hint at like the bug part of it get a little ticking in there for like, insect feeling. So yeah, that was a really fun process of figuring out what that Scarab was gonna sound like
Mark Kilborn 13:15
We’re starting to do this thing where we ask on Twitter of followers, like, hey, what would you like us to ask the crew that we’re interviewing? Unsurprisingly, Khonshu’s voice was brought up? And I’m curious how much of that was the actor’s voice versus processing? And how did you all tackle that challenge?
Mac Smith 13:30
That was discussion from the very start. You’re even before our crew came on for the full show. We knew that the “God voices” were going to be a thing. Originally there was a temp voice and they’re not not F. Murray Abraham. And so we played with that a little bit. But then Bonnie and I quickly realized like it’s a little bit of a fool’s errand to do that until you have the real voice in there. So once we got the the initial F. Murray Abraham recordings, I just spent a number of days just playing with processing. And my number one thing was I want to make sure it’s intelligible. You can you can really hear what he’s saying, because I’ve had the complaint, just as a viewer watching previous things of like, oh, that voice sounds really cool, but I can’t understand every word. So you know, played with so many different plugins, ultimately settled on this, this plugin that I’ve been playing with a lot in the past year called Thermal by Output. They had a preset called “vocal swirl”. While thermal is mostly a distortion plugin. It’s got all these different modules. So it’s got delays, and you can do things to different frequencies, crunch or put different phasing effects on certain frequencies. And so I just played around and played around and found a few that I liked and played them for Bonnie. We kind of settled on the ones that we liked and then sent them off to Marvel and see what they said and one of them stuck. And I just want to add that Um, it’s really cool that when the Emmy nominations came out that not only did we get nominated for Best Editing and Mix, but also F. Murray Abraham got an Emmy nomination for Best vocal performance for moonlight. So I feel like you know, we had a little hand in helping him with that.
Mark Kilborn 15:15
Very cool.
Timothy Muirhead 15:16
That is really cool.
Mark Kilborn 15:17
So related to voices. Another voice I was curious about was the Jackal. I found it very interesting in the in the episode where it first appears because you hear it almost like a whimpering dog early on, and then it suddenly becomes this extremely threatening creature.
Kim Patrick 15:32
Yeah, that was a real evolution of finding that final version that you hear in the episode. We got a guide track from them that had baby cries in it. So the first pass I did was actually some recordings from Mac’s kid. He has these awesome recordings from when his son was a baby, very windy and whimpering. So I basically took their guide track and replaced it with all of these baby cries and we sent it off to them. And immediately they kicked it back and they’re like, no, no, no babies, no babies. So they had also early on, asked if we could get any actual jackal recordings into that character. A real Jackal is actually quite whiny, like that. So this felt like the natural place to try to work with it. It was going to be hard to work that into the big beast version of the Jackal. The second pass I did, I took we have these awesome distant jackal recordings in our library. I took those and I meshed them with I think a Chihuahua. That was like very animated and vocal in its performance. So the first part of the wine is an actual jackal. And then the tail and part of it where it’s like, what is it? What is that? Is this Chihuahua? pitch down. So yeah, that and then I think I baked in some museum reverb onto that. Sorry, Bonnie. All baked in…..
Bonnie Wild 17:10
How dare Kim! How Dare you help me?
Kim Patrick 17:15
Just to add to the the convoluted nature of it as that you’re not supposed to know what you’re hearing Exactly.
Clip 17:24
Hello, Donna. JB.
Kim Patrick 17:29
That’s what sort of Steven goes around exploring, like, is it a dog do I need to like get this thing out of here. And then as it evolves into the larger version, that was also another process of finding what that creature was going to sound like. I think the first pass I did for it was very, like generic pitch down dog rally stuff. And my husband has a really intense snore. So I recorded him. Unbeknownst to him.
Mark Kilborn 18:05
That is amazing.
Kim Patrick 18:06
Then I tried pitching that down, I think they’re like very small remnants of that in the final version, but it didn’t really quite work. The thing that I came across that worked the best was cardboard boxes.
Kim Patrick 18:34
When you move cardboard boxes in a certain way, they actually have a very breathless quality to them. And this is also something I learned from Randy Thom early on was like, if you’re making creatures, you need to give them breath in order to make them seem real because all of us breathe. And if you don’t have something breathing, then it doesn’t quite stick. It’s sort of like the Foley of creature vocals or like you need that glue to make it believable.
