Making ‘Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One’s Meticulous Sound – with Oscar-winning Sound Supervisor James Mather

As supervising sound editor James Mather was crafting the Oscar-winning sound for Top Gun: Maverick (directed by Joseph Kosinski), he was also working on Tom Cruise’s next massive action film Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (directed by Christopher McQuarrie). According to Mather, he worked piecemeal on the sound for Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One for several years, sending effects and sound builds for scenes to picture editor Eddie Hamilton and director McQuarrie, and addressing their notes and re-working sounds to new picture cuts along the way.

Here, Mather talks about that collaborative process with the filmmakers, how scenes changed over time, and how it all came together on the dub stage. He also talks about the filmmakers’ distinctive sonic tastes and how that resulted in a meticulously crafted and uncluttered action film soundtrack. Mather provides details on the sonic approach to specific scenes, such as the train car escape sequence, the Fiat/Hummer chase, and the parallel fight sequence in Venice. Mather also reveals how the sound of the Entity came be, and so much more!

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One | Official Trailer (2023 Movie)

This is your third Mission Impossible film, and you’ve worked with Tom Cruise recently on Top Gun: Maverick, for which you earned the Oscar for Best Sound. (I know you didn’t mix Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One but if the Oscars can lump sound editing and mixing together then I’m going to take that liberty here and ask about the mix.) I noticed that we don’t hear footsteps and body hits at certain times. For instance, after the nightclub scene, when Ethan is running from Briggs and Degas as he’s chasing Grace through Venice, you don’t hear their footsteps. They jump on the boat, and you don’t hear the impact. It was a wholly music-driven chase scene…

Sound supervisor James Mather

James Mather (JM): Tom has a very strong opinion about footsteps, and not just the foley recorded ones. The footsteps in the production track are a distraction. From his POV (and we had this in Top Gun, as well), when he’s walking, he’s not aware of his footsteps. We all agree that we don’t register our footsteps when we’re walking; we register our breathing but not necessarily our footsteps. That’s his point, and I get it.

But it has raised some eyebrows, especially because these days a soundtrack has every detail and everything filled in for the audience. Tom feels – and I agree with him in some ways – that it’s a distraction if there’s so much sound in a piece, whether it’s percussion in the music or footsteps in the sound design. If there’s no need for it, then don’t have it.

His logic (and director Christopher McQuarrie follows suit in the footsteps world) is, “I don’t need to hear my feet running. I know I’m running. Look at the picture.” And that makes sense. The music is driving the chase more than a variety of different footsteps that are stopping, starting, and skidding around corners. And although that does tell a story, it doesn’t add to the story that is clearly being defined, but the music does. Quite often you’ll find that footsteps can muddy the music.

The fight scenes on the bridge are also very minimal. You get a few sounds coming through, but it’s all about the music. It’s a buildup. We’ve already been given a warning by Gabriel in the nightclub that one of the two women is at risk, so from that point, we are with Ethan who is desperately trying to make sure that risk is averted. That thread has to be carried through with a continuous emotion and pulse. And the music does that.

…it’s a distraction if there’s so much sound in a piece, whether it’s percussion in the music or footsteps in the sound design. If there’s no need for it, then don’t have it.

That said, there are some scenes with no music and it’s all effects and feet and everything all over the place.

The filmmakers are incredibly tuned in and conscious of the role that sound has to play in their movies. It’s a delight to work with people who have that understanding and that ambition because a lot of the decisions are made long before you get to the final dub stage. And so you are not there trying to shoehorn in sound on sound, effects on music on dialogue. You know what’s leading and you don’t argue with it. You don’t try to fill the gaps. It’s like putting pebbles in a glass and then gravel and then sand and you say, “The glass is full.” But then you try to add water to the glass; you keep going. But actually, the air within the track is what gives it that sense of immersion, I think.

I think if I wasn’t listening so intently to the sound, I wouldn’t have missed the footsteps. But I did miss the impact when they jumped onto the boat. But I see what they’re going for…

JM: There’s a lot of that on the train roof as well. When Paris jumps on the train roof, it’s barely there. You’re not aware of it as much as you would expect to be in other mixes, for example.

