‘Halloween Kills’ — Rich Bologna Treats Us to Details on Sound Design and Dolby Atmos Mix of latest Michael Myers Release

The name Michael Myers is synonymous with Halloween (both the holiday and the film franchise). His penchant for putting holes in people has solidified Halloween‘s place among the greatest slasher films of all time.

Director David Gordon Green — who directed the 2018 Halloween film, the latest Halloween Kills in theaters now, and is slated to direct the upcoming Halloween Ends for 2022 — is best known for his comedy film Pineapple Express and his direction on Season 2 of HBO’s comedy series Vice Principles (which earned a 2018 Emmy nomination for best sound editing). He’s brought an entertaining angle to this legendary horror franchise by including creative kills and over-the-top gore that’s so sick it’s fun, all while paying homage to John Carpenter’s original Halloween by keeping the story and characters intact. It’s a fine line that is well-walked so far in both Halloween 2018 and Halloween Kills.

Here, supervising sound editor/re-recording mixer Rich Bologna at WB Sound in NYC talks about his sonic contributions to this classic slasher film franchise. He discusses the Dolby Atmos mix crafted on Stage A at Warner Bros. New York, how he collaborated with the sound team on Halloween 2018 for Halloween Kills , his approach to the creative kills, the crowds, and the chaos of this latest Michael Myers film, and more!

**CONTAINS SPOILERS**

Halloween Kills – Final Trailer

When you sat down with the director David Gordon Green, what were his thoughts on how to approach the sound for this legendary Halloween franchise?

Sound Supervisor/Re-recording Mixer Rich Bologna

Rich Bologna (RB): David was a joy to work with. I had worked with many people he had worked with over the years, like Craig Zobel and a few others from North Carolina School of the Arts. So I knew about him vicariously, but he’s one of those guys that is seasoned enough at this point as a director to know how to let us do our thing. And when the time comes and he feels a certain way about something, he always gives great notes and points us in the right direction.

I love working with directors that are respectful of our craft and give us breathing room creatively and then have specific notes as they come up. So in that regard, it wasn’t like we had a mandate as far as what directions to go down.

The big overarching thing for these films is to be respectful of the brand in a way. Aside from honoring that, it was pretty much an open playing field, which is always fun. We were pretty unrestrained as far as how we approached the film and David was all about going for it.

It was pretty fun to not have any shackles on us.
 

By the time you came onto the film, was there a cut in place? Or, were they still working through the cut? How early on did you get involved?

RB: It was serendipitous in that the original crew was an L.A. crew that I’m friends with.

Will Files, who was the sound supervisor on the 2018 Halloween, was slotted to do the film with P.K. Hooker (also sound supervisor/sound designer on the 2018 film) and that whole crew had started cutting. They got through one temp, I think, so by the time it came to New York, it was on its feet already, which was great because those guys do great work.

…we crafted what was given to us and were able to pinpoint key, important things that still needed to be worked on.

I had inherited a lot of effects already that carried through to the final and, in a way, we crafted what was given to us and were able to pinpoint key, important things that still needed to be worked on. In many ways, it was a fun collaboration in that we had two different teams that worked on the film.

We definitely brought our own sensibility to it, but it was nice to have P.K. (who still was credited as sound designer/supervising sound editor on Halloween Kills) be a part of it because I love his work. He had already given us a lot of good stuff and was familiar with the franchise.

It was definitely a cool group effort in that sense.
 

Let’s talk about that great fire scene. The previous film ended with them locking Michael in the basement and lighting the whole house on fire. I love how you crafted the inside of that house burning. What did you do sound-wise to maximize the chaos of this sequence?

RB: It was interesting because it was almost like a reel break from the last film; it picked up exactly where the last one left off. We were already in that mindset and I really liked the 2018 film so we just got right into it.

In terms of that fire scene, it was exciting in that we had differing perspectives — there’s the inside, which consisted of the upper level and lower level, and there’s the exterior where they end up with all the firefighters getting massacred.

…the scene revolves around Michael’s presence in that once he is revealed, we amp up both the music and sound design intensity of the scene.

But the fun part was that the scene revolves around Michael’s presence in that once he is revealed, we amp up both the music and sound design intensity of the scene.

We start more realistic — or how you’d expect it to sound — and the moment that big accordion door goes up and Michael is revealed, we have a giant stinger and it becomes about the impending doom of him. We get a bit more impressionistic with the design.

