Making the Mystical Sound of Marvel’s ‘Moon Knight’ — with Mac Smith and Bonnie Wild

The name Marvel is synonymous with superheroes. And while their new series Moon Knight tells an action-packed superhero tale, it also treks into new territory – the horror genre. The show leans into dark and suspenseful moments, like protagonist Steven (played by Oscar Isaac) being stalked by a jackal-headed creature through a museum.

But in true Marvel form, it also incorporates comedy: Steven is a good-natured guy, and his peaceable approach to life runs counterpoint to the violence he encounters. And when he does embrace his superstrength to fend off foes, like taking on the jackal creature in Ep. 2, it’s almost whimsical. His version of Moon Knight is as effective a superhero as Marc’s more militant one (the other avatar of Khonshu, also played by Oscar Isaac).

For the Skywalker Sound team – led by supervising sound editors Mac Smith and the 3x-Emmy winning, CAS and MPSE Award-winning Bonnie Wild (also re-recording mixer) – the variety of genres employed in Moon Knight offered the opportunity to get creative in different ways – from building mysterious-sounding auras for Khonshu filled with whispers, wind, sand, and birds to designing magical portals that allow creatures from Egyptian mythology (like the jackal-creature) to enter our world. There are booming god-like vocal processes, swishy knife fights, energetic parkour-filled foot chases and grisly glass-filled shoe sounds that needed to be designed. Here, Smith and Wild talk about designing and mixing all those things and more!

Marvel Studios’ Moon Knight | Official Trailer | Disney+

In Ep. 1, Steven sees the bird warrior Khonshu for the first time during an intense experience in the hallway and elevator of his building. Can you talk about your approach to the sound of this scene?

Sound Supervisor Mac Smith

Mac Smith (MS): The showrunners were leaning into more of the horror aspects – a genre that Marvel hasn’t explored too much so they wanted to just go for it.

We wanted to make Khonshu sound mysterious. They had built some ideas in the Avid, but we wanted to take it further. We explored building a lot of elements with sand, wind, and birds, and also some whispers to make it sound almost like it’s this ancient spirit kind of entity. Often when Khonshu appears, it starts with some of those whispery elements when there’s time to do that, and then it builds into more of the wind and the sand.

We really went for it on that first reveal to make it scary. And the composer Hesham Nazih definitely hit that moment too.

I thought the elevator parts were really fun too because we can make all those elevator doors and the movement of the elevator just hyper-real and scary.

And Bonnie did a fantastic job leaning into the quiet and loud moments to make it jarring.

Bonnie Wild (BW): Having those elements all around us it’s like we’re really with Steven in the elevator, which helped that moment.

Sound Supervisor/Re-recording mixer Bonnie Wild

As Mac said, there are a lot of very real sounds that are grounding us, to make it very believable. Then, when we have those horror elements coming in, it’s playing with this question of what is real – is it in Steven’s head? Is he actually experiencing this? It’s giving us this ambiguity all the time; keeping it interesting. Early on in the show, we’re still learning about these characters, about Marc and Steven and what is going on with them.

Cutting out of that sequence to Steven waking up on the bus was also fun. There are numerous transitions like that one throughout the show that we really worked on. As Mac said, the showrunners leaned into everything; they didn’t pull back. Sometimes on a project there’s an idea and then the idea gets backed away from as people get nervous because they’re venturing into new territory. But with this show with Marvel, they really leaned into it and went for it, which is why it’s successful, I think. You just go for it.

MS: In the elevator, there was a happy accident when Steven thinks he’s safe after the old woman steps out, but then he turns around and sees Khonshu up close before he quickly wakes up on the bus. I had taken a monkey scream and ran it through a delay plugin and, by accident, it ended up either sounding like a European siren or a car alarm. So I added a bit of Doppler effect to it. In the scene, the monkey scream starts with Khonshu in the elevator and carries over to when Steven wakes up on the bus; you hear it trail off. It’s very subtle, but that was just one of those fun things that ended up working.
 

Steven meets Khonshu a second time, in Ep.2, in the storage locker facility. This was a great scene. Khonshu is coming down the hall and all the lights are flicking on and off. I loved the sound of those automatic lights, with their big mechanical clicks and the reverb of them in that space…

MS: The lights were so over the top when Steven is walking with the storage facility attendant. But it works – those big, relay switch sounds. We set them up there, before Khonshu’s arrival, so that we could be scary with them when Khonshu does show up.
 