And then there’s the sound of the train itself. This is a big steam-powered locomotive and you’d expect to hear the train more often when you’re inside. But actually, it only punctuates a couple of moments, like when they’re talking to Dellinger…

JM: Yes, it was there during that talk. And also, they wanted to highlight the fact that the train was out of control. They wanted these big bangs and jolts to remind the audience that they were on a runaway train.

Earlier on, when you are with The White Widow, it’s very quiet. They wanted the train to sound very luxurious and smooth. So there’s quite a lot of work in the train sounds to subliminally remind the audience of where we are in the arc of the storyline for that section – the train starts normal, and then it becomes a runaway train and then it becomes chaos. There was a huge amount of buildup and we started with an awful lot more sound, which we then peeled away until we were in a place where we recognized what was happening.

…we started with an awful lot more sound, which we then peeled away until we were in a place where we recognized what was happening.

Amongst all that, you’ve got dialogue all the way through as well. So there are many moments where you would miss things because you are listening to the dialogue. You might not be aware of the change in tempo of the train, or the fact that all the light fixtures, the glasses, and the cutlery on the table are vibrating.

It’s fascinating listening to the M&E mix of this movie. You think that we don’t hear the footsteps in the mix at all, but when you listen to the M&E, they’re there. It’s just that it’s a dialogue scene and so they’re at a level where they don’t intrude, but they are still there. It was a nice surprise when we did the M&E, to listen back without the dialogue and realize that actually everything is there; it’s just at a level where it doesn’t conflict with the dialogue. But it can be heard when the dialogue is not in the mix. So that’s reassuring for the mixers, who’ve spent weeks pre-dubbing foley.

Everything is at a level that is intended, to emphasize either a character or a plot point, or both.

Everything is at a level that is intended, to emphasize either a character or a plot point, or both. There’s a scene where they’re in the airport and Ethan and Grace are trying to avoid the goons who are trying to find them, so they’re walking at quite a pace. That was one of the moments where we thought that we actually do want to hear them walking because the whole point of it is that they are trying to get away. They need to be stealthy but her heels aren’t stealthy. So, therefore, her footsteps add to the tension. Then there’s Benji slamming down the metal stairs onto the gantry as he goes into the luggage sorting bay. And his foot impacts are really loud. So everything has a part to play.

But, there was a point made about when you arrive at the airport you’d expect to hear footsteps on that hard surface for all those people. You’d expect to hear a huge array of clacking feet. But again, no. The story was that we needed to see Gabriel and we needed to follow the suitcase. And the feet aren’t telling that story, so we don’t need them. It’s really interesting because it’s a real discipline; it’s their take on how to get as clean a track as you can get without the distraction of the sound teams’ dedicated eye and ear for detail.

That’s a credit to the filmmakers for understanding the importance of sound and not the necessity of it.

But these choices do make for a clean track. Not every shot is full of sound. Even though it’s visually full, it’s not sonically full. And that’s nice. That’s a credit to the filmmakers for understanding the importance of sound and not the necessity of it. They don’t play by the rules that if you see it, you hear it. They play by the rules that sound is there to encourage the story, add clarity, and help the narrative. It plays a huge part in the whole process of filmmaking.

It is a great challenge to be able to create exactly what they’re going for because they have such a strong idea about what they don’t want to hear. They know what’s not necessary. And they know what they do want in terms of what’s beneficial for their vehicle, for their story. It’s such a collaborative process because everything you present has to have a reason for it. It can’t just be there because that’s what’s on the screen. It has to have a subtext as well, or have a reason, a purpose to drive something. I think it’s really interesting and it’s a nice challenge.

Since you’ve worked with these filmmakers before, did you have a good idea of what they might not want? And did that lighten your workload? Or did you just hit everything and peel it away during the mix?

JM: It’s a lot easier to mute it on the stage than to find the sound effects in a very short amount of time. So we cover everything and it’s a bit like the masters when they do their oil painting; they layer it on and then they start taking layers of oil paint away to reveal what’s underneath. That’s very much the way the soundtrack evolves. It starts with everything and then it diminishes as we make room for important effects and dialogue.