I felt the fire environment was fairly crafted and sounded good by the time it hit us. We ended up doing a custom recording for that scene. One of our assistants on the job, Rick Chefalas, is good friends with a lot of firefighters. So we brought in one of his buddies that had this thing called the PASS alarm, which is basically this device that firefighters never want to hear because it means a firefighter is in a lot of trouble. So that goes off at one point, and it’s very loud and very grating and sets a tempo of intensity. That helped the scene a lot because it grounded it in reality, from a firefighter’s perspective.

The scene is chaotic, but it’s also focused on Michael. This goes throughout the film thematically; Michael drives most of what we’re thinking about. We ramp things up with him.

We were pulling focus with Michael and trying to make it coherent so that you’re not overwhelmed with sound.

The tricky thing about scenes like that is there’s a lot going on. There’s the fire. There are the firefighters. There’s all the wood and cracking, and all of that sound. Things tend to pile up when there’s that much action. But in the mix, we really spent time making sure that it was focused. We were pulling focus with Michael and trying to make it coherent so that you’re not overwhelmed with sound.

There are a lot of different perspectives. Like, we go into the firefighter’s perspective, which is very fun and terrifying because ultimately you’re in that helmet. There’s that epic shot of Michael driving a spike into it and that was terrifying to work on. But it’s also thrilling because you can get into that POV and that drives the intensity of that scene. It focuses where you are, what you’re looking at, and what you’re supposed to be paying attention to.

We tried to make it a very visceral experience, and I think we got there in the end.

Hearing the firefighter’s breathing inside that helmet really puts you there. Actually, I loved how you used breathing throughout the movie — there’s Michael’s breathing through the mask (which was actually in the 1978 film; we hear young Michael’s breathing in the clown mask before he stabs his sister). There’s the intense breathing of people as they’re moving through the houses or the places where they’re looking for Michael. I love how you use the sound of their breathing so upfront and so close. It puts you right next to them. It was awesome…

RB: Michael’s breathing through the mask is also something that was crafted for the 2018 version and it stuck and became this iconic element. So we inherited that and we honored it throughout the film. It’s one of those things that’s terrifying and emblematic of Michael Myers.

Did you mix this film in Dolby Atmos?

RB: We did! That was another thing we were fairly unrestrained with and it was very fun.

I don’t think they actually did an Atmos pass on the 2018 version. So David was very excited about Atmos and it was a great opportunity to go wild with it. And my co-mixer Paul Urmson handled dialogue and music and I was doing effects, foley, and group ADR.

Ordinarily, Paul’s an effects mixer, which worked to our advantage because he took that sensibility to how he mixed the music in Atmos.

Ordinarily, Paul’s an effects mixer, which worked to our advantage because he took that sensibility to how he mixed the music in Atmos. He was like a kid in a candy store. I would look over and he was going crazy with his panners; it was all over the place.

I think even John Carpenter got a chance to hear it in Atmos, and he wrote the music. He was like, “This is so fun.” So that was a humbling, nice compliment that we got.
 

Let’s talk about the crowds in the hospital. That place is packed with people and they go through various stages of emotion, ultimately culminating in the “Evil dies tonight!” chant.

So how did you build that scene out? What sort of challenges did you face? Were you recording the group during Covid lockdown?

RB: That is where we took the torch and really ran with it. Obviously, the L.A. crew didn’t have time to get into loop group. So that was the first marching order from David and Tim Alverson (picture editor).

Luckily, we booked the session in New York, about a week before lockdown. There were murmurings of stuff going on and we got a very big loop group at Harbor Picture Company — maybe 15 people. And they were awesome. We spent a good amount of time doing the mob stuff, which was the big order of the day.

Luckily, we got 80% of that shot before we had to lockdown.

So my first task was the group. Luckily, we got 80% of that shot before we had to lockdown. And then we did a pickup session later in the summer to fill in the gaps. but we had a really rocking group.

The second temp we did was all about getting that going. I spent a good amount of time on getting that mob collected. That was a lot of work for me, and it was very fun. That was a big thing for David to get right.

The Atmos component even fed into it; you’re in the hospital, going up staircases and I definitely played with that.

There’s another progression to it in that the mob steadily builds throughout the film, and it climaxes in that really tragic moment where the escaped Smith Grove mental patient, Lance Tovoli, jumps out the window. The mob was a highly orchestrated element throughout those scenes, to get it assembled and bigger and bigger.

