Serving up Super Sound for ‘Zack Snyder’s Justice League’

Supervising sound editor Scott Hecker at Formosa Group and his brother supervising foley artist Gary Hecker at Sony Pictures Post Production have teamed up on numerous Zack Snyder’s films: Dawn of the Dead, 300, Watchmen, Sucker Punch, Man of Steel, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Justice League (2017), Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2021), and the upcoming Army of the Dead.

Together with sound designer Chuck Michael, they helped to define the dark tone of the DC Comics universe in Snyder’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and his latest Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2021), creating signature sounds for superheroes like Cyborg, Flash, Aquaman, Wonder Woman, Batman, and Superman.

Here, they talk about revisiting their work on the 2017 Justice League, going back to Snyder’s Director’s Cut of that as the starting point for their new work on the recently released 4-hour film titled Zack Snyder’s Justice League now streaming on HBO Max. Plus, they discuss the collaborative process of creating sound for Cyborg, Flash, Steppenwolf and his Parademons, share insights on their sound design techniques, offer advice on preparing a massive effects session for the dub stage, discuss ways of achieving weighty foley sounds, and so much more!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vM-Bja2Gy04

Zack Snyder’s Justice League | Official Trailer | HBO Max

The 2017 Justice League film had a runtime of 120 minutes. This 2021 release is double the length — 242 minutes! Were you able to salvage any of the work that you did on the 2017 version and conform it to this new cut? Or did it require a total redesign?

Scott Hecker (SH): It’s a little bit of everything, a mambo-combo of fare. We thought, “Oh my Lord, do we just start from scratch?”

If we did try to grab all that material from three and a half years ago — even if and when we found whatever we could find — it would have to be conformed and fixed because any of the scenes that Zack [Snyder] originally shot that ended up in Joss Whedon’s version were all pretty truncated.

That material was the most sonically mature versions of our sounds at that point but there was a lot of conforming and filling in the holes. When you take that approach, you’re charged with making it feel like it hadn’t been sliced, diced, rearranged, and fixed.

So in certain situations, we did have to start from scratch. The mix was definitely completely from scratch. We used no existing pre-dubs or anything from the theatrical release.

We ended up going back to Zack’s first Director’s Cut temp mix version. That’s all we had when Zack left the film so that’s what we started with. It was a really good first pass on Zack’s version at that point.

It was like a big archeological dig. I took old continuities (from 2017) and took the new continuity of this four-hour version and went through and found out what versions we had — what material at what versions. We culled all that stuff. It took a lot of work; we probably spent a month just doing that before cutting anything new. We were just trying to resurrect the bones of the work that we did originally.

Chuck can talk about moving forward from there because that’s a whole other huge challenge.

Chuck Michael (CM): I started with Scott’s list of where the best material could be found. And it was this huge archeological project, like he said, going through and finding the pieces and putting them in sync and then fixing and repairing everything.

But at the same time, that was our jumping-off point because so much of what we do is informed by the tone and the mood of the scene, by what’s happening on-screen and the pacing. We found that was significantly different in this version.

Also, a lot of the VFX are completely different. It may be the same base shot, but what’s happening — the timing of the visuals — is very different.

Our archeological process was basically our starting point. Once we had all that, then we could get started. We made all sorts of augmentations and sweeteners and changes based on what the new scenes were doing, and the tone and the mood of it.

The oldest material probably fit the tone better but then at the same time, that was the least developed of the material because we had not spent that much time developing it all.

It really was a huge task to get us to where we ended up, which I think sounds really good and fits the film really well. It was a lot of fun but also a lot of work putting that all together.

SH: Even atmospherically, this version is very different. Zack’s visual effects approach and his color timing are much darker atmospherically and tonally. I think you’ll find the two versions are different, just in that.

I think people will be less aware of that because atmospheres evoke more of a feeling than your brain taking in punches and hits and superhero powers, but the tone of this new version is so different that it’s really a different experience altogether.

CM: Plus the music is different too, so that requires us to change a lot of what we do as well so that we work better with the music and make more of a smooth mix with what we do.

 

Gary, in terms of foley, were you able to use any of your work from 2017? Even if it was just going back to the foley kits for some of the characters, was there anything that you could bring forward to this project or did you start all over?

Gary Hecker (GH): A lot of material and tracks that we shot for the 2017 release, we did keep. Early on, we did several days of ‘temp foley’ (before they do temp mixes). We shot 15 days just for the temp and that’s pretty unheard of.

Typically, even on some of these bigger films that I work on — superhero films — we might only do three or four days of temp foley but Scott wanted to hit it hard with Zack and present an awesome soundscape. So we did 15 days in 2017 and then we went back in and did another 14 days in 2020. So that’s 29 days for a four-hour superhero film.

They kept all that material. But obviously, in this 2021 release, there are new scenes. There’s also some old footage for which we never shot foley since we never made it to the final stages because Josh Whedon was brought in.

But three years later, Scott said, ‘Gary, I hope you remember what you did for everybody — your exact setups.”

Sound-wise, it had to seamlessly fit together so no one would know it was years later that this work happened.

It was really important for me to remember all my setups and my kits for these characters, all the surfaces, and all my props because there were some scenes throughout the film with the old shots inner cut into some new footages, or the old footage would end and then it would start with the new. Sound-wise, it had to seamlessly fit together so no one would know it was years later that this work happened.

Justice League definitely goes down in history as being one of my all-time favorites to work on because Zack’s movies are just very creative and his unique filmmaking style just warrants super cool stuff.

Just a little footnote, I’ve been on board with Scott since the beginning on all of Zack’s films. We did Dawn of the Dead, 300, Watchmen, Sucker Punch, Man of Steel, Batman v Superman, Justice League, and now The Snyder Cut. And we also just finished Army of the Dead.