It starts with everything and then it diminishes as we make room for important effects and dialogue.

For instance, in the chase scene with the Fiat and the Hummer, some ADR lines were added quite late in the process as Tom wanted to emphasize the relationship between Ethan and Grace, and the fun and chaos of the car chase. To add the extra ADR lines, we took the top end of the screech from the skid out and put a line of dialogue in. It’s merely frames that you have to play with, not even seconds. You take out something to make room to add something in.

Another issue is that if it’s too screechy throughout the scene then it becomes tiring for the audience, even though there’s no music. The screeches and the glass smashes were a big deal because they were all high register. High-register sounds are exhausting, whereas low-end sounds are satisfying.

Behind The Music of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One – with composer Lorne Balfe:

 
The Dolby Institute Podcast brings you this interview with Scottish composer Lorne Balfe, where he discusses his incredible original score for the latest addition of the Mission: Impossible franchise. Guest host Jon Burlingame returns to delve into Lorne’s process — including some on-the-fly performances during his interview — and why he so badly wanted to record elements of the soundtrack in so many locations from around the world:

Watch the interview below:

…if it’s too screechy throughout the scene then it becomes tiring for the audience…

When the car hits the scooters and knocks them over, or when the car hits another car, the immediate sounds that one thinks of are “smash” and “crash.” But because Tom has been in that situation (he’s the driver), he knows how it actually sounds. He’d give us explanations that the sound is really a “pang!” And so we’d dull it down until he’d go, “Yes, that’s how it sounds. It’s a much heavier sound.” It’s a more satisfying sound and it’s less abrasive on the ears. You’re holding back on the top frequencies so that when the strings and the horns happen in the music, they fill that space that you’ve been avoiding. It gives the dynamic range a variation from sound effects to music. That works well in some of these scenes, particularly on the train, and in the car chase.

The Fiat is so tiny but, of course, it’s souped up for Ethan in the movie so it has this unique sound. What went into the sound of that car?

JM: That Fiat exists. It was actually fitted out with an electric engine from another car. So when Ethan first takes off with Grace in the car and it lurches into the shopfront doorway, I don’t think it was wholly intentional. I think controlling a car that size with an engine that powerful was a genuine prank and it’s hilarious. The fact that this guy who can fly planes (and do incredible things) can’t drive this tiny car because this thing is so frisky sets up the whole humor of that chase scene from the very beginning. The humor in it is wonderful, and it sets up this real cat-and-mouse scenario.

We went to record the car knowing that it was a real thing…

We went to record the car knowing that it was a real thing (with the engine and the whole lot).
And the only sounds that we walked away with and used in the final track were the creaks and the door bangs. They had a very tinny, slightly feeble sound that made it funny and made it feel like it could fall apart at any moment yet it had this insane engine that sounds like something from Ghostbusters powering up.

And the only sounds that we…used in the final track were the creaks and the door bangs.

So we bought a clutch of electric skateboards because they have a remote that controls the acceleration and deceleration of the electric motors on the wheels. We mic’d them up in different ways, and that gave us the ability to go to town with the dynamic movements of the car.

Then the sound designers added extra pitch bends and variations to those recorded sounds. There was a point when the Fiat was doing donuts in the square at the bottom of the Spanish Steps and the director thought it was weird – like it was missing an engine. It sounded weird to hear the skids and nothing else, but it was an electric engine! It was a twist on what we are used to hearing for a car chase with all the screeching and the revving. So the only time you hear the Fiat is when you get close up to the car. Then you hear the high whine of the engine.

But what it did (for the benefit of us sound nerds) was allow us to soup up the Hummer and make that mega-massive, mega-masculine, and heavy in the low-end frequency. So it sounded like if it landed on the Fiat then the Fiat would be completely squashed. We could have that fantastic diversity between the two and it made it all the funnier and all the more absurd.

What went into the sound of the Fiat driving down the Spanish Steps?

JM: Most of it is very short skids cut in rapid succession as it’s hitting each step. That gives you the sense that it’s not powering down the steps; it’s trying to desperately stop itself from getting out of control. So the skid sound makes it feel like you are trying to hold back.

