Sundance: Designing the Intimate Sound of ‘Good Luck to You, Leo Grande’

Director Sophie Hyde premiered her latest film Good Luck to You, Leo Grande at Sundance - and here, sound designer Steve Fanagan discusses the use of sound as a way to establish location, transition times of day, pull the audience into the characters' encounters, and to underscore the drama, comedy, and intimacy.

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Interview by Jennifer Walden, photos courtesy of Sundance Institute

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Premiereing at Sundace is Good Luck to You, Leo Grande – directed by Sophie Hyde. This intimate film is mainly set in a single location (a hotel room) and features two characters: Nancy (played by Emma Thompson), a retired school teacher and widow seeking human connection as well as satisfaction, and Leo (played by Daryl McCormack), a male escort who’s able to offer both.

Searchlight Pictures has just acquired the U.S. Rights to the film, and it will reportedly stream exclusively on Hulu in the U.S.

Since the film unfolds in a single space with just two characters, director Hyde wanted to use sound to both make the hotel room feel connected to a larger world, and to vitalize the intimate moments. She turned to MPSE Award-winning sound designer Steve Fanagan, whose experience on romantic drama series Normal People would benefit similar situations in Good Luck to You, Leo Grande.

Here, Fanagan talks about how he created a space beyond the screen and what that means for the story, using foley to bring the audience closer to the action, collaborating remotely with Hyde and her Australian sound team, and more.

This film mainly takes place in one location – a high-end hotel room – and it happens in several real-time scenes. What did that mean for you in terms of sound? And what were some challenges that this posed?

Sound Designer Steve Fanagan

Steve Fanagan (SF): These two characters meet in a hotel room and the film takes place over four meetings that pretty much play out in real-time. It was shot in a creative way; it’s very cinematic in how it’s filmed, designed, and edited.

We discussed several details for the location of this hotel, and started to think about what sounds we might hear. It’s in Central London, it’s near the Thames and so we could hear bird-life like gulls, and we could hear pedestrians, traffic, trains, buses, and all of that busy life you hear outside in a city as loud as London. We wanted to do something that suggested there is a world outside. And by allowing that world to be alive that detail could underscore the story and put our characters into a space that’s a sanctuary from that everyday life outside.

Sophie was very clear from the get-go that this outside world should in some way invade the space of the hotel room. The idea was to allow us to feel a passage of time, to feel the different times of day that we visit the room. By feeling and hearing those details, when things do get intimate, we had sounds that we could pull away to help us disappear into the intimacy of these two characters. We could then feature the tiny details, like their touch, their barefoot footsteps, and their proximity to each other – close-up details that you could only hone in on if you already created a larger sense of space. Hearing the outside world and slowly pulling away from it in those intimate moments gave us a good contrast to use for focus.

Hearing the outside world and slowly pulling away from it in those intimate moments gave us a good contrast to use for focus.

It also allowed us to use the outside world to underscore moments – a correctly timed motorcycle or a London bus screeching could in some way subtly interact with the comedy or drama that’s taking place on-screen.

Sophie and her picture editor, Brian Mason (also DP on the film), really wanted to explore these things early on in their edit and so we worked in parallel, trying to figure out ways that sound could suggest cosmopolitan London but also allow us that space to get closer to the characters in the intimate and, sometimes, awkward moments!

Can you talk about your remote collaboration with Sophie’s Australian sound team?

SF: Firstly, I was a big fan of Sophie’s previous films, 52 Tuesdays and Animals, which had also premiered at Sundance in their given years. They are beautiful dramas and character studies, and though they’re very different, they’re ultimately about human connection and relationships. And so I had gotten an email from our post supervisor asking if I’d be interested in interviewing for this film, and I was really excited to do it.

Director Sophie Hyde

Sophie’s second film Animals was set in Dublin, and when they were in post on that in Australia, the sound effects editor, Adrian Medhurst, had gotten in touch with me via a friend to ask for some Dublin sounds. They were trying to build up a collection of authentic Dublin sounds. So, I sent him a bunch of material I had recorded. I was happy to share and help them build up the right material for the film. Also, I was excited because I had seen Sophie’s previous film.

