Crafting a Bold Sound for Horror-Comedy ‘Bodies Bodies Bodies’ — with Luciano Vignola and Mariusz Glabinski

Director Halina Reijn's horror-comedy film Bodies Bodies Bodies (distributed by A24) follows a group of rich 20-somethings who throw a hurricane party at a remote family mansion. As their party game goes awry, snarky backstabbing takes front stage. The hurricane rages outside and the fake friends find their party going from bad to deadly.

Award-winning sound supervisor/re-recording mixer Luciano Vignola and sound designer Mariusz Glabinski talk about creating a long-lasting hurricane that is interesting and dynamic, building intense dialogue scenes, using foley to heighten the chaos and flesh out quiet scenes, and much more!

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Interview by Jennifer Walden, photos courtesy of A24

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Horror and comedy go hand-in-hand in Director Halina Reijn’s film Bodies Bodies Bodies . A group of Gen-Z ‘friends’ get together to ride out a hurricane in high style at one friend’s opulent and remote family mansion. But things inside get as stormy as they are outside when one friend dies mysteriously. The friends turn on each other, revealing their true backstabbing natures.

The hurricane is an ever-present character, lasting nearly the entire length of the film. For the sound team, their challenge was to add movement, texture, and interest to this massive storm, using it to forward plot points, pulling it back at times to let the dialogue take over, and using it to help define rooms geographically.

Emmy and MPSE award-winning supervising sound editor/re-recording mixer Luciano Vignola – who final mixed the film in Dolby Atmos at PostWorks NY – called on sound designer Mariusz Glabinski (winner of an Emmy, MPSE, and Music+Sound Awards) to help craft the storm into a powerful presence.

Snarky dialogue is another main focus of the film. Despite the copious amounts of rain/water (and rain machines to make that happen!), Vignola notes the production dialogue sounded great. They recorded ADR at Soundtrack New York mainly for creative purposes, although Reijn (an actress herself) was protective and mindful of using the production dialogue whenever possible.

Here, Vignola and Glabinski talk about building the hurricane, building intense (and hilarious) narrative scenes with sonic support from the foley, using natural sounds to create subjective moments, and much more!

Bodies Bodies Bodies | Official Trailer 2 HD | A24

What were Director Halina Reijn’s goals for sound going into Bodies Bodies Bodies? Were there certain sounds or scenes she wanted you to tackle first?

Luciano Vignola (LV): One of the first conversations we had with Halina was about the hurricane being a prominent character in this film. There’s a trajectory that the storm takes, that takes the viewers through the story. What will that sound like? How will that feel? How will we use it to our advantage in various scenes and how will we let it sit back?

Storms are such an incredibly useful tool to have as a storytelling device in sound because they can be so dynamic; they give you many colors in their palette to work with. We knew we’d be able to lean on it much in the way that one does with score.

Storms are such an incredibly useful tool to have as a storytelling device in sound because they can be so dynamic…

Pete Davidson, who plays David, shouts at the storm, and says, “Is that all you’ve got motherf**ker?” Then you hear the first crack of the thunder and this begins the rollercoaster of the storm.

Much like score, there are moments where the storm takes a backseat to the dialogue, like in these incredible ensemble-driven scenes with everyone in the living room having these really intense and hilarious arguments, and then it comes rushing back in like when they find David outside, or when they kick Bee out of the house. So this was really our way of cracking the code of how to tell Bodies Bodies Bodies.

I loved all the rain sounds! For instance, when Bee is shoved outside you feel like they’re sending her to her demise. And in the scene when they pile into Sophie’s car, the rain feels overwhelming and intense. Where did you get your rain and storm sounds?

LV: That’s a Mariusz special! Mariusz was the lead sound effects editor, and he shaped the majority of the storm. We also had Steve Boeddeker (at Skywalker Sound) help with some additional accompaniment.

Mariusz records a lot of his own sounds; he’s amassed a collection over the years and I wouldn’t be surprised if a good amount of the storm came from his own recordings.

Mariusz Glabinski (MG): From the first meetings with Halina – even before seeing a frame of the film – it was clear how important the sound of the storm is in the story. And how crucial it was to have distinguished sounds in all the different rooms at the mansion.

