Behind the Strong Sound Design and Dolby Atmos Mix on Award-Winning Documentary Film ‘The Territory’ – with Tim Nielsen, Peter Albrechtsen & Rune Klausen

The rise of streaming services has revived the documentary genre, so much so that it was the fastest-growing genre on streaming services in 2020 into 2021. According to Parrot Analytics, the number of documentary series during that time increased by 63% and the demand grew by 142%. Increased demand means more studios are willing to fund nonfiction content. And audiences expect well-crafted content from the streaming services they’re paying for. Documentary films and series today are as well-produced and polished as dramatic content, and that’s not a bad thing! If the audience is engaged in the story, it will potentially have a greater impact on them.

Looking at the opening of National Geographic’s The Territory – from director/cinematographer Alex Pritz – you get a strong sense that the peace, tranquility, and natural beauty of the Amazon Rainforest is being destroyed by opportunistic landgrabbers who are felling trees to harvest the lumber and to make way for cattle farms. The film starts with a hyper-real, noisy truck ride to the edge of the jungle, the sense-assaulting sound of chainsaws and heavy machinery, and the beefy sound of an old-growth tree falling that, in Dolby Atmos, starts with leaves rustling in the overheads and ends with a massive thud that rumbles the sub. In contrast, following the opening credits, we’re treated to a sequence in the rainforest with the indigenous Uru Eu Wau Wau people; the soothing sound of birds and insects fill the surrounds. Children run along a leafy path and splash in the river; the camera follows a young man, Bitaté, underwater, and the sound is treated as though it’s from his perspective. It’s not your “typical documentary” sound approach. It doesn’t feel raw and “captured in the moment.” It’s not a wide shot of sound, but rather it’s focused and subjective.

Sound designers Peter Albrechtsen and Rune Klausen – who, along with the rest of the sound editorial team, recently earned an MPSE nom for their work on The Territory – and re-recording mixer Tim Nielsen talk about their approach to making The Territory sound immersive by using real recordings of the rainforest captured by composer Katya Mihailova, filmmaker Pritz, and the Uru Eu Wau Wau people to craft backgrounds that feature discrete sounds panned around and overhead in the Atmos mix. They talk about taking an emotionally correct approach that focuses on and emphasizes how the characters feel or the feeling of a location – such as using screaming animal sounds to intensify the fire scene and using the sounds of sirens to portray an uneasy city. Also, they discuss the differences between the film’s first mix for Sundance in 5.1 and the second mix done in Dolby Atmos at Skywalker Sound for the theatrical and streaming releases.

The Territory | Official Trailer | National Geographic Documentary Films

There’s been an amazing rebirth of the documentary genre thanks to streaming services. Docs today can be just as captivating sonically as a dramatic film. And you really get a sense of that in the opening of The Territory – with the hyper-real sounds of the truck, the chainsaws and machines, and the massive weight of a tree falling. There is the underwater perspective of the kids playing in the river. Is there a division anymore between what constitutes ‘documentary’ sound and ‘dramatic’ film sound?

Re-recording mixer Tim Nielsen

Tim Nielsen (TN): I don’t think so. One of the reasons I like to work with Peter is that he has always treated them similarly, I think. There’s been a handful of people that have as well, but I think you’re right. People are realizing that they can’t get away with really simplistic sound so much anymore, and things like Dolby Atmos have opened up the possibility to do more. Some of the sound for documentary films I’ve heard this year rival any of the feature films for sound. It’s all about the decisions.

Peter, you’ve always had that approach, correct?

Sound designer Peter Albrechtsen

Peter Albrechtsen (PA): Yes, I don’t see much of a difference. I feel that it’s really about sonic storytelling. Of course, we spend a lot of time making sure that what is there adheres to this concept called “emotional authenticity.” It has to feel right, and on this film, we spent a lot of time collecting sounds from the area. The composer Katya Mihailova went down there and recorded all kinds of instruments and also ambiences from the area. What you hear is the real stuff; we are just using it in a very enveloping, very nuanced, and detailed way that could just as well be in a fiction film. But it’s a way of recreating reality in a way where it’s totally enveloping and very visceral.

