Building The Batman’s Brooding Sound – with Doug Murray and Will Files

Supervising sound editors Will Files and Doug Murray had a rare opportunity when they started work on Director Matt Reeves's The Batman: they did the sound for the film trailer! And those trailer sounds not only set the tone for the film's sound later on, they were even carried forward to the final mix. Here, Files and Murray talk about their incredible adventure of building this soundtrack during Covid, creating iconic sounds for the Batmobile, working against Michael Giacchino's nearly-complete score, and so much more!

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Interview by Jennifer Walden, photos courtesy of 2021 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.

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Of all the Batman portrayals to grace screens big and small, LEGO Batman (voiced by Will Arnett) is my personal favorite; call me an “uber-nerd fan.” Not only is he super cool, but he’s really into sound. He imparted the sage wisdom of “ABR – Always Be Recording” to Alfred in that unforgettable scene of The LEGO Batman Movie, and the thing he’s most enthusiastic about in The LEGO Movie is his Batmobile’s newly installed subwoofers, which he affectionately calls “the dogs.”

But I digress….

We’re here to talk about The Batman, directed by Matt Reeves and sound supervised by Will Files (also effects re-recording mixer) and Doug Murray. This trio has collaborated on several award-winning films – Cloverfield, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, and War for the Planet of the Apes – so when starting on The Batman, there was already a lot of trust and respect. Files notes that since they’ve been working with Reeves for so long, they often get to connect with him before shooting begins. And in the case of The Batman , they were even called on to create sound for the trailer. This early exploration helped them to set the sonic tone for the film to come. They got to work out how the fights should feel sonically, and most importantly, how the Batmobile will sound.

Here, Murray and Files talk about their early involvement, like working with Oscar-winning production sound mixer Stuart Wilson on the on-set sound of the Riddler’s voice disguiser, designing and mixing the trailer’s sound, recording a Ford Bronco for the Batmobile, finding the distinctive foley sound of Batman, focusing the sound on Batman’s perspective, building impactful (but not superhero-esk) fights, more!

THE BATMAN – Main Trailer

I read that director Matt Reeves was on The Batman for five years. That’s a long time! So when did you get started on The Batman, and what did director Reeves want you to tackle first?

Sound supervisor Will Files

Will Files (WF): The first work we did on the film was back at the beginning of the pandemic when production had to shut down and Matt began work on the teaser trailer. They’d only shot about 25% of the movie at that point, but they decided to put together a teaser trailer for the DC FanDome to get people excited about it.

Matt had shot just enough of the film to put together a trailer that still felt like the tone he was trying to achieve with the film (even though it was actually quite incomplete in terms of what he had shot so far). Doug and I did sound work for that first trailer, and there are things in there that made it all the way into the final mix.

Doug Murray (DM): That was back in August 2020.

WF: About a year and a half before the movie even came out.

Wow, that’s incredible! There are two crazy things in there. First, you did the sound for the trailer? That never happens…

WF: I know! It’s very indicative of Matt’s approach. He has his hands on everything.

Sound supervisor Doug Murray

DM: Matt created the trailer; he didn’t leave it to the trailer editor. Matt was involved deeply in its construction, from the beginning to the end.

WF: Matt knew this would be the first look at The Batman and he wanted to make sure it felt like what he had in mind.

The teaser trailer was a good opportunity for us to explore the early days of the film’s aesthetic. There were a couple of key moments in there, like the Batmobile and a big fight – the beatdown on the train platform.

The sounds I created and cut for the beatdown made it all the way into the final mix. We didn’t adjust those at all.

DM: There’s also ADR in there that made it from the trailer to the final mix – when Batman says, “I am Vengeance,” after the beatdown.

All the things we did in the trailer were informing the direction we’d go in, like the Riddler’s voice, for instance. We knew his voice was being disguised through a voice changer, like the ones they’d use on TV where the person is behind a curtain and you hear their voice garbled and low-frequency.

