Sean Garnhart on Crafting ‘Old’s ‘Experiential’ Sound and Dolby Atmos Mix

With his new film Old, Director M. Night Shyamalan aimed to make the return to movie theaters an experience that audiences can't get at home by taking full advantage of the Dolby Atmos surround field to create an immersive, inescapable beach soundscape. Here, sound supervisor/re-recording mixer Sean Garnhart discusses details of building and mixing the ocean sounds, designing the sound of the impassable canyon, using organic effects and foley to create a human connection to the characters, and more!

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Interview by Jennifer Walden, photos courtesy of Universal Pictures. Note: Contains spoilers

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Emmy and MPSE Award winning supervising sound editor/re-recording mixer Sean Garnhart — at WB Sound in NYC — has been collaborating with Director M. Night Shyamalan for several years now, starting with Glass in 2019. Recently, Garnhart earned a 2021 MPSE Award for his sound editing on Shyamalan’s Apple TV+ series Servant (read about his award-winning work on S2, Ep. 4 “2:00”).

Both of those projects are set, of course, in Philadelphia — Shyamalan’s favorite location for film production. But for his newest theatrical release Old — in theaters now — Shyamalan departs from expectation by taking viewers to a luxury resort on a remote island. It’s idyllic and yet, odd. The undercurrents of unease begin as Prisca and her family settle in. The atmosphere is lively and fun, but Prisca looks troubled. Tension comes from all sides: within Prisca’s family, with the other guests on a remote beach they visit, and with the beach location itself. The situation escalates as the vacationers discover they’re rapidly aging and there’s no escaping the beach.

Shyamalan also departs from convention on the sound and mix to create an ‘experiential’ soundtrack for theater-goers. Here, Garnhart talks about their unconventional approach to dealing with the ever-present ocean by using creative panning in Dolby Atmos, working with challenging location sound, using foley to create a human connection, building an atmosphere of unease, designing organic horror elements, and much more!

Old – Official Trailer [HD]

Director M. Night Shyamalan departed from his usual Philadelphia-area story setting for Old and transported audiences to a luxury resort on a tropical island. How did that impact his goals for sound? Did he have specific ideas for the sound of this location?

Sean Garnhart (SG): Did you notice that Prisca and Guy are from Philly?

I did! They live on Pine Street. So, the connection to Philly is still there…

SG: Night made it very clear to me from the beginning that he was more excited about the sound of this film than any other movie he had made. And, he purposely shot scenes with sound in mind. I love that!

Sound supervisor/re-recording mixer Sean Garnhart

A couple of scenes that come to mind are the 360-degree shots. When Prisca finally reveals she has a tumor, we’re panning in a complete circle. Dialogue can be heard all around us, and, of course, the ocean’s panning to match the shot. The same thing happens during the birth of the baby. Dialogue, the ocean, foley, and people’s efforts come from all around us depending on where the characters are on the beach.

[Night] really wanted this to be an example of how to use the Dolby Atmos format.

Night was very excited about the shot when Prisca realizes she is going deaf in one ear. Many times, he told me how much he loved the sound of the beach on that island while he was shooting. He described how sounds kept slapping off the huge rock walls.

Yeah, Night had huge goals for this movie sonically. He really wanted this to be an example of how to use the Dolby Atmos format.

He liked the sounds slapping off the rocks. That’s really specific. Was the production sound mixer able to capture impulse responses of that slap on the beach? Or IRs inside the cavern they walk through?
SG: No IRs, no.
 

NIGHT’S VISION FEATURETTE

Let’s talk about establishing the sound of the resort. When the family first arrives, the resort sounds happy and cheerful and there’s a lot of activity going on. But there’s also this undercurrent of unease. I think a bit of that was the score, but maybe the crowd, too? How did you create this conflicting feeling of the resort through sounds?

SG: You’re right about the score. When they’re driving up in the van, that uneasiness is very much only the score. And that was on purpose. The sound design was supposed to communicate the feeling that this is the most beautiful place on the planet. But the music helped to add an unnerving feeling, like, “What’s exactly happening here?”

Without the sounds of the waves crashing and the kids laughing and playing, that scene would have fewer dimensions.