I think it’s a great approach! If you can engage the audience and get them emotionally involved in the story, that’s a good thing, especially for a true story like this one where you feel for the indigenous population whose land is being stolen.

When you got started on this film, what had director/cinematographer Alex Pritz already cut in sound-wise? What were some of his initial concerns or aspects of the sound that he wanted you to focus on?

Sound designer Rune Klausen

Rune Klausen (RK): When we got the material and started to work together for the first week – with Alex and the composer Katya and producer Will Miller who turned up in Copenhagen – we started with the big fire scene. That scene had the most action, so we started by diving into that and making that sound nice in 5.1, which was the format we were only focusing on at that time. We wanted to make the fire big, and make it evolve. We wanted to see what we could do together, so we started with that.

TN: Had they cut much in their Avid track? A lot of feature films cut very elaborate Avid tracks, but do documentaries also? Had they done much concept work, or were the tracks pretty bare when you started and it was really just up to you?

RK: No, there was not much. They put in some stuff here and there, but mostly it was Katya’s recording, to give it a little more ambience. There wasn’t much fire or animals. It was pretty sparse.

PA: Their tracks were very basic and very raw. That’s why I think Alex wanted to meet with us so early because he wanted to have a soundscape very different from that.
We had these early talks about the film and Alex is amazing because he’s so curious and he’s very interested and he’s very passionate. He was really curious about what sound can do, and he was that way until the very last day of the mix.

He was really curious about what sound can do, and he was that way until the very last day of the mix.

He’d ask, “Can we try this? What about this? Or how about this?” That meant that things were constantly developing. But at the same time, we needed to all meet up to find out how this film feels if we really go all the way with sound. And that’s when we met in Rune’s studio in Copenhagen, where we all were together and began these first sketches, which really turned out to be the foundation of how the whole film was going to sound.

And I think Alex (who at that point was still editing in New York with his picture editor) realized they can actually make this work where we use sound as such an integrated storyteller, to really make room for all the ambiance.

Watch the Soundworks Collection video feature here: Behind the sound of The Territory

Alex also trusts us to not have scenes where people are speaking all the time and explaining stuff. There are a lot of scenes in The Territory where people are not talking, but they’re doing things. You’re just seeing physical action. It’s about people doing something and that opens up the opportunity for being much more atmospheric with the sound and for the sound to be a creative storyteller.

TN: That only comes with trust and understanding of how sound works. Another doc I saw this year, All That Breathes, has these sequences that are three or four minutes long, that hold on a single shot with no music and no dialogue or anything. That only happens with an assurance that it’s okay to do that. And Alex trusted that he didn’t have to have somebody talking the entire time. He didn’t have to score every single moment.

…more and more filmmakers are trusting that sound can do a lot for them

That’s becoming more interesting and I find that documentaries in general are embracing that idea more. Maybe this has always been the case but it seems that more and more filmmakers are trusting that sound can do a lot for them. Alex trusted all of us and he was curious. It’s a great thing when you can have those moments because so many people would be scared of them. They’d want to cut, cut, cut when nothing’s happening, to cut quickly to the next scene.

PA: The Territory has a very complex storyline with a lot of political and social issues going on that somehow need to be explained. Oftentimes in journalistic documentaries, you have a lot of talking heads explaining everything. Like, now the president came and he did this and that, and then the society changed. You’d have all these people talking about it.

But Alex is not doing that. Instead of hearing about how things are or getting told how things are, it’s about feeling them. So, what kinds of sounds are in the city now that it’s a place where criminal activities are going on? We used sirens and Rune did all these nice things with the ambiences, having kind of dirty, noisy things in the background. It’s a subtle way of creating this feeling that the urban environment is on edge. You feel that this is not a society that is healthy, but rather it’s a society that has issues. But it’s not told in an upfront way. It’s just told in a way where you can feel that things are edgy in this urban environment, for example.

What were the dialogue tracks like? Did Alex have a sound mixer on location to help him with sound? Or was he capturing it all himself? Did they use lav mics or just the camera mic?

RK: The production recordings were actually pretty good. I don’t think Alex had a sound mixer on his team. They had lav mics but I think they mostly used the camera mic.