All the things we did in the trailer were informing the direction we’d go in, like the Riddler’s voice, for instance.

That effect was supposed to be built into the Riddler’s mask, so he could disguise his voice. We were thinking about what size it would be if it were built into the mask, where the speaker would be, and what it would sound like. How distorted should it be?

At the time of the trailer’s release, which was a year and a half before we did the final mix, we had established that The Riddler’s voice would only be slightly pitch-shifted. Paul Dano’s performance as the Riddler and the sound of his lav mic that was on his cheek inside the mask would give us everything we needed.

It was a very useful exercise for everyone to have gone through that trailer.

So the Riddler’s voice wasn’t created with a vocal processing chain in post? It was mostly recorded that way, with the lav being inside his mask?

DM: Yes.

WF: We had experimented with a lot of different things before they started shooting but really it just came down to being the sound of the mic itself and the proximity effect of the mic being right next to his mouth. And then there’s just regular old pitch shift. That’s it.

We kept trying more exotic things but Matt would come back to just keeping it simple. So in the end, it was just a pitch shift and a great performance.

We kept trying more exotic things but Matt would come back to just keeping it simple. So in the end, it was just a pitch shift and a great performance.

DM: It’s really about the performance. Paul Dano heard his own voice through a voice-mangling process that Stuart Wilson, the production sound mixer, put into Paul’s earpiece because Paul wanted to hear his performance processed so that he would have an idea of what it might be like so he could play into that during his performance on the day.

Paul leaned into these effects that he was hearing in his ear, but then we ended up simplifying that sound to be just a pitch shift. His performance was so excellent; it makes all the difference.

The proximity of the voice and the breath in the mask, it’s so creepy.

WF: The pitch shift does give it a creepy sound.

We worked with Stuart to figure out what would be a good real-time solution.

Our work really began before Matt even started shooting. He sent us the script and started asking us about this specific issue of the Riddler’s voice – how to mic it and how to achieve the effect he was looking for.

We worked with Stuart to figure out what would be a good real-time solution. And Stuart found this effects box that he could use on set.

DM: It’s a rack-mount unit from TC Electronics called a TC Helicon. I think it was the first generation of that. They made many models of it, but this was something that Stuart had in his kit already.

I found one of those on eBay. I thought we might need to have one that was similar to what Paul was hearing in his ear. But Matt ended up not liking that sound in the final movie. So, in the end, we didn’t use that effect on Paul’s voice.

WF: Luckily, we’ve been working with Matt for so long that we often get to connect with him before he starts shooting the film. He’ll come to us with specific challenges. He’s a wonderful collaborator.

On the topic of vocal effects, did you do anything to the performance for Batman? Did you end up enhancing Rob Pattinson’s voice, to add power to his performance, or to accentuate the rougher quality of his voice?

DM: We did very little to his voice. We just turned it up. His performance was quiet. Thus, we had a lot of extra sounds – like lip smacks and things like that – that we had to clean up. Rob was so intimate with his performance that we ended up doing more than our usual amount of dialogue clean-up.

He was very soft-spoken in the role and was able to naturally do the timbre of the voice. He developed a voice for Batman that is much lower than his normal speaking voice. He also has an American accent for the character (Rob speaks with a British accent normally).

Rob was so intimate with his performance that we ended up doing more than our usual amount of dialogue clean-up.

I saw an interview with Rob talking about his Batman voice, about how it wasn’t quite there and he spent several days working with Matt, who got him to relax into a more natural voice and not try to put something on – put on a voice that would sound like “Batman.”

So, Rob ended up being able to slip into this timbre if he lowered the intensity of his voice. Batman doesn’t shout, or speak loudly, typically. When he says, “I am Vengeance,” it’s almost under his breath.

There’s a voiceover that plays through the whole second sequence, which Matt called the “Gotham City Tone Poem.” It establishes the grimy nature of the city and the underworld that is active in it. Batman is trying to hold them at bay through his own actions of physical violence against random criminals that he happens to meet up with. The voiceover explains Batman’s thoughts that he puts in his journal. He keeps a journal each day.