Sound designer Mariusz Glabinski

I already had an extensive collection of rain, storm, and wind sounds in my library, nicely categorized in a Soundminer database from a different project, The Lighthouse by Robert Eggers, which I worked on a few years back; it also had a significant and heavy storm in it.

I used (or tried to use!) every rain and wind sound that I had or recently acquired for Bodies Bodies Bodies – using commercial libraries, my own or my colleague’s recording, and independent SFX library sources like libraries from A Sound Effect, which to me are often irreplaceable and essential for many particular and unusual sounds that you can only get from a real passionate and dedicated group of recordists running around the whole world and putting their hearts and time into crafting great and often hard to come by libraries.

That helped me tremendously, especially on the short schedule we had for prep on this film. My sound effects editor, Chris Liang, was also invaluable. He did many hard effects and overall helped with the project.

The storm was the first thing we started working on before editing anything else. In a typical setup when dealing with perspective location shifts in the background or effects, we often keep most of the same elements running along throughout different locations (i.e., interior, exterior, different rooms, etc.) and just split them accordingly and change some of them by adding EQ or reverbs – possibly adding one or two new elements for an exterior shot, but overall keeping the same layer of backgrounds playing along.

I tried to use different sounds of the rain and wind for each location, even if there was no change in timing and the locations were next to each other.

But from the get-go on Bodies Bodies Bodies, to get each room to sound different, I tried to use different sounds of the rain and wind for each location, even if there was no change in timing and the locations were next to each other.

LV: We had to satisfy a few story plot points with the storm. For instance, after the storm starts and they all go inside, Bee is walking through the hallway into the kitchen – she’s sizing up the house – and there’s a moment where the camera tracks up to a window and we have this swell of heavy beating rain hitting against the glass. It tells the audience that the storm is definitely amping up here and it’s also calling attention to that very window, which comes back into play later with David.

…they had to be unique. They couldn’t just be another rain sound or another whistling wind sound.

Then, the camera slowly tracks away from the window and pans down to the doggy door, and here we have this iconic “wind whistling through the metallic vent” sound.

These two set pieces both come back with a vengeance later so we wanted to call attention to them; they had to be unique. They couldn’t just be another rain sound or another whistling wind sound.

The other big challenge was how to make the storm interesting because it goes on for over 45 minutes. How do we make it texturally interesting? How do we keep it varied? How do we not get bored of it? How do we create its identities in the various rooms and floors?

A lot of our work during the mix was creating the geographical identities of all these rooms. It’s a big house – almost unrealistically big. There’s the “red room,” which was the home gym in the basement. In reality, it wasn’t actually in the basement but we made it out to play like it was and that was a big setup, too. We had to create a strong presence of wind and storm right up until they cut to them descending the staircase towards the red room/gym where everything then gets sucked out.

Ever so slowly throughout the course of that scene…the humming gets louder and louder until Bee clocks in the back of the head…

When we cut into the red room, there’s almost no sound except for this one drone – like an 80 Hz hum almost. That hum starts ominously low, and we see Greg wearing this light mask and listening to music. Ever so slowly throughout the course of that scene, which is a really long monstrous scene, the humming gets louder and louder until Bee clocks him in the back of the head and then the hum just hard cuts out.

We ended up having three or four entire days – entire mix passes – of remixing the storm throughout the film to try different variations of textures here and there, and seeing what worked in certain areas.

MG: Having a big hurricane in any story, but specifically in this kind of suspense film, it’s a great and precious tool for sound designers to use. It gives us so many exciting ways to build, sustain, and relieve tension in strategic places.

It gives us so many exciting ways to build, sustain, and relieve tension in strategic places.

Just the sounds of wind and rain hitting different surfaces is such an expressive sound that you can easily manipulate to your needs – not to mention all the other creaky and squeaky sounds we had at our disposal.

The skillful mixing by Luciano in Dolby Atmos opened a wide variety of interesting ideas. I tried to supply him with as many options as possible, so even if Halina listened and approved most of the sounds before the final mix, anything could be changed or rearranged later during the mix. Luciano could just remix and rebalance any elements to his liking.

The red room/home gym was the only room where Halina didn’t want to hear any rain sounds. So it feels odd and unusual. At first, it may fool you that it’s peaceful, but then the action shifts and becomes almost unbearable when it is so quiet and isolated.