TN: I think that’s right. They learned how to use some lav mics and how to wire them properly and they had camera-mounted shotgun mics, but there was no production sound recordist. They were so deep in the jungle and were so self-sufficient that they were a really small team. A lot of times it was probably just Alex filming or one of the Uru Eu Wau Wau filming.

Considering there was no production sound recordist, it was really well done.

RK: The production sound could have been much worse. Sometimes it sounded quite pro and sometimes we needed to do a lot of cleanup because of the insect life.

TN: Mostly, the cicadas and insects were the biggest things we came across in the mix. Rune had done a lot of work and then occasionally we would have to take one more stab at it. Considering there was no production sound recordist, it was really well done. Peter and I worked on a documentary a couple of years ago called The Cave, which was just a nightmare for production sound because of the situation the film was made in. But The Territory was actually pretty decent. We never had any real issues.

RK: We did do a few passes on it. One pass we cleaned up too much and it just didn’t feel right anymore. It became too sterile. That can sometimes be a problem with all the tools we now have for cleaning up dialogue – you lose some edge, some life. We needed to have a little grit and also a little insect life. So we did another pass. We had to find the right balance, and that took some work.

We needed to have a little grit and also a little insect life.

TN: Once we started really filling out the mix with all the other sounds, like cicadas, insects, and our own environmental sounds, a lot of the things that could have been problematic were disguised.

And we all kept saying, “It’s a documentary, nothing’s going to be perfect.” There are still a few lines in there that we never really got great, where the mic was just completely aiming in the wrong direction. But because the film is subtitled, there was a little bit of leeway. We weren’t worrying quite as much about absolutely every single syllable being intelligible. We knew that almost everybody on the planet was going to be reading the subtitles for the movie.

PA: At the same time, though, it was also important to Alex that Brazilian people could understand the movie without subtitles. This is very much a movie made for them. But sometimes you don’t need to hear every single word to understand the meaning of something. And Alex speaks Brazilian Portuguese so that was a great help, as well.
 

The dialogue sounded amazing! I can only imagine the difficulties they must have faced trying to capture dialogue in those locations with those conditions – as you said with the cicadas and insects, and also the rain and water. It must have been tough…

PA: There was a lot of jungle noise. Rune, you did an amazing job! Don’t be so modest. You did an amazing job with iZotope RX, cleaning all of that out of the tracks and making the dialogue much clearer.

RK: Thank you!

When we did go back to a line, it became very clear how much work Rune had actually done with iZotope.

TN: When we started the mix, I should point out that they had already done a temp mix/first pass mix for Sundance. Actually, the tracks that came to me were already quite clean. The dialogue had already been mixed once and was already cleaned up really well. So, luckily I didn’t have to deal with any of that. That left us to do a lot creatively with the second mix. When we did go back to a line, it became very clear how much work Rune had actually done with iZotope. So, Rune, don’t be so modest!

RK: It could have been much worse! Of course, there was noise and we did a lot of work to make it sound better. Even in the city, the cicadas were loud. They were just all over.

So you mentioned a first-pass mix for Sundance?

PA: Yes, we did one mix for the Sundance Film Festival first, and then National Geographic bought the film and put extra money into it so they could shoot a bit more and do a bit more picture editing, and then we did a whole new mix with Tim at Skywalker Sound.

The first mix was really very quick, and very energetic. The crazy thing was that the movie actually won a Documentary Craft Award at Sundance for this rough, intense mix and the sound design was even highlighted by the jury. But when we had a second chance to go back, we could open everything up and make it so much more refined.

We were also mixing in Dolby Atmos instead of mixing in 5.1…

It really was an amazing experience because we were able to watch the film with so much more clarity. We had a great overview of what was in front of us, in a way, and we could really refine everything and make it come alive. We were also mixing in Dolby Atmos instead of mixing in 5.1 and Tim did a spectacular job of making it really enveloping in a very natural, organic way.

TN: The nice thing about having a mix like that done beforehand is that you get a lot of ideas out of that first pass, and some of them totally stayed.

