This interview with “Avatar: The Way of Water” sound mixer Julian Howarth first appeared in a special section of the Below-the-Line issue of awards magazine TheWrap.
Normally, a production sound mixer would be responsible for recording sound on a movie set while it was being shot. But “Avatar: The Way of Water” wasn’t a normal shoot, which meant Julian Howarth’s duties went far beyond the job description. “The best thing about Jim is that he has an incredible vision of what he wants, and you just get swept up in it,” Howarth said of working with filmmaker James Cameron.
In this case, their tasks began to expand after an impromptu conversation during filming on a motion capture stage. “We said, ‘How can we help actors feel more in place?’” she said. “’How can we make them feel like they’re in a forest or by the sea or in these environments?’ So, I developed a system where we would surround the stage with speakers and we started doing sound design on location. When the actors arrived on set, they were immersed in an audio environment that gave them a sense of where they were.”
The setup grew to the point where Howarth had an extensive keyboard rig that allowed him to play samples and sound effects through speakers around the stage. “If you’ve been on a set before when the actors are supposed to be responding to an explosion, it’s usually an AD yelling ‘bang!’ or ‘duck!’ But we were doing actual sound effects that were directional.”
He also worked on submerged audio speakers that would allow Cameron to communicate with his actors while they were executing scenes underwater. (If the director wanted to speak privately with an actor in the dunk tank, there was a lower-tech solution: a wireless speaker floating on a rubber donut.) At the same time, Howarth had four microphones around the tank that were constantly working. . “There is a certain amount of streaming audio underwater that you want to record,” he said. “There are knocks or mechanical sounds or metallic knocks that sound different underwater. It is this clash between the natural and the mechanical that is so important in the film.”
The sound department ended up operating what Howarth called “a kind of mad scientist’s lab where you could go to figure out how to do what Jim wanted. A lot of what we did, nobody had done before. I’m not one to pat myself on the back, but there were a couple of times where I was like, ‘I can’t believe we did that.
Oh, and he also made an MP3 of ocean sounds for Sigourney Weaver, who wanted to listen to it while she fell asleep. “I knew at that moment that we had done something special,” she said with a laugh. “When people talk about having a regular job, well, this was the least regular job I’ve ever had.”
Read more of the issue below the line here.