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It turns into another impressionistic sound design moment where they’re coming up the stairs.

It turns into another impressionistic sound design moment where they’re coming up the stairs. We had a rumble happening, like an earthquake, for the footsteps. And then it goes into this weird, dreamy world and ends with the epic shot of him disassembled on the ground.

Another group effort was that the “Evil dies tonight!” chant. It had already gotten some really cool treatments from P.K. that we ended up using and embellishing. He had done a first pass on the weirder-effected version of it. We had tons and tons of footage shot with loop group, of them chanting “Evil dies tonight!” and the tracks were stacked on themselves.

What about the mob running up the stairwell and slamming the locked hospital doors as they’re trying to get to the escaped mental patient, Lance? Was any of that PFX? Foley?

RB: That was another element that we had sounds for but it wasn’t as fleshed out as I wanted. So Larry Zipf (a sound effect editor here in New York) and I worked on that. We have a very cool stairwell at WB Sound NY. It goes up to the roof and it has that nice, resonant stairwell quality to it. We took some mics up there and had a field day getting impacts. There are tight shots of the door stopper in the film, and we recorded some big sounds, custom sounds for that, which was important for me to nail.

It’s a fun environment to recreate because we can do it almost verbatim in the building.

It’s a fun environment to recreate because we can do it almost verbatim in the building. We even had one of the Client Services people do pratfalls down the stairs. We did field footsteps that we used. It had that natural sound so we didn’t need to spend time EQing the foley to make it work. It just sounds like it should sound.

Halloween Kills features some creative kills, not just the typical knife stabby moments you expect from Michael Myers. One of the most creative was the fluorescent light bulb in Laurie’s neighbors’ kitchen. Michael pulls out the light bar from over the stove, breaks it on the counter, and stabs Sondra in the throat. I love it!

RB: If I had a ‘favorite kill’ in this film, that is my favorite because it’s so bizarre. Those two characters, Sondra and Phil, are priceless.

Carpenter’s score was so great because at this point he knows when to feature music and when to lay back and be atmospheric. It’s a joy because you’re never fighting with score, and if there’s a big score moment, I’m reverent to him. I will let score drive the scene.

Carpenter’s score was so great because at this point he knows when to feature music and when to lay back and be atmospheric.

But for that particular scene and kill, the music is spooky and almost sound designy. So it’s a silent moment after Michael kills Phil, the husband. It’s quiet. There’s some strange television thing happening in the corner and we do a lot of panning with sound for when Michael is stabbing Phil on the kitchen table. The sound design was able to shine in that moment. It’s pretty sparse and terrifying.

The actual fluorescent tube was a multi-pronged approach in that we got the “believable” sounds (i.e., expected sounds) in first, which is the glass and gooeyness of the blood. But I ended up putting in sweeteners that were even more terrifying, like this suction sound of air through a tube for her breathing. That combined with her larynx being penetrated was just awful/awesome. It served the desired effect, which was to make people squirm.

I ended up putting in sweeteners that were even more terrifying, like this suction sound of air through a tube for her breathing.

That was one of the things that made David perk up in the mix; we needed options for the sound of the fluorescent tube breaking. There’s a specific sound those things make, like this popping glass sound. There’s almost a gas release or pressurized sound to it. He was very specific about getting that right so we ended up doing some fixes for that.

That scene was very fun from start to finish. There’s that miniature drone they’re flying around the house, and the sound for that was all PFX in the end. That thing sounded cool on the shoot, so we just went with the real thing.
 

…I love the blurry boundaries of when music and sound design gel — when you can’t clearly distinguish between the two.

That scene was fun, both spatially and in terms of being able to feature sound design because the music wasn’t driving it. We did some subliminal sounds that people would probably think are music. Towards the end of that scene, where Sondra is dying in the corner, that’s all sound designy, droney elements that we created, as well as the score.

In a way, this film was so satisfying for me because I love the blurry boundaries of when music and sound design gel — when you can’t clearly distinguish between the two. There was a lot of that cross-over between what Carpenter gave us and what we were doing. It all sits within this nebulous gray area that becomes the sound of the film.

Some people can get prickly over that. Composers don’t like sound designers stomping on their stuff, and that’s fine. But I think if you do it right, then it’s the most effective and fun for both sides. If it serves the film, then it works really well.

Most of the people who work here (and I think P.K. also) have a musical background. John Carpenter is also as much of a sound designer as a composer in a certain way. So it’s fun to cross the bridge when we can.