…we all sat in the Fiat and recorded us all jumping up and down so the suspension was creaking and the car was screeching.

To capture all the sounds of the banging and the bouncing, we all sat in the Fiat and recorded us all jumping up and down so the suspension was creaking and the car was screeching. Then we cut it very tight and we modulated it to give you that sense that every step was being articulated by the tires hitting it.
The difference between that and the Hummer is that the Hummer comes down the stairs with huge bangs and rattles. It’s weighty and vulgar. The more detail and fine sound work we could do with the Fiat, the more brutal and base we could get with the Hummer.

The more detail and fine sound work we could do with the Fiat, the more brutal and base we could get with the Hummer.

The scene on the steps was a very early scene that we had available to work on and we kept honing it and honing it. As we were filling it in, we could hear that there was an overall sound continuing all the way through – this bending and twisting of the car chassis. That had to come out because it was taking away from the articulation of the Fiat as it was going down the steps. So you start with what you imagine it would sound like and then you strip away anything that might restrict or overwhelm the humor of the situation. And that’s obviously not always the case, but in this instance, humor was quite important.
 

What went into the sound of the Entity? How did its sound differ from the first time we hear it in the opening to the second time we hear it at the party in Venice?

JM: Interestingly, the first approach to the Entity was that music was going to be the signifier and the character of the Entity. It was a hard sell because we hadn’t quite established how much the Entity was going to appear and how big a part it was going to play visually.

A comment was made to McQ (director McQuarrie) by a fellow director who’s very friendly with a guy called Edgar Wright. And Edgar was wondering whether or not there would be a sound signature for the Entity. McQ came away and thought maybe we could try that as well.
We could let the music do something and we could see if the sound design team had something.

…the digital cable from the TV to the soundbar was making this extraordinary, modulated buzzing sound…

During this time, I got a call from my daughter saying, “Dad, the TV’s broken. I can’t hear any sound. It sounds all weird. Can you come and fix it?” (Of course, if you’re a sound person, you get asked to fix anything that makes a noise.) So I got home and somehow the digital cable from the TV to the soundbar was making this extraordinary, modulated buzzing sound, which made no sense at all, but it did change slightly with the sound that was feeding it. So I thought, “Oh, this is great. I couldn’t make this if I wanted to; I wouldn’t know where to start.”

So I got my phone out, put a mic on it, and started recording this sound.

So I got my phone out, put a mic on it, and started recording this sound. I thought, “I know what I’ll do just to be safe. I’ll play Rogue Nation through it. So at least I know it’s consistent with the Mission Impossible movies.”

I recorded about two and a half minutes worth of this sound while my daughter was sitting there going, “Can you just fix it, please?”

When I captured the recording, I had no idea what it would be useful for, whether it would be even something to feature. But, this is what we do. We hear things and we record them.

Almost a year and a half later, we’re at the final mix and McQ asked if we had a sound for the Entity that we could play with, and I got my phone out and played the recording. He said, “That’s good. Let’s put it in and see how it plays.”

So we laid it up and we had this sound, but how often do we hear this sound? Where do we hear this sound? Does this sound tie us into a visual or is it just a sound? The first time we really thought about it and felt it was most needed was in the nightclub because everybody was responding to something that wasn’t there as an audio cue.

So when Gabriel says, “You know that this might even be here,” Ethan stands up and looks around and there are visual cues with the lights on the boards bursting. But when we put this sound in, it felt like it tied us into the Entity.

…I like to think that the evolution of the visual effects for the Entity and the sound effects for the Entity were hand in glove.

Then we tried some experiments using bits of dialogue from the film in amongst the Entity treatment. It was almost like the Entity was replaying lines from them. But that didn’t work. It was too complex and trying to be too clever.

So to tie in the sound, we thought about using the Entity sound early on in the submarine when we see the Entity screen change. (The Entity screen hadn’t changed by then, but I like to think that the evolution of the visual effects for the Entity and the sound effects for the Entity were hand in glove.) Knowing that there would be a sound to tie in with that helped to establish: A) what the sound was, and B) what the visual was – this sort of blue eye. The two characters became one and it became an ominous threat that you didn’t necessarily need to see all the time because you might hear it and you didn’t necessarily need to hear it all the time because you might see it.

