Fans of Game of Thrones are showing up in droves to watch HBO’s new series A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, which tells the tale of a humble hedge knight, Ser Duncan the Tall, as he make a name for himself in the annals of Westerosian history. The story is set among the smallfolk; Dunk’s life is gritty, lived at ground level, slathered in muck, dressed in a tattered cloak, and seems generally uncomfortable. Yet, despite these mean and meager conditions, Dunk is a good guy. You’re rooting for him. You’re in the trenches with him, cheering him on. And that perspective of being with Dunk is exactly what showrunner Ira Parker wanted from the start, according to supervising sound editor/re-recording mixer Alastair Sirkett.
To keep the audience close to Dunk and convey his grimy reality, Sirkett created a soundscape abundant in mud, crowds, horses, domestic livestock, insects, wind, weather, and other natural sounds. Dunk’s foley has a lived-in texture that feels dusty. Even the characters’ on-camera singing has a delightfully unpolished sound.
Here, Sirkett (who won a 2023 BAFTA TV Award for “Sound” on House of the Dragon) talks about crafting a world that feels real by using the Dolby Atmos surround field to play multiple top-down layers for trees, and panning thunder so it rumbles through the valley. He shares details on how they designed those impressive large-crowd sounds, how they made Dunk’s conversations with his horses feel two-sided, how he created clarity in the chaotic jousting events, and so much more!
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms | Official Final Trailer | HBO Max
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is much more ‘ground level,’ ‘rubbing elbows with the commoners’ type of vibe (as opposed to the grandeur of House of the Dragon). How did you support that in your sound work – BGs, crowds, foley, etc. – to establish the feel of this world?
Al Sirkett (AS): It all came from Ira Parker (series co-creator/showrunner). I had only just started on the show, before we’d even had a chance to have a sound spotting session, and I passed him in the corridor where the picture editors were and asked him, “Can you give me one overriding idea for the sound on the whole series?” And he said, “Everything is to be from Dunk’s POV; we’re always in his bubble.”
He wanted everything we heard to help us feel how Dunk experiences the world. Rather than previous Westero-based shows, it’s more about looking from the ground up and hanging out with the small folk than looking down from the high turrets.
We always have something going on sonically, keeping the sense that he’s in a place that he doesn’t feel comfortable in
From the moment Dunk arrives at Ashford village, even before the tournament starts, we always have something going on sonically, keeping the sense that he’s in a place that he doesn’t feel comfortable in, with loads of activity going on all around him. In fact, the only place he gets away from the chaos of this temporary village, which has sprung up for the birthday tourney, is by the tree and the river where he sets up his camp. We made this into a peaceful location, with just the river slowly running by, the wind in the trees, and some local animals, such as sheep, cows, and at some points, quite a few flies. This allowed Dunk to have this location as a place of reflection and peace after his first visits to the village with the puppet show and the wild party at the Baratheon tent.
Let’s talk about the amazing foley! For Dunk, initially, it’s not armor and chain mail. He’s dressed in tattered clothes and uses a rope belt to hold up his sword — not very knightly. Who was on your foley team and what were some foley’s key contributions?
AS: I’ve got a longstanding relationship with the team at Feet First Sound. Barnaby Smyth is the Foley Supervisor/Artist. We also had Foley Mixer Keith Partridge, Foley Artist Rebecca Glover, and Foley Editor Stuart Bagshaw.
With Dunk, there’s always gear hanging off him; his sword is tapping on his side, and his cloak is moving in the wind
They’re an amazing team to work with. They produce what I can only describe as a texture that makes everything they do work so well and feel so real. Barnaby will watch the scene and know how all the foley is going to fit in. I give them lots of notes, usually specific to the mood and emotion of what I’m trying to do with the overall soundtrack, to help guide them in the direction I want.
With Dunk, there’s always gear hanging off him; his sword is tapping on his side, and his cloak is moving in the wind. I always used foley to make you feel like you’re there in Dunk’s bubble, as Ira had said, so you feel that everything is attached and joined together, and the foley really helps you feel that.
