The Savage Sound of ‘Sisu’ – behind the detailed sound design & Dolby Atmos Mix with Panu Riikonen

Sisu – in theaters now – is a Western-meets-action film that combines windswept landscapes with blood-soaked fight scenes and thunderous explosions. In the film, a group of Nazis that invaded Finland meet their ultimate demise at the hands of one man, Aatami. After the Nazis steal his satchel of gold, Aatami decides he's going to get it back or die trying.

Here, sound designer/re-recording mixer Panu Riikonen talks about how he created the film's detailed sound design (from the restless winds to the huge action-led moments), and how sparse dialogue let the sonic details shine. He also discusses his approach to mixing in Dolby Atmos, including how he mixed the incredible bomber flyover scene, and much more!

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Interview by Jennifer Walden, photos courtesy of Lionsgate Publicity

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Director Jalmari Helander’s film Sisu is a sound designer’s dream. Not only are there creative and cringe-inducing gore-filled action scenes; there are also quiet, wind-driven scenes in which subtle details get a chance to speak volumes.

The film follows hardened Finnish soldier-turned-prospector Aatami, who refuses to be robbed of his gold by an invading Nazi death squad. Aatami pursues the Nazis and manages to survive their attempts to kill him. Instead, he kills them off one by one, living up to his Russian moniker of “Koschei the Immortal.”

The film doesn’t have a lot of dialogue or wall-to-wall music, so award-winning sound designer/re-recording mixer Panu Riikonen had room for the sound effects, foley, and backgrounds to play. In the Dolby Atmos mix, Riikonen crafted thunderous bomber plane flyovers, debris sprays for the minefield explosions, expansive and desolate landscapes with the distant sounds of war, claustrophobic tank interiors, and enveloping underwater scenes. It’s a truly dynamic mix that captures the spirits of both a Western film and an action film.

Here, Riikonen talks about creating the sounds of WWII-era planes and tanks using library sounds, designing the ever-changing wind sounds, cutting the brutal fight scenes, creating effective POVs, and mixing challenging scenes like the plane crash, the end attack on the Nazi caravan, and more!

Warning: May Contain Spoilers

Sisu (2023) Official Red Band Trailer

When did you get started on the film? Was there already a cut together when you started?

Panu Riikonen (PR): They were in the second month of picture editing when I started working; they asked me to create some sounds for the fighting scenes.

There was quite a lot of sound design I sent to the picture editor actually, because there was so little dialogue, so they were missing a lot of stuff besides the music (they used some temp music at the start). Otherwise, there was nothing there. So I tried to help them because I knew the more I can do during the picture edit the more it will help me to get through the actual sound post-production phase.

What were some of the scenes they wanted you to tackle first?

PR: There was the scene where the Nazi military caravan is traveling on the road and Aatami attacks them. He’s climbing onto the tank and trying to get in with his pick axe. Also, the final fight with the main villain, Bruno.

Sisu is much like a Western in that the landscape is wide and open and there are tonal winds that fill up the space. There are so many great wind sounds in this film – wonderfully wispy winds and whistling winds, wind through long grass, cold winds, dusty winds, and so on. Did you record a lot of these wind sounds for the film, or were there helpful wind libraries you pulled from?

PR: Budget-wise, we had to use ready-made libraries. But of course, we’d done a lot of recording ourselves, so we had a big library of custom sounds. It was a mixture of all of those. Additionally, I added some of the smaller details, like the rustles and dirt flying in the wind.

Also, there were a lot of metallic details, like when the Nazis stopped, you hear stuff hitting their vehicles. We did some of that on the foley stage.

Because the film didn’t have a lot of dialogue, there was a lot of space for all these little sonic details…

Because the film didn’t have a lot of dialogue, there was a lot of space for all these little sonic details, and I really loved that. More or less, we used elements we already had and then added in some details of the wind interacting with objects or blowing dust and dirt on the vehicles.

I can’t recall how many tracks of wind I had, but it was a lot. So I went through the scenes and mixed them so that it’s not just a constant monotone wind. It’s really changing throughout the scenes.