There’s a little screen in the control room on the submarine where the eye appears and it’s interesting but we didn’t want to put a sound with it so much because that’s too obvious. And I don’t know if you caught the very end of the end credits, but there’s a little Entity thing going on at the end of the movie.

This is unique. No other soundbar has done this and has been recorded.

It became a very satisfying collaboration and creation; everybody got excited by it. It worked really well. And there was some question of, “Does it sound too much like this? Does it sound too much like that? Are people going to think we’ve just ripped off this idea?” But I’ll tell you one thing. This is unique. No other soundbar has done this and has been recorded. It was one of those fortuitous glitches that paid off.

This sound is unique, so actually the challenge for us was trying to replicate this effect to treat Benji’s voice when he is guiding Ethan through the corridors in Venice. We had to try and emulate this modulation and use EQ to affect Benji’s voice with the same sense of identity that the Entity had. And we got there to a degree, but it didn’t have quite the same sound.

…we had to layer the Entity sound beneath Benji’s voice so that we knew that it was being manipulated by the Entity.

So we had to layer the Entity sound beneath Benji’s voice so that we knew that it was being manipulated by the Entity. We found that if we cut Benji’s voice so that it came in and out and was clear when it needed to be, and then had the Entity sounds playing underneath, the gaps in the dialogue would allow the Entity sounds to come through. This made it sound like the voice was morphed with the Entity sound while still retaining the clarity that we needed. It was always there as a character in the background. And it works.

Getting this to work was a bit tricky, much like the transition from Russian to English at the front of the film in Sevastopol. Here, we wanted the audience to feel like they’re slowly starting to understand the Russian language because it’s slowly transitioning into English. These types of things are seemingly quite straightforward, but they take a lot of nudging and coercing to feel right, so it’s not just cutting from one language to another. It has to be a segue that feels natural.

There’s a sequence with two different fights happening: Ethan versus Paris and Gabriel’s goon in the alleyway, and Gabriel versus Grace on the bridge. The two fights are very different, but there’s a rhythm that connects the two…

JM: Music carries you through that sequence. That fight in the alleyway had an interesting progression. Initially, we did a track lay with all the sound effects that you’d expect to hear – the bumps, pushes and smashes, the knees, and the metal pole hitting. Tom came in and listened and said, “It’s okay, but I don’t feel like I’m there.”

…you have the stunt actor in that scene now sitting next to you, telling you what it feels like to be hit in the chest with a metal pole.

Again, this is one of those extraordinary scenarios where you have the stunt actor in that scene now sitting next to you, telling you what it feels like to be hit in the chest with a metal pole. (Actually asking us if we knew what it’s like to be hit with a metal pole! Thankfully, no, I haven’t got a clue.) Tom always has this very strong perspective about making sure the audience feels how it is to be in that tight situation – like the cameraman has to be in there and so does the sound recordist and we are the sound recordist’s aid.

So we took all the production sound from that scene, reinstated it, and wove it between the sounds that we had laid in. We didn’t want it to be too martial arts with a whole gamut of whooshes as you’d have in a Kung fu movie. The pipe should make a whoosh because that’s hollow and it’s going to whine as it goes through the air, but it shouldn’t hit every time. It should only hit occasionally and it should be clumsier and not as crisp and as clean.

That was Tom’s sense of perspective, and plausibility, and reality; he knows that if the audience winces, then they’re feeling it. He wanted it to be that brutal. It’s an uncomfortable fight because it feels so real. It’s sweaty and it’s gritty and it’s not clean. There are many other action films where you just go, “Man, that guy would be dead by now. There’s no way you can get away with all that and still get up and fight more.” Whereas in this film, you feel like they are both spent at the end of this fight. The fact that Ethan manages to get the upper hand is something you don’t see coming.

So we took all the production sound from that scene, reinstated it, and wove it between the sounds that we had laid in.

In interviews I’ve read since the film’s release, Pom Klementieff (playing Paris) said she encouraged Tom to make contact when he hits because it spurs her performance to be more aggressive. You really get that in that scene.