There’s also a very cool sonic experience when we’re in the hotel room for the first time with the family getting settled and Prisca is outside on the balcony. There are lots of happy, lively people on the beach behind her. They’re off-screen in the surrounds. She’s apparently seeing this “happiness” but we, the audience, can see from her troubled face that she has something else on her mind. The sound design creates the contrast for this scene. Without the sounds of the waves crashing and the kids laughing and playing, that scene would have fewer dimensions.

I guess it’s seeing her troubled face and hearing the happiness of the kids screaming that gives it a dark edge…

SG: Yes! And we played with the rest of the family’s sounds here too. The fact that Guy’s dialogue is sometimes played from behind the glass was a very purposeful mix choice: we vaguely hear what Guy is saying as he’s interacting with the kids and reading the pamphlet; we’re clearly staying with Prisca’s perspective, which is supposed to be distracting with of all the excitement and liveliness in the surrounds.

The visuals don’t match what we hear so our minds figure out that something’s not quite right.

When the family arrives at that remote beach, they pass through this cavern. Can you talk about how you developed that sound of the cavern, from the initial pass through to the repeated (and thwarted) attempts to escape?

SG: Finding just the right combinations of sounds for those moments was an adventure. I love starting with organic sounds when I design things. Night loves this too. So, I started with organic rumbles, cave water drips, and tonal winds.

But at one point in my process, I followed picture a little too literally and tried to make sounds that matched the weird blurred and spinning visuals. No one liked this approach. The sound design became too distracting.

…some of the most effective sounds inside those canyon walls were simply human suffering sounds.

So, I switched gears and concentrated less on picture and more on how the canyon was affecting our characters: what sounds would our characters make while they were suffering? How would their moans and groans echo off the rocky walls?

Once I found the right balance of foley movement and painful efforts, those scenes became scary and uncomfortable again. To be honest, I believe some of the most effective sounds inside those canyon walls were simply human suffering sounds. It was simply how I reverberated them or placed them in the sequence.

Working through that design ended up being a great lesson. Usually, when I see fresh, cool visuals, I’m like, “Oh man, let me do something wacky and crazy with some sound design you’ve never heard before.” But again, sticking with the organic story-driven sounds proved to be the most effective design for those scenes.

It’s a small beach, but there are different areas to it, like the cave section where Chrystal is hiding as she gets older. Can you talk about your different sonic approaches for the different areas of the beach?

SG: I most definitely wanted to create unique soundscapes for each area of the beach. Anytime we had the chance to bounce sounds off the rocks, we took it. Anytime we could play with angles and perspectives of the natural formations, we jumped at those opportunities.

…Night wanted to make sure we always heard the ocean. He reminded me, “There is no escaping this ocean.”

I had a blast with the cave where Chrystal was hiding because it was so different from being outside on the normal beach. And we’re outside a lot in this movie. So, I really wanted to create a whole new sonic experience for that cave. Rocks rumble over our heads. I used the ceiling speakers!! Water dripped and splattered all around us.

But Night wanted to make sure we always heard the ocean. He reminded me, “There is no escaping this ocean.”

I used recordings I had captured of ocean waves crashing into rock jetties along the Jersey shore. I haven’t seen them in LA but on some beaches in New Jersey, you often find huge piles of rocks, called jetties, which jut out into the water. I think they’re used to save the beaches.

I used recordings I had captured of ocean waves crashing into rock jetties along the Jersey shore.

Many years ago, I stuck my mic down in a jetty, to listen to what the ocean sounded like from that perspective. I heard this amazing ‘interior sloshing/waves crashing but behind closed doors’ type of sound. And I thought, “Man, I wonder when I’m ever going to use this? Maybe I’ll use it in a sewer scene or something? Who knows…”?

Well, this scene in Old ended up being the perfect place to use that sound. We were inside a cave and Night wanted to hear the waves from an interior perspective. Done!!
 

Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures

It’s like LEGO Batman said, “ABR… always be recording.” It’s a good motto for any sound person. Always be recording because you never know…

SG: Exactly!! Anytime I’m on vacation, I’m always recording. My family knows by now…in fact if we’re all together and we hear a strange or distinct sound, often times my kids in a mocking tone say, “Dad, you should record that!!”
 