It was really nice from a sound design point of view; it was a half-western/half-action and gore film. It was a nice mixture.

SISU (2023) Official Clip ‘Minefield’

The winds create a nice reprieve from the explosions and gunfire, especially in the ‘Minefield’ section. It’s like a sonic palette cleanser that makes the explosions feel more impactful because your ears get to acclimate to these soothing wind sounds…

PR: Yes, I think that some of the scenes were constructed really nicely because there was no dialogue. The ‘Minefield’ scene is a very good example of that. And it was more like ‘pure’ cinema where the movement, action, and rhythm of the scene are more important than the dialogue. So it helped us to build a very dynamic mix.

There’s a great scene in the beginning with Aatami digging at his camp. The sound of distant bombing and warfare intermingle with the sounds of him digging in the dirt and the sound of these tin cans hanging up that are almost like wind chimes. Since we haven’t seen the war at this point, you could have done anything with those sounds. Can you talk about crafting that scene?

PR: We tried a lot of different things in that scene. And it was surprisingly hard to find the right solution. Ultimately, we decided that the first time he thinks he hears something, it’s really distant – so much so that if you watch the film somewhere other than the theatre, you probably won’t hear it. I think that was a cool decision to make; it’s a theatre movie.

I loved the sound of bombers flying overhead; that was so much fun in Atmos. Where did you source those sounds?

PR: There were a lot of libraries I pulled from, and that was definitely one of those scenes that, budget-wise, we had to create from library sounds. It was clear that if we were to record some of these sounds ourselves then half of our budget would be gone.

But it’s not easy to find libraries that have the right sounds to fit your demands. I had to do a bit of searching to find the correct ones. Actually, all the vehicles in this movie were library sounds.
The tank sounds were from BOOM Library WW2 Tanks.

SISU (2023) Official Clip ‘One Man Death Squad’

Of course, I added a lot of details to the tank, like the interior sounds with all the small, metallic clinking and a glass bottle rolling around. There is also a constant LFE element (earthquake rumble) and metallic squeaking and whining that was not from an actual tank. I created a lot of layers but the basic engine sound and tank treads were from the WW2 Tanks collection.

Going back to the planes flying overhead, as you said, you have to find the right sounds that do what you need them to do in order to match what’s on screen. These planes fly in low and slow…

PR: This scene was really nice from a sound design point of view because there was no music. It was just these big bombers flying over Aatami. I think I had maybe 20 different flyovers. Some of them had these long and really detailed tails where you can hear the propellers cutting the air.

Besides the flyover sound, I had this constantly changing engine rumble coming from the planes further away.

Most of these were panned from front to rear through the ceiling. I think we used both beds and objects when mixing this.

Besides the flyover sound, I had this constantly changing engine rumble coming from the planes further away. And then I created this really low, strong, and long incoming plane sound, which we hear before we can actually see the planes. Maybe I used Krotos Igniter, or similar, to create that. I can’t remember that precisely.

Since you were the sound designer and mixer, did that make it easier in the editorial process? Did you have a plan for how you wanted it to sound in the mix, so you didn’t need to cut more effects than necessary? Or did you just design first, put everything in, and then during the mix, pared it back to how it ultimately sounds?

PR: During editorial, I try to collect all the elements I need to do a certain kind of mix, if that makes sense. So I try to be aware of what I think I need for the mix, but, of course, the editing goes on throughout the whole process, also while mixing. You have to be careful that you don’t fall in too much love with your own work. Because when you change from editing to mixing, you have to be able to make choices where you sacrifice something that you spent hours working on if it doesn’t serve the film the best possible way.

There was another great plane sequence in which Aatami uses his pick axe to hitch a ride on the underside of this plane. It’s some Mission Impossible stuff! What were some of your challenges in designing that scene?