We had to re-record all of that voiceover, which took a long time because Rob had to get back into that voice.

So this voiceover was very badly recorded on set. They put Rob in a booth on set and recorded all these lines just before he left on the last day of shooting. We had to re-record all of that voiceover, which took a long time because Rob had to get back into that voice. He went from doing it every day to not doing it at all for a long time. It was an interesting process watching him try to get back into that soft, low timbre.

WF: When we were mixing the film, Matt was very sensitive to certain lines. He never wanted it to sound like Rob was putting on a voice – like Rob was trying to “sound like Batman.” Matt wanted it to sound natural.

But, on certain lines, even just switching from the lav mic to the boom mic (or the boom to the lav) sometimes gave Rob’s voice a put-on quality compared to what Matt was used to in the offline. So, we had to be very careful and go through line by line with Matt to make sure it felt as natural as possible.

Were you able to use SoundRadix’s Auto-Align Post to combine the lav and boom tracks?

DM: We did use Auto-Align Post extensively, on everything.

Andy Nelson, the dialogue/music re-recording mixer who worked alongside Will in the final mix, really likes the sound of the boom and lav combined. But the tracks have to be in precise phase alignment for that to work.

When the tracks are aligned properly, you get this amazing rock-solid quality of presence from the lav and the space from the boom.

Auto-Align Post is such an amazing tool; it makes it possible to use both mics without having to do insane amounts of work to manually pull the tracks into sync, and pull the timing so that phasing issues don’t occur.

When the tracks are aligned properly, you get this amazing rock-solid quality of presence from the lav and the space from the boom. You can adjust the relative balance of the mics (which Andy did in the premix) to create the appropriate timbre for that angle or character’s distance from the camera.

We did that for all the characters, not just Batman.

Batman’s performance is so intimate, and that seems especially fitting for The Batman film since this one feels like a character evolution. How did you use sound to help keep the focus on Batman and what he’s experiencing?

WF: In the early days of working on the film, we spent a lot of time finding the sound of Batman’s body movements and his footsteps. That may sound boring and kind of “normal,” but it took an incredible amount of R&D to figure out how Batman should sound when he moves.

…it took an incredible amount of R&D to figure out how Batman should sound when he moves.

We auditioned roughly a dozen pairs of boots and different materials for the cape and his cowl movement.

The “hero” boots ended up being this old set of snow boots I’d bought just before attending Sundance years ago; it was the middle of January when I decided to go, and every store was nearly sold out of snow boots so I had to buy a pair that were a couple of sizes too big. They were like clown-shoe snow boots.

Since there was a fair amount of empty space inside the boot, it created this satisfying resonance when you walked around. The boot material was a thick, soft rubber so they sounded heavy and deep, but without being sharp.

We went all around the Warner Bros. lot and recorded them on all types of surfaces. We found an unused portion of this new parking garage they had just finished building. It was this big, cavernous, concrete space. We figured out how to sneak in and we recorded a bunch of sounds in there.

The security guards got used to seeing us riding around in a golf cart for days on end recording guerilla foley on the Warner Bros. lot.

We also recorded on some of the standing sets on the lot – like the metal subway platform set, and things like that. The security guards got used to seeing us riding around in a golf cart for days on end recording guerilla foley on the Warner Bros. lot.

Batman’s cape ended up being this interesting Japanese raincoat made from a thick, rubbery material almost like waxed canvas but more high-tech.

We ended up using quite a bit of the guerilla foley recordings that we made around the lot, but at a certain point, we handed off these props to our brilliant foley team to fill out the rest of the film. The time we spent figuring out the movement sounds really paid off; it helps to give Batman a different feeling than everyone else in the movie when he moves.