What went into the sound of Khonshu? He first shows up as a disembodied voice speaking to Steven. Khonshu sounds like he’s coming from everywhere. Later in the series, when we actually see him, his voice sounds less processed… or is that just because there’s a body to attach the voice to? How did you handle his vocals?

BW: I think it feels less disembodied because we see Khonshu. When we first hear him, there’s no visual tie-in and so he is very disembodied. When we were mixing him, we wanted to make his presence scary in a way, more overbearing, to make him very powerful. We’re not seeing the scale of him at that point – that he’s this big god – and so we wanted to establish his dominance, especially over Steven. So, Khonshu is loud and he takes the center stage of the mix.

As the season goes on, his dialogue is treated more conventionally, like dialogue. It still has the same treatment, but his voice is more embedded in the mix as we go along.

…we wanted to make his presence scary in a way, more overbearing, to make him very powerful.

MS: In that first episode, Bonnie was putting Khonshu in almost all the speakers in the Dolby Atmos surrounds, whereas later on, he’s more L-C-R.

BW: Khonshu’s voice in that first episode is more disorienting. We don’t ever get the chance to put dialogue in the surrounds; we barely pan it. So we got a bit of artistic license to have fun with it.

MS: That’s definitely something that the showrunners wanted to figure out early on; they wanted the gods to have a certain processing on them to make them stand out. They had tried out a few options on the picture side, but were never really happy with it. So that was one of my jobs back in December when we started to work on the show, to go through and make numerous versions of the vocal processing. We settled on the one that’s in the show now. They liked it and it stuck for Khonshu.

What went into the vocal processing for the gods?

MS: There’s all kinds of fun! I ended up making a document for the localization teams, so they could replicate the processing on Khonshu when they dubbed the show in different languages.

Mostly, I used this plugin called Thermal made by Output. It’s a crazy distortion plugin that has several different modules. It’s a combination of saturation, chorus, delay, and spread. Thermal was a big part of the sound, but not the only aspect of the processing. We pitched the voice of actor F. Murray Abraham (who voiced Khonshu) down a little bit at times, but only if the pitch of the performance was a bit high. If he was in his lower register, then we didn’t touch it.

It’s a combination of saturation, chorus, delay, and spread.

We also used a low-frequency enhancement tool called Bass-Mint from Unfiltered Audio to tweak the low-end.

We processed it as a stereo file and then gave that to Bonnie and Scott Lewis (the other re-recording mixer on the show) in the mix room to play with. So it was all AudioSuite-rendered by the time it got to the mix stage.

BW: On the stage, we did boom it and we added some reverb to it as well. We had a spacey reverb sound on Khonshu.

MS: My main concern for the vocal processing was intelligibility. We wanted to make sure it was still intelligible because it’s so easy to go too far on that sort of processing and then you can’t understand what’s being said.

In Ep. 1, there’s a great scene where Steven meets Marc in the mirror in the bathroom, and Marc pleads with Steven to let him take over the body so they can fight the jackal-headed creature that’s beating down the door. What went into the sound of that scene?

BW: That scene had some early design work from Mac and Kim Patrick (sound effects editor) for the jackal vocals.

Again, we’re dealing with horror there. That scene really starts with the lights going out in the museum and then that sequence starts. When we got to the mix, we had an active music cue through the top of that scene; it was getting to the action aspect pretty quickly. The first pass on that scene was quite different from where we ended up. When we all watched it back, we felt that we wanted to keep the creepy, horror, and suspense feelings.

When we all watched it back, we felt that we wanted to keep the creepy, horror, and suspense feelings.

So we did another pass and we took out a lot of the active elements of the score. For instance, there were some active string elements we took out. We stripped it all back so that as Steven is walking through the museum, it’s quiet and creepy and he can hear something is happening. We were using the ambiguity of what we hear – is it a lost dog in there? We don’t know that it’s this scary jackal. It’s more of this lost dog kind of howl that’s drawing him into the space. We wanted to leave room to build and to make it scary.

As we pan around and see the shadow of the jackal by the bathroom, it kicks off from there.

The foley crew at One Step Up did a great job on the jackal. He was weighty and we added some effects sweeteners to it as well. All the elements for that worked well.