I had my son scraping and hitting with various branches and sticks outside different windows in the house upstate as I was recording it from the inside.

Many rooms in the house had some kind of visual clue for the sounds. For example, there are rooms where you clearly see the intensity of the rain on the windows, some rooms and hallways have no windows in view, and in some, we are playing the rain as if it’s hitting the skylight or the roof. There is a room, for example, where all the girls go at some point (I think it’s Alice’s room) and you see all the trees and branches hitting the windows. I had my son scraping and hitting with various branches and sticks outside different windows in the house upstate as I was recording it from the inside. We also did some garden hose recordings of water spraying on windows, face, and the body.

Some of that was used in my favorite hurricane scene. Just after discovering David’s body, all the girls are walking to the car in the eye of the storm. That was a fun scene to cut since I could use all the elements together. There was so much to play with: winds, rains, trees’ movements, branches breaking and creaking, leaves fluttering, and, of course, all the water spraying elements.

Inside the car, at first, all of the hurricane sounds are much quieter than they would be in real life, to give you a false sense of safety, like in a protective cocoon. But then we quickly realize that there is no escape. The later scene when Bee is walking by herself to the car also has a similar or even bigger intensity of the storm. Again, all the elements and great foley made this scene sound powerful and full.

The winds were fantastic, too. For example, Bee is in the atrium and she looks through the glass door and sees David lying in the rain. There was a great wind texture in there that added to the scare factor of that moment…

LV: That was a moment, too – as we were sitting there experimenting in the mix – where we had to figure out how we can drive home the point that something crazy is about to happen, and create differentiation and sound texture with the storm to help us do that.

At that exact moment, the camera pans over to that bay window and this beautiful howling, melodic wind comes in.

At that exact moment, the camera pans over to that bay window and this beautiful howling, melodic wind comes in. And then Bee hears David’s first hit against the window and everything cuts out. All you hear is Bee’s breathing. We wanted to do this very impressionistic/subjective flip.

Halina prefers taking creative license through the frame of reality and through natural sounds for the most part, but this was our one indulgent moment to just go all the way into Bee’s head. She almost loses consciousness from what she’s seeing; all you hear is her breathing. Then, Sophie runs into frame and says something but Bee is still slowly trying to understand what is happening. Sophie runs away and we’re still with Bee in this subjective, crazy mode.

And then we smash cut to outside where the storm is huge and the trees are billowing.

Then we slowly roll off the low-pass EQ as she’s walking to the open door, so the storm gradually comes back into the field of view sonically. And then we smash cut to outside where the storm is huge and the trees are billowing.

That entire subsequent scene where they’re outside, every single line of dialogue was ADR.
We had to replace everything because on set, there were numerous storm machines and wind machines, so it sounded crazy and was too difficult to actually clean up. The beauty of that though was all of a sudden we had all this incredible control. We could push certain lines into the foreground, or bury lines a little bit and not worry about any noise. That moment was chaos; the M.O. of that scene was to be as chaotic as possible because that’s where we’re thrown into the real story. That’s the beginning of it.

Bodies Bodies Bodies – Sophie’s Here

I was wondering about the production sound on that scene because they’re so much rain/water! And the pool scenes as well, how did they mic those?

LV: Totally! The exterior pool scene during the day (before we really get into the storm) wasn’t bad. It needed some standard cleanup, but nothing crazy (surprisingly).

These actors are all young but they are incredible at ADR; they’re spot on with timing and matching projection.

To the point of ADR, since Halina is also an actress, she’s locked into the performances of everyone in such a detailed way. ADR was used for tweaking and tuning performances in moments where we wanted to slightly tip the scale in some way or another. Or, we used it to help mend over the cut points.

These actors are all young but they are incredible at ADR; they’re spot on with timing and matching projection. We got a lot of takes to play with mainly because we were just having so much fun doing it. As this process always goes when you get into the ADR world, when you start recording, your creative muscle lights up again and you want to try different variations and different ideas. So we had a lot of extra stuff to work with and we played around.

Bodies Bodies Bodies – Who Are You

Later in the film during the fight for the gun, there was a great conversational moment with Jordan, Alice, Sophie, and Bee. This led to a very chaotic moment where you don’t know who has the gun and what was happening. Were there additional lines thrown in there, to add to the chaos? How did you use sound to help intensify the confusion?