Clip 19:05
Give me the Scarab and you won’t be torn apart
Kim Patrick 19:22
So I really spent a long time just like focusing on the breathing part of it and the growly part of it before even getting into the actual growls and screams and all that. And that’s the base layer that I started with was just a breath pass over the whole thing, using cardboard and pitching that down. And then also in my like breathing pass, I discovered you know, cardboard also has that really awful scrape, if you like put the site into a box and pull it out. So then I just started doing a bunch of those passes, cutting that in. Mac also took a pass over the jackal scene and added this awesome intense high pitch scream. I don’t know if you want to talk about that at all, Mac because it really adds to the terror.
Mac Smith 20:07
Yeah, it was actually a Brad Winderbaum note that he wanted to make sure when the jackal especially lunges at Steven right before he closes the door into the bathroom. And then also in the jackal gets in and lunges at him that really wanted to hear her this terrifying shriek
Mac Smith 20:31
her pass was great. So I just ended up topping a couple of those areas with that konnyaku frying that I think I’ve posted a little video for on Twitter, of those little Japanese yam balls that you put in a frying pan and you squeeze them with a spatula and they just shriek.
Mac Smith 21:00
So, yeah, that was that was fun that it just, it just didn’t take much time. It was just that little tiny layer on top.
Kim Patrick 21:06
And then gotta give a shout out to Tim Farrell as well. He did a pass over the whole scene, as well. And I think he added in some like really nice, deep, big growly parts into it. And also when it’s like jumping through that closet before it goes into the bathroom, he did some really great stuff in there as well. So yeah, this whole series was just a huge collaborative process between our whole effects team, the mixers, we had such like Bonnie and Mac put together such an amazing crew, with all of these really talented designers in their own right. So everybody got to put their touch on each of the episodes. And it really culminates in that last episode. I think everybody’s work is featured in some fashion in there, which Yeah, just made working on this show. Also such a joy that we can be so collaborative and hand scenes off to other people, and they’ll put their touch on it. And I think that’s also why this show sounds so great, because so many wonderful people worked on it.
Mac Smith 22:11
Bonnie, areyou okay?
Bonnie Wild 22:13
I am just dying. It’s just now I’m finding out the jackals are made of cardboard and something you put in a frying pan?
Timothy Muirhead 22:22
The terrifying jackals or cardboard and Yams being fried. Sound is amazing!
Bonnie Wild 22:32
Like sometimes as the mixer like you just, you just get this stuff ans are like “that is cool”. Like, still, especially because we move so fast, you can be kind of detached from what’s going on. And like, you know, Kim’s doing all this at home and everything and Mac’s doing a bunch of it at home. And so it turns up in your tracks, you know, stuffs cool. And like, you know, to try and make an effort, you know, an effort to be like cool.
Kim Patrick 23:05
I think it’s better that you don’t know. Because if you’re knew,
Bonnie Wild 23:10
We don’t usually you know, there’s no time to really sit down and get in in depth of like where this stuff came from. So it’s always in these interviews, actually that you find out like what stuff is made? How did you think of that?!
Mac Smith 23:25
That’s like how foley mixers often don’t want to watch what the foley artist is doing? Because if they watch them, they’ll be like, “Oh, that doesn’t sound right”. But if they don’t watch them, they’re like, “Okay, I like that”. We’re doing the same thing with Bonnie, “Don’t Don’t watch our process. Just listen and put it in”.
Timothy Muirhead 23:43
Awesome. Well, thank you very much for talking to us today. I really enjoyed watching the Moon Knight series. So it was great to talk to you and find out how some of the sounds came together.
Kim Patrick 23:51
Thank you.
Mac Smith 23:52
Thanks, Tim. Thanks, Mark.
Bonnie Wild 23:53
Thank you.
Narrator 43:41
Tonebenders is produced by Timothy Muirhead, Rene Coronado and Teresa Morrow. Theme music is by Mark Straight. Send your emails to info at tonebenderspodcast.com. Follow us on Twitter via @thetonebenders and join Tonebenders 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.
Timothy Muirhead 44:11
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