So it’s been a really great ride and really cool to work with my brother. We have a really good rapport. He’s like me; we’re both really picky and we want the best for the film and obviously want to do the best sound.

Typically when I’m hired, I get films dropped off to me and I take care of it. But with Scott, it’s kinda old school. We’ll get together and view the film together, which I like doing. We view it and then he’ll tell me what he wants in the scenes. We go over every inch of it together so that we can have a super synchronized, tight, creative sound design/sound effects/Foley implementation.
 

This film opens with the death of Superman. I love the effect of his voice moving through all the different spaces and the spatialization of that. Can you tell me about your approach to that design? And what you did on the dub stage to help make that feel so big and cool?

CM: It was actually a real challenge to get the scream that long. It took a lot of audio trickery to extend the scream appropriately.

And then there’s the effect of it passing-by, which we did with some Doppler effects.

I think the real trick for the passing-by was that it needed to not be isolated on its own. Design-wise, I felt the need to keep that big primal scream underneath all of the Dopplers going by.

The changes in the EQ and the placement — a lot of the actual, physical panning — our genius mixers helped us with that. Re-recording mixer Michael Keller did a fantastic job on all the effects. Much of that came together on the stage.

The Superman death scream actually went back to early experiments we were doing…

The Superman death scream actually went back to early experiments we were doing that I never really finished on the first temp. We really got a chance to flesh it out and finish it up in this version.

SH: Interestingly, this was one of the first things that David Brenner (the original picture editor) asked for when we first started. Usually, when you get a list of sounds from the editing room, their requests are fairly straightforward. But in this instance, it was like, “Hey, can we have a version of Superman’s death scream that’s reverberating through the universe?”

“Ok, sure. We’ll be back to you in five minutes.”

I was looking through my notes and that was one of the first things we sent to the cutting room and they loved it. Chuck did a great job of doing that.

I love the way there is this general, echoing death yell that permeates the whole event, from A to Z, but then those individual scream-bys are really cool. Even cooler is when the scream enters the Mother Box; the incoming voice slams into the box and wakes it up. I thought that was really super cool too. That was really effective.

And I love starting the movie off that way. It was a great opportunity for us. Usually, films start off with huge music but that wasn’t the case here. The cue was sort of a plaintive, general bed of Junkie XL’s score. It wasn’t super dynamic. It left a lot of space to establish that his death yell was traveling through the universe and letting everyone know that Superman has died.
 

Let’s dive into the sound of the Mother Boxes. You briefly touched on Superman’s voice getting trapped in the box. What were some other sounds you created for these really cool, mechanical yet magical boxes?

SH: Our first discussion was that we didn’t want to keep adding sounds for each visual effect as it came in — literally being a slave to the visual image.

Secondly, we really wanted to make sure the audience could understand the science behind what these boxes do and that they are like living, organic computers.

So we had to create a sonic guideline of sorts for the different things it can do. Like, the box sounds like this when it’s in this mode. When it wakes up, let’s come up with cool waking-up sounds for it. Let’s have cool sound for when it starts to get more excited and vibrating. Then when the Boom Tube (an extra-dimensional portal that allows for instantaneous travel between two locations anywhere in the universe and beyond) is close and Steppenwolf gets close, it gets into a more frantic, wound-up state.

…we really wanted to make sure the audience could understand the science behind what these boxes do and that they are like living, organic computers.

We wanted to set that up from event to event throughout the film, so that somewhere along the line, the audience almost comes to expect it to sound a certain way. Hopefully, we achieved that.

Chuck can get into all the specifics because there’s a world of very cool sounds in there.

CM: There are a lot of elements to it. Like Scott said, it changes depending on what’s happening. Basically, there are a few layers.

The first layer is sort of the literal layer, where we have the shaking and physical movements of the box. Sometimes you see these little tiles popping out and all sorts of light coming from it. And so we have elements that take care of that physical part of it.

Then we talked about it having a real personality and a voice to it in a way. At some point, the term ‘organic computer’ came up. We took that approach and so there’s a lot of synth material in there, but there’s also a lot of processed screams and vocal sounds processed to make them a little more synthetic, more like the box.

…there’s also a lot of processed screams and vocal sounds processed to make them a little more synthetic, more like the box.

Then we wanted to make sure that it was reacting to the situation. I approach a lot of sound effects as a performance. I think of sound design as a performance for just about anything. For instance, when you’re recording a car, you’ve got to record the performance you need or you don’t have usable recordings. So when creating all this Mother Box material, I tried to get the performance that I thought matched what it was doing in the picture.

On top of the physical material — the sounds for what you are seeing — I also wanted a heart and a vocal for it. So in much of the organic stuff, there is more vocal sounding elements to give a sense of what it’s doing.

I like to examine what I’ve made sonically to see if it works with the tone of the picture. And if I get an emotional response from what I’m hearing, then I know it’s in line with what I think the scene is going for. A lot of the organic sounds of screaming and vocals helped achieve that.

 

To get the performance aspect, are you loading your sounds into a sampler and playing them to picture or are you just totally working in the box?

CM: I’m totally working in the box. A lot of people use a sampler, but I end up building a huge library of material in Pro Tools. I hit record and I start manipulating and adjusting. I know I need this kind of feel and this kind of reaction, and I work from that.

I use different source material for the different elements as well. I try to put in a particular recording or a particular sample of a vocal and process it and get everything I need out of it to make a little library of that sound.

Then I’ll make a library of this other sound, and then I’ll make a library of these cool synth sounds.

After I’ve created these long takes of material doing all sorts of varieties of things, I start putting that together editorially.

