Sundance 2024: Behind the Edgy Sound of ‘Kneecap’ – with Louise Burton, Brendan Rehill, and Aza Hand

There’s an inextricable connection between language and culture as language is a fundamental aspect of cultural identity – it’s how ideas and values are conveyed from one generation to the next. But 762 languages are considered ‘endangered’ – included in that number is Gaelic (an umbrella term for the Irish, Scottish Gaelic, and Manx languages.)

But a hip-hop trio from Belfast is reigniting an interest in the Irish language for new generations. They’re called Kneecap. Director Rich Peppiatt’s biopic Kneecap – the first ever Irish language film to be selected by Sundance – is a semi-biographical account of the rap trios rise in 2019 amid a growing demand for Irish language protections in Northern Ireland. The group has since become “unlikely figureheads of a civil rights movement to save their mother tongue,” according to the film’s synopsis on the Sundance site.

Kneecap – starring group members Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh, Naoise Ó Cairealláin, and JJ Ó Dochartaigh (as themselves), as well as Michael Fassbender in a secondary role of Naoise’s farther, Arlo – was acquired by Sony Pictures Classics ahead of its premiere at Sundance.

Here, Emmy-winning supervising dialogue editor Louise Burton, Irish Film and TV (IFTA) Award-winning supervising sound editor Brendan Rehill, and IFTA and MPSE Award-winning re-recording mixer Aza Hand talk about their experience of editing and mixing an Irish-language film, what it was like working with musicians (non-actors) in ADR, how they handled the group’s music and stage performances, include building believable crowds, how they elevated the film’s edgy aesthetic through sound, and much more!

Kneecap is ‘the first ever Irish language film to have been selected by Sundance.’ Do you speak the Irish language? Can you talk about the challenges of editing the dialogue in Kneecap?

Dialogue/ADR Supervisor Louise Burton

Louise Burton (LB): I don’t speak Irish (sadly!) but this is the second Irish language film I’ve done. I worked on director Colm Bairéad’s Oscar-nominated ‘Best International Feature Film’ called The Quiet Girl (An Cailín Ciúin), which had its premiere at the Berlinale in February 2022.

Aza Hand (AH): It won many other awards as well. All around the world, it seemed to have a hundred percent rating.

But Kneecap is a real groundbreaking movie for the Irish language because there’s never been something that reflects current youth culture or music done in the Irish language as of yet – nothing of this size because Kneecap (the rap group) seems to be quite famous even in the US. They have a big following over there because people love the punk element of it and their live shows are brilliant. I went to see them live a couple of weeks ago and it was really fun. They’re quite different.

Brendan Rehill (BR): They’re in between dance music and hip hop. Their music is like early mid-90s rave.

AH: It’s like 90s all-rounder revival rave hip hop. It’s definitely sparked a bit more interest in the language for me. I find myself humming the lyrics now and still don’t even know the words. I can’t speak Irish either. I can read it and pronounce it – I’ve done loads of Irish language films. Obviously, we learn it in school, but I left school early so I didn’t study it much.

Sound supervisor Brendan Rehill

BR: The biggest complaint about Irish language education is that the way it’s taught in school is very prosaic. You learn the grammar, learn these lines, but it’s a spoken language; the language lives in being spoken. And that’s something that’s lost in our education of the Irish language. It’s why so many kids just stop learning it. We learn it for 16 or 17 years and we just drop it as soon as we don’t have to study it anymore. It just gets dropped and forgotten. But, I did a few summer schools where you did the conversation aspect. I learned more in those three weeks every year in summer school than I did in the other nine months at school.

That’s not to say that I’m fluent, but it made me realize you have to speak it to know it and learn it.

LB: In terms of dialogue editing in a language that you don’t speak, you do get to learn the phrases. In every language, there are natural cadences to sentences – the way you talk and speak – so you can navigate your way through that using those skills. Obviously, the edit has to be checked to make sure that I didn’t break it and just accidentally cut off the end of a word and it now suddenly means something completely different, but for the most part, I get it right!

For me personally, cueing the ADR and getting the written words on the page (I can’t write in Irish either) was a bit of a challenge. So, if they’re ad-libbing on the day, sometimes the sentences that were originally in the script are not the same as the words that they’ve said on screen. Or, there’s a more colloquial or informal way of saying certain lines so they’ve adapted them to be a slightly more spoken-language rather than a written one.

That was a bit of a challenge but luckily our director Rich understands a bit of the language and some of our actors were fluent, but for any technical ADR, we did ‘listen and repeats’ to match the words on the day.

When editing a language you speak, you know when a syllable or word is unclear and needs some work for clarity. Did you have someone there to make suggestions on clarity?

LB: I didn’t have a native speaker with me for clarity, unfortunately. But I used my natural instinct to make sure you could hear the lines as clearly as possible. There are consonants and the fronts and ends of words or sentences that you try and poke through that will naturally make you understand it better.