The fire scene is still what Rune and Peter did on the first pass; we just mixed it a little cleaner. But other things changed pretty dramatically. The funeral scene, for example, is one that we really took back to bare bones; we started over and rethought it.

The funeral scene, for example, is one that we really took back to bare bones…

It was so great to have that pass to start with. The first pass is always the hardest, just to get something to work with. Once you have something, then it’s much easier to refine it, even if you abandon something or just refine it. But probably half the film still has the exact structure as Rune and Peter worked on it, but just cleaner.

There’s quite a bit that we decided to try something new and totally different with Alex and Katya and everybody in the same room. And that’s the way it should be. You don’t want to get attached to things and have the director say, “No, just put it back exactly as we had it on the temp mix. Don’t touch anything.” It was never like that.

RK: And then to have a resource like Tim, seeing it for the first time. He might have seen a screening version earlier, but he was coming in with good, fresh ears.

TN: Whoever that person is, whether it’s a producer or a director, it’s good to have a look with fresh eyes. That’s always so important. The biggest thing that I loved about this mix and working with everybody here is that everybody just constantly said, “What if…”

Those are Peter’s favorite two words: what if. What if we did this? What if we tried this?

And it’s possible to get a composer who really doesn’t feel that way, but Katya was like, “Let’s try it. Sure. Try it. Try anything.”

Those are Peter’s favorite two words: what if. What if we did this? What if we tried this?

When everybody leaves their ego outside the room and decides to try to do the best work they can and also have fun doing it, that makes for a productive mix. And this was probably the most productive mix I’ve ever been on. We had just two weeks to go back through it all again, including the mastering that we had to do. We spent eight days doing the creative mix, which is not a lot of time, but we never felt rushed and we never felt too stressed. We had enough time and it was fantastic.
 

The indigenous tribe in the film, the Uru-eu-wau-wau, they have cameras and lav mics – did you get any of their recordings? Were there other recordings from them besides dialogue? Were there wild tracks of talking or rainforest sounds?

RK: Some of them were quite good. Some of them were very noisy, but when you’re in the deep in the rainforest and the rain is pouring down and you have a shotgun mic and maybe one or two lavs, then it will be very noisy. But they did pretty good and we’re using some of the sounds.

Also, in those moments, they’re handling the cameras; it’s more handheld and so more forgiving.

This intensity just grows on you because of the way the ambiences and backgrounds are utilized in every shot.

PA: There are many instances where we were making things edgier by putting in an ambience just for one cut, and then we go to the next cut and it’s a different ambience so it shifts tonally. We worked a lot on all those small dynamic changes, and in a lot of places it almost worked like music because it has this suspenseful effect. This intensity just grows on you because of the way the ambiences and backgrounds are utilized in every shot. That was something we spent a lot of time on.

TN: When the picture cuts go that fast, sometimes you need to do the same with the sound, to emphasize a change in location or shot. The shots might look similar, but Peter would point out that it’s a jump cut, that we’re jumping into a new location, so we really had to make the sound clear that it’s a new cut. In the rainforest, different camera angles kind of all look the same sometimes, but we are actually jumping through time so we need to make it jarring to sell the idea of a montage or something.

It shouldn’t be like you are sitting in the audience looking at a rainforest. It should feel like you’re in a rainforest as you’re watching this film.

PA: There’s an interesting trick I remember hearing Gary Rydstrom talk about when he did Jurassic Park. In order to make the forest sound really big, he’d use one recording of one rainforest over here on the left side and a different one on the right side. And there were several places in this film where we did that – we’d have one ambience there and one here, and then you shift the perspective and it changes the other way around.

This little homage to the master Rydstrom was an effective way of creating this feeling of a very big space that was just so alive. We really wanted to create a rainforest that felt like you were there. It shouldn’t be like you are sitting in the audience looking at a rainforest. It should feel like you’re in a rainforest as you’re watching this film.

TN: As far as the sounds we used, I know they used recordings from George Vlad, who has spent a lot of time recording rainforests. And there’s a fair amount of production. There are definitely production recordings that were reworked as ambiences for the foundation. We knew those were entirely accurate and they helped fill over dialogue sometimes, too, because they match the dialogue better. So we’re definitely using some of the ambient recordings, but a lot of them are just mono recordings.

