Craig Henighan (‘All the Light We Cannot See’ sound editor) on why WWII is “for us sound artists a really great playground to be in’ [Exclusive Video Interview]
As Craig Henighan describes it, being a sound artist requires a lot of give and take. An Oscar nominee (in 2019 for “Roma”), Henighan maintains that you want your sound designs to stands out but “you don’t want to be calling attention to every single thing.” A little bit contradictory, to be sure. But as the supervising sound editor and re-recording mixer on Netflix’s four-part World War II limited series “All the Light We Cannot See” that adapted from the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Anthony Doerr, he’s confident that he found the right balance. “My job was to make it feel like we’re in a war-torn zone – not just the planes and the bombing and stuff but also buildings creaking, the general chaos, the sounds made by debris and simple things that add texture sonically and reinforce the story. The series has so many places and cool things to be able to hang sound on and motivate story that, for us sound artists, it’s really a great playground to be in.” Watch the exclusive video interview above.
As an example, Henighan cites that while the series features a rich tapestry of wartime planes and weaponry, a lot of the sounds of aerial bombing and planes flying takes place off-screen; thus, a lot of the heavy lifting for sound his sound design (put together almost exclusively in post-production) is created “to make a bed for the whole story to sit in,” as he says, Also, because the lead character is the story, Marie-Laure LeBlanc (played by Aria Mia Loberti) is blind both in the story and in real life, “we were able to heighten some sounds and make them a bit louder and heavier to stand out because we’re experiencing it through her. We make the staircase she comes down in Episode 1 sort of a character with the creaks it makes, knowing it would pay off later.”
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The distinctive sonic textures come in “All the Light We Cannot See” from something as simple as Marie’s walking cane and its tempo, and the way it sounds when struck against cobblestone versus regular wood flooring in a home. “We went through a couple of iterations of what it would have sounded like back in the Forties,” Henighan notes. “People might ask, ‘You spend that much time thinking about what a cane would sound like?’ But at the end of the day, those are the little details that make a soundscape. The sound is at its best another character that can be used to drive story and narrative.”
At the same time, Henighan is sensitive and experienced enough to understand that his use of silence can be as important as the way noise is utilized. “You can’t have a loud sound (and have it be effective) if you don’t have some sort of quiet before; it’s dynamics,” he stresses. “For instances, it’s quiet leading up to a soundscape of the B-24s coming in. Then you hear the distant bombing, and it builds and builds and builds and then it dissipates and we go to complete quiet. And then you see all the pamphlets raining down quietly. That set the tone and the footprint for what we were going to do sonically.”
To gauge the effectiveness of a film’s sound and how it’s either taking you into or (occasionally) out of a story, Henighan encourages you to try this experiment: close your eyes and just listen without benefit of the visuals, the same way Marie-Laure is experiencing it in the limited series. “A soundscape can actually take you into that world,” he believes. “Some of the best films and the best shows that are out in the world can do that (effectively). And then you add in a fantastic score like James Newton Howard did for us that’s got the delicate piano and you have room to explore.”
Henighan has also been at this gig long enough that he understands his craft is destined to be underappreciated no matter how seamless and powerful the presentation. “The majority of people in the world are visually-oriented, they’re not sonically-oriented. Except me. I’m one of the few. But sound is an art form that leads to everything you experience visually and it kind of gets taken for granted. But take the sound away from a gigantic action sequence and tell me how you feel. Sound is so much of the experience, so much of the excitement.”
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