SUNDANCE 2023: Realistic Sound Heightens Horror in ‘birth/rebirth’ Film

Director Laura Moss’s first film birth/rebirth – part of Sundance 2023’s Midnight category – tells the tale of a single mother and a childless morgue technician who are bound together by their relationship to a little girl they have reanimated from the dead. The film will be available to stream on Shudder later this year.

MPSE Award-winning supervising sound editor/re-recording mixer Bryan Parker at Formosa Group has worked on horror films like Jordan Peele’s Get Out and Fede Alvarez’s Don’t Breathe, and horror series The Mist. He understands how to use sound to heighten the horror, even when that means pulling the sounds back so they feel as if they’re captured on set. Imaginable horror is sometimes more intense than over-the-top gore. That was his approach to birth/rebirth, to make the horror realistic and palpable. Here, he talks about that process of discovery, from imagining how the sound could be while reading the script and then understanding how the sound should be after seeing the cut. He also talks about his favorite moments for sound, his favorite single sound, and how working on birth/rebirth has helped him to be a better sound supervisor and re-recording mixer.

What were director Laura Moss’s goals for sound on birth/rebirth? And what were your creative ideas on how sound could help tell or support this story?

Sound supervisor/re-recording mixer Bryan Parker

Bryan Parker (BP): Laura had an interesting approach to this one. They were especially concerned with the reality and believability aspect of all things in there. In fact, they had a medical consultant known as Emily Medical on set to help with the visuals, and also for us in terms of what the loop group would say inside the operating room. Much of this film takes place in a hospital or around the hospital and so they were mostly concerned with realism. Laura was tuned into making sure the heart monitor rates were steady and that the perspectives or locations of different equipment in the room felt true.

When I read the script a couple of months ago, I viewed it as a way to create a big, visceral experience in certain scenes. But it’s funny when you see the movie after reading the script because it’s not how you imagined. What this movie actually wanted in terms of my sound storytelling goals turned out to have a lot more to do with that same realism.

Laura made this extremely uneasy film that only works if it feels real. There’s a small amount of “gore,” but in a hospital, that’s normal. On the page, it seemed like it was going to be a really big moment for finding the edge between medical thriller and body horror. But when I saw the picture and had a stronger connection to the characters, I realized the story was about ethics and motherhood; it’s really about these people. The whole thing becomes way more uneasy if everything feels as though it came right out of the camera, feels completely human scale and raw and real.

On the mix side, we played it pretty realistically. The panning is fairly narrow on everything except music. There’s a fair amount of detail that we built into the tracks, especially with the foley from Aura Sound and Color, but we pushed it all into the noise floor of production, so it just sits right there with the characters. We didn’t make a really big, cinematic experience out of it because then it would have stopped feeling like this real thing going on with these two women. So, that’s how my storytelling goal shifted.

If you had to pick one scene that best represents your sound work on this film, what would that be? Can you describe the scene (in general terms) and what went into your sound work on it?

BP: There’s a great two-minute sequence where a maternity nurse named Celie confronts the pathologist Rose at her home. Rose’s big plan is revealed. It’s their first big conflict and we had to follow the geography of them moving through the hallway and into Rose’s apartment. We had to play out the realization of what was going on and the horror of what Rose was doing for Celie. There’s a bit of a physical struggle and then a medical alarm cues some action and we follow them to the little girl. Getting that sequence just right was probably my favorite body of work because of managing the medical alarms and adding some low-end sound design with the modular synth that was intended to complement the music.

I tend to go through the entire movie before the mix…with a scene change track, using Audio Ease’s Altiverb to set reverb locations for the whole picture.

By the way, the composer Ariel Marx is a wonderful composer. She was great to work with. I’ve done a couple of movies with her and we work well together. We trust each other. We only overlap in ways that are beneficial for the film.

For the medical alarms, we played the different perspectives through our use of reverbs. On a show like this, with a fairly limited number of locations, I tend to go through the entire movie before the mix (to save money in the big expensive room) with a scene change track, using Audio Ease’s Altiverb to set reverb locations for the whole picture. This way, I’m not spending valuable time on the dub stage dialing up algorithmic reverbs.

I was riding reverb sends, doing EQ, and other mixing things all the way through editorial… because you have to.

When moving this fast on a film, I’m making editorial choices based on what’s going to work in the mix. So I’m riding levels, adding reverb, and doing what I can before the mix. There’s no room for the inefficiency of dividing those two roles, honestly. I had a separate session for cueing the ADR, but everything else was in the same session with routing that I gave to the mix tech on the stage at Formosa. That way we could open it up, hook up to the recorder, and go. I was riding reverb sends, doing EQ, and other mixing things all the way through editorial… because you have to.

It’s great to do some work ahead of the mix so you can slow down and dive into one particular scene that needs your attention more. Usually, in those instances, the mix process becomes a subtractive one. We have all this great editorial work, but what do we actually need? And there’s a fair amount of that in this moment, where we needed to make way for Ariel’s score. So we cleared out some of the city life and ambulance sounds that were taking up tonal space that we needed.