There are definitely production recordings that were reworked as ambiences for the foundation.

PA: Katya recorded lots of stuff down there for us. The idea was to mostly capture music, but she’s so much into using natural sounds as music, so she recorded lots of ambience and specific animals in the jungle at different times of day and night. The rainforest sounds different in the morning than it does at noon, in the evening, and at night. She did a lot of great recordings down there, which we used.

And then as Tim mentioned, we got some of George Vlad’s recordings and also some stuff from Nicolas Becker. We also used a few other rainforest libraries.

There was this idea of using the animals in the forest as though they were talking in the background. For example, in the fire scene, you start out hearing all these animals. You see a frog and that is the actual sound of that frog. You hear these sounds of the jungle animals and they’re cute and kind. And then during that fire sequence, they turn into these screaming, angry animals. We were using both the cicadas and insects and the actual birds and monkeys and whatever’s in there. There are so many crazy sounds in the jungle. It’s pretty amazing.

What scene needed the most work during sound editorial, to further the action or to support the story?

TN: Even though I wasn’t doing the editorial work, I can say that there aren’t many scenes that don’t get about the same amount of care, to be honest. Even something like the fire scene, which is obviously a big scene, probably didn’t get more work than some of the simple, quiet scenes.

Even in the opening, when they’re going underwater, even something as simple as that needs and gets the same amount of thought and care.

…when they’re going underwater, even something as simple as that needs and gets the same amount of thought and care.

I know the dream sequence was a big one, as far as the stylistic direction of trying to design the shaman’s dream. But judging from the number of tracks that came to the mix, I wouldn’t say there was anything that stood out as being more cut than anything else. There were lots of sounds cut everywhere!

RK: The intro was a big scene for editorial, and also the fire. Another scene was when the farmers were digging the fence post holes. Alex wanted that to sound hot. You can see the guys sweating as they’re struggling with the holes and so the sound needed to reflect just how hot that was.

TN: In a lot of documentaries, you may have one or two sequences that are “sound sequences.” And they get more attention. But with that scene where Sergio was just there digging the hole and it’s hot, we worked on that a fair amount, trying to get the dialogue just right and the sound of the insects just right – just trying to sell it. It’s something so simple that maybe nobody even notices took a lot of work. Nearly every scene in the movie has an approach of sound behind it. Every scene we went through piece by piece and asked, “What can we do with the sound for this scene?” There weren’t any places where we just let it roll for 10 minutes before we pick it up again. Every scene was important for the sound.

Nearly every scene in the movie has an approach of sound behind it.

PA: That was also important to Alex, that all the characters had these refined sound spaces around them – every character, every environment had a very specific identity to it.

One thing I really like about the film is that no one is portrayed as a villain. Of course, looking at this crisis and all this stuff that’s going on, you see the indigenous people have all these terrible things happening to them but the characters from the opposite side, like Sergio for example, have moments that are very subjective. So, all of his ambiences are very layered. It’s very delicate and also very dynamic. Instead of making it sound harsh, and lofi, and evil, it’s more detailed sonically and this means that the characters also have more depth and nuances.

TN: The exception is Bolsonaro. There’s one sequence when Bolsonaro basically wins the election and there’s the huge rally. That’s one area where we purposefully introduced tons of distortion and almost screeching sounds because it’s from the emotional perspective of what this is going to mean for these people. It’s not a realistic approach necessarily, but it’s an emotionally correct approach. It almost sounds like distorted production, but it was very much stylized and done in the mix so the rally felt like an overwhelming emotional response because that’s what it was to Neidinha, in particular. Bolsonaro is the villain, and luckily he’s been vanquished.

…every character, every environment had a very specific identity to it.

PA: I love that moment. Originally, it sounded more traditional before going to the mix at Skywalker. Alex asked if we can do more, if we can play around with things so this can be more powerful. So we built up these things in the mix and created this distorted montage. I just love that!

TN: Actually, Peter went, “I have an idea!” And he disappeared to his Pro Tools station for 30 minutes and came back with it. We said, “Peter, you’re crazy.” But it worked so well.