We ended up using quite a bit of the guerilla foley recordings that we made around the lot…

Part of that is Rob’s performance; he’s moving with such deliberation. The idea is that he’s moving slowly because he’s taking in all the details; he’s more of a detective in this film. We wanted to support what Matt and Rob were doing there, and make it feel to the audience that we’re connected to Batman’s physicality. We wanted to extend the performance that Rob was already doing visually by adding a lot of details to his movement.

I think it really pays off, especially in the first forensics scene in the Mayor’s study. There are these shots where Batman is either on the periphery of the shot, or not in the shot at all, but you see people looking nervously at him. I think having this heaviness to his body movements and this slow pace of Rob’s movements really gives his character more gravitas.

It was a great opportunity to use sound to extend what they were doing on the screen.

Behind the sound of The Batman – loop groups

In addition to the guerilla foley, did you do any other field recordings for The Batman?

WF: We did quite a bit of recording all throughout the process.

The biggest recording session was to record a car for the Batmobile. We went out to the California City Airport in Kern County. It’s a nearly abandoned city and nearly abandoned airport but it’s still technically in use. Although, we were there all day though and didn’t see a single airplane.

It’s a well-maintained tarmac and you can drive a car really fast on it. There are no other sounds around because you’re in the middle of the desert. Of course, it is hot as hell, which was kind of rough, but it was great because we got to do all kinds of crazy maneuvers.

We went out there with recordist John Fasal to record a modified 1980 Ford Bronco V8. He spent a couple of hours rigging up mics all over the car, and then we had four of us out there with spot microphones to get bys and various angles on the car.

We went out there with recordist John Fasal to record a modified 1980 Ford Bronco V8.

As we had done for the sound of Batman’s foley, we initially auditioned a bunch of different flavors of engine sounds for the Batmobile when we were first starting on the film back in March. That was the first scene Matt wanted us to tackle. We picked a one-minute section and sound designer Chris Terhune cut it 12 different ways. We tried Ford engines, Chevy engines, Mopar engines, monster truck engines, tank engines, boat engines – we tried everything you could imagine.

We kept coming back to this late ’70s – early ’80s-era Ford V8 engine. It’s a naturally aspirated large displacement V8, and it had this snarl to it that just sounded meaner than the others.

Some of the other engines had a deeper sound or a rounder sound, or a more chuggy sound. But there was something about the Ford engine with that snarl that we loved.

The Batmobile is more complex than one sound, but the Ford Bronco is the bestial heart of it.

Once we discovered that, we started looking for what we could get our hands on to record – something that would be similar to the recordings we already had in order to extend the sonic vocabulary of our existing recordings.

A friend of ours knew a guy who had a 1980 Ford Bronco that he used for off-road racing. It was in really good shape and he had it all tuned up. The thing sounded totally gnarly and mean.

So we took that car out to the desert and ripped it around in the hot dusty sunshine for a full day. That’s one of the main sounds of the Batmobile.

DM: The Batmobile is more complex than one sound, but the Ford Bronco is the bestial heart of it.

WF: There are three different elements to the Batmobile… well, four actually.

There’s the rocket turbine whine, which is the howl of the car when it first turns on. And, when Batman punches it at the end to escape the semi truck pile-up, you hear it again.

There’s the rocket thruster.

There’s the engine, of course.

And at a certain point, Matt also asked us to come up with a supercharger whine. He wanted the car to whine when it was really under stress, really hauling ass. We experimented with a bunch of different sounds for the whine – synthesizing things, making sounds from actual jet turbines, engine superchargers, and turbochargers – and we stumbled across this old recording we had of a WWII-era Jeep driving in reverse. It had this crazy, howling whine from the straight cut gears in this old, uninsulated military transmission.

The Jeep sound had more grit. And for the Batmobile, we wanted it to have as much grit as possible.

So we ended up taking those Jeep sounds and building a whole kit of different speeds, Doppler bys, and that sort of thing.

There was something about that reverse whine that had more character than using something synthesized or something that was an actual supercharger whine. The Jeep sound had more grit. And for the Batmobile, we wanted it to have as much grit as possible.

