Designing a Foreboding Sound for ‘The Watchers’ – with Jill Purdy and Sylvain Bellemare

Director Ishana Shyamalan's debut feature The Watchers is a supernatural horror film that blends elements of Irish folklore like faeries and changelings with natural elements that have a dark twist, like an enchanted forest that traps visitors inside and flocks of birds (called devil birds) that panic and flee as the sun sets. For the sound team, this created a fun opportunity to explore nature sounds in a new way, to create unique vocalizations for 'The Watchers' and design how they'd sound when mimicking humans. Here, sound supervisors Jill Purdy and Sylvain Bellemare talk about working with director Ishana Shyamalan, finding the sound of the magical forest and the wildlife within, designing sounds for the folklore-inspired 'Watchers,' and so much more!

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Interview by Jennifer Walden, photos courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures; Jill Purdy

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When it comes to getting creative with dialogue for horror films, Jill Purdy is a master. From recording/cutting breath tracks that will quicken the audience’s pulse to working with fictitious languages – like the Li Tolqan language in Infinity Pool – Purdy knows how affecting human sounds (words and inflection, breaths, and vocalizations) can be. Her dialogue work on horror/thriller films like Knock at the Cabin, Leave the World Behind, and Nightmare Alley had a huge impact on the audience’s experience of the story. Purdy also handled dialogue editing on disturbing films like Requiem for a Dream, sci-fi films like Francis Ford Coppola’s upcoming Megalopolis, and she’s supervising sound on M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap (hitting US theaters this week).

For The Watchers (now available to buy/rent via VOD), Purdy’s breath work helps to convey the isolation and emotional state of the characters. She also designed the voice of Madeline as a changeling taking on the form of other characters.

Purdy shared sound supervision on The Watchers with Sylvain Bellemare – known for his Oscar and BAFTA-winning sound work on Arrival. Bellemare’s proclivity for choosing natural sounds as the basis for sound design was a perfect fit for The Watchers, which unfolds in an enchanted forest in Ireland. He and his sound effects team designed an unsettling and ominous atmosphere for the enchanted forest, where those who enter find it impossible to leave. From the start of the film, they make this forest feel threatening, establishing an unsettling tone for the rest of the film. By designing twisted natural sounds and winds, they maintain that connection to nature that’s central to the story.

Here, Bellemare and Purdy talk about collaborating with dir. Ishana Shyamalan on her debut film, integrating sound into the film’s narrative, choosing to work with natural sounds to design otherworldly elements, designing vocals for ‘The Watchers,’ and so much more!

THE WATCHERS | Official Trailer

The Watchers was director Ishana Shyamalan’s debut feature. How were you able to help guide her sound choices for the film, or collaborate with her on different ways of using sound to help her tell her story?

Sound supervisor Jill Purdy

Jill Purdy (JP): For a first-time feature director, Ishana had very clear, concise, detailed, and astute notes about every aspect of her film, which was fabulous to witness.

When recording loop group for every project, I cover wild, unscripted, back-pocket material such as screams, whispers, murmurs, laughs – anything extra that I think may be useful to have on hand. With The Watchers, the casting by Dann Fink and Daphne Gaines included fabulous Gaelic-speaking talent; wild Gaelic callouts supplemented the sound design at various points throughout the film. Loop group was recorded by Bobby Johanson at Harbor Picture Company in New York. For the group “coop” recordings, Bobby recorded an additional track in the ADR control room behind its glass to simulate the quality of how the characters would hear The Watchers from the other side of the coop’s glass/mirror.

Sound supervisor Sylvain Bellemare

I wasn’t a guide; I was just a boat that followed the flow. Congratulations to her editor, Job ter Burg, who is truly wonderful. Job and I quickly got to know each other, and our communication and friendship were clear. He was a fundamental part of the creative process. Both wanted the sound to be included in the art work.

…the history of sound design is a deep love for sound that comes from real life…

Of course, I came into the process with opinions. A good director expects strong opinions from her collaborators. My first feeling was to guide Ishana with organic sound, being far away from electronic culture. Of course, this is classic: the history of sound design is a deep love for sound that comes from real life – from Walter Murch, Ben Burt, Leslie Shatz, and Mark Mangini to name just a few. But we understand why: the level of raw material is rock-solid and the ability to transform nature into a design is impressive.

…nature was the major inspiration, from the forest to the voices of ‘The Watchers’

In the end, the entire conceptual sound was enriched by the use of electronics, particularly the sound of the burrow. But nature was the major inspiration, from the forest to the voices of ‘The Watchers’.

The first challenge was to create the language of The Watchers. That was the milestone for us. That was the first hoop we needed to jump through. For Ishana, that was clearly a way to use sound to tell her story.

What went into the sound of the ‘enchanted forest’ in Ireland? How did you use sound to make this place feel ominous and foreboding? (I loved the use of echo on the voices when they’re out in the forest.) Can you talk about some of the sounds you made for that environment?