We did the same thing in The Cave when these jets fly overhead. When we were mixing that, we wanted to make them emotionally terrifying. And so I happened to have this one sound in my library that I’d never used for anything; it’s the sound of pure terror. I made it by mistake when I was sound designing something else. I played it for Peter and we layered that into so many of the jets so they sound completely terrifying. That was the “Bolsonaro” moment in The Cave. We were trying to get to the emotion of it over the reality of it, and that’s always how it should be.

What was your approach to the Dolby Atmos mix in terms of using panning and filling out the surrounds? How far did you take it?

TN: The thing is with Peter and Rune, you can’t go too far, especially at the start of trying things. There’s no idea that’s too crazy for Peter. I’m a little more traditional in some ways, yet I’m adventurous, I hope. But Peter and I have these long discussions about things like panning dialogue, which I’m most always against. But anyway…

Just being in a good Atmos room, you hear what you hear, so immediately you start to see where the opportunities are to put something overhead. I’m always the one saying, “Okay, I’m happy to put stuff all over but is it in service to the story? Is there a point to doing it?”

Taking away sounds is just as important as adding sounds

We want to make it immersive, for sure. That goes without saying. But there are times when you have to take stuff out because maybe it’s too distracting to the emotion of what’s really going on. For example, the funeral scene is more about focus than immersion. Taking away sounds is just as important as adding sounds. So we fill out this lush soundscape and then we pull those sounds back to really focus attention on one area.

We did a lot with movement in the sound field as opposed to having a static placement of sounds.

We did a lot of work with the music. The music was mostly stereo when we started. Katya had replaced much of it between the first mix for Sundance and the mix at Skywalker, and so we spent a lot of time with each cue, listening to the different instrumentation and experimenting with what sounds good, and what’s immersive. We moved things from the front to the back, or raised things up into the canopy. For instance, when the tree falls, it starts up high and then comes crashing down low. We did a lot with movement in the sound field as opposed to having a static placement of sounds. If we were going to put a bird somewhere, the bird was probably going to move around a little bit – start top left and move over to the left surround. That’s always fun to do. I didn’t use any Atmos objects in the mix. We did it all in a 7.1.2 bed which was enough. We never felt that was lacking.

I’ve been a part of mixes where people just want to throw everything into the surrounds and overheads, but if it’s not grounded in the story, then there’s no point to that. We tried to never make it distracting. There shouldn’t be any moment where the audience looks because there’s some weird sound that comes out of nowhere that doesn’t make sense.

Peter, you’re a big fan of Atmos and immersion, and so you’re always wanting to make it more immersive. And we did. This is one of the most immersive mixes I’ve done. It was the perfect location for it, of course, because in the rainforest so much is above you. There were so many opportunities.

… this is a film that really shines in Atmos because you feel enveloped by this very special, natural place.

For a lot of films that I’ve done, we use the overheads really sparingly because there are not many justifications for it, for what might be up there. But here, there could be monkeys, or birds, or all kinds of stuff up there.

PA: There’s just this clarity in Atmos that’s different from 5.1. In 5.1, if you pan a sound to the surrounds it would get washy, or phasey. But in Atmos, it’s so clear and that makes ambiences work so well in Atmos because it feels enveloping in a very natural way. So, for something like The Territory, which is so much about the ambiences and the backgrounds, this is a film that really shines in Atmos because you feel enveloped by this very special, natural place.

TN: I don’t think we used many multi-channel recordings. I know there were a couple of 5.1 jungle beds in the template, but most of the mix is made up of pretty discrete elements. And that’s important. I’ve done a lot of experimenting with surround recordings and ambisonics, but the truth is that when you really want to make something feel enveloping – like Peter said about Gary’s technique of putting one whole different ambience on one side of the room than the other – it makes the distinction in the space. We did a lot of that, putting one specific sound here, one sound here, one sound here, all in different parts of the room so that it doesn’t get washy. You really want that distinct event to happen on the left. You want a distinct event to happen on the top back, and so on.

Was this a theatrical Atmos or Home Atmos mix?