In the other fights with Gabriel and Grace and Ilsa, there are these incredible, sweeping overhead shots and low angles. It’s balletic almost, and you never get that same sense of intensity. Grace is giving it her all and she’s capable. This woman can handle blades. But you get the sense that Gabriel always has the upper hand even when she pulls out a second knife. A knife fight is more orchestrated and disciplined. You do this to parry that. There’s much more air in it. It’s sweeping and there are bigger moves.

What makes that different from the fight with Ilsa is that Ilsa’s fight with Gabriel gets tighter and tighter into the physical combat until the very last strike. And that’s so shocking because you are not expecting that.

As much as it is visually beautiful…the sound is doing the same thing.

Now you’ve got Ethan running (we love Ethan running) and there’s this incredible buildup as you think he’s going to get there. We don’t hear footsteps; there are barely any sound effects. Sound effects only come in towards the end of that final fight. It’s all about the music and building up to that final moment.

We go from the explosive fight in the alley – where you feel confined and constricted and slightly grubby – to this balletic, orchestrated fight that becomes more and more detailed, more and more uncomfortable, more and more intense until its surprising conclusion. It’s an incredible construction. As much as it is visually beautiful, with dynamic and varied angles high and low and the camera movements throughout, the sound is doing the same thing. You have hard effects, music, and a bit of breathing. Then the music steps back. It’s a really deft and well-handled emotional scene, I think. It’s hard to know where to start bringing the energy down so you can rest. It’s an extraordinary scene, so cinematic.

Ethan and Gabriel are fighting on top of the train, and there’s a great scene where it goes into the tunnel. You hear the knife swooping across the metal train roof, and the stone ceiling scraping across their backs. Can you talk about your sound work for this scene?

JM: That was a lot of fun. And again, there was no music. The train fight scene is all about effects and immersion; you want to feel the jeopardy of being on the roof of that train going at breakneck speed – the precarious nature of trying to fight somebody on a train roof with all the wind and the whooshes and the gantries that they have to duck under.

The tunnel scene started with what I’d call a very standard process. It’s going into a tunnel, so everything has to be reverberated; we’re going to have the sound of the train bouncing back off the walls and we’re going to have these overhead lights whooshing by. The clickety-clack is going to be a bit weird because it’s bouncing off the walls, and there’s the train whistle that’ll help. You would expect to hear these sounds throughout the train fight but we listened to it and it wasn’t different enough.

We wanted this backdrop of sound that would make you want to get the hell out of there.

So I went through our library of tires and cars on bridges. There are a couple of recordings I took in New York underneath the Brooklyn Bridge. You can hear the cars above on that crazy road surface, which has this weird groove on it. It sounds like weird tires on a serrated surface. It’s an extraordinary sound that’s very New York. It’s a very identifiable sound. It sounded cool so I used some of that. And there were a couple of other sounds that I got from underneath the train station at Waterloo. As the trains come out, they go over this bridge that goes over the South Bank. You can stand underneath it and record that sound.

It was all about getting a perspective of being on the other side of the sound of the train (or car, or whatever). We stacked up tracks with all these different frequencies of different traffic and just different sounds, like the sound of wind going across a pipe, which had this odd moaning sound. We weren’t trying to describe anything in this melee of sound. We weren’t trying to be specific.
We wanted this backdrop of sound that would make you want to get the hell out of there. We wanted you to feel like it was claustrophobic and horrible and airless.

…when you hear that track, you can hear voices within it as if the brain’s trying to pick up on the frequencies of things that aren’t really there.

The weird thing is when you hear that track, you can hear voices within it as if the brain’s trying to pick up on the frequencies of things that aren’t really there. We kept wondering if Ethan and Gabriel were making grunts and sounds, but they weren’t. There’s no dialogue at all. It’s just all these different frequencies making you think they are.

We created this bizarre track with the whole purpose of being oppressive and then added in all the lights going by overhead and the knife sounds.

If you knew the volume of those knife foley sounds, you’d be shocked. If you played that normally, you’d think there’s no way you could have it that loud. It was as loud as the Top Gun jets; it was just insanely loud. But amongst all that other noise, we could just get it audible in the mix.