There were a few passes on the jackal but it didn’t take long to design him. They did a good job on it!

MS: It was mostly Kim on the jackal, and she did a fantastic job. Once you saw the real jackal reveal, we wanted it to sound big and heavy, and scary. But, we also wanted moments where it sounded shrieky.

Sonically, we had to switch from the jackal being the dominant one in the fight to Moon Knight being the dominant one in the fight…

The biggest challenge was after Steven goes into the bathroom and he starts to transform into Marc, the scene cuts to off-camera around the corner. Sonically, we had to switch from the jackal being the dominant one in the fight to Moon Knight being the dominant one in the fight even before you see what’s happening. The jackal vocals needed to be very different, more desperate, as if it’s freaking out because it’s losing the fight. The punches from Moon Knight had to be really visceral.

I was wondering if they were going to have us pull back on how brutal Moon Knight was sounding but they were all for it.

BW: It was a tricky balance, especially when we see Marc in the mirror because we have a lot going on. The music is going; we have the feel of the room and we have the jackal pounding on the door. We had to keep the tension going and the action going because Steven is terrified of the jackal busting down the door.

But, we had to protect the dialogue there because that’s the story. That’s a really important moment. You see these two characters at the same time, see how different they are. Oscar Isaac’s performance is so good and you don’t want to tread all over that. You want to keep all these things intact. Oscar’s ability to play those two characters and to have them feel so different that you forget they’re the same person is incredible. Our job is to maintain that performance and not blur those lines when we’re not supposed to.

I love the impacts on the metal bathroom door – such great metal wronking sounds. Did you beat up any metal doors for this show?

MS: No, I don’t think we did. It’s funny, on this show instead of parsing out one episode to a specific effects editor and having them handle it from top to bottom, we ended up assigning elements to people who do that particular thing well. Terry (Teresa) Eckton (a legendary sound effects editor; her work goes back to some of the original Star Wars films) cut all the vehicles and all the doors for the whole series. She’s a master of those. And we gave her other things to do. But, it was fun to work that way on this show.

The show opens up with Harrow breaking a glass and pouring it into his shoes. Yikes!

MS: From what I understand, that was Ethan Hawke’s idea to open the show. He came up with the whole glass thing himself.

The director, producers, and picture editor always wanted more of the glass sound as Harrow is walking around but we had to be careful because we didn’t want it to sound like he’s eating glass. And you don’t want to get in the way of the dialogue. It was definitely a balance. There were times when we thought we were playing it too loud.

That must have been tough for the One Step Up foley team. I feel bad for whoever had to walk Harrow! That’s one tough day at the office…

BW: Well, they should have known that one day they’d have to walk around on glass (hahaha!)

MS: Yeah, we made sure that they did it completely realistically.

Just kidding. No Foley artists were hurt in the process of making Moon Knight.

BW: Foley artists have tough feet. They’re alright.

In Ep. 2, Layla and Steven have a standoff with Harrow and he stabs his cane into the floor and opens up this purple portal that lets the jackal out. How did you create the sound for that magical portal?

MS: That was Kim; she did a lot of work for Harrow’s magic, for his cane, and the energy and magic.

BW: There were elements of alligator mixed into that, like hissing and clicking.

MS: Harrow is channeling Ammit and she’s the crocodile goddess, so Kim incorporated some alligator and crocodile sound elements into the magic.

Steve and Layla fight the jackal, which is partially invisible – regular people (including Layla) can’t see it. Was it challenging to design and mix the sound for a fight that you only half see?

MS: It was challenging in that it could easily end up being too much. The jackal roars had to be in very specific places; they did a good job on the picture side deciding where that worked.

When the door first opens and you see the fight from Layla’s perspective that nothing is there, that was definitely a question because it felt super empty when we truly had nothing there. There was a lull in the music there, too. So we needed some wind gust
or something to signify that something big had happened.

It was all about going through the fight and making sure sounds were very specific to what you needed to hear in order to understand the story points.

It was all about going through the fight and making sure sounds were very specific to what you needed to hear in order to understand the story points. So, when Mr. Knight (that’s what they call Steven when he’s in the suit) grabs the bumper and crunches it, we had to sell that he does in fact have super strength even though he’s clumsy. We had to set up his super ability so that later on when he does that punch you believe that he can actually do that. Steven has all the ability, he just doesn’t realize it yet. So, it was definitely a dance, going through that fight sequence.