SB: The magical northern forest is a big part of a mythology that plays around in our minds. Our objective was to establish a collection of realistic birds that are present in the northern hemisphere, but with a surreal vibration and magical quality. With sound designer Samuel Gagnon-Thibodeau, we wanted to create a feeling of a weird forest in the daytime, but very subtle. While at night, there were only The Watchers’ vocals. The birds that frantically fly to signal that the forest is getting dark – we call them devil birds – Samuel made the chipping and screams of the birds feel like it’s a dangerous environment. It was a pure representation of how natural sound can transform into an object of design.

We also develop a sort of forest design based on wind material…This design was meant to be mixed into the musical score…

We also develop a sort of forest design based on wind material; they’re like drones but come from real winds and various components. This design was meant to be mixed into the musical score, so that it can be a part of the score. All my admiration to re-recording mixer Sean Garnhart who was able to mix all the music with design.

Their use of echo was Sean’s touch. We knew from the start that the forest was meant to be echoed.

Another part of the forest was to design the burrow concept – an underground terror. This is where The Watchers wait for the night. The burrow concept was based on bass. It might be cliché to mention how bass was a concept since it has been used in film sound design/mix since King Kong in 1933. Sound designer Francis Gauthier handled the bass; we called it the stampede.

Breath work throughout the film added to conveying the isolation and emotional state of the characters.

That long bass sound was used for the menacing area in daytime, as their subconscious voices. Mina’s encounter with a Watcher during the burrow scene allowed us to reveal the bass’ size. This ominous world had to be striking in that scene.

JP: Breath work throughout the film added to conveying the isolation and emotional state of the characters.

The ‘coop’ is a place of fragile safety for the group. How did you use sound to impart that sense of feeling safe inside the ‘coop’ but only to a point? (For example, the two-way mirror has a nice, thick resonance when The Watchers bang on it from the outside, but it still maintains that hollow, glassy sound, letting the audience know that it is sturdy but still breakable). Can you talk about your approach to the sound for the coop?

SB: The main approach to the coop was to create a safe bubble where nothing can be heard easily – to a certain point, as you mention. The more The Watchers attack the coop, the more the sensation of the safety bubble disappears. The resonance inside the coop during these attacks needed to increase the frightening elements. Our characters are aware that safety is limited. In fact, we were playing with what can be heard or not heard.

Can you talk about your approach to the sound of the professor’s bunker under the coop?

SB: That was the old vintage setup. It’s a different world from above. The professor had old computers and machines that barely work anymore.

A part of it was also to isolate all the actions from previous scenes, to have a sensation of rest and security.

What went into the sound of The Watchers – their movements, their vocals?

SB: (written in collaboration with Paul Lucien Col: sound designer: Watcher Vocals)

We got involved pretty early in the editorial process, and our first task was to create the voices for The Watchers. Editorially, the narrative role of The Watchers was still being puzzled out and Job did a cool sound edit on The Watchers to help us to get some ideas. But still, a lot had to be defined. Sound designer Paul Col had the role of recording and creating The Watchers vocals.

…The Watchers are an intelligent species, but have long ago lost their language. They are capable of complex emotions but also have a ferocious, animalistic side…

Thankfully, Ishana had a very clear understanding and was very collaborative in her approach to defining the sonic palette of The Watchers. Based on our conversations with her, we learned that The Watchers are an intelligent species, but have long ago lost their language. They are capable of complex emotions but also have a ferocious, animalistic side – sort of like a once-civilized species that has gone feral. So these dualities formed the basis for our sound design approach; we knew they had to have a sort of primitive language or communication, but also be able to invoke an animalistic terror when their emotions turned south.

Even with that understanding, we had many ideas for how the voices could sound, so we proposed five different concepts for the vocals of The Watchers to see which one resonated most with the director. We tried one based entirely on animal communication sounds (Kookaburras, Baboons, and Parrots, for the most part), one based on our own voices doing weird, fake language vocalizations, one fabricated from props we recorded ultrasonically, one based on a bowed cactus, and one based on human screaming vocals. When you hear the final mix, it ended up being a bit of a hybrid of all the various versions we created, but the primary vocal ingredient stemmed from the ultrasonic props we recorded.

…the primary vocal ingredient stemmed from the ultrasonic props we recorded.

The human vocalizations were fun to produce, if dangerous for our throats from the craziness of trying to go deep on designish throat sounds. Ishana didn’t really want to hear a human quality in it, except on one or two occasions in the film, such as the big shriek when Mina sees The Watchers in the forest when she had to hide with Madeline.

We did such a great session with The Monster Factory in Montréal to impart a more human sensation for The Watchers, so we were able to have a human feeling on that big shriek in the forest.

What were some of your challenges/opportunities for the ‘changeling’ aspect of The Watchers (when they take on the form of different humans)? How did you handle the dialogue for that?

SB: The big scene from that point of view is when Mina arrives at Caira’s house at the end. She just realized that Madeline is a Watcher. And in fact, she’s everywhere, in every character. For this entire scene, we did Madeline (Olwen Fouéré) in a complete ADR for all characters, so we were able to mix her voice with the voice we wanted from each character.

