Behind the sound of The Dark Tower

Stephen King adaptations are all the rage recently. There’s The Mist series on Spike TV. Coming to theaters on September 8th is director Andrés Muschietti’s take on IT. And in theaters now is The Dark Tower, based on King’s epic series of novels. Creating a film of this magnitude is a daunting task. Not only do you have a massive die-hard Stephen King fan base to please, but there are over 8,000 pages worth of story to compress into 90 minutes of film. How does one tackle such a beast? Director Nikolaj Arcel’s film doesn’t take a verbatim approach. Instead, he captures the spirit of The Dark Tower. The books are an inspiration for his story and that makes the film work on its own.

Handling sound editorial was Warner Bros. Sound’s supervising sound editor Jeremy Peirson, who actually did all of the sound editorial work on The Dark Tower at Sony Pictures. He spent the majority of his time in the cutting room in Hollywood, where he was embedded with the director, the picture department, the music editor, and the visual effects team. “We were all under one roof so we could all chat, and watch scenes, and try things. That workflow seemed to be pretty effective. This was a Sony movie so it was all mixed at Sony. All of the Foley was done at Sony. My sound crew was based at Sony. I think they even scored at Sony if I remember correctly,” says Peirson.

Here, Peirson shares insight on how they created sound for the ‘ancient future’ tech, the different worlds, and the gunslinger’s badass handguns for The Dark Tower.

How did you get involved with The Dark Tower?

Jeremy Peirson (JP): I got involved through the picture editor Alan Bell. I remember we were at the ACE Awards and he was telling me that he was going to meet with the director for The Dark Tower the next day. I told him I was a huge fan of the books, and asked if he could help me get a meeting if he got the film. Sure enough, he ended up landing the film. While they were in South Africa shooting, the question of who was going to do the sound came up and my name came up as well as a few others. There were a lot of people going after it and I was able to get an interview. The director Nikolaj Arcel and I did an interview over Skype and we hit it off.

I’m a huge fan of the books too. But adapting Stephen King’s works to the big and small screens seems like a hard thing to do…

JP: It’s tricky. It’s funny because in the conversation I had with the director Nik [Arcel], I told him I was a huge fan of the books and he asked if I had read the script and was that going to be a problem? The film is not a direct adaptation of the books; it’s more in the spirit of the books. If you’re a fan of the books, then this movie sort of allows for that to happen in a weird way.

There are eight books in the series so it must be hard to fit that into 90 minutes of film…

JP: Yes. I don’t think that was ever the intention.

What was director Arcel’s vision for the sound? How did he plan to use sound to help tell his story?

JP: The biggest thing for him was this concept of ‘ancient future.’ He kept reiterating that over and over again every time we got to some part of the technology. In the film, the portals are based on technology and not the magical element that provides their power in the books. Everything is built upon this technology that was super high-tech but it has been sitting around for thousands of years, totally neglected. So that was the big, overall concept. Everything had to sound high-tech but kind of funky. It couldn’t be Star Trek; it had to be the broken down version of Star Trek. That was an interesting challenge.

How did you create this ancient tech sound? Can you share an example?

JP: The portals and the technology behind it require a massive amount of energy in order to punch through multiple dimensions, and across the universe, and through different worlds.

There is the Dutch Hill portal in New York, through which one of the lead characters Jake Chambers [Tom Taylor] enters Mid-World. That portal has been sitting and resting for thousands of years. So as it’s starting up it’s not a very clean startup. It takes a long time to warm up. Then when the portal gets formed it takes a while for it to figure out where to go as it’s punching through dimensions and trying to get there.

On the flipside of that, the portals at Devar Toi (the bad guy hangout) are a bit more maintained. So it doesn’t have that funkiness. It’s a bit more dialed-in. When Walter “The Man in Black” [Matthew McConaughey] wants to go somewhere it’s very easy for the portal to align itself with wherever he needs to go.

That’s primarily the big contrast in terms of technology in that respect.

What do the portals sound like? What went into their sound?

JP: When it’s initially punching through worlds it’s very electrical based. It has some fire and synthy whoosh elements to it as it is finding the world that it needs to go to. Then once it has aligned itself, the visual effects show the portal boundary as having a liquid quality to it. So the challenge was how do we maintain an electrical sound that takes on a liquid feel? That was a big challenge.

When it’s initially punching through worlds… [y]ou don’t hear a rise and a crest. It’s more like a fluid membrane and we layered that so you don’t hear starts and stops. It has more of an oozing quality to it.

So there are fire elements, like pitched fire, and all of these cool water-based elements. We took the sound of a wave and time stretched that so it’s a longer duration. You don’t hear a rise and a crest. It’s more like a fluid membrane and we layered that so you don’t hear starts and stops. It has more of an oozing quality to it. Then we added an electrical element to it so that you feel its power in addition to this membrane that is between the two worlds essentially. It’s sort of synthy. In addition, there’s the technology that is actually holding the door in place. It was a fun challenge for sure.

