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| Expedition
Bismarck |
HEATHER JOHNSON talks to
the staff at Juniper Post about raising the
Bismarck (in sound).
Fuelled by countless pots of coffee and cans of Red Bull, a team of
Juniper
Post engineers and sound designers tackled a seemingly impossible task:
build sound effects and mix a feature-length documentary, to and
incorporate
sounds never heard before, and they have it done in about a week.
James Cameron, Director.
This was the assignment presented by Oscar-winning Titanic director
James
Cameron for his Discovery Channel documentary James Cameron's Expedition
Bismarck, which made its US premier in December, and is released on DVD
in
February.
Part action thriller, part historical documentary, the reportedly $4m
film
chronicles the demise of the seemingly "unsinkable" German WWII
battleship
Bismarck, a ship nearly equal to the Titanic in length and 20 feet
wider.
After the Bismarck sank the battlecruiser Hood in May 1941, British
Prime
Minister Winston Churchill ordered the Bismarck sunk. The British Navy
attacked Hitler's pride and joy (decorated with a 40ft diameter
swastika, no
less) and the 38,000-ton ship descended into the North Atlantic Ocean,
just
off the coast of Iceland. Of the 2200-person Bismarck crew, only 115
survived.
American oceanographer Robert Ballard - who also found the Titanic -
discovered the Bismarck in 1989, but Cameron is the first to embark on a
thorough, detailed exploration of the ship, aiming to discover some of
the
mysteries behind its demise.
"Visually, it's pretty impressive," Juniper President, Co-owner and
Sound
Supervisor David Kitchens says of the film, which incorporates old war
footage, interviews with survivors and simulated battle scenes shot on
3-D
high definition video. "And none of those visual elements had sound."
"It's wall-to-wall sound effects and sound design," Juniper Co-owner,
Supervising Sound Editor and Re-recording Mixer Ben Zarai adds. "It's
not
like a car chase where you can just use a standard sound effect. It's
very
precise."
Because sound can't be recorded at 15,700 feet below sea level, the
Juniper
crew turned to Cameron and producer Andrew Wight, both knowledgeable in
submarine technology and sea explorations, for guidance. They also
consulted
with Mike Cameron, who designed and built the Remotely Operated Vehicles
(ROV), robotic devices connected to a submarine via fibre optic cables,
used
to explore the wrecked Bismarck. The director's brother designed the
small
vehicles to fit through hatches and doorways, allowing them to record
the
most intimate footage. "There are only four subs in the world that can
go
that deep, and James Cameron has two of them," Zarai says of the ROVs,
affectionately named Jake and Elwood.
Zarai and crew recorded certain ROV sounds in Re-Recording Mixer and
Sound
Designer Eric Reuveni's swimming pool. They also travelled to Mike
Cameron's
manufacturing headquarters to record authentic sound effects for the ROV
propellers. "Mike Cameron's facility had a water tank," Zarai explains.
"He
had attached the actual propellers for the ROV to a wooden board, and
suspended that board above the water tank so we were able to record the
propeller under water, above water... doing all sorts of things and
thereby
getting the actual sound of those vehicles."
To capture the various ROV sounds, the sound design team used a
Hydrophone -
an underwater device originally used to detect submarines and icebergs
that
picks up acoustic energy underwater. They also used Sennheiser 416s
covered
by an ultra-high-tech device known as... the condom. "It protects the
mics
from the water and sounds great," says Re-recording Mixer and Sound
Designer
Ken Skoglund, who flew in from Sweden to mix the project.
Audio was simultaneously recorded on to DAT and directly into Pro Tools
using a Macintosh Titanium Powerbook G4 computer and a DigiDesign Mbox.
"At
the same time we were working on the sound, a crew was working on
computer
graphics," Skoglund explains. "We would get updated versions, and
digitise
those images into Pro Tools."
"That's not done a whole lot," Kitchens adds. "But it gave us a chance
to
hear the sound against the image."
Mike Cameron's facility allowed for authentic ROV recording; however,
sounds
emanating from the bottom of the ocean were built from scratch. Skoglund,
responsible for re-creating the Bismarck wreck and designing sounds for
twin
submersibles Mir1 and Mir 2, used a number of unexpected items to build
mechanical noises and metallic crashes. To create the sound of the Mirs'
propeller motors turning, Skoglund recorded a ceiling fan, pitched down,
and
mixed with bubbles and other effects in Pro Tools. "There are two side
thrusters that make a very special sound," he says. "It was very hard to
get. But James Cameron could explain how it sounded... pretty accurately
with his mouth. It's pretty amazing."