Let’s look at the death of Big John and Little John. Michael squeezes his thumbs into Big John’s eyeballs. It’s this applied pressure squish that ends in a crunching pop. How were you able to make that kill unique in terms of sound?

RB: I really love the Hiss and Roar library. They have some great vegetable sounds in there.

Stylistically, that was driven by Tim (picture editor). He’s great because he loves the sound part of the process. He’s quite good at putting in his own effects. In the AAF, what we get from the picture department, there are a lot of good ideas (some that make it into the final). We’ll incorporate them and sweeten them up. In essence, what he gives us is very helpful in that I know what he’s going for even if it’s not the right sound. What we got from Tim was pretty close; it was a matter of amping it up and making it terrifying.

What we got from Tim was pretty close; it was a matter of amping it up and making it terrifying.

The sound that got me squirming was the popping — that hollow, inside-your-head-cavity sound made it work well. And that was your classic vegetable cracking, cantaloupe sound. I was going for that hollow effect.

Those types of things, for me, are hard to watch. I have to avert my eyes. It’s tough to see it so many times. For the audience, it’s probably the same. But it’s fun in that it’s so over the top. Halloween Kills is a slasher film and it’s quite scary when it wants to be, but it’s also fun and silly in a way. So, things like that we didn’t take too seriously. We wanted to make it visceral and scary, but also not too serious. It’s so over the top that we can have some fun with it. We can be as overstated as the gore.

But it’s fun in that it’s so over the top. ‘Halloween Kills’ is a slasher film and it’s quite scary when it wants to be, but it’s also fun and silly in a way.

The most satisfying part about doing films like this is that there’s a language to them. And more specifically to the Halloween films, the fun challenge is that you’re beholden to speak that language but you can make your own thing of it. That’s the thrill. You have parameters to work within but then how can you make it your own thing. The eyeball squish has been done before, and the fun challenge was: how can I make this my own thing?

That was his big goal on this one, to find a way to kill someone by stabbing them in the armpit.

The fluorescent bulb was my favorite and this eyeball kill was my least favorite because it makes me squirm.

It’s one of those things where, during the mix, I looked back at David and just had to chuckle. It’s crazy.

He did an interview recently where he said he just had to have a kill where someone was stabbed in the armpit. That was his big goal on this one, to find a way to kill someone by stabbing them in the armpit.

Another creative kill was near the end when Allyson and Cameron are in Michael’s childhood home. Cameron gets killed on the upstairs banister, skewered on the spindles…

RB: That one was fun from a perspective standpoint. It’s a two-story house, and Paul and I spent a lot of time matching panning. This is a fun Atmos movie. We did a lot with the Atmos surround field, and that was a perfect set piece for it. We didn’t put sounds in the surround field just for fun; I think it really does scare the shit out of you to hear sounds in the ceiling and not know where Michael is.

We did a lot with the Atmos surround field, and that was a perfect set piece for it.

The setup to that scene was great because Lonnie (Cameron’s father) had already been killed by Michael and was shoved up in the attic ceiling door. So he’s bleeding from the ceiling and it drips onto Cameron’s hand. It’s a classic, quiet setup in that you don’t know where Michael is and it just gets eerily quiet as he’s walking down the hall upstairs. Once the blood drops, then all hell breaks loose. It cuts to Michael popping out from behind that door. It’s just mayhem after that.

When we walk through that scene, it’s a lot of moving parts with the surfaces, the wood, and the actual kill sounds. There were a lot of things to work through and we played it without music a couple of times. The music was needed in that scene, but it was really fun to hear it without music just as a first pass. David liked how scary it was without the music and so we ended up pulling back on some of the stems that John Carpenter gave us. It was a nicely crafted, orchestrated scene.

Paul and I were very meticulous in getting that panning right.

There are also some fun moments that David is very good at, like when we’re on Cameron’s face, really close, and he’s getting swung back and forth by Michael and getting impaled on both sides of the banister. We’re swinging right with his face and that was such a fun thing to work with in sound. Paul and I were very meticulous in getting that panning right.

One of the cool things about having this dual sound crew collaboration was that oftentimes the more effective way to get where you want to get with the mix is to have a big stack of sounds that we could peel back. In a way, that’s better for sound design because you can hone in on the sounds that are really good and peel back the excess sounds, and that makes it more focused. To me, that scene was about the wood sounds, and making it crunchy, and supporting the music without getting in the way of that.

