Breaking Conventional Boundaries in Sound for ‘If I Had Legs I’d Kick You’ – with Filipe Messeder and Ruy Garcia (Sundance 2025)

Director Mary Bronstein’s film If I Had Legs I’d Kick You – premiering at Sundance 2025 and set to be distributed by A24 – is a trip into the exhausting and overwhelming life of a mother named Linda, who is bombarded by tribulations. Shot in close-up, the audience is glued to Linda, experiencing her stress of unrelenting conflicts and her escape into a surreal reality.

Here, sound supervisor/sound designer Filipe Messeder (who helped mix the film) and re-recording mixer Ruy Garcia talk about their close collaboration with dir. Bronstein and picture editor Lucian Johnston, choosing exact sounds to play in each moment to clearly communicate off-screen events, designing surreal soundscapes that take the place of score, using the full surround field and crafting a dynamic mix to engage and immerse the audience, and more!

If I Had Legs I’d Kick You was edited and mixed at Postworks NY.

From L to R: Re-recording Mixer Ruy Garcia , Director Mary Bronstein, Sound Supervisor/Designer Filipe Messeder, Post Supervisor Rita Walsh, and Sound Effects Editor Abby Harrison.

When did you get started on the film and what did director Mary Bronstein want you to tackle first? Was there an aspect of the sound she was focused on initially?

Filipe Messeder (FM): Were we involved very early; we were both sent scripts and a lookbook presentation with all of their design and aesthetic ideas. Sound concepts were written into the script. This gave us a very clear direction in which to start thinking about sound. From our very first meeting, we discussed exactly what they were envisioning, and were given plenty of time to brew it up in our heads.

it lives in a space between fantasy and reality; all this is fertile ground for sound design.

Ruy Garcia (RG): It was motivating to see how much thought they put into sound on the script and how they were able to lay it out in such detail. This allowed us to put together an efficient work plan and take advantage of all available resources.

The mood of the film is surreal and expressionistic, yet plausible. You are not always sure if what is happening is a dream or a hallucination — it lives in a space between fantasy and reality; all this is fertile ground for sound design.

Overall, how did director Bronstein want to use sound to help tell this story?

Director Mary Bronstein

RG: Linda (played by Rose Byrne) is the main character of this story. We experience most actions reflected through her, and using the surround field was a perfect tool to illustrate that.

One of the main characters is Linda’s daughter, and she’s off-camera throughout the film. We knew we’d have to experiment with her treatment. That gave us leeway with the placement of actions you’re not actually seeing.

FM: The very first thing that was conveyed to us was that the film was going to be shot very close up. Most of the story takes place outside of the screen, which gives us a lot of room to play with.

RG: Additionally, for most of the movie, you hear things before you see them. This helps narratively and allows the audience to actively engage with what is happening.

FM: Since it’s told from the perspective of Linda, it’s about her experiences. The script described the off-screen action as, “This is happening.” How we decided to portray that sonically evolved over many conversations with the director, Mary, and also the editor, Lucian Johnston.

Together, the four of us crafted exactly what sounds we would hear at what moment. We had to be very careful to be deliberate with our edit as we were trying to tell a very specific story and not just fill the speakers with every possible idea that we could have had.

What were some of the creative sound ideas you brought to the film?

FM: Since the camera is close up on the main character, foley was an incredibly important part of the film. Foley artist Tommy Stang gave us rich and detailed actions for all the characters and for the world around us. It helps the audience to orient themselves by communicating who exactly is coming on and off screen and where everything is happening in relation to our limited point of view.

Sound supervisor/sound designer Filipe Messeder

Although we did record quite a bit of breathwork with our lead, Rose Byrne, the majority of the dialogue you hear was recorded on set. That was a huge effort by Kristin Catuogno, our dialogue and ADR editor. She not only had to work extremely hard to clean up the constantly overlapping dialogue but also clean up the film camera noise from the tracks.

Just like on the effects side of the mix, the dialogue had to be meticulously crafted to fit together because we had many scenes with multiple characters speaking over each other. One of the early decisions that we all made about our approach to the mix was to pan each character in the space to add to the directionality of the mix and the effect of being so focused on our main character.

None of that careful panning would have been possible without our cleanup efforts. It was pretty amazing what Kristin was able to do.

RG: Some of Filipe’s sound work helped inform the picture edit and these changes affected the way the film evolved. Kristin’s thorough edit, carefully splitting dialogue from room tone and production effects, was crucial to allowing us to pan lines 360 degrees around us.
 