The whole film has that feel and we wanted to lean into what the film was trying to do narratively and to match the aesthetic that Matt and Greig Fraser had established with the photography.

DM: The design of the sets, the costumes, and the Batmobile all have a lived-in look, you could say.

WF: The sound of the rocket turbine is a fun story. It makes this crazy banshee howl/shriek when it first turns on in the darkness. That’s made from the sound of a bottle rocket, if you can believe it.

It’s one of those sounds I discovered in the process of doing the first teaser trailer. I had a lot of time to experiment at home because it was the early days of the pandemic. I was trying to find a sound that imparted a horrific feeling.

I was trying to find a sound that would be evocative and scary, and have this otherworldly shriek, but still be plausible as something mechanical…

The idea of the Batmobile is that Bruce built it by hand and he designed it to support his concept of what it is to be “The Batman.” He’s weaponizing fear, trying to scare all the criminals in Gotham City; that’s why he made his suit the way it looks and made his car the way it looks.

He’s also designed the car to sound intimidating. So when it turns on in the darkness in that shootout with the Penguin, Batman is trying to distract him because the Penguin is about to kill Catwoman. Batman is basically putting on a show.

I was trying to find a sound that would be evocative and scary, and have this otherworldly shriek, but still be plausible as something mechanical and could theoretically come out of that car.

I started searching my library for words that have emotional meaning, like “shriek,” “scary,” and so on. I came across this short recording of a bottle rocket. It’s a one-second sound. It’s a cool sound with some distortion to it. It sounds like it overloaded the mic when it was recorded. I thought if I could find a longer version of that type of sound it would be perfect. I kept looking but always came back to this short sound. It had the feeling I wanted.

So I took this short bottle rocket sound and ran it through Paul Stretch, and made various different lengths, some being literally minutes long.

I remembered this video on YouTube that someone sent me years ago, of this Justin Bieber song that had been stretched out by 800x. It was this meditative, beautiful, Sigur Ros-type song. It sounded completely different from the original, yet you could hear the original in there. But by stretching the song out so much, it became something else.

Turns out that song had been stretched using this free experimental software called Paul Stretch. It’s a very clunky, non-user-friendly piece of software but it sounds amazing. So I took this short bottle rocket sound and ran it through Paul Stretch, and made various different lengths, some being literally minutes long.

Then, I loaded those into a sampler and created more pitch variations, layering the different lengths and pitches together so that the sound starts with a quick aggressive pop like the original bottle rocket, then transitions into this longer riser version of the sound that ramps up over the length of the scene.

So, basically the turbine sound you hear in the movie was all created out of this one, short, one-second bottle rocket sound. And it works! As my friend and former mentor Randy Thom often says, “If it sounds good, it is good.” It doesn’t matter how you got there, and what the recording was originally when you started, it only matters how it feels when you’re done.

To that end, I often resist telling the director how I made a sound until I’m sure they like it. You don’t want to give it away because some directors may react negatively to the source sound. Like, “Bottle rocket?? You can’t put a bottle rocket sound in the Batmobile! That’s ridiculous.” But, Matt isn’t that kind of director. And, it just worked, so it made it into the movie.

The Sound and Music of The Batman | Sound + Image Lab

But that’s what I love about sound. It can be anything you want it to be. It doesn’t have to be what it was when it was recorded…

WF: What we’re often trying to do with sound design is to find sounds that are emotionally engaging and evocative, and try to strip them of their intellectual content while preserving the emotional content. So the audience doesn’t sit there and think, oh, that’s just a little bottle rocket. They instead get the feeling of sitting next to a 5-ton bottle rocket. That’s a scary thing.

…find sounds that are emotionally engaging and evocative, and try to strip them of their intellectual content while preserving the emotional content.

DM: The sound is really effective. I was following this thread on Twitter of people going on and on about the sound of the Batmobile starting up. It had a huge impact on the audience.