After I’ve created these long takes of material doing all sorts of varieties of things, I start putting that together editorially. I start finding the pieces that I think work really well and get the emotion of the scene, and I cut those in. I have to make sure all the pieces work together, too.

If I feel it’s still lacking something, I’ll go back and find another sample and create a whole other group of effects that I think are in that vein. I’ll find the best pieces of that and cut those in and see if I’m where I want to be. Then I show it to Scott and say, “Do you think we’re where we want to be?”

SH: That’s half the fun of our working relationship. We talk about these things before we start — just to talk in the ether to throw ideas around — and then we talk about what certain sounds we should start with, what kind of a vocabulary of sounds to be used.

Chuck is amazing with all the technology and whatnot. I just leave him alone for a while to come up with some material because at a certain point, you can only talk about things in the ether so much, especially things that don’t exist in the real world. Sometimes it’s pretty tough to talk about things that don’t even exist, although it is very freeing creatively because with no real reference, you can do whatever you want really, as long as it works.

Then we review material; we sit together and refine it. It’s really a fun, collaborative process that I just really enjoy.

 

On the foley side, Gary were you able to contribute to the sound of the Mother Boxes?

GH: One of the first things that you hear in the movie, foley-wise, was in that opening scene with the Amazons. You first see the Mother Box on that pedestal and it starts shaking. They’re all standing around it with their spears pointed at it. We had to come up with all the shaking movements, which would be hard to find in a sound library.

Throughout the film, we (myself, Foley Mixer Randy Singer, and Foley Artist Adam DeCoster) had to cover all the shaking movements, and whenever the Mother Box is dropped or handled. Cyborg picked it up a lot. There are battle scenes, too, like when Steppenwolf is chasing the Amazon queen on horseback and the Mother Box is bouncing off the ground. We had to cover all of that.

For the boxes, I used these really heavy metallic, camera suitcase-type boxes…

For the boxes, I used these really heavy metallic, camera suitcase-type boxes, and I resonated them on a thick metallic structure that I had built on the foley stage. I used the Sanken CO-100K microphone to capture the sound, and I used harmonizers and sub harmonizers to pick up all the weight in the low end, all those really deep frequencies.

The challenging thing was to make it heavy because when you play that sound at the appropriate level in the movie, it has to be held down and so it loses a lot of the weight. We were constantly pushing the bar on trying to get weight to that foley sound for the Mother Boxes.
 

---

Popular on A Sound Effect right now - article continues below:

---

Any tips you can give other foley walkers on how to create really great, heavy sounding effects without totally killing oneself on the foley stage?

GH: As a foley artist, you have to be creative and be meticulous. All those factors go into it. But throughout the years, typical foley has been light. Because that’s just how it is. It records light. So what I’ve tried to do over the years is figure out ways to make my foley sound thick and heavy. That’s what makes it more real. A lot of the foley in the old days was really thin and brittle, and it wasn’t the greatest.

But it’s tricky to get that low end and that weighty sound out of props, so I try to incorporate that processing in anything that warrants it.

So over the years, besides being a foley artist, I’ve had the opportunity to work on the other side of the glass and learn how to mix foley. I learned the different gear that was out there to make things feel heavy — like harmonizers and sub harmonizers and EQ. Because, once again, when you attenuate a sound in a movie (it can’t be played at full volume as we recorded it), it does lose a lot of the weight. I like making things feel weighty so that they have that substance. A lot of the dubbing mixers always say, “Hey, how did you do that? Because we really appreciate all that weight.”

But it’s tricky to get that low end and that weighty sound out of props, so I try to incorporate that processing in anything that warrants it.

 

Picking up 60-pound boulders and crashing them around on your concrete slab there in the studio would get pretty tiring after all…

GH: What’s cool is that I have these rocks and if you just record them normal, they sound like rocks. But it’s the recording illusion and recording tricks that I’ve learned — how I route things through the console and the gear that I use — that makes a normal rock that’s maybe 20-pounds sound like it is a thousand pounds.

A lot of it is recording magic but it does come from the source, too. You have to have the right source…

A lot of it is recording magic but it does come from the source, too. You have to have the right source and put a good mic on it and use gear like sub harmonizers.

That’s the difference to me. When a sound designer goes out into the field, they take their rig and their mic. They take their setup, but they’re limited. Out in the field, they don’t have top of the line mic pre-amps that I have. They don’t have at their fingertips all this studio gear. Later, back in their design suites, they do. But to be able to record it like that, with a source on the stage and with all that gear, that to me makes a huge difference.
 

Let’s look at the sound of Cyborg. In more emotional moments, he’s less of a mech but, of course, he’s got his mech moments, too, like in that first encounter with newly-returned Superman. Can you tell me about your palette of sounds for Cyborg and some of the things that went into creating him?

CM: With Cyborg, the trick was to keep his human qualities because there are really a lot of human elements to him. Story-wise and sound-wise, we didn’t want to make this big, heavy, beefy machine. But then when he’s fighting, he needs to be a big, heavy, beefy machine.

So there are different sides to the characters and we try to pull that out in what we do. There are these very delicate, subtle movements to Cyborg when he’s more introspective and more human. And when he’s a fighting machine, he needs big sounds.

A great sound designer named Casey Genton, who worked with us, did a lot of Cyborg stuff as well.

For Cyborg’s subtle sounds (when he’s just moving around very subtly), it really was a chain of crazy plugins. I would basically just utter little sounds into a microphone and through the processing chain create this crazy thing.

I would basically just utter little sounds into a microphone and through the processing chain create this crazy thing.

In some ways, I kind of performed bits here and there, vocally, but there’s so much processing on it you don’t hear any voice. I just needed some sort of input to this wacky chain that I was continually adjusting to get different, subtle sounds while I was rolling. I just recorded a bunch of stuff. I was talking into this chain or making little breaths into the microphone — things like that. I was manipulating all these parameters on the plugins, in real-time, just to see what I get. And when I found something cool, I did a bunch of that.

