I’ve watched the Master and Commander disc many times and I can’t get over the clarity and detail in the “quiet” moments. How hard were those to create?

We worked very hard to capture clean recordings, as free of unwanted background noise as possible. For instance, the sail movements and flaps were recorded out in the Mojave Desert, which is extremely quiet but has a decent breeze. There’s so much layering of sounds that it was important that each sound be as pristine as possible. A good analogy is a watercolor painting, built up of layers of translucent pigment, where it’s easy for the painting to get muddy if the colors aren’t pure. Peter Weir challenged us to use natural sounds in a musical way, with sounds of varying tonality and rhythm.

Are you prouder of the subtleties or of those cannons?

I think the dynamics of the track are very important. The louder sections, like the cannon battles, have so much more power because they generally follow quiet scenes.

But which do you think won you the Oscar?

Peter Weir won us the Oscar! He wanted the audience to really experience what shipboard life was like for these men, and he knew that letting the audience get to know the sounds of the sea and the ship were critical.

Once and for all, can you explain the difference between Sound Mixing and Sound Effects Editing?

Sound effects editing is the recording, creating, and placing of sound effects in sync to the picture, as well as editing the dialogue tracks and recording dialogue replacement, “looping.” The sound editor brings thousands of individual tracks to a mixing stage, where the re-recording mixers, with guidance and input from the sound editor and director, mix the sound effects, dialogue, and music together. Paul Massey & Doug Hemphill did a brilliant job mixing Master and Commander—they won the CAS Award, the BAFTA and Satellite Awards, as well as being nominated for the Sound Mixing Oscar for Master and Commander. They created a symphony out of all the material we brought in.

(speaking specifically about the Dolby Digital 5.1 presentation) Is the soundtrack essentially unchanged from theatrical to home video?

The home video track is unchanged from the theatrical release.

I really enjoyed that DVD documentary and the interactive cannon demo (gone from the 4K) but do you worry that you gave away too many trade secrets?

Those of us who do this for a living are constantly sharing information. A lot of the work we did for Master and Commander is built upon ideas we got from our colleagues in the sound community. It’s an evolution. Hopefully we were able to push the envelope a little.

What differences are the most striking when you watch the final film in a big movie house versus a good home theater?

The picture plays well in large theaters, but I think it sounds better in smaller spaces, I think in part because it emulates the size of the ship better than a huge movie house. Everything just feels a little more “contained.”

Happy with both presentations of your work?

Very much!

Are you a home theater buff?

My home theater is pretty rudimentary. We’re definitely due for an upgrade! I do have a pretty sophisticated theater setup in my studio at work.

People used to ask, “What music did Frank Sinatra play when he wanted to set a romantic mood?” So what discs does Richard King spin to show off his home theater?

I generally use my studio theater to play back discs for reference, to recall how we solved a problem in a film we worked on, or to get inspiration from someone else’s work.

Does your knowledge help you better enjoy a well-mixed and -recorded movie?

Well, I can certainly appreciate cool sounds for their own sake, or the technical and artistic aspects of how a soundtrack is crafted, but when it gets really interesting is when cool sounds contribute to the story being told. I would point to the films of Sergio Leone, where sound is a major player in the storytelling.

Are you able to sit back and enjoy the final version of your own movies, or by that point are you hearing all the work that went into it?

If I watch a film I’ve worked on too soon after finishing it, all I hear are the things I think I could have done better! But after some time has passed, I can look back and usually say “Hey, that’s not bad!”

What are some of your “greatest hits”?

I’m especially proud of Master and Commander. The prelude to the first battle, when the ship’s crew think they might have heard or seen something in the distance, has some very subtle breathing in the soundtrack, in addition to some almost musical tonal ambiences, created with human voices, mixed in with the wind to create a tense, spooky feeling. The storm scene is a favorite of mine. Generally, a scene of this aural complexity would take several days to final mix, but we played Peter Weir all of the material we had brought in and “pre-dubbed” in a run-through without stopping, just to show him what the elements were (and) this is the version in the finished film. Peter liked the scene with the rough edges intact, a little out-of-control, like the storm!

Can you tell us about your work with M. Night Shyamalan?

I worked on the beginning of Signs; when the Mel Gibson character wakes up, hears a distant scream and runs out into the cornfield to find his kids; for months! The placement of every bird, every dog bark was carefully planned. In Unbreakable, the (early) scene (in which) Bruce Willis’ character is flirting with his cute seat-mate and their conversation is occasionally silenced when the train they’re riding in passes a train going by on the opposite track: I used a combination of real train pass-bys, huge animal roars, and blasts of fire to give a foretaste of danger while the scene itself is still sort of lighthearted. Also when he’s released from the hospital and walks out into the waiting room and passes the families of all those killed in the accident, the scene is “scored” with train sounds. Lots of metal groaning, distant train brakes screaming, but pitched down to give a very mournful feeling.

The studio was very keen on the fact that the deleted scenes for the Unbreakable disc were finished to the same audio and video standards as the movie itself.

After we were finished with the theatrical version, we spent a couple of weeks on those scenes, then sent the mixes to M. Night in Philadelphia for approval.

Any others? You’ve done so many great movies.

I think Gattaca is a good track. Magnolia.

Ah, so the frogs in Magnolia were yours?

Yes, and no frogs were killed or injured in the process! We essentially created the frog rain one “frog” at a time, layering up many individual impacts then playing the mixes we created over loudspeakers and re-recording them out in natural environments to create a sense of depth.