And this sound started back with the trailer. That’s the most iconic sound in the teaser trailer that I think got people excited for this movie. The sound of the Batmobile starting up qualifies as iconic, I think.

And it’s a sound that’s been done so many times, for all the Batman movies, and series, and games. Being able to put your own creative spin on something that iconic must have been a really cool feeling…

WF: I think it’s safe to say that we all felt that way the whole time we were working on the movie!

Every frame we knew would be looked at by millions of die-hard Batman fans.

DM: Every frame we knew would be looked at by millions of die-hard Batman fans. And you don’t want to disappoint them. But you also want to give them something new, fresh. Threading that needle (or walking that tight rope) was the whole movie for us. And for Matt, too, I think.

WF: We’ve all been doing this for a long time at this point, but not everyone gets to work on a Batman movie. I feel very privileged to have not only worked on a Batman movie, but a Batman movie with Matt Reeves. And it’s a really excellent film, as well. I count my blessings that we were able to do it, and do it in a way that people are responding to.

What was your approach to the punches and impacts? How did you want the fights to feel, and what were your means and methods of getting them to feel that way? Did you rely on a lot of foley? Were there any SFX libraries that were useful?

WF: We used all kinds of sounds, as you can imagine. We did quite a bit of recording ourselves, beating up things in the shop and around the lot. We did a fair amount of throwing ourselves around, actually. We recorded a lot of the fight efforts ourselves, too.

…nearly everything fight-related was processed through analog modeling plugins to give it a tape-saturated sound.

One big component of the sound of the fights, in general, is that nearly everything fight-related was processed through analog modeling plugins to give it a tape-saturated sound. (And this is true for nearly all the sounds in the film really.) One thing that Matt, Doug, and I have talked about over our years of working together is our mutual love of ’70s movies. It was obvious from the beginning of The Batman that Matt wanted this to feel like those ’70s movies we love, like The French Connection, Bullet, Chinatown, and The Godfather.

All those films were recorded on tape and mixed on magnetic film. They have a nice analog saturation to them. I wanted to make the fights sound modern but have that analog “thickness” that all those older movies have. So, literally, everything got some amount of analog tape saturation on it.

I’m a big fan of multiband buss compression. If you use it right, it’s one of those things that softens the highs during the loud moments but lets the lows stay nice and thick.

In terms of plugins, I used Avid’s HEAT in Pro Tools, which was something that the entire effects side of the mix went through. It’s essentially a plugin that operates system-wide. It’s almost like taking every track in your session, running it through a tape machine, and then bringing it back in. It gives everything a bit of glue and saturation. I did some additional processing as well to bring out even more of that analog feel, with plugins like Soundtoys Radiator and Decapitator.

When we went out to record that Bronco in the desert, we even brought along a Nagra to have the option of actually recording on tape!

I’m a big fan of multiband buss compression. If you use it right, it’s one of those things that softens the highs during the loud moments but lets the lows stay nice and thick. That’s sort of what tape does. It soft-clips the high frequencies before the low frequencies, and that manifests as multi-band compression in so many ways.

Going further, especially on the punches, fight sounds, and foley at times, I ran the sounds through analog tape emulation plugins to pre-process the sounds and give them even more of a big, fat, recorded-on-Nagra type of sound.

Behind the sound of The Batman – recording the Ford Bronco to Nagra

When we went out to record that Bronco in the desert, we even brought along a Nagra to have the option of actually recording on tape! We recorded on digital as well, but we did roll tape on everything and much of that made it into the movie as well. It sounded great!

DM: Another thing we pushed in the final was the efforts that Will had mentioned. Those effort sounds were a combination of the effects editors and loop group.

Matt was conscious of using efforts to express intensity on the hits. If you keep turning up the hits to make them sound cooler, it sounds like a battle between superheroes. Matt didn’t want to go there at all. He wanted to keep it grounded, but still big. So adding the efforts, the voices and breaths, and the foley feet and body movements made it feel more tangible, as if you’re in there.