That’s how my connection to Sophie’s Australian sound team originated. So when she decided they wanted to work with a sound designer on this film – something she hadn’t done in the past – my name came up as a result of that prior connection. It was lovely.

The first contact we had for this film was before they started the shoot. They were in pre-production and more than a month out from shooting. All I knew was that Sophie was directing and that Katy Brand wrote the script, and that Emma Thompson was involved. As I was reading the script, I really imagined Emma Thompson as this character and I could really hear her dramatic and comedic brilliance in there. And there’s that lovely stiff-upper-lip, British thing going on with her character that she’s so great at portraying. I could really feel that as I was reading it.

…she had such a vision for what she wanted to do with the film and such a sense for how sound could bring something to it…

When I got on a call with Sophie, I felt like we immediately hit it off. It felt like she had such a vision for what she wanted to do with the film and such a sense for how sound could bring something to it, in terms of an atmosphere and intimacy. She knew some of the work I had done previously and so we were able to talk about that in relation to this, particularly Normal People, which has some very intimate moments, and Room, which was set in a single location for the first half of the film.

Before they began shooting the film, I was in touch with the location sound mixer Jonathan Blagrove. When they were doing camera tests, he got to do a sound test, which he sent to me. He was sending me dailies every so often when they shot, making sure things were sounding ok, like, “There’s a plane going overhead. Does this sound usable?” and that sort of thing. I would take a listen and let him know if the track was something I felt we could clean up in post. He was really great to work with and came up with all sorts of inventive ways to mic the actors and the room to give Pete Smith (dialogue editor/re-recording mixer) great options in his dialogue edit.

Then when we came into post proper, Sophie and Bryan started to send the film to me in sections. Sophie had the idea that she didn’t want to screen the film for anyone without some sound work done because she wanted to make sure the space felt alive. Essentially, the set of the hotel room was built on a soundstage and so it was an incredibly quiet space. She wanted to make sure the environment didn’t sound dead when she screened the film. She wanted us to have begun creating the world going on around these brilliant performances.

Essentially, the set of the hotel room was built on a soundstage and so it was an incredibly quiet space. She wanted to make sure the environment didn’t sound dead when she screened the film.

We started to work together very early in the film edit, with them sending me these sections. I’d work for a couple of days and send them back a work-in-progress and they’d send back notes. I’d do some updates and send that material. The three of us worked that way initially, and later in the process, their usual Adelaide-based sound crew, Adrian and Pete came on.

At that point, I had done a lot of design and effects work on the film so we weren’t starting from scratch. It was a lovely thing that evolved over time and in tandem with the picture. The collaboration was all done remotely but we were catching up on Zoom or conversing over email; whatever worked best for the moment. When they were under pressure in the edit, I would get an email asking for this or that. But when there was more time, we’d jump on Zoom and talk things out. It was a very natural process between all of us. There was a lot of mutual respect and a sense that we each had our own part to play. We were all very invested in the film!

There was a lot of mutual respect and a sense that we each had our own part to play.

When we got to the pre-mix and final mix phase, Pete was mixing dialogue and music and Adrian mixed the effects, design, and foley. I would have loved to be in Adelaide with them for this, but COVID made that impossible, so we figured out a good workaround. They would send me the premix and final mix work that they were doing as they went and ask for notes. If I had notes, I gave them. If I didn’t, then I didn’t. Everyone was open and generous in terms of how we interacted with each other.

The foley was recorded and edited in the UK, at a facility called Aquarium, by Jason Swanscott, Rob Price, and Stuart Bagshaw. They did a great job and really captured the intimacy of the interaction between Nancy and Leo.

Adrian (who is an accomplished foley artist in his own right as well as a great effects editor) was then able to focus on specific effects or details that he wanted to add to and enhance. Any of that close-up detail and micro-movement became very important in the mix as a way of expressing the intimacy of what this film is all about.
 

What scene best represents your sound work on this film? What went into it?

