Behind the Menacing Sound of M3GAN – with Sound Designer P.K. Hooker

Who wouldn’t want a child-sized life-like robotic doll with adaptive Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI) capable of continuously learning new data to quickly adapt to changing circumstances in real-time? That sounds totally safe and nothing could go wrong, right? Right??

Director Gerard Johnstone wasn’t afraid to go all-in on his horror-comedy M3GAN, to embrace all the fun that the horror genre has to offer – like having an evil robot doll kill the neighbor with a pressure washer full of chemicals, or stab someone to death with the blade from a paper cutter. Horror fans that like to laugh and cheer, this film is for you.

MPSE Award-winning supervising sound editor/sound designer P.K. Hooker – known for his work on horror films like Prey for the Devil, Halloween Kills, Halloween (2018), Don’t Breathe 2, The Invisible Man, and more! – helmed the sound editorial and design work at Pacific Standard Sound, and was on hand for the final mix in Dolby Atmos on the William Holden Theater at Sony Pictures in Culver City (one of Hooker’s favorite stages and his favorite mix facility. He says, “They have the best engineering and mix-tech staff on earth!)

Here, he talks about designing M3GAN’s mechanical and electrical/digital sounds and her vocal treatment, how he evolved those sounds throughout the film, how they handled the super-salesy kids’ toy commercial, how they had some fun with the horror scenes, and so much more! Warning: MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS

M3GAN – official trailer

What were Director Gerard Johnston’s goals for the sound of M3GAN – her mechanical and digital (electronic) sounds? Did he share any film references that had similar kinds of tech, or did he want to hear a variety of original ideas?

P.K. Hooker (PKH): Gerard’s principal concerns were about M3GAN’s voice. He knew he wanted something unique, but also wanted to avoid anything too heavy-handed and distracting. We did a lot of experimentation. Early on, me and my design team talked about GLaDOS from the game Portal. She was the gleefully malevolent AI bot that tortures the player throughout the game.

Sound supervisor/sound designer P.K. Hooker

She has this really over-baked auto-tuned processing to her voice that slams her tone into lock-step “tune” and flattens a lot of the fluctuation in her voice. The process produces a lot of very silly and unusable results, but also has moments where it really works and sounds odd. We had to tediously cut in little moments of it throughout her perfomance (voiced by Jenna Davis). Jenna has a really incredible voice that has a really even and confident tonality to it so it was HIGHLY activated by our processing. That made it easy to sell the otherness of the autotuned weirdness with only the smallest amount of cut-in processed vocal material.

In addition to that, we used a fair amount of plugins to give it a subtle modulated digital quality with a very less-is-more approach.

As far as M3GAN’s physical movement and UI design, I brought up the idea of doing something a bit more sinewy and slithering rather than motors and servos. In the end, we landed a bit in the middle. She sounds a bit muscular and dangerous, but also expensive and high-tech, so we ramp up her engine a bit when she’s up to no good with more aggressive servo-like stuff, and then get a bit more serpentine in the quieter moments.

The “Purrpetual Pets” commercial looked like a lot of fun to make because it’s overly salesy and hyperbolic. How were you able to have some fun with that?

PKH: Gerard had a very clear vision for the commercial from the outset. The voices/comedy were in place very early on. The music and VO were definitely in the driver’s seat for these moments. But we did have a lot of fun with it. We tried to stay true to the idea that it’s an actual kid’s commercial so the design around it was all very canned and corny library types of sounds, like extremely lame, synth whooshes, and little Scooby Doo-esque marimba running sounds. I love that kind of stuff. It’s really satisfying to recreate a vibe like that… the lamer the better!

What went into the sounds of M3GAN? Let’s start with the first iteration of M3GAN, down in the toy lab. She’s missing a part and so her face melts. What went into those malfunction and meltdown sounds?

PKH: We had a lot of fun coming up with lines for her to misspeak and then trashing them around and repeating them to create the crazy malfunction that makes her head explode. We got to go over the top with it and start to repeat and speed up and add motor sounds and vocals to get us to a giant chaotic crescendo.

After Gemma gets M3GAN up and running, what went into M3GAN’s mechanical/movement sounds, and her digital/electronic/data sounds?

PKH: After the explosion when Gemma gets M3GAN up and running, I wanted to avoid bleeps and bloops outside of her POV shots and try to be subtle and expensive-sounding. It helped to give us somewhere to go later on when M3GAN gets dangerous.

