Good Cinema is the marriage of visuals and sound, one is handicapped without the other but when both blend seamlessly it creates cinematic magic on the large screen. In the recent past there have been some great movies that have raised the bar of how sound is perceived in films and leading the way in that sphere has been Dolby Laboratories’ pioneering technology of Atmos.
Speaking earlier to AnimationXpress.com, Dolby’s Pankaj Kedia said: “Just to give some perspective, Atmos is what we call a revolution in sound. It’s not just an improvement but a dramatic change from surround sound. There are other companies around that are just enhancing the number of channels with 7.1, 9.1 and 11.1 but our engineers were very clear that is not what Dolby should be looking at doing. For us the bigger picture was more important and thus, with Atmos, we have redefined sound in two ways – one, we have gone from being mere channels to objects; and what Atmos does is to transform the sound into an object.”
We recently caught up with a few sound artists from the Hindi cinema space to really understand how Dolby Atmos has really helped them to achieve some great sound effects and mixes in the films they have worked on.
First up, we met up the duo behind sound of Yash Raj Films’ 2014 comeback film of Rani Mukherjee in Mardaani. Anilkumar Konakandla (Sound Designer) and Anuj Mathur (Senior Mixing Engineer at Yash Raj Films) spoke on how they worked in-sync to bring to life this Pradeep Sarkar helmed project, which also went onto two prestigious awards for its sound design for Anil at Filmfare and Screen Awards this year.
“Atmos has given you another format to indulge in, Pradeep Sarkar (dada) understands sound better than any director in the country and he’s like a technician’s director. Everything in the film has been done according to the script and brief; Anil designed the whole track and it’s a fine balance between him and me that has created the blissful sound for Mardaani, the final mix has really complimented the visuals of the story,” said Anuj.
The duo was pleased to see that dada believes so much in creating a sound board for his films and also entrusts them with creating the best sound design and mix respectively with a free hand at their work.
This also happens to be Anil’s first independent project, and he’s simply overwhelmed with the awards and accolades coming his way. “Sound has always been very close to my heart and post my education, I decided to make my passion my profession. And it’s an honour to mentored by the likes of dada (Pradeep Sarkar) and Biswadeep da (Biswadeep Chatterjee),” Anil expressed.
The movie took nearly two months for the sound design and nearly a month to complete the mixing process. There were around 15 members who were involved in the complete execution of the sound for this feature from the YRF stable.
Speaking on the importance given to sound in films these days, Anuj revealed: “There needs to be a right approach to filmmaking, every single element is instrumental in creation of a successful project, be it sound, editing, script, effects, etc. I believe filmmakers need to really explore a lot more in the sound space and with Atmos the potential is limitless.”
The duo felt some directors who really understand sound in the industry are: Anurag Basu, Vishal Bhardwaj, Aditya Chopra, Yash Chopra, Zoya Akhtar and Pradeep Sarkar.
After interacting with the duo who cast their spell with the sound on Mardaani, we met up with Anup Dev, a sound mixing engineer with over two decades of experience under his belt and over 150 movie titles to his credit list in the sound department.
What began as a passion for sound morphed into a prolific career after Anup graduated from India’s top film institution FTII Pune in 1982; he quickly found his feet in Mumbai’s burgeoning film industry and was snapped up by Anand Recording Studio. His early works include Pardes, Dil to Pagal Hai, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai and Mohabbatein.
Anup’s sweeping range encompasses independents such as Shootout at Lokhandwala and The Japanese Wife to the critically acclaimed Omkara, the popular cult film Rock On and Taare Zameen Par as well as Bollywood blockbusters Wanted, Ghajini and 3 Idiots. His multiple accolades include a State Government award for Deva Shappath Khare Sangen, Zee Cine awards for Soldier and Paheli, IIFA awards for Aitraaz, Black and 3 Idiots and the prestigious National Award for Moksh and more recently 3 Idiots.
Anup is also the man behind the sound mixing of India’s most commercially successful film PK that released in the year gone by and has already bagged the Star Guild and Apsara Awards for the same.
“PK is my second with Raju (Rajkumar Hirani), I won a National Award for 3 Idiots earlier and I truly believe we have a good understanding. Both the films are very different from one another in its storyline and approach. The major sequences in PK are the spaceship landing on Earth where we have used drone effects also and the other sequence that I am really proud of is the train blast. Atmos really helped in creating the effects of the spaceship coming from top and the train coming from the back to the front on the large canvas,” revealed Anup.
PK took 75 days to do pre-mixing and the final mix with a total of 10 people working in the sound department. Sharing his thoughts on increasing focus on sound in films, he added: “I truly feel only five to ten per cent of the current lot of filmmakers understand sound and really give impetus on this element in their films. I feel there is a lot that is still untapped and with technology like Dolby Atmos available, we really need to push the envelope in this sound department and take things up a notch.”
It certainly seems that the industry swears by Dolby Atmos for the best in sound and Dolby Laboratories on its part too is leaving no stone unturned in continuing to up the ante in backing these sound artists to continue to experiment with different effects in their projects.