FEATURE FINAL CUT
(L-R): Mark Paterson and Julian Slater in the Goldcrest Dean Street Theatre
devices have even become part of the franchise and have become anticipated elements in their own right. A visual example might be the ever-troublesome garden fence; and an audio example might be a fruit machine sound effect. Slater: “A certain amount of that is there for that, but also Edgar feels there should be a reason for everything. It is not just coincidence that things happen.” That purposefulness of
something strange is happening – that’s when we start getting a lot of the tools out the box and start doing tricks with the sound again.” Slater notes that the first 40 minutes of The World’s End are probably “the most straight 40 minutes I have ever done for Edgar”.
CHOREOGRAPHED SOUND It’s the audio equivalent of the Wizard Of Oz trick – starting in black and white, then switching to colour when you hit the big plot device. However, it’s also true that even though the opening soundscape is more traditional than usual, it is no less crafted or choreographed. “For example,” explains
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Slater, “you could have Nick Frost taking off his glasses in the pub, and leading up to that – and this is one of Edgar’s trademark things, diagetic sounds – you will have someone in the pub in the background on the till, which is going ‘beep, beep, beep’, and then the drawer opens ‘kerching’, precisely on the ‘glasses off ’. Likewise, when someone turns their head to look at someone there will be a car pass that will sync with it. Nothing is by accident.” Indeed, you can watch an
Edgar Wright film quite a few times over and still wonder at the sonic detail and thought that carries the audience fluently through the plot. Some of the audio
placement, and devotion to rhythm is poetic. In fact, just before I met with Paterson and Slater, they had been adjusting the rhythm of a segment. “Effects might work with the picture, but not necessarily with the rhythm of what they are trying to do,” says Slater. “It’s quite an art. Even though I have done many of Edgar’s films, every time I get a new turn-over I have to sit down and look microscopically at what they’ve done. They may have only moved something by a frame or two frames, but if I
haven’t adjusted everything, you can bet your bottom dollar they will notice it.” Paterson: “Because there is
a reason for everything, if it’s not right then it sticks out…”
TRUE COLLABORATION This is not to say, however, that Wright rules the process with a rod of iron. Slater and Paterson are keen to point out that they are afforded an exceptional level of creative freedom, bounded by Wright and Slater’s long-term working relationship. Paterson expands: “Edgar
“This is by far the most satisfying creative experience that I have had thus far.”
Julian Slater
is one of the few Directors that gives you creative licence – he encourages it. Even if the idea isn’t quite right, he’ll say ‘perhaps that’s an area where we can do something...’ We can just open doors all the time. “Julian’s relationship with Edgar makes a big difference. There’s a massive trust there. There is a big creative vibe in there because Edgar trusts Julian and Julian knows what Edgar wants, so we can all go down that road. If Julian feels, based on his experience, that Edgar will like something then it goes in. No one is afraid to say ‘let’s play it to him’.” There is no doubt that
Slater is the audio point-man for Wright. Slater: “My remit is just the sound – it is that simple… Everything to do with sound for Edgar. If there’s a trailer review, I’ll go in beforehand and make sure that I’m happy with it. So
that when he turns up I know that he is going to be roughly happy with it. An American supervisor a few years ago said to me that his role as a sound supervisor was to take 1,000 decisions and distil them down to 100 for the director. I think that is a very good description of what I do.” Slater is involved on a
Wright production from the very beginning. He has already started on VFX tests and conceptual ideas for Ant Man, a new project Wright is directing for Marvel, even though the project isn’t even in pre-production yet. Slater had his say on the choice of production sound mixer for The World’s End – Colin Nicholson. “Colin Nicholson did an amazing job. I’d worked with him years before on a film. He is not the kind of sound mixer who does loads of tracks – he just does one or two tracks with a boom – doesn’t use radios an awful lot but will when he has to. He just gets great tracks. On a film we did before he said ‘I won't record lots and lots of tracks – I will record probably one, but it’ll be one great sounding track’. That’s great. I have had so many problems over the last 25 years with multiple tracks of useless material.”
MULTI-MIX Mark Paterson takes everything, except ego, into the final mix. This is one of
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