BW: Scott mixed that episode, so I got to sit back and check it out.

MS: Generally, Bonnie mixed all the odd episodes and Scott mixed the even ones.

BW: I did cut all the body falls through there at one point. I did an attempt at the bumper crunching sound but I knew that Terry was going to be better at it.

What about the knife fight at the top of Ep. 3? How were you able to have some fun with the sound here?

BW: That was fun! It was a cool opening with Marc doing parkour over the barrels and over the wall to get to the guys on the roof, and there’s the slow-motion knife spin.

We have to remember that they’re not superheroes and we can’t go at the fight like Marc is Moon Knight at that point. He’s only Marc; he’s kicking butt but only because of his training as a mercenary. So that’s cool because it’s visceral. And it’s funny when he slaps the young man because he can’t bring himself to punch him.

We had some percussion going and that’s always fun because you find the rhythm in the action.

That was a fun scene to mix. The music was cool through there. We had some percussion going and that’s always fun because you find the rhythm in the action. We can pick out the sounds that work with the rhythm of the music. I think that’s fun.

There’s a foot chase after that as well, which is cool. Marc is jumping off the truck and you see him pop back up.

What’s that called Mac?

MS: A Texas switch. It’s an old Hollywood trick where a stunt performer who, in this case, looks like Oscar Isaac jumps down but they go behind another vehicle and Oscar Isaac jumps up and runs. It looks like it’s one continuous movement but it’s actually two people that seamlessly create the performance.

If you’re on Twitter, I recommend searching #TexasSwitch. It’s more fun than searching the Wilhelm Scream.

What were some opportunities to get creative with sound for when Khonshu/Marc meet with the other gods? (This was a great space, by the way!) What went into this scene?

BW: Big reverbs.

MS: I had fun building out the ambiences for that using different fire and torch sounds, and layers that sound more mysterious and some that were more realistic that Bonnie could weave in and out of from moment to moment, and to make the space sound like a giant cave with a low tonal room tone.

Kim [Patrick] did the sounds for the gods coming into their avatars. And then the sounds for when Khonshu speaks – there is this ka-boom to signify that Khonshu is speaking through Marc. Kim did a fantastic job on all that.

BW: Did we layer the voices of F. Murray with Oscar for that in the end? I don’t think we did…

MS: No.

BW: At one point, we had a bit of both.

MS: Vanessa Lapato, our rockstar ADR editor, did an amazing job of syncing their voices so they could play together, but ultimately, they wanted just Oscar.

Later in that episode, Steven and Khonshu are turning back the night sky. What went into the sound of that scene?

BW: Everything! Everything went in there.

MS: Kim ended up leaving this project early to jump on another project so we brought in a new person that we hadn’t worked with yet, Leo Marcil, who had come from Wylie Stateman’s camp.

That was one of the first things that we threw at Leo and he did a great job of coming up with different layers of rock cracking and swirling movements and the fluttering of those stars. There are lots of layers in there.

You have to select the elements that are going to cut through the score because it’s big and you have to play it big.

BW: There was a lot in there. And the music is intense. For sequences like that, you have to complement the visual effects that are happening because there’s a story being told. The sound effects have to tell the story of what’s happening. You have to select the elements that are going to cut through the score because it’s big and you have to play it big. It’s the emotional drive. Hesham [Nazih]’s score was inherently big and one of my pet peeves is hearing big score played low. I always find myself leaning in when that happens. And you’re trying to avoid that as a mixer. If you see people leaning in, they’re straining to hear – whether that’s dialogue or something emotionally they’re trying to get from the music.

MS: That scene was a dance because during that moment of them turning the night sky, it cuts to inside the chamber of the gods and they’re chanting. That chanting, which was not part of the score, ended up being really important. Mohamed Diab was specific about the things he wanted to hear at certain times, like an Egyptian soloist that comes in as part of the score. That made for a very complicated dance that Bonnie had to do.

BW: We also had chanting in the score. We tried to pull back on that and push the chanting by the gods in the chamber, and try not to feel anything happening. Everything has to be seamless, and you have to keep the energy going.

Everything has to be seamless, and you have to keep the energy going.