What did you use for the horse’s hooves? Did foley walk those, too?
AS: With the horses, Ira was very insistent that they were anthropomorphic during Dunk’s conversations with them — when he was talking to them as if they’re his friends. The horses are always part of that conversation. So, especially using foley, we wanted to make sure the horses were always present; you hear their movements: their saddles, hooves, and the specific surfaces.
We predominantly used previous recordings I had for the hooves, but obviously beefed them up once we were in the tournament settings. Ruth Knight, one of my sound effects editors, cut all the horse sounds, then Sound Designer Martin Cantwell and I added extra sound design layers for the tourney scenes. Ruth’s brilliant at dealing with horses and really brought the animals to life.
This bus contains a mix of movement, saddles, and what I call a ‘dirty track’ to give it texture, so it’s not just clip-clop, clip-clop
For the ‘normal’ horse moment when Dunk is traveling on his own, or when he’s traveling with Ser Arlen, we ended up with three mix busses: one for vocals, one for hooves, and one of a more foley-type nature. This bus contains a mix of movement, saddles, and what I call a ‘dirty track’ to give it texture, so it’s not just clip-clop, clip-clop. It helps to give a feeling that there are always things hanging from the horses as they’re moving around.
With Ira wanting Dunk to have these anthropomorphic conversations with the horses, especially in Ep.1 and Ep. 2, we did some extra recording. Doug Cooper, the lead re-recording mixer, has a daughter who works weekends at a local stable. I gave him a handheld recorder and asked if she could record any horse sounds while she’s working — just setting the recorder near the horse’s mouth to capture any of their vocalizations. These were very handy while creating the horse side of these conversations.
Ruth and I talked a lot about what we thought the horses would be saying back to Dunk in these conversations. I’d write out a notes track for Ruth of what I thought was the horse side of the conversation would be, and she’d search for a vocalization that she felt had that feeling and meaning, allowing us to start from a point of storytelling, rather than the usual image-first approach. Then she’d find a way to edit that to fit the picture. This way, it wasn’t just normal neighs, whinnies, and snorts. More thought went into these horse vocalisations to help show the special friendship he has with his horses, which changes over the season. At the beginning of the series, the horses don’t seem to be that impressed with him after he gets them from Ser Arlen, but by the end, they respect him much more, or at least that’s how we played it.
What about the background crowds? When Dunk is at the tourney, there’s a lot going on all the time, whether it’s people just going about their lives in the tent town, milling around waiting for the jousting to happen, or reacting to the jousting (expressing their excitement, bloodlust, or disapproval). How did you handle these crowd sounds?
AS: I got in contact with the production sound mixer, Simon Willis, once they’d started shooting, and I asked him to get as many crowd wildtracks as he could from the on-set crowds. He knew there were a lot of big crowd moments in the show that we wanted to make feel fully immersive for the audience, and he was right on board with trying to capture them for us. The jousting scene in Ep. 2 is a great example of where we wanted to use the crowd to heighten the moment when Dunk is overcome with the chaos and danger that he’s watching.
[Simon Willis] would also have plant mics dotted around, such as behind where people were moving around in the marketplace of Ashford Village
I’ve been here before and am fully aware that it’s always tricky to get these types of recordings on set, with everything that’s going on. Stopping the shoot for a few crowd recordings isn’t really going to happen, sadly. But Simon absolutely took that on board and produced some of the most fantastic crowd tracks I’ve ever had the chance to work on from location (as well as recording great dialogue tracks at a very tricky shooting location for sound). He not only set up extra booms to capture the large crowds, but he would also have plant mics dotted around, such as behind where people were moving around in the marketplace of Ashford Village, not too close but just enough to give you that sense of movement and activity that really helped you feel as if you were there in the mud with them. He really understood what we were going to try to do with the whole soundtrack.
Simon’s tracks probably make up 80% of what you hear in those crowd moments
We also recorded loop group for all of the crowd scenes, to help add weight to specific reactions and for more specific moments in the show. That was led by ADR/Crowd Supervisor Adele Fletcher, working alongside the Supervising Dialogue Editor Michele Woods.