PR: That was quite a tricky scene because we had a lot of things going on there. There was a big musical piece, plane engines, heavy rushing winds, multiple cuts from plane interior to exterior, and the flyby shots. So I tried to be very selective and just mix it from shot to shot. Even though it somewhat was a sequence that was partly leaning against the music, I wanted to push the wind and the engines louder in some shots so that the sequence felt grittier.
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Aatami finds his way into the plane and has this brutal fistfight with the head Nazi Bruno. Bruno wraps a parachute strap around his hand, the end of which is this heavy metal hook that he uses to punch Aatami in the face. This sounded amazing! You really feel the metal in each punch. What went into the fight scene?

PR: This scene had one of my favourite moments in the film where Bruno walks over to this parachute strap, and slides the hook along the metallic wire. That was really cool because you can hear all those details and it really helps to build up the suspense before the actual beating starts.

…you can hear all those details and it really helps to build up the suspense before the actual beating starts.

Then Bruno drops this metallic hook on the floor of the plane. And we did this heavy metallic thump which really gives the audience the feeling that this thing weighs quite a lot. The actual whipping sound – as he’s swinging it around and wrapping it over his hand — took a while to get right. There was some foley made for that. And then I made some recordings with this metallic wine bottle opener. That was heavily compressed to get the metallic timbre out of it. I think it was the one thing that really gave the metallic identity to this sound. And then I had the punching effects which gave the feeling of the weight for those hits. And then there are the basic details, bones crunching and lots of blood splatting all over the plane.

That scene ends with Aatami clipping the hook to a bomb and opening the bomb doors and Bruno falls out of the plane, yelling, ‘F**K YOU!!!’ I’m guessing that wasn’t production…

PR: No! Not production. Actually, there was only one scene that had the production sound. It was where the abducted Finnish women roll up in the tank and greet a Finnish patrol on the road. The reason for that was partly because the decision was made to change the accent of the Nazis, how they were speaking. And, of course, there were some other challenges also, noisy old vehicles and the heavy wind in Lapland. So we end up doing a lot of ADR, most of it in London at De Lane Lea.
 

This sequence comes to an end with another huge plane sound. So the pilot dies, the engine dies, and Aatami straps in for a crash landing. The plane falling out of the sky is shown from interior and exterior perspectives, and it takes a while to play out. Can you talk about how you built the sound for this sequence?

PR: You have to have this classic descending sound of a plane going down. I made that using Krotos Igniter. It was a really long descending sound; I think it took 60 seconds before the plane finally hit the ground.

There was originally music in the scene, but the director wanted us to take it out. This decision was made when we were already in the final phase of the mixing. Luckily, I had edited a lot of stuff in this scene. I had these heavy metallic rumbles and metallic stress sounds, metallic rattle, and also all the cargo rattling. I had very low rumbles, like earthquake effects, and lots of rushing winds. The difficult part was to get some dynamic changes so that it’s not just constant noise all the way through. And still, it had to feel like it was constantly getting louder and louder while the plane is falling.

After the crash, Aatami crawls out of the swamp, and it’s almost like an anti-climatic heroic moment. You’d expect big cinematic music, making a big show of it that he somehow survived this huge plane crash….

PR: There actually was this big cinematic music. But on the last days of mixing, we were asked to kill the music and search for some other kind of approach because the big music was maybe too obvious and did not reflect our main character and the concept of Sisu that well. So we took some throat singing from an earlier scene and really loved how much more powerful it changed the resurrection of Aatami. And it really helped the way the film built up from this point to the final scene in the bank, compared to the earlier solution with the big cinematic hero music.
 

The bag of gold is its own character in the film, something everyone wants. The gold is in a leather satchel and makes a nice weighty, slightly metallic thunk when it hits the ground. What went into that?

PR: It was challenging. We had some rocks there, some foley stuff. But it wasn’t just a pure recording of a pile of rocks, though. I did some processing to it. And there was a metallic element, some coins and/or metallic chains, pitched down and mixed with the rocks to make it sound like a bag of gold. I used body fall sounds to give the bag a heavier feel when it was tossed on the ground.