For the POV stuff, I just tried to be precise so the sounds feel connected to the visuals. It’s a lot of sped-up birds and stuff like that for the UI. That always produces some fun results.

M3GAN is attacked by the neighbor’s dog. She gets pretty mangled. How did her mechanical and digital sounds change? (At the M3GAN demonstration for the investors, she’s starting to sound a bit janky…)

PKH: The idea is that before the dog attack, she has already kind of started to question what her purpose is beyond her assigned directives to be a companion to Cady. But during the attack, she is essentially shocked into overdrive so all of her learning models and evolution happen in a more out-of-control way.

Sonically at this point, she begins to get a bit more RoboCop and a bit less Ex Machina. Her sounds are more mechanical and servo, and heavier. Even her feet become a little heavier. She feels more substantial and dangerous. This is an idea we ramp up throughout the rest of the film.

After that dog attack, M3GAN becomes more sinister. In the woods, she attacks Brandon. You can hear the changes in her vocal processing and her mechanics. How did you create those sounds?

PKH: Right! So she IS changing. We were definitely dialing up her vocal process and introducing much more overt and heavy movement sounds for her here. My thinking was that as soon as little Brandon’s ear comes off she goes into a kind of battle mode. Heavier, louder, and scarier. The galloping is full-body weapon attack!

M3GAN attacks the neighbor Celia; how were you able to have some fun sound-wise with this scene?

PKH: This scene is a fun one. We are luring her into the garage with a canned dog whimper being played back by M3GAN in the shed, which then morphs into an ascending motor sound when M3GAN rises out of the darkness like an evil robot power up. This is where I think M3GAN enters her full power. She is not above murder and has become her true, evil self. I wanted the build-up to the pressure washer to be very cinematic and BIG. We are seeing (hearing) her become M3GAN in this moment.

M3GAN attacks David and his assistant Kurt in the elevator with the paper cutter. How did you have some fun with sound here?

PKH: Gerard loves himself some funky bass. A lot of his music choices have really driving bass lines and he plugs a lot of rhythm into his visual language. That makes sequences like this really fun to cut. The way the scream leads us out of the explosion into the alarm popping off as she walks past it, and then into the notorious dancing moment punctuated by the paper cutter being snapped off into a makeshift sword. All of it was just so fun and satisfying. We used a lot of musical sounds here for her movement and the ring of the blade. I think that, in a movie filled with what I think are successful moments, this is the most successful one. There’s so much energy in the visuals and soundtrack here and I love it.

All of it was just so fun and satisfying. We used a lot of musical sounds here for her movement and the ring of the blade.

When she finally catches up with David at the elevator there was actually a more R-rated version with more blood and gore, but honestly, the PG-13 version ended up being much better. Her slow approach to Kurt with the tip of the blade scraping across Davids’s shirt and the scene-buttoning implication of her final blow to Kurt are really much more satisfying than what was there before. It’s all just well punctuated and textured in the way it was shot. I’m really happy with the way it sounds, but also feel like the scene was put together by Gerard and the Editor Jeff McEvoy so well that it was just a luxurious buffet of low-hanging opportunities for us to add to.

Gemma breaks a glass over water over M3GAN’s head, causing M3GAN to malfunction. What were some new sounds you created for her afterward (new mechanical sounds, new digital sounds, and new vocal processing)?

PKH: This was a bit of a return to the galloping moment. She’s highly malfunctioning so we are really stepping up her heft and menace here. No more subtlety, it’s full RoboCop, haha! That goes for her voice too. We are amping her up across the board here and through to the end of the movie. It’s an escalation of her sound palette rather than new sounds – just bigger and louder M3GAN sounds!

What were some fun sonic moments for you in the Gemma vs. M3GAN fight? (Like the hedge-trimmer, so fun!)

PKH: That’s a real hedge trimmer I recorded! The temp sound was a gas chainsaw which was evocative but the challenge was to find an electric hedge trimmer that was dynamic and threatening. We enhanced it with a lot of hair rips and metal grinding. Gerard said he found the sound to be highly unpleasant and unsettling, so NAILED IT, haha! Also, M3GAN is much more powerful and violent here, along with her vocals, we really amped up her strength and robotic movement.