Then I would move on to something else and do a bunch of that.

I probably couldn’t recreate it at this point because sometimes you just record a lot of material and you have this cool little setup and you’re doing things and you get the product of that. Then I’d go back through all that material and find the pieces I wanted to use. So that was more of the subtle stuff.

For Cyborg’s big sounds — his big metal impacts and cool hits — Casey came up with a bunch of really cool stuff for Cyborg opening his arms, and moving, and some fighting-type of material. And he came up with some great material for the flying.

SH: After Chuck made a first pass on Cyborg, the visual effects came in and were further developed, so I started working with Casey on this stuff.

Casey just got obsessed. He bought a Kyma from Symbolic Sound and was taking lessons on how to use it from some guy in Germany. At 3 A.M., he’d be online taking lessons from this guy. And I was like, “Dude, you gotta sleep, man. You gotta show up at work alive and ready to go, man.”

And he goes, “Oh, it’s just so amazing. It’s so cool. This guy’s brilliant.”

Casey ended up actually bowing guitar strings and doing all sorts of stuff and he was manipulating a lot of it with different Kyma algorithms and whatnot.

…we definitely wanted to stay away from was to just cover his movements with different types of servos.

So we had performed synth vocals that Chuck did and I think Casey did some more. That was really interesting how Chuck started the foundation. Casey took it in an additional direction. And then it came back to Chuck at the end, when we were on the dub stage and the VFX were coming in. Chuck sort of put a bow and a ribbon on all of it.

I think it feels super organic and cohesive. It doesn’t feel like there are too many fingerprints on it.

The one thing that we definitely wanted to stay away from (and it could have been so easy to do) was to just cover his movements with different types of servos. I think we did a cool job of not being literal. We came up with more interesting, colorful sounds and not just mechanical sounds. Like Chuck said, Cyborg had a huge part of him that was still human. We definitely didn’t want him to sound just like a machine. So I think all those guitar tones and processed vocals really paid off in spades.
 

Chuck, I would love to know some of the plugins in your processing chain for Cyborg…

CM: I don’t remember exactly what I had in that chain. I do know there were some FabFilter plugins: Timeless, Volcano , and probably Saturn. Those were probably the primary focus. But again, I don’t remember exactly as I didn’t save that particular processing chain track.

Sometimes I’ll save a track of some processing chain I used. I know a lot of people process in Soundminer with the VST rack but I prefer to bring everything into Pro Tools and then do my processing. Then I keep that track or tracks of processing sometimes, just to save the chain.

I don’t always do that. Sometimes I don’t and I wish I did. I do save more now than I once did.

SH: For a lot of sound designers, it is like sonic alchemy. Sometimes you’re just playing with these different chemicals and combining them and all of a sudden there’s an explosion and you go, “Whoa. Whoa. That was cool. What did I do there?”

part of the art of sound design is knowing when something’s not working so that you can keep trying other things.

All those happy mistakes that end up being beautiful…

CM: But part of the art of sound design is knowing when something’s not working so that you can keep trying other things. Even if you spend a lot of time on it, you have to go, “You know what, this is not the right direction. So let’s go back and see what we can come up with.”

Sometimes you go back a few steps and see what else you can put in the chain and see what works. The advantage I have in Pro Tools, because I don’t use the VST rack that much in Soundminer, is that I can automate the plugins if I need to. Sometimes I’m changing the processing on the fly, but sometimes I’ll automate what I want out of it and then record a bunch of that stuff out that I’ve automated.
 

[tweet_box]Serving Up Super Sound for Zack Snyder’s Justice League[/tweet_box]

Gary, what were some elements you brought to Cyborg in your foley work?

GH: Cyborg is really a precision machine. In foley, we tried putting a movement to him with armor, but the plate armor ended up sounding thin when we tried to keep it quiet during his dialogue. So we decided to let all his movements be handled with the sound design.

What was really important to come up with were Cyborg’s metal footsteps. That was actually very hard to do and you can hear them bold as day in the film.

Scott and Zack and everybody wanted that to sound cool, like a big, heavy metal ‘ka-chunk, ka-chunk, ka-chunk.’ They had to be weighty. And that’s the thing: it’s hard to record metal on a foley stage and get it really thick and weighty. So it was a challenge to come up with that.

They had to be weighty. And that’s the thing: it’s hard to record metal on a foley stage and get it really thick and weighty.

At Sony, I have thousands of props. I went through them and found this heavy, winch-type thing. It’s made of steel so it’s pretty darn heavy. It has gears and stuff on it. And I used that on a big metal surface that I have on the stage to perform Cyborg’s feet.

I used that killer microphone I mentioned earlier, the Sanken CO-100K. It ranges from the low end at 20 Hz up to 100 kHz. So it has a huge frequency response. That mic is known for picking up really weighty sound and it did pick up a lot of the weight of that metal, and it was crystal clear. Then we used sub harmonizers and beefy equalization to add more weight. That was definitely a signature sound for Cyborg for sure.

I have a whole array of great microphones on my stage, like the CO-100K and a Neumann KMR 81. There’s one microphone I don’t think any other foley stage has: the Sony 800 G. I got that years ago. It’s like a $10,000 microphone and it’s really cool. It’s a large-diaphragm mic; it has its own power supply and its own cooling fan on it. I use that for a lot of props on the stage, and I also use it for my vocals too. It’s made for vocals. But it’s really a cool mic and it just records awesome.
 

Another character that’s also very metallic is Steppenwolf. What were your challenges in creating his sounds? And how did you make sure that Cyborg and Steppenwolf didn’t start to invade each other’s sonic space?