LV: Totally! That scene was amazing. It’s amazing how much more complicated quiet scenes are to pull off. That’s probably obvious to a lot of people in this industry, but it’s an interesting point to talk about for people who aren’t really familiar with this world. When the scene is quiet and intimate, you can hear a thumbtack drop, so to speak. Emotionally, you can feel the slightest shift of anything – whether it’s a performance, or it’s a background sound, or it’s the music coming in or leaving, or a tone shift. It’s all exposed.

Emotionally, you can feel the slightest shift of anything – whether it’s a performance, or it’s a background sound, or it’s the music coming in or leaving, or a tone shift.

So that scene took a lot of work to get right. And the first ingredient there, of course, was, “what is the storm doing and how do we respect the performances of the actors?” Tonally, that is a defining moment for the film. That one scene had every layer of flavor of what this film is. It was this beautiful ensemble moment with all the actors and everyone has their solo – everyone takes their turn. It’s really cool, but sonically it’s quiet.

We wanted to treat that moment as a play, and so the storm took a backseat but every so often, we would shift the layers around just to create a little variety and to play into the tension a little bit, especially when Bee’s lies start to come out about how she wasn’t actually working at Game Hut and that she didn’t graduate from college. As she’s talking with Sophie about it and their conversation takes over, the storm does a little movement there, but for the most part, it’s sitting in the back.

It’s amazing how much tension you can add with the right shuffle of a footstep here, or the movement of the gun there…

The other big moment was when they grab the gun and all the action bellows up. ADR-wise, we got textures, we got them struggling and screaming. But 90% of that scene, in terms of dialogue, was production. That was one of the quieter rooms in the house. It was pretty good so we didn’t need a lot.

The foley took priority here, for their movement. It’s amazing how much tension you can add with the right shuffle of a footstep here, or the movement of the gun there, and then creating these little gaps of silence. Adding those dynamics with foley can help tell that story in an incredible way.

Speaking of foley, another great moment was when Bee pushes Jordan over the railing and she falls onto the glass table below. The table broke and bottles were smashed. There was so much awesome-sounding glass and debris….

LV: That was another Mariusz special. We were coming into that moment really strongly with score. The score, by Disasterpeace, contributes in a really unique way. It’s not a traditional score. When it comes in, it comes in hot and strong and you know this is a moment for the viewers to sit back and enjoy it. The music slaps in as hard as it slaps out. It’s almost like these mini intermissions, but you’re still connected to the story in a cool way.

The music slaps in as hard as it slaps out. It’s almost like these mini intermissions, but you’re still connected to the story in a cool way.

So to that point, we’re coming out of cue and Bee tosses Jordan over the rail and she falls onto this massive glass coffee table, and everything goes spreading across the floor. So that was Mariusz and foley playing together in a beautiful way. And we added some reverb that echoes throughout that big marble hallway.

MG: I remember that as being a challenging sound because of the thickness of that glass table. Most sounds in libraries are often a thin pane of broken or smashed glass.
Chris Liang did some great work there, and later we added some pitched-down glass effects and some heavier, chunkier glass debris. We then added foley for the bottles and other debris that did the trick.

Even more challenging was that all that plays off camera…So the sound has to explain all the actions.

Another challenging sound was Emma falling down the staircase and smashing her head on the wall, stairs, and finally, on the floor. We worked on many configurations of hits and bumps with Halina and Julia Bloch (the film editor) to get this sounding right, so nobody in the audience was confused about what had happened. Even more challenging was that all that plays off camera, and then we only see the aftermath. So the sound has to explain all the actions.

There were already some practical VFX, like the blood pattern on the stairs and wall that they did during production. So I had to kind of play off that, imagining how the fall happened by looking at the blood on the wall.

Later, Luciano took those elements and placed them nicely around and above using Atmos in the mix to clarify even more what just happened.

LV: One sequence that we’re super proud of was towards the beginning of the film. It’s seemingly simple, but it took us a lot of time to get there. It’s when Bee just finished having the conversation with Jordan upstairs – after Bee was looking at the framed photos on the wall – and we cut to Bee as she walks down the stairs and she’s admiring the house. She’s walking through the living room and sees Greg sitting on the couch doing his meditation. And then we come into the kitchen where the girls are talking and watching the storm news on TV. That sequence was this very delicate dance. The undertone of it is score; we have this low percussive, propulsive music happening. And it’s almost apropos to The White Lotus opening. It’s got this tribal, foresty, “what am I getting myself into” type of percussive propulsive feeling.