Cady uses Bruce to fight M3GAN, tearing her in half. Two robots fighting, awesome! What were some fun sounds you created for this fight? M3GAN’s top half continues the fight – what were some new sounds you made for M3GAN here?

PKH: The Bruce fight was really fun. We got to finally let loose with some big old-fashioned cinematic hugeness with him. We are living in the sub every time that big guy takes a swing at her. That was a really triumphant moment in the film where Cady introduces M3GAN to Bruce so I just went over the top with his hits and footfalls. We had to match the score and the goose-bump moment of Cady choosing Gemma and finding her own power to stand up to M3GAN for the first time. Also, M3GAN’s sounds are really sharp and fast. Like an injured predator, she’s unpredictable and dangerous.
 

What went into the sound of Bruce the robot and the kinetic gloves? How did you create his sounds?

PKH: The gloves are crunchy, engage lock sounds with some Moogerfooger digital roundness applied to them along with the tried-and-true camera flash power up sine wave. It’s hard to escape how effective that little sound is!

Horror, to me, is a really joyous and fun genre. There’s a lot of glee that goes into making effective horror.

We also added a little UI tonal power-on sound the first time we meet Bruce which we play up massively in the final triumphant moment in the end battle. I wanted there to be a bit of a callback, and there’s something kind of funny and great about a silly little sound like that playing up a huge, powerful moment. That’s the kind of stuff I love to do as a sound designer.

Horror, to me, is a really joyous and fun genre. There’s a lot of glee that goes into making effective horror. M3GAN is ostensibly a comedy by a lot of metrics, but there’s a lot of horror muscle in there too. All of it is full of joy. Gerard has a really funny and deviant mind, and I think that really comes across in his filmmaking. It was fun for us to try and meet him there whenever and however we could.
 

What was the most challenging scene for sound?

PKH: I think overall it was the ear-ripping/forest chase. The music is really pounding in there (as it should be) so it was a challenge to get design to play along with it. And then it leads right into the more impressionistic aftermath of M3GAN in the car observing Cady and the police through the car window. Start-to-finish that whole sequence took a lot of work editorially and especially for our mixers Joel Dougherty and Kyle Arzt. They did a LOT of heavy lifting throughout to make it all work. M3GAN is a deceptively dynamic film that kind of bends the genre and becomes a bit of a comedy, a bit of a family drama, and even a bit of a musical!
 

Did you have a favorite single sound you created for the film? What went into it?

PKH: I mean it’s hard to beat the hedge-trimmer if only for the reaction from Gerard! But honestly, it would be her voice. I am always a bit nervous going into a project where character vocals are a big concern and a big part of the design process. In the past, that stuff has proven to be really elusive and hard to pin down. On M3GAN, we arrived at her voice really early and relatively quickly.

…we came up with a pretty simple and effective language and process to get her to sound “other” and scalable…

In addition to that being a huge relief, I was really happy with it, and it freed up our mental horsepower to focus on all of the other elements of the movie. There was some back-and-forth for sure, but we came up with a pretty simple and effective language and process to get her to sound “other” and scalable so she could sound like a digital nightmare slowly over the course of the film. I’m pretty psyched about how it turned out.
 

How was creating the sound of M3GAN a unique experience for you?

PKH: Every film presents different challenges, and every soundtrack demands some level of new thinking and new methods of creativity. What set M3GAN apart for me was the process. Gerard is one of those directors who not only values sound but also has an inherent understanding of what it is capable of. From the outset, he was very focused on what we were doing and very quick to give feedback. That was refreshing for sure, and it allowed us to arrive at conclusions really quickly about what was and wasn’t going to work.

Creating a new sound palette for a fully-realized character is a lot of fun, and we were left to explore and create with agency and trust.

Creating a new sound palette for a fully-realized character is a lot of fun, and we were left to explore and create with agency and trust. And we got lucky a lot! That let us make a ton of stuff, more than we would normally on this kind of schedule. I feel like we spent the whole time making new fun stuff and not much time chasing our tails or hitting dead ends. That was a really unique and enjoyable part of it for me. I wish they could all be like that, but there’s also something to be said about the frustrating creative alchemy of failure too!

A big thanks to P.K. Hooker for giving us a behind-the-scenes look at the sound of M3GAN and to Jennifer Walden for the interview!

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