SH: With Steppenwolf, our challenge was his organic suit of armor that was percolates and emulates his emotions through the film. When he gets riled up, the metal scales really start flaring. And if he’s in extreme distress or really, really pissed, all of a sudden they just flare and snap out.

So those were, thank goodness, pretty different from Cyborg’s mode of movement. It enabled us to make sure that those sounds were completely different.

We had a couple of different layers of movement for Steppenwolf and one of them Gary worked on in foley.

Steppenwolf’s armor visual effects didn’t come until later. If you remember in the 2017 theatrical release, he didn’t have any of this metal armor. It was more like battle gear. So this is a completely new spin on Steppenwolf. I thought it was really cool, very menacing. And I loved that it expressed his emotions and anger and fear and all those different things throughout the film. We just tried to get that through subtly so it wasn’t too dominant, but that you could feel it and sense it.

I had to make little tinks and little slidey sounds and little pulsating moves with these blades, but I had to do it just right so that it didn’t interfere with any dialogue.

GH: Steppenwolf was a very challenging character. As Scott said, in the first Justice League, he had Viking-style gear, like leather and armor. But Zack wanted to improve Steppenwolf’s look so they changed it to make him more ominous and more threatening and unique. So now he’s covered in a stainless steel, metal, warrior suit that had thousands of little sharp blades on it.

We had to throw out all his other armor movements, and start from scratch.

For those tiny stainless steel blades he’s composed of, I used metal floor jacks and swords, blades, and knives. I had to layer and perform in sync all of his movements with all of these props. I had to make little tinks and little slidey sounds and little pulsating moves with these blades, but I had to do it just right so that it didn’t interfere with any dialogue.

I had to use all these blades and knives and machetes and layer them to match what I saw. When we played it back, all of his movements sounded really slick and cool.
 

What about the sound of Steppenwolf’s Parademons, which are also metallic? What went into their sound?

CM: The Parademons’ sound is one of those stories of where you just sort of happen on something quickly. They made their first appearance in Batman V Superman. I’m sure that everyone in the VFX department knew they were coming, but we didn’t have them at all until towards the end. And I had to very quickly come up with something.

But then when we got to Justice League, there were so many Parademons throughout the film. I actually thought, ‘Let me try to start again.’

But nothing that I did came out as cool so we went back to that sound we had established in Batman v Superman. But to make it work for Justice League, we had to make a lot more detail and augmentation and sweeten it and just sort of built upon it. So we used this Batman v Superman Parademon sound as a base and made a whole new palette based on that.

But nothing that I did came out as cool so we went back to that sound we had established in Batman v Superman.

It’s one of those things where I went back to square one just out of curiosity, mainly because I thought, “Oh, I came up with that so quickly. Maybe if I have more time, I’ll come with something better.”

But I never got anything better. Sometimes there are these little miracles that happen where you’re just doing something quickly and you hit upon an interesting base sound that’s really good. Like I said, we tried to do some other things, but I don’t think anything sounded as good.

SH: There was sort of an evolution though at some point, with the sound of the Parademons’ wings. We did want the wings to sound like what you saw. What we started off with weren’t delicate wing flaps by any stretch, but they weren’t as clicky and aggressive initially.

There were so many Parademons we felt that the world’s our oyster as far as animalistic vocal screams.

And especially with a Junkie’s score, I think we all agreed to leave those softer Parademon wings alone and just go for the aggressive, clicky wings. They’re very staccato and really cut through the mix nicely. When you see it on-screen and hear the sound, it’s completely believable.

I think some of the more delicate wings are in there still, when it’s a quieter scene. But for the most part, we knew that in really big action scenes the only thing that was really going to cut through were those clicky wings.

The vocals for the Parademons are just a smorgasbord of processed animal screams and different things. There’s even an occasional zombie scream in there too. I won’t lie. But it’s very, very loose. There were so many Parademons we felt that the world’s our oyster as far as animalistic vocal screams. There’s even a recording in there of a dog tearing up a chew toy. It gets down to that.

So there was a lot of processing involved with all those different sound sources.

GH: In foley, I covered the movement for the Parademons, for their metal feet and their metal bodies.

I also did really cool wing passes. On the stage, I have these huge feather dusters — really giant ones — that I flapped against this metal tower I have. I close-mic’d it and synced my movement up to these wing flaps. They’re going at high speeds so it’s hard to do. You have to do it really fast.

…the feather duster on the metallic tower added this metal tone. It wasn’t just like a generic wing flap; it had metal to it.

What was cool about it is your ear would hear a wing element, and then the feather duster on the metallic tower added this metal tone. It wasn’t just like a generic wing flap; it had metal to it. That was a cool sweetener to give to the sound design team as an element of those wings.

Another cool little tidbit is that in addition to foley, I do creature voices.

So on the first one, Scott did a couple of sessions with me and I performed some Parademon vocals.

And I actually did a little bit for Steppenwolf’s fighting movements as well, along with the actor. That was cool, making those voice sounds and the creature sounds. Together with all the sound effects, they sounded super slick.

 

What was your approach to the Flash’s slowed-down view of reality? Were there parameters that helped you to define how that should sound?

CM: That’s another one that had a huge evolution. I think that was also an early scene, when they’re in Barry/Flash’s lair and Bruce Wayne/Batman throws the Bat-a-rang at him and he goes into that subjective reality. That was one of the early scenes we started with.

SH: Yeah, the cutting room asked, “What do you got for that?”

CM: I did a bunch of stuff for that early on and again, Casey came in and added some cool stuff for the Flash, as well, particularly the electricity. He did some great stuff with his electricity. I don’t know what his secret sauce was but that all sounded fantastic.