…we start upstairs with the sound of her hand slowly sliding down the wooden banister – this beautiful foley texture of her hand sliding down.

And so playing off of that, we start upstairs with the sound of her hand slowly sliding down the wooden banister – this beautiful foley texture of her hand sliding down. Then downstairs, we have a few balls up in the air at that moment. We have the television playing in the background, with the newscaster talking about the storm. And so in very particular moments, words from the TV that we needed the viewer to key into are pushed to the foreground ever so slightly.

Aside from that, as Bee is looking around, we track to the window, and we hear a little bit of the rain. We see Greg doing his thing, and then we cut back to the girls. It’s almost like the girls are the lions in the lion’s den as Bee is approaching. They’re doing their thing. The girls have been friends forever and they’re loud and they’re brash. They’re like hyenas, almost.

It was this beautiful sequence that was seemingly very simple but to get all the points across, it took a little bit to find the moments for everything to peak through.

You mentioned the red room/gym, but I wanted to go back to this space. It feels unlike the rest of the house – very isolated from the chaos happening in the rest of the house and from the storm outside. It felt like this insulated, safe space before all hell breaks loose…

LV: In an earlier iteration of that scene, there was more room tone in that space to help ground the dialogue. There are a lot of reasons for having a certain minimum presence of background sounds. It helps with dialogue that’s troublesome or tricky to mix. It helps you to feel grounded in the scene. But we had to flip the whole thing upside down on its head and say, “Okay, let’s strip everything out.” This required us to further clean up the dialogue even more, and de-noise the f**k out of it so basically our noise floor was nothing.

When things are quiet, sonically you’re much more on display.

So your ears would settle to this tone and that’s all we had. When things are quiet, sonically you’re much more on display. So the two things that stood out in that scene were the foley and the reverb on the foley and the dialogue. And the reverb I used in that particular scene was called Paragon from NUGEN Audio. It has this beautiful texture to it. It feels like actual production sound. It has the ability to give you this tail of actual de-correlated textural sound, instead of just a “slap off the walls” style reverb.

The reverb we chose for that moment was a very odd one. It’s thick and luffy and almost melodic in texture. It’s not entirely realistic. It almost makes you feel like you’re underwater.

It has this feeling of claustrophobia. So we put that on the foley and on the dialogue, and that’s all we had. Usually, there’s other stuff you can hide behind in terms of the backgrounds, but that was it.

When it gets so quiet, what you’re left with is everyone’s nerves and anxiety and that comes out through the breathing.

The beauty of this setup was that the moment when Bee first hit him in the back of the head with the kettlebell and everything dropped out, all you had is this ring out of this beautiful reverb off of that metallic weight to his head. That bludgeoning, crazy sound. What was left was the ADR of their breathing. We did so much breathing in this film.

During ADR we would basically play a 10-minute sequence and tell the actors to just breathe with their character on-screen, and not to worry about the dialogue, or filling the gaps properly, but just to watch themselves, and breathe with it.

So as a result, we had these layers – almost score of breathing – from all the actors. (All of them!) When it gets so quiet, what you’re left with is everyone’s nerves and anxiety and that comes out through the breathing. That scene was another monstrously challenging one because it’s so naked.

The exterior of the house had a certain quality to the storm, which then felt entirely different once she got to the car…

On the reverse side, we have the scene when Bee is locked out of the house and has to find her way through the raging storm as she walks down to the car. This was another Mariusz special. The challenge was how to indulge and make it really loud and impactful and cool, but also play up the idea that she’s moving through all of these spaces. The exterior of the house had a certain quality to the storm, which then felt entirely different once she got to the car, so you felt like you were along for the ride with her.

For that doggy door, we really wanted to feel the texture of Bee’s bloody knees scraping against the gritty metal floor as she’s making her way through because it sets up for this activation of Bee’s ‘beast mode.’ She picks up the hammer and the music slowly comes in. That was a beautifully sequenced moment.
 