That scene was fun mix-wise because we were almost mathematical with the panning, and where we are spatially at any given time.
 

What I love about those three kills we just talked about is that they weren’t “stabby” moments. There are so many stabby moments, with knives or metal objects. For those, did you rely on foley to bring something new to it?

RB: This goes back to the language of a slasher film, to have the right sounds for that. We ended up using a layered approach. Tim gave us some pretty good stuff to begin with. Anything knife play-related, we ended up having a layer from Tim that stayed in the design. P.K. did a good amount of sounds as well, which were in line with the 2018 film. The foley team did elements that I ended up featuring more in the mix. These were great, custom sounds that Andy Malcolm’s crew at Footsteps Post Production Sound, Inc. in Ontario made. They do great prop work. The foley team would give me elements that were ‘more realistic’ ultimately. But they also did some shingy sounds. So it was a combo of the custom sounds from foley for the knives — that’s always fun because you can match the action precisely — and then our in-house foley editor, Igor Nikolic, ended up sweetening with effects, too, whenever it was needed just to make the foley side sing.

The foley team did elements that I ended up featuring more in the mix. These were great, custom sounds that Andy Malcolm’s crew at Footsteps Post Production Sound, Inc. in Ontario made.

For me, it’s great because I had all these elements from P.K., Tim, and the foley team. I had three different approaches to that stuff. And if they all worked well together I would use them, but I ended up featuring one of those departments or pulling back on some of the library effects and featuring the foley. More is really more in this situation because then I have options and can pick the right aesthetic for the moment. There was a lot of variety to play with.

If the music is really bumping in a scene, I’ll go with sounds that poke through the mix. That might be the more shingy sounds or designy sounds that cut through more than something that’s more realistic.

…some of the knife sounds can be very musical and very percussive. They’re cool sounds and we’ve heard them a million times in films for good reason.

That serves the whole idea we were discussing, of the sound soup, that some of the knife sounds can be very musical and very percussive. They’re cool sounds and we’ve heard them a million times in films for good reason. They’re part of the language of these slasher films. They’re satisfying sounds.

The fun part about Halloween is that Michael Myers doesn’t speak. He’s this force of nature. And what you have to work with are his footsteps (which I send through the subwoofer because I want him to be a monstrous, big, imposing character), his breath, and whatever sharp object he is killing people with. That’s it. How can you make that really dangerous and terrifying?

What would you want other sound designers to know about the sound of Halloween Kills?

RB: First, it was a pleasure. Sometimes when you’re working on a project, you just get lost in the weeds. So on the first day of the mix, I usually skip the opening credits because it’s just music. But once you put up that iconic Halloween music, that 5/4 theme, you realize that, wow, this is a Halloween movie! I grew up watching these and was so scared. You feel a bit humbled by the experience, in that this is part of this larger horror film history. People love these movies. It was important for me and our team here, and for the team in L.A., to honor that. When you have that fire behind you, you want to do a great job.

You feel a bit humbled by the experience, in that this is part of this larger horror film history.

David is also a director that is very inspiring. He’s like a kid in the candy store when he’s doing his job. He brings such a high level of enthusiasm, even on ADR sessions. For every film, we have to do clean versions that no one ever sees unless you’re on an airplane or something. David is so fun because he’ll make that a very fun experience. He’ll write stuff on the fly and it’s brilliant. No one will ever hear it, but for him, it’s all a joy to work on. That’s very infectious. When you’re working within a franchise that is such a big thing for so many people, and working with a director that is both respectful of what we do and also inspiring and enthusiastic, you really just want to do a good job. That might be the overarching takeaway that I had from this film. It’s something you want to pour your heart into because it’s a lot of fun for a lot of people, including me.

Also, this film was a great opportunity to work in Atmos. We could really push it to the max.

Also, this film was a great opportunity to work in Atmos. We could really push it to the max. There were obvious moments to do in Atmos, like when Michael jumps on the car. That was a no-brainer for Atmos and it was terrifying because it sounds like he’s on top of you. The big mileage we got out of Atmos was the music. John Carpenter gave us cool stems that were either atmospheric or designy stuff, and we went wild with that. When you’re working with that Atmos spec, you get full range fidelity so the bass sounds better, and the dynamics of the mix really shine. It was a lot of fun.

A big thanks to Rich Bologna for giving us a behind-the-scenes look at the sound of Halloween Kills and to Jennifer Walden for the interview!

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