…with all the visual electricity in the film, we didn’t want it to be just a bunch of processed electrical arcing and sparking.

It just kept evolving. I think there are elements from both of us in there. We took what works, the best stuff for Flash. Casey did a lot of stuff, especially with electricity and reversing material.

SH: It’s like Cyborg. We didn’t want Cyborg to just sound like a servo mech. And in the same vein, with all the visual electricity in the film, we didn’t want it to be just a bunch of processed electrical arcing and sparking. Things like that would get really tiresome and be a bit too literal. So there are a lot of different flavors in there.

There obviously are some processed electric sounds and whatnot…

CM: …and some dentist drills in there.

SH: Yeah, dentist drills and glass breaks, also a tape measure — like extending a tape measure and snapping it (with the residual rattles and things). Just a mambo-combo of things.

I just love it when you can arrive at sounds that are believable, but aren’t literal.

Casey even got into doing some processing with oscillator sweeps and getting into the Kyma world with that stuff too.

It’s funny that you ask about those two characters, Cybrog and Flash, because those two characters were probably the most collaborated on sonically — between Chuck, Casey, and myself — creatively and technically. I think it turned out really cool. I just love it when you can arrive at sounds that are believable, but aren’t literal. In this case, it’s not even electricity, but it feels like it is, and it feels correct. So I’m happy about that.
 

That’s the magic of sound design. Despite the source elements, if it feels like it fits what you’re looking at then you’re golden. But it must be so challenging when you get the visual effects in late, because you’re creating this sound that fits what you have and then the VFX come in and it could change everything…

SH: Absolutely. And like Chuck was saying, at the end of Batman v Superman when it was the post-apocalyptic dream, all of a sudden we’re getting all these Parademons in at the last minute. Sometimes that could turn into a panic but what it does (and I think it’s really cool) is it gets your first impression.

Chuck was under the gun and I was on the dub stage. We were dubbing away and Chuck was trying to come up with these sounds. Sometimes it’s really cool when you’re under pressure like that, because you end up having to trust your first instincts. And a lot of times those first instincts are really the best ones.

Sometimes, if you have too much time to think about stuff, it can get over-done, diluted, with too many fingerprints on it. It’s really interesting: the creative process and how it’s implemented, especially on films like this where there are so many sounds that just don’t exist in the real world. That’s the fun and freeing part.

…you end up having to trust your first instincts. And a lot of times those first instincts are really the best ones.

CM: My approach of recording to create design effects that I was talking about earlier — where I make these long takes of a variety of things — I think that helps because if I can do that fairly early on in the show, then when VFX come in at the last minute, maybe I can find something in there.

Because we try to make a sonic palette for the show that sounds like this universe, if new VFX come in I don’t want to just go grabbing anything. It’s got a sound like it fits into this universe. So when I’ve made these long takes of things with lots of variety in them, perhaps I can find something in there that I didn’t use before that now fits the new VFX… or some combination of several of those effects.

Starting early and having time to build a library for the show, even if there’s stuff you think you probably won’t use right now, later on down the line it might be perfect for something else. And it already fits into this universe of the show sonically.

So it really helps to be on early, creating all this material and creating large recordings of it so you have a grab-bag that can help you later.
 

And never throw anything away…

SH: Absolutely not.

CM: But at the same time you have to be able to go, “Nope. That’s not gonna work.” So you have to try something else.

…at the end of the day, you’re really only as good as your library.

SH: You can always go out and record stuff, but at the end of the day, you’re really only as good as your library.

It’s funny. I was working on a show years ago and I provided an older sound from my library. The editor was younger than myself and when I came back in to ask, “How’d you like that sound,” he goes, “I don’t know if I can use it. It’s got tape hiss on it.”

This was years ago when everyone was into using CD libraries. And if you’ve just started editing during that age, you weren’t used to hearing any background hiss. All those CD libraries sounded so antiseptically clean and sterile and whatnot.

But anyway, I said, “In this sequence, no one’s going to hear the tape hiss. It’s a fabulous sound. Don’t be afraid to use it.”
 

Battle sequences in any action film are full of sonic opportunities. But with superhero films, they’re even more demanding. Characters have super-abilites and trademark, iconic sounds that need to be heard. What were you challenges in designing the sound of the battles for this film?

CM: We have to be true to what a character’s sound is so that the audience instantly knows by the sound what’s going on, and who’s doing what.

Wonder Woman has her signature sounds and Aquaman has his; we made a real deal out of his trident. Cyborg has his signature sounds, and so on. So at the bare minimum, you want to make sure that the signature sounds are coming through for each character so that the audience knows which character is saving the day at this particular moment.

The other tricky thing with those big action sequences is to not overdo it or you get mud.

And they’ll all be saving the day at some point.

I think that was the main thing.

The other tricky thing with those big action sequences is to not overdo it or you get mud. It’s about choosing the right kind of sounds that will come through and clearly tell the story. And at the same time, not muddy up everything else that’s going on.

That also falls to our mixers. We provide the material as closely as we can, but the mixers have to get in there and really work with the music and the effects and balance everything out and make sure that you’re hearing what you want to hear.

It’s really like telling the story with sound (as well as what you’re seeing on the screen, obviously) but you need to pick through what’s the best, and what’s going to cut through and tell the story the best sonically for that particular little moment.

And we’re talking very short moments; it’s continually changing.

What do you need to pull out to make room?

Like, when that big wave of water comes in, you get that big rush of water. But steady water is just going to take up track and you’re not going to hear it. So that has to go pretty quickly. Once you establish it, then you go onto the next thing.