…there were so many colloquialisms from Belfast…that I, as a Londoner, am not familiar with.

But one of the bigger challenges on Kneecap was there were so many colloquialisms from Belfast – phrases that someone might not understand even though they are speaking in English – that I, as a Londoner, am not familiar with. So I was making sure an audience could still understand the English words even if they only just get the gist of what they’re trying to convey.

I spent a lot of time with the Kneecap boys (and I’m sure they hate me for it) just trying to make sure that I could really understand their English. So we re-did a few phrases, didn’t we, Brendan?

BR: Yeah. So to help put this into perspective, Ireland is roughly 1/10th the size of Texas. I grew up an hour’s drive from Belfast and they have some colloquialisms that even I don’t understand. The development of languages in Ireland is so regional that sometimes little phrases and little things will just appear in a very small bit of square mileage.

LB: Kneecap is an Irish film set in Belfast, but it’s important that people outside of Belfast can understand the words that they need to in order to understand the film and its humour, especially if we want to go worldwide!

BR: A huge amount of that comes through the tone as well though. If you were reading the script, these things would be a bigger challenge. But when you’re watching characters on screen in the context of the scene, the tone of their voices communicates a lot beyond the words.

Re-recording mixer Aza Hand

AH: There are lots of different versions of English – different dialects, different ways of speaking English. I find it challenging sometimes to understand some of the English in the film simply because in Belfast they don’t say the English words the same way that we do. It literally sounds like a different word. “Mass rock,” for example…

BR: I think that actually drives up the main point of the film, which is that it’s all about authenticity to the place and the band and the people. It wasn’t tweaked to make it accessible to the broadest possible market.

The thing that struck me when I first watched it was just how energetic and punky it was; that was a guiding principle throughout, to make sure it kept that authenticity, which can sometimes get a bit steamrolled in the post process.

What were some of Director Rich Peppiatt’s creative ideas for sound, to help support the story and give it the feeling that Kneecap (the group) was looking for?

AH: During the mix, the director let me do what I wanted. It was very creative and a big mix with lots of different pieces of music, VO, live music on stage, and source music from The Prodigy, Orbital, and others. There was some crazy sound design and drug-fueled scenes. It was a very creative experience.

‘Kneecap’ Director Rich Peppiatt

Rich allowed for a lot of pushing and pulling with the music, putting in different spaces – sometimes on the stage, sometimes just playing it straight as if it was in the studio.

It was one of the most free mixes I’ve done, although he knew what he wanted. If Rich didn’t like it, he would let us know. It was a very fluid, creative experience for me.

It was a quick mix though. We might even end up going back in after Sundance. We’ll see what happens, but I don’t think he’s ready to let it go quite yet. We went to see it in the cinema last week; it’s a great cinema experience. I think it’s going to be brilliant on Thursday night at Sundance.

LB: The great thing, as well, is how the film is cut and shot; it allows for that freedom. There is such space for creativity with the sound design, with the voiceover, and with the music. The picture can handle being pushed and pulled in the directions that it has been. It can withstand that kind of soundtrack. So I think we were very lucky as sound editors and mixers to be able to grab that by the horns and run with those ideas.

AH: Because of the way the film is cut, it’s almost like you’re breaking the film open or slicing it open.

We’re pushing things right to the edge.

There’s lots of dialogue written on-screen in places, which is a lovely motif that the director came up with. The guys are always scribbling the lyrics for a rap in their notebooks and so we see dialogue scribbled across the screen. There’s a real style to it, and when you’re dealing with music and studios and sound within the fabric of the story, that allows for even more creativity in pulling the soundtrack apart.

We’re pushing things right to the edge. There are a lot of dynamic moments in the soundtrack.

Kneecap has recorded studio albums. Did you have access to the stems for use in the film?

AH: We got most of them, but then sometimes we didn’t have them, and sometimes our hands were tied. Sometimes we used master tracks, sometimes we used instrumentals mixed with live vocals that have been re-recorded to emulate a live performance on stage, which in some cases worked beautifully, especially for the last very large auditorium gig.

BR: The interesting thing about a film being made about a band at the point in their career where Kneecap is, is that there hasn’t been the archiving and maintenance of their studio work that there might be with a more established band. There aren’t people looking after the media once the album’s finished.

…another challenge: getting past the walls of admin to get to speak to the right people and tell them what we need.

JJ – the DJ in the band – produced a lot of the first and second albums. It was done with a very garagey sort of setup (as you see in the film). We’re all guilty of making some cool stuff and after you get it done, you just throw it in a folder and there it goes. So it was challenging to get some of the bullet tracks from the early material.