What was the most challenging scene for sound, or the most challenging aspect of sound for this film?

RG: There is no conventional “music score” in the film; the story is told with visuals and sound.

FM: The biggest challenge for me was dealing with the idea of score. We were tasked with creating something that exists somewhere between score and sound design, which I had never done before. This element had incredibly rich, surrealist atmospheres, and a lot of rhythmic and musical qualities to it. We accomplished this through many, many different passes of abstract sound design, created directly with Mary’s and Luc’s creative input, through picture adjustments, and then sound adjustments as they tightened up the picture. It was a full team effort. They were very much involved in the creation of this component every step of the way.

Re-recording Mixer Ruy Garcia

RG: There’s a melodic thread throughout the film, a sort of musique concrète with the musicality of common sounds; Filipe created a lot of melodic tones. You can feel the use of harmonies and different intervals that generate more or less tension. Whether you call it sound design or music, it’s just a label.

FM: I try to prioritize excellent recordings to start with and then we shaped them from there. Nick Caramela (sound effects editor) and Abby Harrison (assistant sound editor/sound effects editor) were amazing collaborators on the film. We made a lot of recordings together. Nick recorded different hums and vibrations, like from his car, a bathtub, and various pipes. Abby and I spent a lot of time recording a wind wand, handmade by a maker in California.

I did a lot of work in Sound Particles, making these constantly evolving and moving soundscapes.

From there, I did a lot of work in Sound Particles, making these constantly evolving and moving soundscapes. TONSTURM’s Whoosh plugin for NI Reaktor was a big tool for us, as well as my custom-created patches in Reason. So with all of these together, we were able to make a very dynamic and fluid soundscape.

Mary’s idea was that we should never stay in the same sonic place for too long. We should always keep moving forward and always change the soundscape. With these tools, we were able to do that.

RG: Part of these constant, evolving atmospheres include sound motifs that are layered throughout the movie. For example, Linda carries a baby monitor with her and it’s constantly playing in the foreground. The film is set in Montauk, so you have the presence of the ocean and percussive waves throughout the film.

We hear multiple recurring patterns, but they are gradually changing as the film progresses

We hear multiple recurring patterns, but they are gradually changing as the film progresses and there are grounding points where you can almost forget they’re there. It’s tricky to keep all of these elements going throughout the film without making the audience sick of hearing them or becoming immune to their presence, so we made gradual changes to keep it interesting and engaging.

It’s a pretty complex soundtrack. The intensity and complexity of the surreal aspects depend on Linda’s mood and what she’s experiencing. We accompany her through her full story arc.

FM: The main idea for Linda’s character was that things are falling apart, both internally and externally. To convey this, we chose to focus on the real-world sounds rather than on the intensity of the abstract sounds.

RG: Right. Reality is harsher than any dream. That’s part of what’s brilliant about this film. Everything is plausible and feels like something we could experience. There are just different dimensions to go through.

There are sequences rooted in breathing. We played with several styles of echoes and distortions

 
We mentioned the breathwork before; that’s also a vital element of the soundtrack. There are sequences rooted in breathing. We played with several styles of echoes and distortions as characters come in and out of focus, with multiple conversations and reconstructed memories that push through the screen.

The trick was to execute that idea while not losing the thread. Mary and Luc were able to expertly guide us through that. We could go nuts and then they’d say, “Go more crazy here,” or, “You kind of overdid it there.” It’s always helpful when you feel the trust of the people working with you. You are working on a common creative path where you can take adventurous turns without losing direction.

In terms of your sound work, was there anything new you tried — something you hadn’t done on other films, like a new recording or editing technique, or using a new plugin?

FM: As I mentioned before, I have never been asked to write a score before. That was the biggest challenge. It was a very unique experience. We were given the time and space and encouraged to play. For me, that was uncharted territory. I was asked to come up with something unique for this film and unlike anything I’d done before.

For this, I used new recording techniques. For example, I recorded the wind wand to get these drones, as well as a voice box to re-record the sounds back through my own body using my mouth to control the shape of it. Abby did tons of recording with electromagnetic induction mics, and contact mics.

We also came up with a miking technique of putting two microphones on the wand – one on either end – and then spinning it around.

I was struggling to get a consistent sound out of the wind wand, and we found the best way to capture it was by strapping a contact mic to it. That gave us a very textural sound because of its proximity to the physical vibrations of the object. We also came up with a micing technique of putting two microphones on the wand – one on either end – and then spinning it around. This way it was never actually off-mic. When we aligned the three tracks, it gave us the best result.