Simon’s tracks probably make up 80% of what you hear in those crowd moments, from the huge cheers and disgust at the tourneys and various puppet shows to the shouts and chatter in the market areas of the temporary village. We wouldn’t have been anywhere near where we were without Simon getting those tracks for us. They were wonderful and so important, allowing us to create these powerful and immersive moments.
The jousting at The Ashford Tourney is brutal. Can you talk about crafting these sequences to make them exciting and terrifying for viewers?
AS: I was blown away when I first saw the action sequences, the way it was shot, the choreography of the action, and how our editors had put it together. They were a joy to work on. One of the biggest challenges with any action sequence is to keep it flowing for the audience. You want it to feel like it has a natural sonic progression, especially when it’s put together this well, so you always feel like you’re following a path through it.
Sound editorially, other than helping to convey the power, that’s the most important thing for me, to make sure that it isn’t just individual effects for each individual shot, but that there’s something carrying you through the scene, so you feel like you are still in the action and you are moving around within it — again, following Ira wanting to always be in Dunk’s bubble.
That’s the most important thing for me; to make sure that it isn’t just individual effects for each individual shot, but that there’s something carrying you through the scene
For the main joust scenes in Ep. 2 and Ep. 5, Martin Cantwell, Ruth Knight, and I worked separately to bring our own flavour to the action. We’d had a spotting session with Ira and the editors before we started, and having worked with Martin and Ruth before, I knew how to divide up the different layers of action so we could all focus and get as much detail in there as possible.
Then, it all came back to me, including the foley. As FX/foley re-recording mixer, I’d work a path through the scene, going back to Martin and Ruth for updates when I felt they were required, pushing to get the most out of the scene sonically. We’d bounce FX mixes and send them to the cutting room every now and then so Ira could hear how we were proceeding and get feedback and notes on how he felt. This was another great part of the project: that constant collaboration, knowing that when we hit the mix stage for the final, Ira had heard pretty much everything we’d done and was comfortable with how it was going to sound. Then we could push it even further once we were all together and doing those final tweaks.
In Ep. 2, just before the joust begins, the tourney field goes completely silent as everyone anticipates the start of the tourney events. Having the aura of the crowd just being there, to have that sense of hundreds of people doing nothing and waiting, is very effective, especially with what’s about to happen. Then, once the joust begins, it’s chaos, pandemonium, and madness, visually as well as sonically. We used the crowds to help us boost these moments of cheers, awe, and excitement.
We wanted to make it feel like you could be crushed at any moment, to help feed into how Dunk was starting to feel
Once we get into the joust, you’re down on the ground with all the horses thundering by, lances breaking, and barriers smashing. We wanted to make it feel like you could be crushed at any moment, to help feed into how Dunk was starting to feel, his anxiety and panic that this was something he himself was intending to do. We spent quite a while in the FX mix of these sequences, making sure the thundering hooves felt as powerful as possible. We did some side-chaining into the sub, so you can feel the weight and power of the horses. We added layers of sound design elements to the horses during these sequences, too, especially as the joust progresses. We ended up with some rather weird animal sounds that accompany the horses thundering by and falling over. We made sure everything was heightened in these moments, but we always had a great foley track to ground it, helping us feel the mud, dust, and dirt being kicked up. Everything had to be quite visceral from our perspective.
Another really interesting sequence to work on was towards the end of the joust sequence in Ep. 5, where there’s a huge sonic shift for Dunk’s perspective. This was really great to play around with, allowing me to go into a completely different headspace, very different from the rest of the show, but another way of being closely connected to how Dunk was feeling, and all the while, the madness and chaos of the joust/fight is still going on around him.
And for the lances hitting shields or smashing into splinters? Did you do any custom recordings? Get to break any lances?
AS: We laid in a lot of sounds from our libraries for the splintering, shattering, and explosive impacts in these moments, to help feel the power of them. Then foley did a wonderful job of getting us extra layers to feel those hefty wooden impacts.