But more recently, Kneecap has worked with UK hip-hop producer Toddla T, who naturally has more of a team around him. So, then we ran into another challenge: getting past the walls of admin to get to speak to the right people and tell them what we need. A lot of that was handled by our music editor Richard Armstrong, who kept chasing and chasing to try to get clean stems.

So, sometimes we didn’t have exactly what we needed, but in the mix, we were able to make the call of what’s working for the moment.

Rich (Peppiatt) brought up the fact that they wanted a narrative of the band growing and gaining confidence through the film, but you run into this big problem of showing their first and second performance, where they’re not so musically steady on their feet. It sounds like it’s a new band, lacking that bit of studio polish. That’s going to turn an audience off straight away. We don’t want people to think, “These guys are shite; they’re not good to listen to.”

…they wanted a narrative of the band growing and gaining confidence through the film…

There was a lot of time spent on making sure we had all versions available to be able to choose from as much as possible, so we could go back to that more confident, mid-studio sound rather than a fully garage sound.

Also, it all comes down to time. You can make anything work, but you just need more time.

So the unvarnished garage versions could have worked, but it would have needed a lot more time and iterations of the idea to know that it would work for an audience. We just wanted to have them put their best foot forward.

AH: Kneecap came in and we played that scene and they said, “No. Can you please just get into the master recording as quickly as possible?”

From their point of view, that garage is the studio. So we’re trying to emulate what the recording sounds like in the headphones. That made sense to me. So, we’d be “live” for a moment in that space but then we’re very quickly into the recording.

LB: We recorded everything back in ADR; nearly every track you see in the film we did a version in ADR to get that slightly more live feel should we want to take that route. There are places where that served us well, for example, as we get to the live part of the film at the end versus the studio space earlier in the film.

…we did a version in ADR to get that slightly more live feel should we want to take that route.

It came down to creative choices. We covered everything we could so we had it available for the mix. Then Rich could just sit back and tell the story that he wanted to tell with the materials that we could give him in the time that we had.

AH: Exactly. And Rich wasn’t sure what that was until we were at the mix. So we needed to have all those options available in order to figure out what the path was. And it wasn’t until Kneecap came in that Rich was comfortable with the path. There was the option – as Brendan described – to make it sound like we were watching the guys in the studio and then we cut into real parts of the recording. There are lots of ways it could be done, but ultimately Kneecap wanted to hear themselves the way the fans do, as quickly as possible. That’s what it came down to.

Speaking of the live music, how did you handle the stage performances in the film? And what about the crowds?

LB: We did have production tracks for sync reference, but these were unusable due to onset playback so the recordings in the final mix are the version that we shot in ADR. We recorded them while they were bouncing around the studio to get that live feeling. A studio performance doesn’t feel live. It’s very hard to sell it when you see them bouncing around yet they all sound perfectly crystal clear. So in ADR, we tried to get them to do it with as much movement as possible, copying their body movements on screen.

That meant we could use the instrumental tracks to have control and fill that space.

We recorded them while they were bouncing around the studio to get that live feeling.

For the crowds, we did all of our crowd recordings over in Ireland to make sure we had those authentic voices.

AH: The crowd was great and they really helped. Also, the fact that the band is a hip-hop band makes creating the live music part of it in the auditorium a little easier than if it was a whole band, just because of the complexity of creating a very good live sound.

It was a lot of fun to work with big reverbs and to make different levels of energy – waves of sound that change and get louder. Also, on the approach to the auditorium, I tried to make it feel like it grows and grows and then ultimately just drops at the end.

LB: We recorded bits of loop group chanting “Kneecap! Kneecap!” to get really authentic-sounding crowds for their gigs.

The gigs were in Galway and Derry, so it felt more localized…

You’re not going to sing along to their tracks necessarily, so we didn’t need to record reams of singing crowd but there are hints and pieces of that throughout the film for the bespoke recordings that we did do.

BR: Rich (Peppiatt) also gave me a drive of footage and audio that had been recorded at a couple of UK and Ireland gigs with Kneecap. There were one or two large-scale gigs and a lot more smaller venue-sized gigs that I was able to go through and take a few snippets from. There wasn’t a massive amount of material, given the nature of how it was being recorded, but there were enough bits of an audience saying something. The gigs were in Galway and Derry, so it felt more localized, and just a bit more Irish. I was able to pepper it in a little bit so that felt authentic to their kind of crowd.

LB: The biggest challenge with these types of films is that you want to make the crowds feel real. There are crowd libraries that exist, but they’re generic. You want everything to feel real and authentic to that band in particular. You have to do the research as to how their crowds behave, so it was great that we got some of that material. It adds authenticity to their performances in the film.

BR: If you search for crowds in your library, you find a bar crowd or whatever, and it tends to be American. That’s fine if it’s playing at a low level, as a bed for other stuff to sit on top, but if the director asks to make it busier and you start to turn that up, then you hear the phrases and the accents and it doesn’t work anymore. So we were trying to find stuff that could sit on top of those broader crowd beds, that could poke out and be a little more regional.

