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“I had this idea of creating deep space sounds with a hydrophone and underwater speakers,” says Brian Emrich. He’s describing his cutting-edge sound design work for The Fountain, a new film by Oscar- and Golden Globe-nominated director Darren Aronofsky. “I first made a CD of sacred Hindu chants and om’s on my computer, then I constructed a floatation device to suspend the two speakers underwater equidistant from the hydrophone. The CD was played into the speakers and recorded through the hydrophone.” How’d it work out? “Apart from standing in freezing water half naked for several hours, the idea was a success. It produced only one usable sound, but it was exactly the sound I was looking for. It’s one of the most important sounds in the movie.”
RED: Let’s start by chatting about your overall approach to miking. How does it change from genre-to-genre or artist-to-artist for you—or does it? BRIAN: My main miking occurs in the field. Whatever the project might be, I will decide what mics and approach I’ll take. For example, on a recent Nike World Cup spot, I needed to capture as much soccer activity as possible in one day of recording. Using a stereo shotgun mic on a handheld shock mount, I went to a high school soccer field and recorded all kinds of foot and ball movements on different terrain. When I need long passes of environmental ambiences, I’ll use a stereo mic with a wide field and mount it on a tripod to capture clean passages. Also, I was in Guatemala last year for The Fountain and needed to get jungle sounds and howler monkeys. I would often venture off into the jungle, set up my rig, walk away, and just sit for an hour or so in quiet until I had enough sounds captured. I kept my fingers crossed that the monkeys wouldn’t walk off with my gear! RED: Talk a bit about your audio chain and tracking with EQ and compression. Does it change depending on whom or what you're recording? BRIAN: My chain normally consists of a high-resolution digital audio recorder with either shotgun, stereo shotgun, or cardioid stereo condenser mics with a proper windscreen cover. I then dump my recorded files into either BIAS Peak or Pro Tools to edit and organize. Sometimes I’ll need to EQ some of the low-end noise that is common with recording outdoors, but usually that’s it. Then it’s a matter of cutting in my sounds in Pro Tools to a QuickTime picture that I’m working to. Of course, if a certain project requires specific needs, I’ll have to process my sounds further with plugins to get the desired effect. RED: How do you choose which microphone you'll use in a given scenario? What are the three most important criteria you look at when choosing a mic for a given application? BRIAN: I need several different types of microphones for all my applications: Stereo mics to capture outdoor ambiences; shotguns to get a more focused field on Foley type sounds indoors and out; contact mics if I need to actually “get inside” an object, such as a mechanical or electrical device; and a hydrophone [underwater microphone] if I need to capture underwater ambiences. RED: Using a track you’ve recently recorded as an example, describe how you set up a mic to record with it. BRIAN: We needed the sounds of Mayan spears flying through the air for a scene in The Fountain, so my partner Craig and I bought small practice golf balls that resemble mini whiffle balls. I skewered a few of those onto the shafts of hunting arrows and had a friend shoot them with his bow into a practice target. We had a stereo condenser mic on a stand about six feet from the bow aiming directly across the arrow’s path to capture a left-to-right movement, and a shotgun mic at the end of the path aimed at the target about four feet away to capture the arrows’ impacts. My partner also hand held his two directional mics in an X-Y position a few feet away from the bow to capture the release of the arrow. All mics in this situation need to have windscreen covers to minimize any outside breeze and possible surges from the arrows. The end result was an exaggerated “whooshing” sound that fit well to the picture. RED: We like to ask about crazy sounds you've gotten in the studio. Maybe you planned those, or perhaps they were accidental. When have you tried a weird idea that seemed like it absolutely wouldn't work, technically or creatively, but then it did? BRIAN: This might be hard to describe, but I’ll try. I have this homemade office desk sculpture from the ‘70s made of clear epoxy resin, small stiff steel wires, and pennies. Each penny is contained inside a semi-sphere of epoxy with a wire attached. The wires all go into a small epoxy base, which it stands on, kind of resembling strange plants or mushrooms. Still with me? O.K.—when you shake the entire thing lightly, it creates an amazing musical flexi-tone. I had the idea to try and record it with a contact mic just to see if anything worthwhile might come of it. I placed the mic onto the base of this sculpture and lightly shook the sculpture while pushing down on the individual penny stems. The mic picked up vibrations and resonance through the epoxy as if it was inside the epoxy. I then pitched the final recording down an octave in Pro Tools and the result sounded like huge pieces of flexible glass or plastic material! There’s a scene in The Fountain that I was having trouble tackling where this sound effect ended up fitting in as if it was planned—but I had just stumbled upon it on a whim.
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