MS: It’s like one of those shell games where you don’t realize that something has gone away; you’ve already established a sound and the audience heard it so you can pull it back but they’re still feeling that energy.

The music in the show was helpful in terms of sound because at times we didn’t have to do too much with sound if we knew that music would drive the scene.

With that said, Mohamed [Diab] and Grant [Curtis, exec. producer] definitely wanted the Egyptian scenes to sound as authentic as possible. That was important. So, we reached out to an Egyptian sound designer named Sara Kaddouri, and were able to get some sounds that she recorded in Cairo to use for the show. The showrunners didn’t want this to sound like your typical Hollywood movie that takes place in Egypt. They wanted it to be more realistic. And from what I’ve seen posted on Twitter, the audience is happy with how it sounds and with how it looks – that Egypt is represented as a modern civilization and not an antiquated one that is so often depicted with a yellow filter put onto all the shots. It was nice that the showrunners wanted to go for a much more modern feel, and that was fun.

In Ep. 4, Layla gets pulled into the wall of the tomb and we hear the creature off-screen before we see it. How were you able to have some fun with that?

MS: We had lots of fun with that ‘creature,’ which is called the Heka Priest. The directors – Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead – wanted it to sound unexpected, so not like a zombie. But they wanted it to definitely sound scary. It’s supposed to be this thousand-year-old human that’s kept alive through supernatural powers or magic.

They had established a bit of that clicking element in the Avid; it’s almost like an echolocation type of thing. So we came up with this philosophy that these creatures can’t see (they’re blind) and they have to use those clicks in order to hear what’s going on. We tried to get a range of emotions.

We probably spent about an hour just recording any sort of sound we could, from very subtle to big and screechy – all mouth clicks and throat clicks.

We ended up casting a famous voice actor, Fred Tatasciore, to do a bunch of sounds for the priest. He did an amazing job. We probably spent about an hour just recording any sort of sound we could, from very subtle to big and screechy – all mouth clicks and throat clicks. There was a note from the directors that they wanted it to sound sad at times, and not evil. We tried some sounds that felt like an ancient whispery language, like some incantation it would mutter while pulling out the organs of one of Harrow’s men. It’s not sing-songy, but more like something they’d mutter in order to keep themselves alive.

So when Layla gets pulled back, they definitely wanted it to sound ambiguous, so you’re not sure who’s winning.

We tried all kinds of different things and then Tim Farrell, one of our effects editors, took charge of everything we’d made and brought it home. He delivered his designs to the mix in a fantastic way.

There are two moments in that scene that use silence: right before Layla comes out, and when they fall off the cliff. They leave you emotionally tense because you’re not sure if Layla survived. I was very happy with how those turned out.

At the end of Ep. 4, Marc is in a mental hospital. He lets Steven out of the sarcophagus and it sounds really scary and tense in this moment, but at the end, the Hippo goddess Taweret shows up and says, “Hi!” and it’s so cheery. How were you able to have some fun here?

MS: We asked in our spotting session how much they wanted to play up the ambience of the mental hospital/psych ward. They wanted it to be more sterile and quiet, not to have the sounds of patients screaming or sounding like they’re in discomfort. So we kept it pretty simple.

In Dr. Harrow’s office, we had fun with the clock tick, and we played with other elements, like just a bit of street traffic. But, this was a moment to be quiet and have a different dynamic than earlier parts that felt more like Indiana Jones.

It was also fun when Marc runs around the corner after escaping Dr. Harrow’s office and you see lamps swinging. We have all sorts of wronks and creaks in there. Scott got to move those all around the room in the Dolby Atmos Home format.

What was your favorite experience of working on the sound of Moon Knight?

MS: Working with Bonnie!

BW: Working with our Skywalker Sound team!

MS: Our team was great.

BW: They were a really good team.

MS: We were super happy. And many of them were working remotely. It was essentially only me, Bonnie, and Scott at the Ranch. Everyone else was working from home. So that was challenging but we had calls all the time to check-in and everyone did feel like they were a cohesive unit.

BW: It was collaborative and creative. The show lent itself to that. The showrunners were open to all the crazy ideas we had. We didn’t have to back out of them.

A big thanks to Mac Smith and Bonnie Wild for giving us a behind-the-scenes look at the sound of Moon Knight and to Jennifer Walden for the interview!

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