Bodies Bodies Bodies is a fun commentary on Gen-Z’s addiction to and reliance on their cell phones. Technology is a major component of these characters’ lives, so when the power goes out and no one has a signal it’s almost as if the loss of a signal makes everyone go completely mad. How are you able to work with that idea through sound to help tell that aspect of the story?

LV: The first thing is the setup. In the scene when Bee and Sophie are in the car, Bee is getting inundated with text messages, so we’re hammering the viewer over the head with notification sounds. We were creating the cacophony of what it’s like to be a Gen-Zer on a phone in a car.

Then, once they’re in the house, they’re recording the TikTok videos, and they’re playing music. They’re always on their phones. The moment the power cuts out, the wifi goes out. So none of them have reception anymore. And so we smash into this stark silence.

And of course, by the end of the film, this silence is bookended when we’re on that shot of the pool and the water fountain in the background comes on and we get all those notification dings again. And Bee goes, “I have reception.” It’s so good. The timing of her performance there is incredible.

Bodies Bodies Bodies – Podcast

What was the most challenging scene for sound? Why?

LV: We had this film in a pretty good shape relatively early on in our mix schedule. What then became a real challenge was how to take this storm a step further, and the only way to do that was to experiment. We re-mixed the entire storm probably close to three times. We wanted to explore the most impactful trajectory for it to take and that just took a lot of time.

We basically mixed the storm independently from the film to find its own voice, then we reintroduced the story and tweaked it further.

We re-mixed the entire storm probably close to three times. We wanted to explore the most impactful trajectory for it to take…

Normally in a film like this, I would say the ADR would have been particularly challenging because of the tricky production environments, particularly in the exteriors. Re-recording entire scenes with ADR is always a challenge in itself. But I can’t say that about this film. The actors were really good. Halina and I came into the studio after we did the lion’s share of the principal ADR recording and started to compose a draft of the ADR in that nighttime scene with David. We were both a little surprised at how effortless it was. That was a great spot to be in because it only meant it could get better from there. Honestly, the ADR on this film was a delight to deal with and manage.

The music was also a delight to work with because it wasn’t approached in a traditional sense. The scenes didn’t call on score the way one might expect. Instead, it was treated more as relief, a quick moment of badassness to go 10 out of 10 and have a surge of energy before we pull back into the story. Everything had its pocket and sat really nicely into the mix.

What would you want other sound pros to know about the sound of Bodies Bodies Bodies?

LV: This is probably an obvious point, but one that gets so easily forgotten: good storytelling takes time. It takes time to get the perspective, to watch a film after you’ve done a pass of it and sit back and watch it again and try it again and do it again and do it again.

You need time to refine and craft. It’s challenging though when we work with shorter and shorter schedules these days…

This is probably an obvious point, but one that gets so easily forgotten: good storytelling takes time.

One of the things I loved about this film and working with the folks at A24 was that there was a mutual understanding of our approach and the requirements for refining the mix. You don’t get to do that on every project. It’s a function of what you’re working on and who you’re working with; not everyone shares that mentality. But when you get that perfect storm of people who really appreciate the process and the filmmakers, it’s such a luxury.

Then you come out of it saying, “This isn’t a luxury; it’s a necessity.” If you really want to tell this story in a beautiful and effective way, you just need the time. You need the perspective

MG: I think it’s essential to understand that the time for sound prep and editing is also very important, even more so in a scary, suspenseful kind of film like Bodies Bodies Bodies when many plots and scenes are often based on sounds.

…the time for sound prep and editing is also very important, even more so in a scary, suspenseful kind of film like ‘Bodies Bodies Bodies’…

As Luciano mentioned, mixing takes time and is a crucial part of sound post-production.
You put all the elements together and polish them until they work seamlessly. Often, it’s when you see if you are still missing something to tell the story right or if music or sound effects are working together.

But it’s also very crucial to have enough time in the schedule to find, create, and edit those elements beforehand, so the mixer has plenty to choose from during the mix.

I believe that even if this project had a very rapid editing schedule, we did a decent job
of building tension and scaring people at the right moments.

It was an enjoyable film to be working on!

A big thanks to Luciano Vignola and Mariusz Glabinski for giving us a behind-the-scenes look at the sound of Bodies Bodies Bodies and to Jennifer Walden for the interview!

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