SH: In a scene that’s busy, like Steppenwolf’s fight with Batman, Wonder Woman, Cyborg, Flash, and Aquaman in the tunnels on Stryker’s Island, it’s visually stimulating, and the pace of the editing is pretty tight too. And then you have Junkie XL’s music to deal with. There are all these factors and yeah, you have to keep all the characters’ sounds very specific. We do start off cutting in sound for most everything that you see and then we play it and see where we’re at.

We always arrive at,”‘Okay. It’s too thick. We’ve got to start pruning the tree.”

We start with the most essential sounds. We know that those are going to be there. Then we start plucking out some sounds for things that are happening in the background. We pull those out and just start weeding the garden until we arrive at something that feels really good.

At a certain point, we started getting stereo mock-ups of Junkie’s cues. They weren’t exactly what was going to be in the final mix, but it was fairly close and in the spirit of what was going to be there. So we tried, always, to work against those mock-ups to make sure we weren’t wasting our time.

As a sound designer, you can get all wrapped up in your stuff. But at the end of the day, it’s all about what’s best for the film and the story and the scene in any particular moment, especially in a scene that’s so intense and visually stimulating and busy sonically.

… the easy solution is introducing mid range sounds that will cut through. But an accumulation of too many of those sounds is really taxing on the ear.

You have to consider frequencies, too. We have to be really selective about what kind of frequencies are going to play with the music and how can we reveal our sounds in the most interesting ways. A lot of times that’s really challenging too, especially with big music, because the easy solution is introducing mid-range sounds that will cut through. But an accumulation of too many of those sounds is really taxing on the ear.

The last thing you want is for the audience to become fatigued and just shut down.

To be honest with you, I think as judicious as we were and always try to be, even at the end of the day when I watched the film I thought, “What else could we have maybe stripped out to make it even more clear?”

I think we really got down to brass tacks and the essential elements that were needed to tell the story and to identify what our heroes were doing from moment to moment.
 

For these battles, you’re creating tons of effects with elements at different frequencies — a low, a mid, and a high frequency element — so the mixers can decide what’s going to cut through the best, or play best in that scene.

Do you have any tips on how to best prepare a busy scene for the mixers? Any tips on pairing all of that down so that the mixers are not completely overwhelmed on the dub stage?

SH: Time is never on our side. Even when the studio is gracious and gives you a good amount of time, it feels like there’s never enough time.

We try to be really smart about what we deliver to the stage. We kept our layout pretty slim. Again, with the music mock-ups, it enabled us to take some risks. And if we have questions, we mute some sounds rather than get rid of them, just in case.

We tried to feature the different frequencies that we felt would play best with the music, but in that, within our template, there are for certain elements complete separation for high, mids, and lows. So Michael Keller, our effects mixer, always had a nice degree of separation should he need to adjust within there.

It takes all three of those flavors — high, mids, and lows — to make it all what it needs to be.

…I’ve found that many really smart sound designers aren’t super-organized. And the organization of the sounds is just as important as coming up with the sounds.

We tried to stay really consistent with our layout. I think there’s a lot of really genius sound designers out there, but sometimes I’ve found that many really smart sound designers aren’t super-organized. And the organization of the sounds is just as important as coming up with the sounds. Otherwise, it makes it really tough on the mixer.

Michael was always really happy with our stuff. He always knew where to find things through our consistent layout.

Admittedly, towards the end of the project when new visual effects were coming in and you’re just rapidly cutting sweeteners to cover yourself, the session started to get a little plump. It was very flavorful and full.

At the end of it, we’re like, “Oh my God, I’m glad it’s all over because we didn’t have much more room for any more sounds.”

CM: One of the tricks, too, is movement. A sound that doesn’t change is a lot harder to hear than something that is changing in some way. If there’s always motion to your sounds, that helps.

A sound that doesn’t change is a lot harder to hear than something that is changing in some way.

For instance, an explosion can be just like white noise. It’s big and loud, and you’re not going to hear much detail in that. But if you put some sort of little zinger or sweetener — some sort of movement — it’s going to cut through better. That’s why a lot of times when things explode, you’ll hear more detail in the metal rips then you will in the fireball.

Even with the fireball, you need to come up with an interesting element that changes over time. Changes in pitch or changes in any sort of movement help the ear and the brain register the sound; it’s not just something that takes up track without any detail. If it’s changing and moving, it won’t get lost in mix.

Changes in pitch or changes in any sort of movement help the ear and the brain register the sound

You can have big sounds that you don’t hear very well because there’s no motion to them. It just gets sucked up into the track and it’s sound pressure level without detail and without anything that you can identify.

So the more motion that you have in all of your effects, the better they are. It can be a volume change, or an EQ/frequency filter kind of thing. Anything you can do to add some sort of motion and change to the sound — so it’s not just a static sound — helps it to pop out of the soundtrack.

SH: Also, when you get on the mix stage, giving that element movement spatially, in the room, that helps us too.

Junkie’s score is beautiful. It’s thick, with a full range of frequencies in there. So it was a dance, a ballet, to constantly figure out where our opportunities were and how to reveal ourselves amidst a lot of really intense action and music.
 

And Gary, what are some things that foley can contribute to add clarity to busy scenes? For instance, for the battle in the tunnels, what were some things you covered in foley?

GH: We provide all the detail. All those fight scenes had a lot of work in there.

Foley-wise, for that fight in the tunnels, that surface that Steppenwolf and the superheroes are fighting on is like a metal drawbridge and it also is grated. You can’t just use a thin steel grate because it sounds thin. So I have this metal structure on the stage and we resonated different kinds of refrigerator grills and air conditioning grills on it.

But it was tricky. We had to sandbag them down so they wouldn’t rattle too much. It was pretty painstaking.

There was a big climactic shot where Wonder Woman’s sword drops on the metal grate. There’s a close-up of it as it slides all the way across the grate, flies up in the air, and then she ends up grabbing it in her hand.

