It's one thing to make a film sound good in the cinema, but it is a whole other task to take that experience to your home.
Much of that process relies on sound editors and engineers, who have their work cut out adapting the sound to home cinema products.
During the launch of Sony’s latest soundbar system, the Sony Bravia Theatre Trio, we heard Academy Award-nominated sound editor Andrew De Cristofaro speak about the different ways sound must be engineered.
He has worked on films such as The Housemaid, Green Book and Venom: The Last Dance, and collaborated with Sony during the development of the new Bravia Dolby Atmos sound system.
De Cristofaro says: “Sound is doing way more than you think. You can close your eyes and still follow the story but if you mute it, the experience falls apart.” He adds that instead of purely making a film sound good, his job is about making “sound tell the story”.
We watch a scene from Venom: The Last Dance to demonstrate, in which Eddie and Venom come face to face with the monstrous Xenophage. First, we listen with the raw audio that comes to the sound department after filming. As you would expect, it feels far less exciting than the final cut. Footsteps sound more like shuffling, the cracking flame of a lit car has no impact, and the reveal of the Xenophage is as casual as someone getting on the bus.
Venom’s voice is not audible either, as Tom Hardy (who plays both Eddie and the aforementioned alien symbiote) records his lines offset right before he shoots. The crew then pitch the vocals down and feed them back to him so that he can interact with the character live.
Next, De Cristofaro demonstrates how sound effects start to make the scene feel more dramatic. Layer upon layer of crackling, humming and spitting is added to create the sound of the fire. The footsteps of Hardy’s character as he walks the street become precise, which creates more of a three-dimensional sound, and vocals are brought to the fore.
The stomps of the Xenophage are also given a low squelching sound that immediately makes you feel the weight and monstrous nature of the character. The final touch comes with some dramatic bass stabs, and the end result is a tense and atmospheric scene.
But how do you adapt that sound to home cinema kit? De Cristofaro admits that it is a different kettle of fish compared to the cinema audio. The impact can disappear, vocals get lost and the sense of space collapses.
De Cristofaro says that “you have to rebuild a three-dimensional soundfield” adding that “sound isn’t tied to the speakers necessarily; it is mapped into a 360 space”.
He uses the Bravia Trio as an example of this, as the sound engineers at Sony are employing the brand’s proprietary 360 Spatial Tone Mapping which “analyses your room and reconstructs that environment so you maintain the scale”. As its name suggests, the Trio system comprises three speakers: a tiny central channel soundbar and two left and right channels.
We are yet to hear the Trio soundbar system in our test room to confirm whether this is the case, but we have heard other soundbars such as the KEF XIO and the Samsung HW-Q990F come very close to the desired full dome of sound.
De Cristofaro adds: “When everything is working right, when the dialogue is clear, when the space feels real, when the dynamics land the way they should, you don’t hear the system. You feel the film.”
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