How were you bringing all these sounds together? Was it in Kontakt, or in Pro Tools?

JP: It was all done in Pro Tools. All of the different layers were designed and made and blended together in Pro Tools. I’m not a big fan of combining too much stuff, especially on a movie like this where you have a lot of opinions and different people have ideas of what it should sound like. The more flexible you are the more you are able to change it as needed and tailor it to the visuals that are coming in or to the needs of whoever is in the room at the time asking for it to be slightly different.

What audio tools were you using to help create the sound?

JP: I use a lot of Serato’s Pitch n’ Time. I found that to be a pretty good tool. I was using a lot of other plug-ins too, a lot of the Soundtoys plug-ins like Crystallizer and EchoBoy. I was using PSP’s plug-in called N2O which does all sorts of bizarre things to sounds. It’s a cool little plug-in. I was using Native Instruments Reaktor to create the synth-based sounds and also as an effects processor to try and change sounds into other things. Reaktor is pretty amazing because you have all of these people making patches and presets that you can try out and tweak. You can create something completely different than what you set out to create. It’s fun and exciting. There’s another plug-in called MComb by Melda Production. It is this bizarre comb filtering plug-in which was awesome for making these kinds of sounds. It’s one of my new go-to tools right now.

There are times when we are in a spooky, foggy forest. To do that I was using Sound Particles to create this fog-like environment. That is a very cool and interesting program as well. I used that quite extensively for another component of the film, for when all of these kids are being harnessed for their psychic energy. Walter uses them to attack The Dark Tower. All of that was made with various screams and pieces of screams. You put that into Sound Particles and get it moving around. You can layer it and Doppler it. Sound Particles was pretty helpful in that respect and a huge lifesaver for creating the sound of the energy that was being used to attack The Dark Tower. That is a pretty intensive but amazing tool.

The sound for this film was a lot of experimentation and trial and error, but that leads to all kinds of other things. You are working on one thing then all of the sudden you make a sound that isn’t right for what you are currently working on but it might be right for something else. In terms of sound design, this film was a lot of fun to do.

In the books, Stephen King describes the gunslinger’s guns as being larger than average handguns. Can you talk about the sound of the gunslinger’s guns for the film?

JP: I did a pretty big recording session with guns to try and capture and get new elements to create this mythical hand cannon for Roland Deschain [Idris Elba]. We recorded a lot of types of guns like black powder guns and muskets. We had revolvers from 1876. We had all of these crazy old guns. If you take a black powder gunshot and pitch that down it sounds like a cannon, because that is essentially what a cannon is.

A lot of work went into finding that ‘crack’ element for the gun. There’s a high, piercing crack that Roland’s gun has. I found different pieces to use for the mid-range bite of the gun. Then there’s this pitched down black powder gun for the low-end thump of it all.

On top of that, I found a cool lightning strike element that adds a different dimension to the gun. It added a whole other texture that made it fit with Roland himself.

The challenge with his gun is that, A: he has two of them, and B: they needed to sound different acoustically depending on perspective. If we are facing him while he is shooting it sounds different from when we are behind him while he is shooting. It sounds different because it’s a totally different perspective. So I was trying to blend that so that it has a much more realistic sound.

Another aspect to the gun is that it is a revolver. Roland has all of these cylinders loaded up and clipped to his belt. Near the end of the film, there’s a bullet-time sequence with Roland loading his gun. Can you tell me about the sound work for that?

He can reload faster than you can imagine he could actually do in real life. A lot of work went into trying to ground that in reality …

JP: Since it’s a revolver it doesn’t load with a clip. In the book it makes the point that Roland can whip out his gun and shoot someone before you can even see it. He can reload faster than you can imagine he could actually do in real life. A lot of work went into trying to ground that in reality, with the bullets being ejected and the bullets going into the cylinder as well as the cylinder spinning. You have to figure out that rhythm but the challenge is that every time he does it it’s a slightly different variation.

Once we get towards the end of the movie, it does become a very Matrix-like, stylized moment. That required a very non-literal approach. The cylinders going into the gun happen in slow motion and so we are allowed the freedom to be more expressive and to try different things using stingers and designed metal, to just go for it essentially depending on the particular scene.

There was a variety of people who were working on that. Each one brought something unique and so that was a lot of fun. On my team I had Lee Gilmore, Chris Diebold, Michael Babcock, and Jeff Sawyer. They came on at the end. There were a lot of people who helped out to make that all work.

Sonically, what were some of the differences between Mid-World and our world?