If you knew the volume of those knife foley sounds, you’d be shocked.

That scene was great in the Atmos mix because it’s all around you in all frequencies. It also allowed us to get out of the tunnel really successfully because when we get out into the open air, we’re getting away from this enclosed space. To make the most of that transition, our mixer Mark Taylor did a little scoop away before we get out of the tunnel. So there’s that one fraction of a beat – two frames of silence – before the whoosh of air as you leave the tunnel.

Then we’re with Grace at the front of the train and the music kicks in and we’re off again. It’s that handoff between emotion and visceral physicality that McQ is eager to embrace and to generate because he loves that. He loves that counterpoint of beating the audience over the head with the physicality and then giving them some emotional music and letting them enjoy the ride of this next section. It’s a real joy to be able to work on a project where you have that dynamic range and the freedom to explore it.

And that’s something he does so successfully in the film. The director and you, the sound team, working together…

JM: Everyone together. We’ll do a scene and turn it over to Eddie Hamilton, our picture editor, and he will then work on it with McQ in the cutting room. We’ll get notes back or occasionally, I go in and sit with them and talk about ideas for other things. But there’ll always be an updated version of a scene or a mix of a scene as we are going through the process. We are always sculpting and shaping and pushing and pulling, and they’re always coming back with ideas to try. The process is a real two-way street. We’re not being asked at the end to do our best work. There is a lot to be said for that. Quite often the cut will change considerably, and we might have to just ditch a scene and start again because the conform will change the dynamics of the soundscape in a way that neutralizes its potential.

We are always sculpting and shaping and pushing and pulling, and they’re always coming back with ideas to try.

For instance, the desert sandstorm scene at the beginning of the movie was originally a long scene – two or three times the length it is in the final cut. There were lovely bits of detail here and there that were just simply that. But as McQ rightly says, if it doesn’t earn its place, it doesn’t stay at the table. They don’t want to take these things out but they realize the story is told better by doing it this way.

And so we redesigned the soundtrack for that scene literally days before we finished the mix. We tried to keep the integrity of what we had but because of the length change, it needed to be more dynamic, more low-end, and more bombastic. The detail had to be more generic detail, like the building shaking rather than the swings blowing in the wind. It had to have this brutality and immediacy to it, which is a different brief yet it’s the same scene. It’s really interesting. You find yourself using the same ingredients to make a completely different dish. It has to be as satisfying and as tasty, but it has to be different yet use the same ingredients.

It’s that process of finding the story, knowing the story, refining it, and then getting it to a point that it’s very satisfying. You feel like you’ve got the best of every part of it. That’s the process for Tom, McQ, and Eddie. They work hard and challenge each other, constantly pushing to see how much they can bend it and twist it to get it to do the same thing but better. And we aim to try and match that verve.

My favorite sequence in the film was Ethan and Grace trying not to fall through the train cars as they go over the cliff where the bridge used to be. It happens one car at a time and each car has a new challenge… the kitchen car with the fire, and the furniture car with the piano. They’re climbing up through each car as it hangs over the edge. Thrilling! Can you talk about your sound work for this sequence?

JM: It’s amazing. From concept to final mix, it is an extraordinary piece of engineering – the fact that they made the train cars, they made the locomotive that they then drove off the bridge, and they had the camera operator suspended on a harness so he was in the train car with Ethan and Grace as they are trying to battle their way through so you get the sense that you are in there with them. There’s all of that attention to immersion and action and drama, so you see the sweat on their faces and veins popping in their necks, and to throw onto that boiling fat, and dishes, and knives, and a piano, it’s bonkers. It was so much fun to do.

For the sound team, the scene that brought the most satisfaction was the kitchen scene because every part of that was perilous.

There are so many aspects of that one scene, and it needed the least direction in terms of how much fun you could have with it. You couldn’t go too far because it was already too far.

For the sound team, the scene that brought the most satisfaction was the kitchen scene because every part of that was perilous. There were such different sounds to play with, like the splashing oil, which makes the floor slippery, the dishwasher slamming down and them hanging onto that, and the deep fryers. Everything had its place, its moment of reveal, so you could hit those sounds without fighting against anything else. The timing of it is sensational.