Indie films typically have restricted budgets and therefore don’t use a lot of CGI. But what the filmmakers lack in funds, they make up for in creativity. How were you able to use sound to help the filmmakers achieve a cool sci-fi/horror effect without having to put it all on-screen?

BP: There’s a pig in the film, which Rose had previously done some experiments on. So, there’s a live pig on set, hanging out and demanding treats from the actors. The pig, named Muriel, really adds a lot to the picture. The horror climax of this picture centers around the pig. And we were able to really extract a lot of horror using sound instead of actually seeing that violence. Our sound designer, Doug Moss, did a very, very good job with making that feel pretty big and really emotionally resonant, but still true to the space and realistic.

What was your favorite single sound that you created for this film? What went into it?

BP: I did have a favorite, and it almost didn’t make it in. (My second favorite sound didn’t make it into the picture, but that’s okay.) Celie figures out that something is wrong at the very start of the story, and rushes off in a hurry. She had answered the phone, and she saw a note, and without hesitation – her maternal instinct kicks in – she bolts for the door and just drops the phone. The camera stays in the space where she was previously standing, with the phone hanging from the cord.

I recorded the sound of a dial tone as the phone is swinging toward and away from the mic, to match its movement in the picture.

I recorded the sound of a dial tone as the phone is swinging toward and away from the mic, to match its movement in the picture. I recorded it practically using my office phone at Formosa Group. I did it in two different layers: one layer for the cord, and one layer for the dial tone itself. It really sells the slow rhythm of the phone swinging, and the dial tone just inherently feels lonely.

It was all working well so I played it for the filmmakers and Laura felt it was too pleasant. They said the sound of it should be sharper, harsher. At first, I thought, “It’s just a dial tone. This is how it would sound.” But I EQ’d it and introduced some saturation with FabFilter’s Saturn. This brought out some harshness in the upper mids, and that worked for them. It sits into the picture well, which is important because we do hang on this shot for a moment. I think it speaks to the rush, the urgency of that moment.

 
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What have you learned while working on this film that has helped you to grow your craft – as a sound artist and sonic storyteller?

BP: When I work on these pictures with really passionate filmmakers, without disembodied studio notes in the way, I tend to work on it way past the budget. I do it for me and I do it for the work. For this film, going to Sundance was not Plan A; that wasn’t on our calendar. So when we got the great news that this picture was going to Sundance, I panicked a little, just because there wasn’t enough time. I’ll give away my time, but I refuse to promise anybody else’s time – to ask them to put in the time that the story wants as opposed to what the budget can afford.

So what I learned from this film was that I should ask for some help.

So what I learned from this film was that I should ask for some help. I said, “Hey, with the Sundance calendar, do you think that we can add some weeks to the editorial budget, so I can hire some help?” And they pretty much said, “We can make that work. The Sundance calendar is aggressive, and we (the filmmakers) know that. “

Post sound work comes at the end of the process. We’re the caboose. We’re the last thing most of the time, and the project has already run out of money or they’ve gone over budget in production and VFX and everything else. So, I got out of the habit of ever asking for more money; there’s just no money. But between playing ball with a limited budget versus potentially burning myself out and handing in work that was only 80% of where I wanted it to be, I just took a swing and asked for more money for sound editorial, and they were down.

None of us are getting rich off of this, and it’s not greedy to say that the story will be served better…if I had some help.

The producer on this film, Mali Elfman, is very dear to me. I’ve done a bunch of projects with her, so we just leveled with each other about what the situation was. And so Mali said, “Let me just look into that. Let’s just see what that would look like.”

When you’re crunched, two weeks of editorial help goes a long way. I hired sound effects editor Melissa Corns to help me work three reels, so I was able to focus on the ADR needs and some pre-mixing. This way I didn’t have to split my brain for the last week before the mix, doing ADR during the day and effects editing at night. That is totally doable, just not sustainable. So I said, “Hey, I think the movie will be better if I can get some help. Is there a little money left in the pot for that?” None of us are getting rich off of this, and it’s not greedy to say that the story will be served better (given this change in schedule) if I had some help.

I realized during the mix…that by having the director engaged the whole time…we were able to accomplish things much more quickly.

I realized during the mix (which went fast; we made good progress early on) that by having the director engaged the whole time – listening to the changes as we were addressing them instead of only looking up from a laptop to pay attention when we ask them to listen – we were able to accomplish things much more quickly. Laura was sitting at the console, right beside me, and I could tell from the expression on her face if I had taken it far enough, or if they had another idea in mind. We saved maybe 25% of our time just by staying engaged. We listened together for the entire week. It made a big difference in getting good momentum early and being able to slow down for the scenes where we wanted to pick stuff apart. So, that was another important thing I learned while working on this film.

A big thanks to Bryan Parker for giving us a behind-the-scenes look at the sound of birth/rebirth and to Jennifer Walden for the interview!

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