We do multiple layers because everything’s a different setup. So with the sword sequence, first the sword drops. So we have to get the impact of the sword right. Next the sword slides, so we had to slide the sword across that whole metallic surface. Then the sword slides off the lip of the bridge. For that, I created a really cool ring-out by slicing a sword across this Tibetan bell that puts out a beautiful organic ring. When you synchronize and play all those tracks together, that creates the sword drop sequence.

I created a really cool ring-out by slicing a sword across this Tibetan bell that puts out a beautiful organic ring.

And then there are all of their footsteps on the metal bridge, which all had to be different so they weren’t just metal clangs. Wonder Woman had to be different from Steppenwolf, who had to be different from Cyborg, and so on.

We had to do all their body falls and create a particular sound for each character. So for Steppenwolf’s body falls, I’m using that Sanken mic to capture this big metallic wrench on the metal surface, pitched down, with the sub harmonizers picking up all the low end. And then for Wonder Woman, I’m using a big, thick leather coat and a boxing glove. The metallic surface is resonant and all that gear is what creates that massive low end. We perform in sync to picture on that surface with all of our gear and it just comes out thick and massive.

Wonder Woman’s shield would hit that surface, too. And typically a shield on a foley stage records really thin. Scott said, “Gary, I want that heavy.” So I ended up having to use steel I-beams for her shield, and those were super heavy.

All of those fighting movements out there on that grate were challenging. Like, Steppenwolf would throw Wonder Woman against the wall and the rocks would break so I’d do more rock breaks. All the movements and impacts I covered with foley helped to provide all that detail.
 

And that scene when Superman returns to Earth, and he’s a bit of a jerk, how were you able to use foley to help that fight between him and Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Flash, and Cybrog?

GH: Near the start of that fight, Superman picks up that big statue head and throws it at Wonder Woman. That was something that we had to cover in foley. I used these giant rocks on this cement surface on the stage. It’s actually hollow underneath it. I call it a sub pit.

Rock-wise throughout the scene, Superman would throw the superheroes down and you could see the rocks crash. We did a lot of those big rock collisions, cracking rocks, and smashing rocks.

Those came out really good on the stage. They came out beefy and just really cool. We can capture a good rock sound with those rocks I have.

And Wonder Woman’s lasso was something we covered. Scott had all the fiery sounds for the lasso but when it would wrap around a character, and squeeze them, we made leathery, creaky sounds for that.

I sliced a machete along the crowbar’s curve to create a ring — all while watching the picture to match my performance to it.

There was Aquaman’s trident throughout that scene, which was another cool prop that I did. Every time he slammed it into the ground, it has a big, ringy, thumpy, stylized sound. Scott had a lot of that. But in foley, we came up with a really unique Trident sound that had this cool metallic, harmonic ring out on it. I used these long metal rods and a really cool crowbar that’s long and heavy. I sliced a machete along the crowbar’s curve to create a ring — all while watching the picture to match my performance to it.

After the ring was activated, I would get the crowbar really close to the mic capsule (being careful not to hit the microphone!) to capture as much of the ringing as possible. So that was one of our Aquaman signature foley sounds.

I covered all those fighting movements out there with all the characters.
 

In terms of sound, what do you like best about this new version of Justice League?

GH: I’m just glad that Zack was able to finish this film. No one else has his filmmaking style. I think it’s really spectacular, visually. And one cool thing about his movies is they’re shot for sound. He gives so many cool opportunities for sound. He and Tarantino are my favorite directors for doing sound or that use sound to its full capability.

When I work with Scott on Zack’s films, I hear pretty much everything that I record and do in foley. That’s really cool. On other films, you don’t hear as much. So that’s one thing I do like on his movies, is that they really use foley and sound effects.

And it’s cool to have all those characters, too, in a film. On Batman v Superman, we have Batman and Superman. On this, we have Cyborg, Aquaman, Steppenwolf, Wonder Woman, and Flash.

I have to put in and match the intensity on the screen for each one of those characters.

It was a lot of work. At the end of the day, I was thrashed. I have to put in and match the intensity on the screen for each one of those characters. So it was huge. It definitely goes down in my book as one of my favorites to work on.

SH: The thing I liked best about the sound in Zack’s version of the film is the space we were afforded in the structure of the film to establish the atmospherics of the various locations in the expository sections of the film. With a 2-hour superhero film, the editing is tighter and the soundtrack is more dense, leaving little time to establish evocative atmospheres that enable an audience to “feel” the vibe and tone of the film.

…with six superheroes working their magic, we had so many cool and creative opportunities to come up with fanciful and original sounds that don’t exist in the real world

I also love that with six superheroes working their magic, we had so many cool and creative opportunities to come up with fanciful and original sounds that don’t exist in the real world, which cumulatively amounted to a rich tapestry of kaleidoscopic sounds, moving and grooving with the story, images, and music. I don’t know of any sound team in the past that’s had the opportunity to sonically color 4-hours of superhero fun in one film!

CM: In terms of sound, what I think I like best about this new version is just the epic scale of it all. More extended action scenes, more time to delve into the characters, more unique VFX, etc. just means more opportunities for us to dive in and play with sound design, both huge and subtle.

I always enjoy a challenge and there were so many different types of sounds and moods that needed to be created for this film; it’s kind of a dream project. It was a ton of work, of course, but the results are very satisfying and I’m really proud of the work everyone did to put this soundtrack together. I think it is epic in every way.

 

A big thanks to Scott Hecker, Gary Hecker, and Chuck Micahel for giving us a behind-the-scenes look at the sound of Zack Snyder’s Justice League and to Jennifer Walden for the interview!

 

Please share this:

 

---