You hear the “oofs,” and “aahs.” We played a lot with the balance of that in the final mix to get that structure so that the hits felt violent but not super-human.

Matt was conscious of using efforts to express intensity on the hits.

Will did a really good job responding to each scene and adjusting the punches accordingly to create a balance of efforts.

WF: We wanted to avoid that superhero aesthetic as much as possible, as Doug said. Matt always complains when sounds are too “shiny.” He doesn’t like things that sound overly slick. For him, that means they sound fake. He wanted things to sound naturalistic yet expressive and impactful.

That’s something we always strive for in general with Matt’s movies, but even more so on The Batman because we wanted to make something that didn’t feel like a normal superhero film.

Did you have a favorite fight to design?

WF: I’d say the very first beatdown on the train platform. That was the first fight scene we cut. And much like the Batmobile scene, we were trying to find the aesthetic. That’s an exciting part of the process for me: experimenting with sounds to figure out what this movie is going to feel like.

So that train platform fight was a jumping-off point aesthetically, although it was a fairly brief moment in the film. It’s short, but impactful at the same time.

I was focusing on the sound of the punches and blocks, but also, I wanted it to sound precise and so the rhythm was important too. The rhythm is dictated somewhat by the visuals, but there were some liberties taken in terms of sync. I wanted the fight to have a musical sound. It makes Batman feel more precise in his movements.

That’s an exciting part of the process for me: experimenting with sounds to figure out what this movie is going to feel like.

Along those lines, we took it one step further with Catwoman in the fight in the Mayor’s study between Selina and Batman. We wanted to differentiate their styles of fighting through sound and rhythm. How can we make Catwoman sound even more precise than Batman? She’s cat-like, so we wanted her to sound nimble and fluid compared to Batman, who is more angular in the way he fights.

So that was a fun thing to figure out. It took us a few tries to get those two rhythms to work with each other, and to get them to sound distinctive enough. Sound designer Lee Gilmore spent a lot of time finessing that scene and making it feel real.

Behind the sound of The Batman – recording shell casings

DM: Those are great examples but I have my two favorites.

First, there’s the fight scene in the club. I love that scene. Batman takes out the two bodyguards at the door very quickly, and then he moves into the club. As we move into the club with him, you hear people yelling; you’re immersed in this really loud club music and the sound of the crowd. That envelops everything.

I love the contrast that happens when you go into the club and you’re enveloped by that primordial feeling of the crowd and the music.

Batman gets into this violent fight with ten bodyguards that come out of the woodwork. You can feel the fight through the music – hear the impacts and efforts. It’s all there but the music is much bigger. The crowd has no idea; they’re just dancing. Then someone fires a gun and the crowd reacts.

I love the contrast that happens when you go into the club and you’re enveloped by that primordial feeling of the crowd and the music.

The other one is that amazing scene in the entryway to Carmine Falcone’s loft above the club. Batman comes out of the elevator and takes on all these different guys but the power is out. The scene is super dark and only illuminated by the muzzle flashes of the automatic weapons.

This was done practically on the set using blanks in the guns. There was no other lighting.

This was done practically on the set using blanks in the guns. There was no other lighting. It creates this intermittent strobe effect that continues throughout the fight. Batman is using his fists to clout each of the assailants and his bulletproof suit is keeping from getting injured. So he methodically goes through and brings each of the guys down. You hear them making impact reactions – oofs and aahs – and you hear Batman’s fists which are bigger than life but not superhero big. Visually, that’s the most powerful fight in the movie, I think.

WF: Sound is telling you a lot about that fight because you can’t see what’s happening much of the time.

They had the forethought to shoot that scene with a night-vision camera, also. They were carrying that in the Avid as a separate track so that when it came time to do the sound for that scene, we could cut all the details that you weren’t necessarily seeing. It was a clever idea.

Matt wanted to emphasize this idea of Batman’s feet as he came closer and closer through that shot, as if he’s this unstoppable force.