Director Jalmari Helander

I loved the bank scene. Aatami strides in there victorious, full of confidence, and slams his pick axe and bag of gold onto the counter. The sounds of that ring out in this cavernous bank space. There’s this subjective POV feel to that sequence…

PR: Director Jalmari Helander likes to use slow-mo moments. And this is one of those scenes. The sound in this scene has this enhanced reality feel to it. All the background sounds are mixed remote, such as the voices in the bank, the telephone ringing, etc. Then I used these very detailed heavy steps for Aatami to counter that remote background. And then the super heavy pick axe dropped, and all of this had some larger-than-life reverb.

There were some interesting POV moments in this film. For instance, during the ‘Minefield’ sequence, Aatami’s horse gets blown up and we hear the world through Aatami’s damaged ears. It wasn’t just the exterior sounds that were filtered. I like that you added the sounds of his groans and breaths, too. It really sold the feeling of his hearing-impaired POV…

PR: Yes, I have wanted to try that really loud and EQ’d breathing and groaning and now I had the chance to do that. I think it gives a really strong subjective and agonizing feel for this. I think it really takes us close to our main character.

In addition, I used a lot of musical sound elements and an adapted tinnitus sound, which was much lower in frequency than usual. There was no music in this scene; it was all sound design that transformed into score in the end of this scene when Aatami realized that Nazis were coming.

SISU (2023) Official Clip “Underwater”

Another fun POV was the underwater scene where Aatami cuts the Nazi’s neck and he’s sucking the air out of his lungs through the slit he made…

PR: That was me sucking on something while holding a Shure SM58 really close to my mouth. That was one of the early demos I made for the director, while they were still editing the picture.

Did you have a favorite moment in terms of sound design? What was the most enjoyable moment for you to create sonically?

I really like how the sound gives you the feel of the rough nature, and how vast it is. It generates this Western vibe for this film.

PR: I really liked the part where, after Aatami passes the first group of Nazis on the road, he rides past the corpses hanging from the telephone poles and then he rides on and meets a smaller Nazi group. That sequence has a lot of nice winds and really nice details. You can hear the first Nazi battalion – with the tanks and the motorcycles – quite far in the distance. And you can hear Aatami’s horse, which we mixed really close and really big. You can hear the details of the corpses swinging in the wind and you start to hear the Nazis up ahead, who are trying to repair their car. You can hear them talking. I really like how the sound gives you the feel of the rough nature, and how vast it is. It generates this Western vibe for this film.

And of course, I really liked doing all the action scenes. This genre offers you a lot of freedom to go beyond reality and be really innovative. That’s the best.

Did you have a favorite scene mix-wise? What was the most fun scene for you to mix, or the most challenging scene that you are happy with the end result?

PR: The hardest scene mix-wise was the sequence where Aatami attacks the Nazi caravan. It was challenging partly because the music was this heavyrock-influenced cue with big crunchy electric guitars. And it needed a lot of room because otherwise it just felt that it was not rocking hard enough.

In addition to that, we had the caravan of vehicles, and action scenes with fighting and shooting while jumping on trucks and tanks. And everything needed to have this big-sound mentality in the mix. So it was a difficult equation. But I’m quite happy with how it turned out.

On the dub stage, was there a scene you tried a bunch of different ways, to find what would work best?

PR: I think there were a few scenes that we tried different ways. But the most significant was Aatami’s resurrection scene, which I talked about earlier, where we changed the big heroic music into this very minimal cue of throat singing.

How has working on Sisu helped you to become better at your craft? What did you learn while working on this film that has influenced the way that you think about sound for film now?

PR: Because of the minimal use of dialogue, this film reminded me of the early days of cinema where the stories were told through action, which is the characteristic and strength of movies in general. I think that’s easily forgotten in the era of streaming services and their TV series, which are heavily based on dialogue. So this was a really nice film where I just tried to celebrate the given opportunity and create a detailed, well-crafted, dynamic, and good-sounding theatre movie soundtrack.

A big thanks to Panu Riikonen for giving us a behind-the-scenes look at the sound of Sisu and to Jennifer Walden for the interview!

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