Everything had its place, its moment of reveal, so you could hit those sounds without fighting against anything else.

In the next car, for the piano scene, we worked the hardest on that one to create that tension building up to the final hand grab. As the piano was hanging there, it needed to be banging against the side of the train car and it needed to have that discordant piano string clang. Music supervisor Cecile Tournesac and her team happened to still be scoring while we were mixing this scene. They were at the studio and we asked them to record some piano bangs with the lid open so we could get these resonant strings.

We got this multi-track of about 50 tracks of piano bangs and crashes. And it was really good. But of course, you put it in and wonder is that too low a pitch? Is that too high a pitch? Are we trying to say this is a lighter moment or is this a heavy moment and should this be in a low key? When music and sound design blend, the sound designers are going, “Well, I think this is more exciting if we have it there.” And the musicians are going, “It’s an optimistic key.”

McQ has an incredible intuition with music and score, so he knew what he wanted…

So that was quite subjective. McQ has an incredible intuition with music and score, so he knew what he wanted and we would just go through and play it until he heard what he wanted. The same went for the train whistle. He knew what he wanted when he heard it and if something else snuck through that wasn’t the same sound, he’d know it immediately. He’d go, “No, that’s not the one. Why haven’t we got the same whistle?” He’s very dialed into tones.

We had so much in that scene; we had rubble as the bridge is crumbling and that was creating the momentum for the train car to go over the edge. One person wanted to have more rubble sounds so we knew the storyline of the bridge collapsing. Another person wanted to have more creaking, groaning metal of the train car itself. There was a to-and-fro of sounds, trying a bit of this and that, and having that bit here and trying that bit there. We were making sure that the balance was right to give you the sense all the time of the jeopardy that’s getting more and more dangerous even though the scene is getting calmer and calmer. The tension is getting more and more taut because even though you’re not in the kitchen with stuff flying everywhere and things on fire, you have this piano to worry about, that’s hanging by one little metal hook. All the tension of that moment is created by one tiny thing – the hook holding up the piano.

At the same time, there are cutaways to the train car linking mechanism either snapping completely or just missing a tooth on the thread. Everything is building. We had so much fun with that. It’s a monumental reel for mixing, from the train chase to the final over-the-cliff moment. A lot was going on in that reel.

How was Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One a unique experience for you?

JM: There were so many elements to it that I’d never experienced before. From a schedule standpoint, we started this movie before we completed Top Gun: Maverick, so we’ve been in and out of this film for many years. And, fingers crossed, I hope this is the last Covid-affected film that I have to work on.

Creatively, we had this challenge of keeping things fresh. We’d done the car chase very early on and we used it for presentation at CinemaCon. So we spent a huge amount of love and time on it, but other elements didn’t get that. It was an extraordinary process of a story coming together, and once it was all there, it started coming together in ways that (we all felt like) everything was complimenting everything else. It was all starting to fit together really well.

…so much of it felt like it came together during the last five weeks of the dub.

There were times when we (sound editorial) couldn’t quite work out how the soundscape was going to map out. Unlike most films that I’ve done, which are over a much shorter period, the soundscape is clear – you know where you’re going to be, where you’re going to end up, and how it needs to be done. But on this, we didn’t have that clarity because we weren’t sure when we were coming back. We didn’t know if we were going to have the same people on the same crew. We had to bring in other people who hadn’t ever done a Mission Impossible film before. So there was a whole language of translation for some of the team members who weren’t aware of how the filmmakers like things to be done or their preference in style.

So there were challenges in a lot of different areas. But I think, strangely, so much of it felt like it came together during the last five weeks of the dub. All the nuts and bolts seemed to tighten simultaneously – the music, the sound design, the ADR that we were getting in (which wasn’t much), the edit that Eddie was constantly improving, making sure that it was absolutely as tight, as accurate, and as perfect as possible. That kept us on our toes. It was a bit like climbing through the train at the end of the movie; you never quite knew what was coming up in the next train car but you get there in the end.

A big thanks to James Mather for giving us a behind-the-scenes look at the sound of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One and to Jennifer Walden for the interview!

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