SF: I always find it very hard to pick favorite scenes or sequences in things I’ve worked on. We spend so much time working on these things in such a microscopic way in the sound edit. It’s only when you sort of zoom out and listen through a reel or the full film that you get a sense of how all of that material is working, so I am often more focused on how the different scenes feel and work as part of the whole film.

It has to go from being a normal day in a hotel room in the middle of London to these two characters being lost in each other, and we’re right there in the space with them.

With that in mind, the center of this story is about a meeting of two people from quite different generations, backgrounds, and life experiences. It’s all about what they bring to each other, their differences, and what they can learn from each other. It’s about that amazing ability that we, as humans, have to be able to transform each other. In this film, it’s very much a two-way street between our two characters. Ultimately, the sound work was about how to explore and underscore that.

In any of those intimate scenes, we start with a meeting and a conversation. It felt like we could play the world in those moments, play what’s behind the glass out there in London. We could experiment with people passing by in the corridor outside their room. The world outside could very much exist.

It becomes a subjective experience and that’s always my favorite kind of sound work – where you have POV in a scene and you figure out with your director a way to hopefully say to the audience, ‘This is what this feels like.’

But as their conversation naturally transitions from small talk into more intimate conversation and into intimate interactions, we felt that we could pull those sounds out and then introduce design elements and heightened movement, like hearing Nancy’s heart racing at times because she’s never been in this type of intimate situation with someone like this, where the conversation and the idea of what she can ask and what she can expect is separated from any of that societal uptightness that she’s used to in her daily life. She’s free to be the person she is and to ask for things she genuinely desires or wants. And Leo, in his professionalism, can offer those things. So the sound has to reflect that. It has to go from being a normal day in a hotel room in the middle of London to these two characters being lost in each other, and we’re right there in the space with them.

This felt like something the cinematography and production design, and the direction allowed for. Any scene where we got to transition from this normal life into this rich experience of their intimacy best represents what we were striving for with the shape and design of the sound for the film.

It becomes a subjective experience and that’s always my favorite kind of sound work – where you have POV in a scene and you figure out with your director a way to hopefully say to the audience, “This is what this feels like.” They’re not just observing a moment, but rather they’re sharing an experience with the character on screen.
 

What was unique for you in terms of crafting the sound of Good Luck to You, Leo Grande?

SF: The collection of people involved was very unique and brilliant to work with. The setting of the story is very unique. From a sound point of view, it was about going out and recording the right material and finding libraries that had the right material in them – to express the city outside and to express the characters’ inner worlds.

There are a couple of libraries from If a Tree Falls, a UK sound recordist named Rick Blything. He has some great London libraries that capture very specific details of life around London. He’s captured really rich, expressive sounds of the city, things you would only hear in London, at all different times of day and in different locations. That material dotted throughout this film was very helpful to express the city but also to express and underscore our characters’ POVs.

I was living in London at the time so recorded a lot of material myself. In addition, I got great use out of the recent crowdsource libraries, MyHome and Ambient Isolation.

Trying to figure out how to transition that world outside and the interior world that they’re in through that time was a real challenge.

The film was unlike anything that I’ve worked on before and part of that was the duration of some of these real-time meetings. The scenes play out over a longer period of time. The first meeting takes place over the transition from daytime to evening and into nighttime. Trying to figure out how to transition that world outside and the interior world that they’re in through that time was a real challenge. It’s something that I hadn’t had an opportunity to do before. There were so many clues in the performance, in the writing, in the editing, and also in the shot choices and lighting. There was all of this inspiration in what they had done that helped us to figure out soundwise how to shape and evolve our work, so that we expressed that passage of time in the context of the interaction between these two characters. Sophie was so great at guiding us through this.

It was full of things that I never had encountered before. Having read the script I was excited, thinking, “How is this actually going to work? How are we going to do this? How do we make sure that what we’re doing with sound isn’t limited? How can we make it evolve and change, and be something that is helpful to the story?”

When you work with a great director, a great crew, and you have great writing and performances, all of that gives you a breadcrumb trail to follow and shape the sound work around with the rest of the crew.

A big thanks to Steve Fanagan for giving us a behind-the-scenes look at the sound of Good Luck to You, Leo Grande and to Jennifer Walden for the interview!

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