Even dialogue underwent extensive processing. Submarine crews
communicate
with one another using a UQC, an underwater sound telephone that uses
sound
waves rather than radio waves. "It doesn't quite sound like a radio,"
Zarai
says. "There's a ringing tone to the voice, and very often you'll hear
echoes." To create this effect, Zarai started with Tech 21's SansAmp
distortion plug-in. "Then I used Digidesign's Sci-Fi plug-in, which
added
the ringing tone," he continues. "The next processor was Digidesign's
Lo-Fi,
to make it sound, well, bad. Following that I used a Digidesign
compressor
plug-in, and smashed the signal as hard as I could. Then I used CRM's
plug-ins to enhance the ringing sound, and Waves' Q10 to EQ it overall.
It
took a lot of steps to get the voice to sound that way."
For the actual Bismarck wreck, Cameron wanted to create an ominous
feeling
as the camera panned closer to the ship. "I found a low metal groaning
sound
with some loud metal clanging. The metal clanging is me kicking an oil
tank
in my Dad's basement," Skoglund says. He then pitched down the oil tank
clang in Pro Tools, and combined it with 14 additional layers of
groaning
metal and other ambient sounds. "It gives you the feeling of how a huge
ship
sounds," he says.
Skoglund and Reuveni also used numerous layers of distressed metal
sounds,
bubbles, and 'boomy' sounds as the Bismarck turns in the water and
slides
down a hillside to its final destination on the ocean floor. Regarding
plug-ins, Zarai cites Waves Q-10, TrueVerb/Distance Processor, various
pitch
shift and sci-fi plug-ins, and Digidesign's Vari-Fi - used to simulate
the
ramping up and down of the undersea equipment's hydraulics - as just a
few
of the many used on the project. "The challenge was to distinctly hear
each
element without meshing and blending it with everything else," Zarai
says.
"We couldn't make anything sound too bassy. And on top of that, you've
got
to be able to hear the narration."
It was quite a big boat.
Actor Lance Henrikson, (Aliens, Scream 3, The Last Samurai) a friend of
Cameron's who has a distinctively deep, rich voice, narrated the
documentary. "The problem was, everything else on the show was deep and
rich. It was a challenge to make him stand out from the underwater
presence,
cannons, shells, and explosions."
"The room was shaking, there was so much low frequency," Kitchens adds.
"We
were shaking the ground when we mixed the project."
Skoglund, Reuveni, and Zarai mixed the project in Juniper's Studio C,
which
features dual Pro Tools|24 MixPlus digital workstations, a Yamaha O2R
digital console and high-resolution video playback via Gallery's Virtual
VTR
software. Due to the extreme time crunch, sound effects, dialogue and
other
aspects of the film were mixed independently and simultaneously. "We
would
watch through a portion of the programme, Jim [James Cameron] would give
us
all of his notes and we would all get to work at once," Zarai says.
"It kind of sounded like a cacophony in the room, but we had to make
changes
very fast," Kitchens says of the efficient procedure. "During the mix
process, they worked seven to ten days straight without really sleeping.
They would take two-hour naps, and there were a couple of 48-hour stints
where the guys wouldn't even take a nap because there wasn't time."
Juniper Post - where much of the action was.
Audiophiles might catch one of the mixers taking a siesta on the DVD
release, as the project will tentatively include behind-the-scenes
footage
on the full production sound for Expedition Bismarck. "Foley,
sound-effects,
ADR, dialogue... it's definitely going to be jam packed with information
for
any audio buff," Kitchens says. The DVD will also include five
additional
minutes of footage, a Dolby Digital 5.1 mix, and an isolated
sound-effects
track, allowing viewers to hear every clang, bang, and explosion without
narration or dialogue.
The engineers made good use of Pro Tools' built-in surround mixing
capabilities to create the DVD mix. "You've got shells whizzing through
the
speakers and explosions that will start in the front and recoil into the
rear," Zarai says. "Jim wanted a thundering echo every time a cannon
went
off, so we usually had that in the rear speakers. It gives you an
enormous
sense of space and scope for the battle, which is true... there was
nothing
around them but space."
Sleep deprivation aside, the Juniper post-production team played a key
role
in creating one of the most visually and sonically stunning and
historically
significant documentaries of the year. "While we were transferring the
sound
to high-def video, Jim was listening with headphones as it was going to
tape," Zarai recalls. "After we were done, he took the headphones off
and
said, 'this sounds as good as anything I've ever done'"
Project:
Expedition Bismarck
Studio:
Juniper Post.
Sound Team:
Supervising Sound Editor and Re-recording Mixer, Ben Zarai; Sound
Supervisor, David Kitchens; Re-recording Mixer and Sound designers, Ken
Skoglund and Eric Reuveni.
Report:
Heather Johnson.
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