Also, I’d say taking Nick’s recordings of hums and vibrations, and my drone recordings, and pushing them further with Sound Particles was a huge part of our process. Shout out to TONSTURM’s “Sentient Frequencies” library. They gave us some great starting palettes.

it felt like the mix stage was a safe space to bring it all together. Everyone was so open to ideas.

RG: The unique thing for me is having space to think. You rarely have enough time to do all the stuff you want. On this film, both Filipe and I did a lot of work on our own and then it felt like the mix stage was a safe space to bring it all together. Everyone was so open to ideas. We all had strong opinions but they were loosely held. Sometimes I pushed the wrong knob and Mary would say, “That’s awesome.” And then we’d realize that it worked. Even with our limited schedule, I never felt the time pressure as one would in other projects. We were experimenting and having fun throughout as a team.

FM: The film is so unconventional that we weren’t really following any guidelines. I feel the most stress when I know there’s a very specific thing that we have to accomplish in a time crunch. But on this one, we were able to play. We were in these uncharted waters so it didn’t necessarily feel like we were crunched for time. We were just finding the film in the time we were given.

RG: In terms of mixing, I don’t know if I would call it unique, but the choices of what you hear and what you don’t hear are not conventional. Most people always want to hear every line of dialogue or very authentic sound effects, but in this movie, there are lines of dialogue that are meant to escape our direct attention and sounds that we should just feel. There were other conventions used — we called them ‘magic doors’ — so once a door is closed, everything is shut out immediately, which is not strictly realistic.

We mentioned there was no score but there are a few source music tracks that play in the store, the car, and the muzak in the therapist’s hallways.

FM: We actually ended up writing the song that plays in the hallway of the therapist’s office. Abby Harrison composed that piece of “muzak.” It’s your typical spa track, but it plays a huge role in every opening and closing of this door. It’s both comic relief and also at times, a very stressful element of the scene.

We also used a lot of weird effects in the mix, placing things with echoes and reverbs that are not necessarily natural.

RG: We used speaker divergence so you can’t always pinpoint the sound source, but it feels like it’s outside or inside the screen. And as the characters move, those sounds start coming into focus or getting farther away.

We also used a lot of weird effects in the mix, placing things with echoes and reverbs that are not necessarily natural. They feel a bit off. We used filtered delays instead of reverbs. For example, the sound of the baby monitor that Linda carries around is bouncing off of walls, changing quality in the hallway, through the street, and in the store.

FM: The baby monitor is playing medical beeps and medical machine clicks. Deciding how we heard that, how close we heard that, and how much we featured that in the mix was a huge task.

RG: We were constantly dialing in how much futz we had on the monitor, so you can still understand what it is, and what elements you hear in different contexts was a big part of it. Then, there are all of the transitions, coming in and out of different situations, and we had to decide whether to do that with filters, J cuts, or by taking everything away and creating silence.

By the way, this film is best experienced with a subwoofer. There’s a lot of low-frequency information in the mix and Mary loved it. We did a lot of work making small sounds huge — and vice versa.

We took advantage of spatial dynamics. There are parts when we’re using almost every surround channel, and then pulling everything straight into mono.

What have you learned while working on this film? What will you carry forward from this experience into your next projects?

FM: I learned a lot from working so closely with Mary and Luc. Keeping the conversation honest and opening up a safe space for ideas was crucial in designing the sound of such an experimental film. I have always strived to foster an inclusive space with the crew and the filmmakers, but sometimes it’s just not possible to be in such close contact either because of schedule or physical limitations. I credit a lot of this film’s ambitious ideas to their willingness to sit with us and jam and I will always strive for that standard in all future projects.

RG: I agree. It’s about managing expectations, developing trust with the people you work with, and understanding that different ideas are just that — just different ideas. One isn’t always necessarily better than the other. When you approach it from a curious non-judgmental space, creativity thrives. Also, the process becomes more fun. This idea of the mix stage being a safe space, a lot of people talk about it, but there’s so much pressure with deadlines, time, and money. Having the space to discuss ideas, and approaching them with an open mind and willingness for experimentation really makes for better art.

FM: The film sounds the way it does because Mary fought so hard to look out for us. There was some pushback about not having a score, but throughout the process, she had a vision and she trusted that vision. It sounds the way it does because of that.

A big thanks to Filipe Messeder and Ruy Garcia for giving us a behind-the-scenes look at the sound of If I Had Legs I’d Kick You and to Jennifer Walden for the interview!

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