David Klotz (‘3 Body Problem’ music editor): ‘We worked really hard’ on the audacious soundscape [Exclusive Video Interview]
“It never gets old! I’m always happy to hear the news,” declares eight-time Emmy-winning music editor David Klotz about receiving his 23rd career Emmy nomination to date, this time for Netflix’s sci-fi blockbuster “3 Body Problem.” For our recent webchat he adds, “We worked really hard; myself along with the sound editing team on the show. A lot of the same crew that I worked with from ‘Game of Thrones’ were on this, so we had a shorthand between us, and also with our producers, executive producers and showrunners. I feel like that gave us a head start, creatively, jumping into it.” Watch our exclusive video interview above.
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“3 Body Problem” scored six Emmy nominations this year; for Best Drama Series and for the show’s editing, cinematography, main title design, sound mixing and the team’s sound editing team, which includes Klotz as the show’s music editor. The series was co-created by multiple Emmy-winning “Game of Thrones” duo David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, who serve as co-creators and producers with writer/producer Alexander Woo (“True Blood”), based on the Hugo Award-winning novel “The Three-Body Problem” by Chinese author Liu Cixin, the first in Liu’s “Remembrance of Earth’s Past” trilogy. Benioff, Weiss and Woo co-wrote the pilot episode together, titled “Countdown,” which takes place in both 1960s China and modern-day England, where astrophysicists try to uncover and expose what is ultimately revealed as an existential threat to humanity from a distant and more advanced alien civilization known as the San-ti. The sci-fi drama’s international cast includes Rosalind Chao, Jess Hong, Benedict Wong, Jovan Adepo, Eiza Gonzalez, Alex Sharp, Sea Shimooka, Marlo Kelly and “Game of Thrones” alums Jonathan Pryce, John Bradley and Liam Cunningham.
Klotz and team are nominated for the show’s fifth episode (the pivotal action-packed “Judgment Day”), in which chief planetary defense strategist Thomas Wade (Cunningham) enlists Dr. Auggie Salazar (Gonzalez) and a Royal Navy team to ambush the fortress-like Judgment Day ship that is scheduled to cruise through the Panama Canal in order to retrieve enemy intel. The team deploy Auggie’s (literally) cutting-edge nanofiber technology to horizontally slice through the ship, killing everyone aboard, including Mike Evans (Pryce), the wealthy leader of the shady Earth-Trisolaris Organization. Their mission leads to Wade and Dr. Jin Cheng (Hong) discovering the San-Ti’s true mission; to cripple Earth’s scientific advancement, preventing humans from technologically surpassing them by the time of their arrival in a few centuries’ time. Shortly after, all electronic devices around the world display the message “YOU ARE BUGS,” with the San-Ti’s advanced proton-sized super-computer “sophon” enveloping the Earth, revealing the existence and power of the San-Ti to the world. It’s a narratively dense and visually and sonically ambitious installment in the show’s freshman season, accounting for all four of the show’s episode-specific nominations.
“In the episode that I was nominated for, there’s a giant sequence,” Klotz explains, referring to spectacular sequence midway through the episode where the ocean liner that is sliced apart like a Christmas ham, destroying everything and everyone on the ship. “We had a lot of work to do. [Composer] Ramin [Djawadi] had written a queue, but then the effects were so loud, sometimes where it’s clashing. I worked together with our sound mixers and our sound editors and figure out where we don’t need music,” he explains, breaking down the job of a music editor, which is to meticulously plan and execute where and how music is deployed in each scene. “Maybe we drop it out or maybe we take some of the percussion out so that we can hear all the sounds of the ship coming apart, and that kind of thing. It’s a team effort, and I’m glad that as a music editor I’m recognized as a part of the sound team cause we do all work together to put it together.”
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