Matt wanted to emphasize this idea of Batman’s feet as he came closer and closer through that shot, as if he’s this unstoppable force.

Another thing we contended with in that scene was this very strong rhythmic theme from composer Michael Giacchino. As is often the case, the music and sound effects need to speak to each other rhythmically. If they’re both just doing their own thing, it sounds like two songs playing at the same time.

Once the music was finalized, we made some micro-adjustments to the hits and guns and footsteps, to make them more cohesive with the rhythm of the music. This way it felt like it was one idea.

On the dub stage for the final mix of ‘The Batman’

What would you want other sound pros to know about your work on The Batman?

DM: I would say it’s the experience of working with this team who have worked together before; we all had a huge amount of trust in each other. That goes from Matt all the way through to the assistant sound editor. Matt relies on everybody he works with, but he relies a lot on sound yet doesn’t have the time to focus on it.

The process of working with Matt and Bill Hoy (editor) and Tyler Nelson (second editor) was unusual in that we were moving through the film in a linear fashion, creating the sounds for the scenes that we were on, or that Matt was working on, or any of the future scenes we knew he’d be getting to soon. We’d deliver mixed down tracks to Bill [Hoy] to put in the Avid, and he’d mix in the music, which was composed in large part from themes Michael Giacchino had already written for the movie. Michael actually had the opportunity to record those tracks with an orchestra at Abbey Road Studios before they started shooting.

So we got a mix back that might have certain sound effects muted completely or other ones pushed up…

Paul Apelgren, the music editor, was able to work on them, weaving them through the movie as the scenes were being worked on. So Bill was able to rough-in scenes and give them back to us with music and sounds, and his mix moves from the Avid. He was mixing in the Avid in response to Matt’s comments on what was a music moment, or effects moment, or just dialogue. So we got a mix back that might have certain sound effects muted completely or other ones pushed up, and this would give us a sense of what they were responding to that we were sending.

Matt would also call and tell us his thoughts for scenes.

We started before Matt did so we could get a head start on the scenes that he’d be working on. And we worked through the whole movie that way, slowly but surely, to the end. We were all discovering the movie together in a way, in a call-and-response. It was an amazingly healthy, effective process that relied on people having good communication and trust. And it was dependent upon having a director like Matt, who had a vision that he was able to communicate effectively. Matt would respond to things, “I like this. I love that. I hate that. We need more here.”

It’s a great way to work. Matt has the privilege to work that way now and we’re so happy and lucky to do that with him. It really is an effective methodology.

WF: It’s very good for the creative process. It sort of means that we’re always sprinting, but it’s much better for the creative process than showing up to the final mix with a bunch of sounds that the director never heard before and having to sort it all out.

As much as possible with Matt, we try to make it an evolutionary process instead of a revolutionary process.

DM: So that’s the thing that’s most unique in working with Matt on this film and the other films we’ve worked on with him. That’s definitely something I’d tell my fellow sound professionals.

Sound is being filtered through one of the character’s experiences in one way or another. That guides our choices in terms of what we’re featuring and how it sounds to the audience.

WF: One of Matt’s hallmarks as a filmmaker is that he pays so much attention to point-of-view. That often extends to the sound as well. There’s always a sonic point-of-view. It’s not a generalized observational thing. Sound is being filtered through one of the character’s experiences in one way or another. That guides our choices in terms of what we’re featuring and how it sounds to the audience.

This film is almost entirely taking place through Batman’s POV in one form or another. That’s such an effective filmmaking tool, and it opens our work up to making bolder choices because the audience inherently understands that they’re experiencing things as Batman is experiencing it. That allows us to make aesthetic decisions that are not necessarily completely realistic. They’re more emotionally driven. That is such a gift for sound professionals, to be able to play in that sandbox.

A big thanks to Will Files and Doug Murray for giving us a behind-the-scenes look at the sound of The Batman and to Jennifer Walden for the interview!

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