…when The Watchers try to imitate human voices, such as the big final attack of the coop, these voices were slightly processed but not much.

On the flip side, when we did the big Daniel scream at the lake, just as he became a Watcher, we only had our typical Watcher vocal for that shot.

In some other scenes, when The Watchers try to imitate human voices, such as the big final attack of the coop, these voices were slightly processed but not much. We wanted to really feel the human voice for that.

…the thread of her voice could weave in and out at any point with varying degrees of subtlety.

JP: For the changeling scenes, all of the actors re-recorded their lines for layering purposes and flexibility for sound design processing and integration. The actors also recorded the lines of the other actors as the changeling morphed from one character to another. Additionally, Olwen recorded not only the lines of her character, Madeline, but also those of *all* the characters, so the thread of her voice could weave in and out at any point with varying degrees of subtlety. The final mix of those scenes combined production audio and ADR – with three to four layers per line available. Every line had a specific combination of layering (or not) as per Ishana’s direction and intention.

Were there any useful indie sound libraries that you used as source for the sound design? Did you do any custom recording for the film?

SB: When creating the five different concepts for The Watchers vocals, we ended up exploring a lot of indie libraries as our first line of attack, and the two that ended up working the best were Mattia Celotto‘s Animal Hyperrealism libraries, and Thomas Rex Beverly‘s Bowed Cactus libraries. These libraries both offered a lot of expressive, emotionally rich sounds that played very well on screen for the types of sounds that we were trying to create. In addition to having really diverse and interesting sounds, the ultrasonic nature of these libraries really makes them shine. We were able to perform drastic pitch shifts to create otherworldly screams or shrieks, which became the basis for The Watchers’ animalistic screams.

… the inverted cup created a resonant chamber much like a mouth, and the flimsy wet silicone acted like a vocal cord when vibrated.

We also did a bunch of ultrasonic recording sessions where we recorded all sorts of props squeaking and sliding across various surfaces. The winner of these sessions was a little silicone cup, which when inverted and dragged across a wet surface made a sort of mouthy purring vocalization that sounded animalistic, but unlike any animal we knew. I think the reason this prop worked so well was that there was something anatomical about it: the inverted cup created a resonant chamber much like a mouth, and the flimsy wet silicone acted like a vocal cord when vibrated. And when put together, it immediately evoked the feeling of a voice. From this one prop we were able to make soft purrs, belting roars, and all sorts of different intonations by varying how much pressure was applied, how fast it was being dragged, and by modulating the shape of the cup while performing it.
 

What was the most challenging scene in terms of sound design?

SB: Definitely the big final attack on the coop. I’m so proud of Sean Garnhart for how he managed a huge amount of tracks.

I’m so proud of Sean Garnhart for how he managed a huge amount of tracks.

We had multiple concerns: the banging on the walls by The Watchers, their imitation of human voices, the lines of our characters, of course, the banging on the floor by Daniel, the opening of the bunker door, etc.

In order for the viewer to follow the narrative of the scene, it was necessary to hear all of these elements clearly. Sound moves closer to one shot and further away from the other while the scene is in fast-forward mode. It was pretty exciting to design and pretty exciting to mix!

What was the most challenging scene in terms of dialogue or vocal work?

JP: The most challenging scenes for dialogue were the changeling scenes for the reasons previously mentioned and the amount of ADR that needed to be recorded so that all bases could be covered with respect to design. Very little technical ADR needed to be recorded overall thanks to Simon Willis and his production recordings and every actor was a dream to work with in ADR, so this feat became much less of a daunting process.

Very little technical ADR needed to be recorded overall thanks to Simon Willis and his production recordings…

With respect to vocal work, much experimenting was performed to achieve the voice of Darwin the parrot, running the range of female and male natural and parrot-mimicking recordings with and without plug-in processing. Ultimately, the processed temp version of Darwin’s voice provided in the cutting room by one of our picture assistants, Joel Figueroa, became the final version.

What have you learned while working on the sound of The Watchers? What has this experience taught you?

JP: It was a pleasure to work on a film that was so sound-centric as an inherent part of the storytelling of The Watchers! The reiteration of silence and atmosphere being characters in and of themselves was refreshing.

This mix taught me again about the importance of friendship on a mix stage.

SB: So much! For various reasons, we had a big challenge with the schedule that brought us into very long hours per days. Despite the hard work, the entire crew on the mix stage was delightful. We became such a nice group of human being who only wanted to achieve the best. With Sean, Jill, and I, Mark Filip, Daniel Breenan and Del Spiva on music editing completed the crew on the mix stage. We had so much fun, all of us. This mix taught me again about the importance of friendship on a mix stage. A mix stage crew can become a family; this is so nice when this happen. Also, we have to mention the importance of Dolby Atmos theatrical more and more. The sound world is so different now – the cinematic experience reaches unexplored universes to date.

A big thanks to Jill Purdy and Sylvain Bellemare for giving us a behind-the-scenes look at the sound of The Watchers and to Jennifer Walden for the interview!

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