The Sound of "The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug"

Discussions covering film and television.
Post Reply
User avatar
MikeQuell
Site Admin
Posts: 412
Joined: June 6th, 2013, 4:15 pm
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Occupation: Sound Designer
Contact:

The Sound of "The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug"

Post by MikeQuell » January 25th, 2014, 7:32 pm

Image
[center]SoundWorks Collection - The Sound of The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug[/center]
Soundworks has a nice little feature up for the sound of The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. What were some of your favorite moments? Smaug is an obvious stand out with Benedict Cumberbatch delivering an excellent performance. I also really enjoyed the spiders and a lot of the combat sounds, specifically the bow and arrow stuff. Inspiring work!

There are a couple other nice interviews here:

David Farmer giving an AMA (ask me anything) on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid ... =1&theater

Brent Burge has a quick interview with Studio System News here:
http://www.studiosystemnews.com/awards- ... ne-dragon/

http://vimeo.com/83936766

User avatar
Nick Output
Critical Listener
Posts: 15
Joined: January 30th, 2014, 4:03 am
Location: London
Occupation: Sound Designer
Contact:

Re: The Sound of "The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug"

Post by Nick Output » February 1st, 2014, 10:07 am

I'll give these a watch, always impressed with the sound design in Peter Jacksons films… I am a little underwhelmed by the mixing however, it seams the trend is to drop more and more sounds out of the mix until one point (at the end) there was just dialogue and music with no sound effects despite a huge amount of action in the background. This kind of relates to a discussion i have started on mixing.

viewtopic.php?f=20&t=145

Im interested in the thought process of mixers working like this. What are the first types of sounds people generally start to knock out of the mix. Sound effects and foley are usually the first to go, followed by more detailed sound design elements…. until you are basically left with dialogue and music. Coupled with the high frame rate this made the experience seam more like a high end TV drama than a film. But a very enjoyable and memorable one all the same :D

Post Reply