JP: In New York, the world is starting to move on but it hasn’t hit the same way that it has in Roland’s Mid-World. Nik [Arcel] wanted New York to sound active and angry and funky. So, whenever possible, we would have angry horn honks and off-screen sirens. There was this angst that is always present when we were in New York. We’d have that whenever we could. It’s New York already but we wanted it to be even angrier. There is this constant, angry feel all of the time that we are in New York.

All of the birds had a slightly different tilt to them so that anything that was similar, or familiar to us, would sound different but yet we could still identify it as something that we knew.

Conversely, Mid-World is essentially all nature. There isn’t the kind of civilization that we have in New York. It’s all woods, and desert, and the mountains. So, how could we slightly alter the sound there? The approach that I pitched was that if we have crickets, then they should be modified in some way. They are pitched down frogs to make them sound like crickets. If it’s a bird, we multi-pitch it. We pitched it down a little bit so that it sounds like a crow but it’s not quite the same kind of crow that you would hear in the real world. All of the birds had a slightly different tilt to them so that anything that was similar, or familiar to us, would sound different but yet we could still identify it as something that we knew.

In addition to the guns, did you capture any other field recordings?

JP: I recorded some wood elements for the house demon. A lot of the work was done by taking sounds and manipulating them or finding other sounds and applying those to what we needed them to be. For instance, because of this whole ‘ancient future’ concept, the Dutch Hill portal start-up sound is a combination of an old modem starting up in addition to an ATM machine. Also, there is a hard drive sound from an old PC that’s grinding away as it starts up. We spent a lot of time looking for sounds and repurposing them into something new.

On this film, we were allowed to experiment with sound. If you saw a dog you didn’t have to hear a dog. We could make that sound out of a horse. There are sandstorms that Jake runs into, and we had the challenge of making that sound different. How could we tonally make that sound like a sandstorm but with a different tilt to it? It had to sound familiar but oddly dissimilar from what we all know. Visually, they did that by making it look unlike a sandstorm that we would see. It looks weird and different. That was the approach that we had to take with sound as well.

Did you have a favorite scene to design?

JP: My favorite scene was the Dutch Hill sequence, up until the house demon comes. Jake is on a sidewalk in New York trying to find this location. In the book, Stephen King is very descriptive about what happens when you enter this area. There is this sense of evil and this evil presence that basically cuts out all the sound of the world. It just becomes this weird place within New York City. So you have Jake on the sidewalk with street ambience, and a bus goes by, but as soon as he crosses the fence line we start to blur the sound of New York and you hear this ominous tone that presents itself.

Once we get into the house, the house itself is sort of alive. There are these growls and creaks and groans as Jake is going through the house. He walks by and the floorboards rattle. He walks into this one room and that triggers the portal to power up, which sounds like this modem sound and this ATM and an old hard drive chugging as it is powering up. The portal machine powers up and we have the first opportunity to punch through to another dimension. That sound settles and Jake gets attacked by a house demon. Then he gets forced into this totally different world. It’s a fun combination of ideas and different sound pallets that we got to use to create that moment.

What was the most challenging scene to work on?

They’d ask, ‘What is that going to sound like?’ And my response was, ‘What is that going to look like?’ We went back and forth to figure out what we had to do.

JP: I would say the end sequences were tough because of the visual effects that were required and the picture cuts that were required. The density of the action there was intense. There’s a long drawn out section when a lot of different things happen. There is a gun fight and Jake’s energy is being used to attack the tower. There were a multitude of things happening that required a lot of visual effects that came late in the process. They’d ask, ‘What is that going to sound like?’ And my response was, ‘What is that going to look like?’ We went back and forth to figure out what we had to do.

In terms of sound, what are you most proud of on The Dark Tower?

JP: I am really excited about the details, not necessarily the big moments. I’m excited about the subtlety that is there. For me, there is nothing more exciting than when you can add little layers and all of the sudden it goes from sounding like just the production track to sounding like reality. To me, that is very fun to do.

There are more than a few moments in this film that we got to do that. One of those moments is where Jake wakes up by a camp fire that he and Roland were sleeping at. He’s walking through the forest and there are all of these creaks and crickets and other sounds that we added just to make you feel like you are in this forest at night. Because that scene is in Mid-World, the crickets that you’re hearing might not even be crickets to begin with. Or they might be detuned crickets, so they sound familiar but different. There is that overall concept. As Jake gets closer to what he thinks is his dad, the layers peel away and it just becomes about him and his dad at that point. I just enjoy those moments more than I do the bigger action scenes because it’s really where you get to feel like you have made something sound real and that to me is pretty exciting.

A big thanks to Jeremy Peirson for giving us a behind-the-scenes look at the sound in The Dark Tower, and to Jennifer Walden for the interview!

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