Is there a scene that best represents your sound work on the film – what went into your work on it? For Sound Editing? For Dialogue? For Mixing?

BR: It’s probably the opening sequence. The first couple of minutes captures what the rest of the film is going to be like. There’s forward momentum, interruptions, we’re switching locations, you have helicopters flying in, church services happening, and drug trips happening. I spent a fair bit of time on the first 5 to 10 minutes, just working those different locations and trying to figure out how the sounds could support the forward momentum of it.

I spent a fair bit of time on the first 5 to 10 minutes…trying to figure out how the sounds could support the forward momentum of it.

And the film works like that more broadly. There are quiet moments, but then there are very heavy, intense, fast-moving sections. So for me, the first few minutes best represent my work on the film.

LB: For dialogue, it’s either the opening or the final gig.

In the opening, we have the voiceover and that opening sequence has many moving parts. Aza did a wonderful job of getting that all balanced. That opening is quite a challenge; a lot is going on.

But for the final gig, from a musical point of view, we captured some excellent performances in the ADR theatre to get that live gig working as well as it does.

…there are little bits of dialogue in there from the crowd, from some principals in the crowd, and from the boys on stage.

And there are little bits of dialogue in there from the crowd, from some principals in the crowd, and from the boys on stage. It’s nice when all the departments work together. Biopic films are a big collaboration and it’s nice to work so closely with the music department to get it all working well.

So either of those are my favorites.

AH: For the mix, I’d also have to say the same two scenes.

The opening almost has everything you could ever need to test the film in the cinema within the first few minutes. I’ve got VO, a big loud explosion with sub bass, loud raucous dance music, and creeping atmospheric orchestral stuff. It goes to lots of different places. I’m trying to keep the energy up and keep it slamming as well as keeping clarity in the dialogue. The VO took some work and passes to get it right. I was really happy with that.

For that last scene, I was working all of those different elements and trying to make it feel as real as possible. I was at the Kneecap gig recently and had a really good idea of what it was like.

I didn’t shy away from lathering it up with realistic amounts of auditorium reverb.

I thought the ADR was brilliant. What Louise and Brendan recorded with the lads feels like a real gig to me. I didn’t shy away from lathering it up with realistic amounts of auditorium reverb. Sometimes you hear music gigs in films that are a little bit cleaner than that, but I didn’t want that sound. I wanted it to sound real.

For processing the live gigs, I primarily used Audio Ease Altiverb, The Cargo Cult Slapper, and Harrison MPC Channel Strip which has all of the processes for dialogue on it, like compression, de-essing, de-noising, parametric EQ, shelving, high pass, low pass, and all of that. I just use that on everything, basically.

LB: I think the realness comes from the fact that we didn’t shoot it like ADR; we shot it with handheld mics so we could get all the movement and breaths, and all the natural pops that come with that. All those things are useful to us in actually selling that and making it stick to the image. All the little breath pieces in between really helped to sell that.

BR: For one or two scenes, I printed a few tracks that I’d run through Soundtoys Decapitator, just as elements to sit underneath the main tracks for the earlier gigs because the music is playing through smaller PA systems that wouldn’t have the fidelity of a nice sound system.

We wanted to add a bit of an edge to take away the studio polish.

We wanted to add a bit of an edge to take away the studio polish. You get material that was mastered for consumer listening, and it can be very sharp sounding in a cinema environment. You often want to do things that will just even out that mid-range a little more, and not have it sit quite as proud.

What was unique about your experience of working on Kneecap?

AH: I don’t think I’ve ever worked on a film about a band who were playing themselves at the time. I don’t even know if there has been something like this…maybe The Monkees?

BR: That’s a really good point. Before I watched it for the first time, I had a little trepidation about it. How is this going to hang together if they’re playing themselves? But within five minutes, I realized, holy shit. They’re really great.

There’s a lot of love and heart that’s gone into this film.

LB: Yeah, I was a little apprehensive about doing the ADR as well, just because we’re so used to working with actors and these guys are musicians (which does help with ADR). But, I was slightly apprehensive that they may not be able to do that particular part of the process, but they were amazing. They were so good and they were so in it and just such a joy to work with.

BR: They were giving themselves notes. They knew when they could do a take better.

LB: All my worries just disappeared within the first two minutes of starting ADR with each of them. It was just wonderful.

The film is really ambitious. And it’s a testament to Rich, our director. He’s made something really special and on a tight budget for this style of film. It’s wonderful what he’s been able to do, and I think everyone’s done a really amazing job. There’s a lot of love and heart that’s gone into this film.

A big thanks to Louise Burton, Brendan Rehill, and Aza Hand for giving us a behind-the-scenes look at the sound of Kneecap and to Jennifer Walden for the interview!

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