TN: Both, but it was done theatrically first. We knew that it was going to have a theatrical release so the whole initial mix was all done theatrically, and then we basically did a home theater Atmos version at the Disney+ spec for the Disney+ release. But we didn’t make many changes. We used some tools to contain the mix, but luckily the spec is good enough for Disney+ that we didn’t make many compromises in the home Atmos version. It sounds very close to the theatrical version.

We also did a nearfield 5.1 mix and a nearfield stereo mix. Those are requirements these days, but not a 7.1 mix. They didn’t want that. I guess they just down-mix the 7.1 live.

We want to make sure it’s intelligible and they can hear the dialogue, but we’re not going to try to mix it for an iPhone.

The stereo mix is always the most compromised mix, and one that we fear even listening to sometimes because we’ve done all this work and to not even have a center channel for the dialogue, it just sounds so weird to listen to. But actually, it came out okay considering. And of course, we don’t want to believe that anybody will ever listen to the stereo mix. At the minimum, we only want them to listen to the 5.1 mix. Hopefully, they’ll hear the Atmos mix, but that’s not the reality, of course. It’s always too demoralizing for me to think about, but there are differing opinions. Some people will try to make the stereo mix sound as good as they can, as a compromise, because they realize a lot of people will watch it that way. I always try to make the theatrical mix sound the best. We try to make that sound as good as it is and if people are going to watch on their phones in stereo, there’s not a lot I can do about that. We want to make sure it’s intelligible and they can hear the dialogue, but we’re not going to try to mix it for an iPhone.

What scene or sequence evolved the most during your mix at Skywalker?

TN: I think it was the funeral into the partial dream sequence into Bitaté sitting and listening to his grandfather talking. I guess the dream’s not part of the funeral, but Peter I’m thinking the funeral sequence in particular, we spent quite a bit of time because it’s the emotional climax of the movie in a lot of ways. It had to be done well and we wanted it to be this powerful moment.

We also wanted it to be a beautiful moment on some level because it carries on for a little bit after the funeral into these lyrical, poetic shots of the bird. I’m thinking of the final bird swarm that flies by, that’s the one I remember spending most of my time on just because we knew we had to get that right.

PA: There are a lot of those poetic moments that we spent a lot of time on – all these small, quiet moments – and they shine so much more now. It’s beautiful.

There are a lot of those poetic moments that we spent a lot of time on – all these small, quiet moments – and they shine so much more now.

I love the dream flashback, where we see the archive material of the first people coming in to meet the indigenous people. That was actually a new sequence put into the film. We spent a lot of time on that.

Katya was so amazing with her music. She was so open to do whatever with her music. So, I did a pass back home in my studio in Copenhagen, using all these textures from her music that then got turned into a part of the sound design. There are so many layers in the sequence that you can’t really tell if this is sound or if this is music. And having a composer who has that kind of openness was just amazing. Katya did a really great score, but she was also just this wonderful collaborator.

TN: We changed a lot of her music over the course of the mix, with her in the room and with her blessing. A lot of the changes were from her ideas. If something wasn’t quite working, she’d offer up another version.

Katya was so amazing with her music. She was so open to do whatever with her music.

One sequence that Katya and I worked on a lot was the final climax piece of the music up until the final booms into the end credits. She really wanted to get that perfect so we dissected that down to the bare-bone pieces. We went through piece by piece, deciding what to keep and what to recut. There wasn’t a music editor, so Katya did a lot of her own music editing. She had some help at some point earlier on. But, a lot of mixes have a dedicated music editor, which we didn’t have. So a lot of times we were just cutting stuff live during the final mix, moving pieces around, and stealing them to use in another scene.

That flexibility paid off in huge amounts for us. Our hands weren’t tied. If something just wasn’t quite working, nobody was possessive about it or insisted that it had to stay. Katya was the first one to say, “Take it out.”

That’s the free-form fluidity that you want in a mix, because the mix is supposed to be a creative endeavor, not a technical one.