Being on a small beach, you’re dealing with the ever-present ocean. I loved your use of panning for the ocean, to keep the sound from being overwhelming and to help establish the characters’ relative distance from the water. Can you talk about your approach to panning and mixing the ocean sounds? Did you know this was how you were going to play with the ocean sounds? Or was there a process of discovery on how to deal with this ever-present element?

SG: Thank you for noticing all the panning of the ocean! I panned and changed the perspective of the ocean on almost every picture cut while we were on the beach.

And to answer your question, I did not know I was going to do that, and to be honest, I didn’t think that approach was going to work as well as it does.

Every shot has a balance of ocean on one side and sonic reflections of the ocean on the other side.

But Night insisted on that approach. He said, “Hey Sean, let’s try this. If we’re going to make this an Atmos movie let’s try it this way.” And so we did. And I’m grateful he pushed me!

Every shot has a balance of ocean on one side and sonic reflections of the ocean on the other side. Sometimes those sides were left and right, sometimes front and back. It just depended on where the ocean was in relation to the camera.

For the non-reflective ocean sounds, I used waves that I recorded on the Jersey shore. But for the reflective ocean sounds, I used recordings a friend of mine captured in a cove in California, which ended up being great because the mic was pointed at the rocks of the cove, as opposed to directly at the ocean.

Panning the ocean for every shot was intense. I knew Night wanted a full Atmos mix and I was all for that. But this approach was extreme and out of my comfort zone. I was worried that the result would be too distracting. But I figured out a way to make each cut flow together and successfully perceive the ocean all around us.
 

Did you spend the majority of the mix placing and panning the ocean and reflection sounds?

SG: Yes, we spent a lot of time not only placing the ocean panning-wise, but also finding that balance between the reflective sound and the direct sound. Night was very interested in hearing both.

…we felt the reflections on one side and heard the harsh, inescapable ocean on the other…

And sometimes if I played a reflective sound too loud it read as ocean on the wrong side. This sounds so simple, but because the production dialogue was so noisy, we had to find that precise balance where we felt the reflections on one side and heard the harsh, inescapable ocean on the other while still hearing the words. We did a lot of weaving — as we always do when mixing — but this mix was a significant festival of weaving.

Let’s talk about that dialogue. What were some challenges in working with the production dialog tracks? Again, the ocean is always there. Did you do a lot of ADR?

SG: The ocean was always there. You’re right. It was always there.

Re-recording mixer Skip Lievsay

I’ve worked with Night for a few years now and one of the things I’ve learned about him is he does not like ADR. He is intimately familiar and most comfortable with his production dialogue. So, ADR was not an option except for a few irreparable moments. We had to do the best we could with the production recordings.

Michael Feuser, the dialogue editor, prepared the tracks and then Skip Lievsay, the dialogue and music re-recording mixer, spent hours digging out syllables from the ocean-filled recordings. He did this mostly with EQ and volume automation.

During the mix, Michael spent more time finding replacements from other production takes for words or even syllables to make a sentence or phrase clearer and more easily understandable. Then Skip would attack those alternate takes and match them to the original.

One thing to note was the lack of lav mics because of wardrobe. You can’t hide a lav mic on a shirtless or scantily clad body. So, we had the ocean fighting us the whole time, and this production location presented a very difficult miking puzzle. Skip and Michael did an amazing job helping us to hear the words.

They did an amazing job. I thought the dialogue sounded really great, especially given that challenging location…
SG: Thank you. It was a challenge.
 

Let’s look at some of the horror elements. How did you handle the sound of old Chrystal’s bones breaking in the cave? The stabbing and slicing sounds? The flesh healing itself? I know that you and director Shyamalan are really until using natural sounds and starting with that. So was foley a big contributor for these gore sounds or was it mostly hard effects?

SG: Chris Chae helped me cut the sound effects on this film. He and I used crisp vegetables snapping, and pieces of wood cracking for Chrystal’s bones breaking.

The stabs were pieces of fruit being smashed, married to pitched-up sword shings. We also used different blades cutting through sandpaper to get a violent ripping and scraping sound. I like to add low-end punch sweeteners to stabs to give them more beef. A great low-end punch will round out a stab sound and make it sound more painful.

