Behind the Immersive Sound of Apple TV+ documentary ‘Fathom’

Apple TV+ documentary feature 'Fathom' follows two biologists on their quest to decipher the complex communication of whales. Here, supervising sound editor/re-recording mixer Brad Engleking talks about his approach to creating compelling sound while staying true to the documentary's subject matter.

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Interview by Jennifer Walden, photos courtesy of Apple TV+

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Remember when award-winning supervising sound editor George Haddad talked about the versatility of whale sounds for sound design in our conversation on Netflix’s Sweet Tooth series? He said, “There’s something amazing you can do with whale voices or calls. You can just process them, pitch them. They can be sci-fi. They can be tinnitus sounds. Anything.”

Well supervising sound editor/re-recording mixer Brad Engleking at TBD Post in Austin, TX, got to work with a whole bunch of whale sounds for the Apple TV+ documentary feature Fathom. And while Engleking’s use of whales, overall, was less designy and more realistic, there are moments in the documentary with lush compilations of whales songs and score, crafted by composer Hanan Townshend and London-based sound designer Nick Ryan. Using the Dolby Atmos surround field, Engleking and re-recording mixer Glenn Eanes immerse the audience in the experience of the whale researchers.

Here, Engleking talks about his collaboration with director Drew Xanthopoulos, working with sound elements provided by the scientists, enhancing the production sound in a realistic way, and expanding the sound track into an enveloping Dolby Atmos mix.

Fathom — Official Trailer | Apple TV+

What were director Drew Xanthopoulos’s goals for sound in this documentary?

Brad Engleking – sound supervisor/re-recording mixer

Brad Engleking (BE): Drew wanted to create a very dynamic and immersive mix for Fathom from the very beginning. It was very important to him that the sound of the film be grounded in science. Drew said over and over again that this film is a document of his memory of this time with Dr. Flournet and Dr. Garland and we worked hard with him to evoke those memories.
 

Since it’s a documentary, did he take steps in pre-production or production to ensure the capture of usable ambiences or specific production effects while on location shooting the footage? For instance, there are different playbacks of humpback whale calls in the lab in the beginning. Were those calls the actual recordings that these scientists had captured to playback, or were these re-created in post?

BE: Drew was a one-man crew throughout the production of Fathom. Because of this, the audio was captured with a mono mic attached to the camera. This obviously doesn’t really lend itself to creating a big immersive Atmos mix.

Dr. Michelle Flournet has an amazing quadrophonic recording technique where she drops 4 hydrophones in a 1km square.

The humpback sounds in the sound design sections of the film were provided to us by the scientists. Dr. Michelle Flournet has an amazing quadrophonic recording technique where she drops 4 hydrophones in a 1km square. The spatial information that is inherent to these tracks is really incredible and Nick [Ryan] spent a lot of time cleaning these to create what you hear throughout the movie. In the vérité sections of the film, the whale’s breaths and breaches were all captured by Drew and his mono setup while shooting but we did take license to pick out favorites and sprinkle them around.

For the ambiences in Alaska, Nick connected with Hank Lentfer and Richard Nelson, who provided him with ambience recordings that they had made near those locations previously. I topped some of the Alaska small boat stuff and some of the wind through trees in Alaska with elements from PSE Odyssey library to give me some tracks to swing around the Atmos objects.

I built the French Polynesia locations again using mostly PSE master library and Odyssey effects. We very consciously made a huge dynamic shift whenever we switched between these two locations.

Bastien Benkhelil recorded foley for a few selected scenes as well.

Deciphering the Language of Whales in ‘Fathom’:

There’s a great whale song compilation at about 16 mins in; it’s different whale calls blended into the score. Can you talk about the creation of this ‘whale song compilation’?

BE: So this is really the work of composer Hanan Townshend’s fantastic score and Nick’s great sound design. When mixing this scene, obviously the VO has to take center stage but there is a LOT of bobbing and weaving taking place in the mix. The Atmos format really helps open up the mix so that you can play a lot of elements. On the stage, we were constantly tweaking the VO, music, and effects edits, building a tapestry that washes over you.

There’s another compilation of whale calls further in, around 59 mins. Can you talk about the creation of this one as well? There are some crazy whale sounds in there, like this deep chittering sound that sounds straight out of a Hollywood alien movie! Were those sounds manipulated in any way?

BE: The trick with this one was that the animation was changing and we had to tweak the effects edit a bit during the mix to make sure that we were hitting all the VFX correctly. The whales here are all absolutely correct. There is some delay and reverb added to tie all the parts together and again Nick spent hours cleaning all this stuff but there aren’t any added sweeteners or design elements. We had such amazing source elements that were provided to us by our scientists and we didn’t want to (or need to) embellish on them.

Dr. Ellen Garland in “Fathom,” now streaming on Apple TV+.​

In addition to the places we expect to hear whale calls, did you incorporate whale calls into other areas of your design work for the documentary?

BE: Other than the sound design sections that are in the film, the vérité sections are played really straight. I really like that the movie has such a wide dynamic range and a wide range of sound styles.

A big thanks to Brad Engleking for giving us a behind-the-scenes look at the sound of Fathom and to Jennifer Walden for the interview!

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