If I said, “Hey, this one instrument is pulling attention away.” She’d say, “Mute it. Let’s just try it without.” That’s how it’s supposed to be in the mix, and it’s the same with the sound. We even took out dialogue lines. Sometimes I would ask if they were saying something important because it was in the way of something else, and we would check with Alex. And he’d say, “No, we could lose that.” That’s the free-form fluidity that you want in a mix, because the mix is supposed to be a creative endeavor, not a technical one.

PA: On the mix stage, we had a second Pro Tool system so when Tim and Katya were working on music and it sounded really interesting and inspiring, Rune and I would work with headphones on and fly what we created to Tim’s computer to be put into the mix.

TN: They’d get an idea and make some notes, and then go back to the computer for 20 minutes and cut a few fixes to bring in new ideas or recut some of the dialogue lines to clean up one more syllable. It was nice to be able to jump around. We were mixing in one big session, which was nice. But, that meant they’d have to work off-line and we’d bring in the fixes. Even Katya would do that. She would work on her laptop at night and bring in ideas the next morning.

What are you most proud of in terms of your sound work on The Territory?

PA: I’m really proud that we made a very political film but did it in a very poetic and atmospheric way. It’s had an impact on a lot of political levels, and I think that’s quite amazing.

I’m really proud of this feeling that you’re in the rainforest, that whole feeling of being there. I love all these abstract moments in there which are done very subtly. In a very subtle way, it takes you between different scenes or different moments. I love the Bolsonaro scene. I love some of the more suspenseful moments that are really powerful, where we take away sounds. Tim did some great things in the mix, making things more claustrophobic in places. I love how some of the driving scenes have a big truck passing by and it almost takes the sound away so you’re just in this silent space.

That wasn’t very specific, but that’s the feeling of the film.

RK: I’m proud of the scene after the big fire. The forest goes dark and we take away almost all of the fire sound and flames and wind and it’s almost quiet. There’s a bit of magic happening and you hear one little cinder here and there, and one little branch burning on the right side.

There’s a bit of magic happening and you hear one little cinder here and there, and one little branch burning on the right side.

TN: The attention to detail you guys did on that was amazing.

We have to talk about the foley work on the film because a lot of documentaries don’t have foley. Peter has a long-standing relationship with foley artist Heikki Kossi in Finland, and I’ve now worked with him many times, too. He’s a dear friend and one of the best foley artists on the planet for sure. Having foley for a documentary is fantastic because it gives you all the details that would be obviously missing in the production. So, it’s always a gift to have Heikki on a film, especially a documentary.

From the moment we started mixing until the time that we were done, we never stopped trying new things.

For me, who typically does a lot of Hollywood films and not as much documentary work, I’m proud to be part of something that’s so important. Five of us basically locked ourselves in a room for nine days, and we left our egos outside. We all had the single goal of trying to tell this important story and make it as brilliant as we could with the sound. We laughed a lot while we did it. We had a lot of fun, all of us. And it felt like a little family for nine days. Everybody left happy and content. Nobody had to leave feeling like they had to give up things that they wanted. Alex got everything he wanted. We all got to put our contributions in and feel like it mattered and Katya was happy. From the moment we started mixing until the time that we were done, we never stopped trying new things. We never stopped trying to be creative. In a lot of ways, this was the perfect mix for me because it was exactly what you wanted. It was a creative thing. We never felt too stressed. We were experimenting, always with a common goal in mind. It was really so much fun.

PA: I’d like to highlight one scene, with Neidinha lying in the water with the rain coming down…

TN: That scene took a long time because there were 30 or 40 tracks that we had to weed through to try to find the exact rain sound. It was a very important moment, and it was only a 15-second shot. That shot took us probably three or four hours to get right, but it was worth it.

This is a very dynamic mix. There are a lot of loud moments to very quiet moments and back and forth, which is really fun for us to be able to mix like that. Where do we pull all the sound out? Where do we go big? Where do we go small? Instead of a mix that has flatline volume, we really made something very dynamic to match the movie. I’m proud of that, too.

PA: It was a wonderful experience with a wonderful team. We’re all very proud of this movie.

A big thanks to Peter Albrechtsen, Rune Klausen, and Tim Nielsen for giving us a behind-the-scenes look at the sound of The Territory and to Jennifer Walden for the interview!

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