There’s so much music and singing in this show — Egg sitting in the tree, whittling some wood and singing, Lyonel Baratheon’s feasts in his tent, and Ser Arlan of Pennytree singing as he’s riding his horse. What was your approach to these on-screen musical performances?
AS: There were pre-recorded tracks for some of the music moments that were played back on set, but all the singing was live. I asked the Music Editor Neil Stemp about their approach, and he said, “Ira didn’t really want this to be a glossy, big score show. Composer Dan Romer used lots of different instruments whilst he came up with the score, working closely with Ira during this process, bouncing ideas off each other throughout. So it was a different feeling that we got, much closer to that of a Western. The singing on set, from the Baratheon songs to Egg’s limerick in the tree, was all written beforehand and sung live, without any pitch correction in post. Ira wanted everything to be gritty, realistic, and natural. They just did several takes until they got it right, and Ira was happy.”
All the playback recordings were delivered with multiple stems, which allowed us in the final mix to make it feel like it was being played in the room/tent. The music could follow the on-screen musicians, and we could push it slightly off to the side when required. Ira never wanted those moments to feel like score, but instead to feel like you were in the room with them.
Did you do any custom recording for the show? Any field recordings for ambience?
AS: I really like world-building with ambiences, and over the years on numerous projects, I’ve collected and recorded ambiences from all over the world, so I felt we were well covered with my library, and there was nothing I felt I needed to go out and get.
Whenever possible, I like using the Dolby Atmos speakers for atmospheres, as I feel they really help sell the spaces emotionally and create a stronger connection with the environment, especially in scenes with Dunk in his camp. That’s a slight refuge for him away from the village and the tourney field.
I like using the Dolby Atmos speakers for atmospheres, as I feel they really help sell the spaces emotionally and create a stronger connection with the environment
I’ve found that a very effective use of the Atmos ceiling speakers with ambiences, specific to this kind of environment, is to have high-frequency rustling-leaf sounds above you in the ceiling, when you’re in and around trees, and then adding single bird sounds, while keeping everything else down on the ground in the usual 5.1/7.1 setup. There’s something about having a layer with a quite different frequency above you that creates a great sonic canopy. I’ve found it’s much more effective than just lifting some of your other ambiences into the Atmos speakers.
Speaking of Dolby Atmos, were there any scenes in particular that shine in this format? I’m thinking the rain scene in Ep. 1 with Dunk and Ser Arlan of Pennytree sheltering under the tree…
AS: Yes, those types of shots are great for us to lean into for Atmos. With them sitting under a tree in the pouring rain, we could move different textures of rain into the overheads for the rain on leaves and then use other tracks all around us for the grass and mud. This also happens a couple of times when they’re in tents, and it’s raining.
I’ll slowly pan the different elements of the ambience tracks gently throughout a scene
When we’re outside for so much of the series, I like to make the environment feel as though it’s naturally moving around, so I’ll slowly pan the different elements of the ambience tracks gently throughout a scene. We also panned the rumbles of thunder across the sky in the opening scene, so they felt like they were rumbling down the valley from a distance.
Any helpful indie sound libraries to use as raw materials for sound design on the show?
AS: A useful library for this show was one I bought years ago: a crowdfunded library of armor and medieval action, which worked great to bed in with the shot foley. I always make sure that in a ‘medieval’ weapons-heavy action scene, like those in this show, that there’s a lot of variation in all the swords, movement, and impacts, so they don’t start to sound the same. Using different libraries for each side of the action can really help differentiate between people being hit and how that felt with their different weapons and armor, allowing each character to have a unique sound and feel.
So far, what’s been the best part of your experience of crafting the sound of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms?
AS: Working with Ira as the showrunner, from his initial directive that everything should be from Dunk’s POV, was a great way to think about how we approached the whole show and all the sound. It gave me a good point of reference to go back to whenever I was thinking about how to approach something, whether that was the ambience or specific spot effects in sequences, such as the jousts. Where is Dunk? What is he doing? How does he feel? We built everything around that thought to make everything feel rich and alive for him.
A big thanks to Al Sirkett for giving us a behind-the-scenes look at the sound of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms and to Jennifer Walden for the interview!