We scraped things together, like a hockey puck on a piece of wood or a piece of cardstock on a human arm, just to get that organic quality.

The healing sounds needed to be organic — nothing magical. Nothing magical was happening on the island. It was all just time passing. We scraped things together, like a hockey puck on a piece of wood or a piece of cardstock on a human arm, just to get that organic quality.

Then we added an element of gooshy fruits and veggies being squeezed and crushed to those rubbing sounds, which gave it a wetter, ‘cells-and-membranes-joining-back-together’ sound.

To answer your foley question, we had to design those sounds very early in the audio post-production process; before I had access to my foley team. So, when Igor Nikolic, the foley supervisor, came on board, I asked him to ignore those moments and concentrate on other areas of the film.

What was the role of foley in the film?

SG: Foley did a fantastic job on the rock-climbing scene. And foley brought the entire sandcastle building scene to life.

Foley was an absolute necessity in this film’s soundtrack. Because the beach was so noisy, we could barely count on the mics picking up the dialogue let alone trying to capture the details of a footstep or any other specific movement an actor made. The foley added so much realism, depth, and tangibility to each character.

The foley added so much realism, depth, and tangibility to each character.

Foley covered many things but I think the most important foley in this movie may be thought of as possibly the most mundane, that is: the footsteps in the dry sand, the gushy sand, the water, the rocks, and all interactions between characters when they would touch themselves or each other. Prisca would touch Guy’s shoulder to get his attention or Chrystal would be exasperated and slap her leg. That’s all foley. We need these wonderful details to subconsciously relate to the characters!

What were the director’s goals for sound in the medical lab at the end? It’s so different from the beach environment. (There weren’t any ocean sounds to play with!) How did you want that space to feel, and how was sound able to help?

SG: When Night talks about sound, he often discusses feeling, like how does he want the audience to feel? What does he want the audience to know? This abstract communication allows me to be creative and not get cornered into trying to guess exactly what sound is in his head. It’s a great way to work!

When Night talks about sound, he often discusses feeling…

I had a blast with the establishing shot of the lab when Night (playing the Hotel Van Driver) is walking through it to bring the hard drives back. I love when we pass by the scientists and we get a glimpse — both visually and sonically — of what each one is doing. It’s an incredibly detail-oriented moment that was super-fun to build. Night really wanted the audience to understand that serious, credible work was being done in this lab.

I do think Trevor Gureckis’s score did a fantastic job here too. The score is what really helps us feel like, “Ooh, man, what is going on here?”
 

What were your biggest challenges or maybe most difficult scenes in terms of the mix?

SG: I alluded to this earlier but I’d say my biggest challenge on this movie was letting go of my 27+ years experience of how to use backgrounds to glue picture cuts together.

In the past, I have always prepared at least some sounds to play from the same perspective throughout a scene. To those constant sounds, I would always add details that can be panned anywhere depending on what’s happening on screen, but the scene would play with a sonic continuity no matter how many picture cuts are in that scene.

…my biggest challenge on this movie was letting go of my 27+ years experience of how to use backgrounds to glue picture cuts together.

However, Night insisted the ocean always be heard from where it was on screen. My challenge was to create a smooth transition between every shot so that the ocean could be that constant reminder that we’re on a beach but still switch perspectives on every shot. There are many instances in the film where there is literally nothing except production sound in the center channel. All of the ocean BGs are panned out of the center. That was an odd approach for me but I’m grateful that Night stretched me.

Overall, how was Old a unique experience in terms of your sound work?

SG: I think it’s very cool when we artists get to try something new. Night did not care about the industry standard of keeping dialogue in the center channel. In fact, he is interested in redefining some of those standards especially now that people are able to experience films in a theater again (as opposed to on their phones or on a computer).

Night did not care about the industry standard of keeping dialogue in the center channel.

If people are going to a theater, they should have the experience of sound all around them, literally, even dialogue. So, we didn’t just pan oceans, helicopters, winds, and many other sounds effects; we panned dialogue all around us so the audience could feel like they were on the beach with the characters.

Night kept using the word EXPERIENTIAL. He’d say, “I want this film to be experienced, not just seen.”

A big thanks to Sean Garnhart for giving us a behind-the-scenes look at the sound of Old and to Jennifer Walden for the interview!

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