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Under his masterful hands, a normal door squeak can spook you

Under his masterful hands, a normal door squeak can spook you

It was during a discussion about how common sounds, such as drums, could be used to evoke certain imagery and emotions.

A cacophony of them — people talking, feet shuffling, skirts swishing — was around us, making it almost hard to hear what Andy Nelson had to say.

Suddenly, amidst the din, the 66-year-old pointed out the squeak of a door beside us and remarked: "You can heighten tension with sounds that become amplified. Like the door squeak you just heard then, if that was an isolated sound that was a little bit louder. It would make you aware that something uncomfortable might be happening."

It was a moment that passed in a flash, yet it didn't escape the honed instincts and keen senses of this veteran sound mixer.

Speaking to AsiaOne at Disney's Storytelling+ Bootcamp in Singapore last month, the two-time Academy Award-winning sound man also observed that silence as a sound effect is underrated.

He said: "One of the things I think is underused and very powerful, oddly enough, is silence. It's the lack of sound where we take things away to create moments. When you go into someone's head and you just hear breathing, or we use a heartbeat quite often — subjectively sometimes very low — to give a sense of anxiety, not in an overt sort of way, more in a subconscious style."

Andy's illustrious career started at the tender age of 16 when he worked as a projectionist in a movie theatre in London. He fell in love with movies and cinema and while he didn't know what he wanted to do exactly, he knew his future lie in the filmmaking industry.

He got his break working on his first feature film with the late British director, Ken Russell, and his career took off. Since then, Andy has worked with numerous celebrated directors such as Stanley Kubrick, James Cameron, Steven Spielberg, Tom Hooper and, quite recently, Damien Chazelle on La La Land.

And if you're a fan of Star Wars, or just happen to have heard of the epic franchise, you might be interested to know that Andy had a hand in creating an important scene in The Force Awakens — Han Solo's death at the hands of Kylo Ren.

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hh-zGP-LcQQ[/embed]

Breaking down the scene, Andy explained: "We really had to work hard to make that sequence work effectively because [the sound] started in a very vast cavernous style but as they came closer, we had to take the reverb away. We had to become much more intimate like a personal father-son moment.

"And it went very quiet, but we managed to bring John Williams' beautifully written music in at exactly the right point on one of Kylo's lines so you really felt emotion for him at the point where he started to break down.

"And what it was really doing was taking your hand and making you feel more comfortable, so that when the scene turned violent, it came as such a big surprise."

He added cheekily: "It was tricky because you don't want to ever tip the balance of what might happen."

I may not know about sounds, but I know my Star Wars references when I hear one.

Incidentally, The Force Awakens was also the film in which Andy had the most fun because he felt that director JJ Abrams "combined nostalgia with freshness" and revealed that he would start work on the final instalment — The Rise of Skywalker — when he returns to Los Angeles.

With such a perfect pitch, we just had to take the swing and asked whether there was anything he could tease about the highly anticipated film — despite having a Disney representative present at our interview.

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adzYW5DZoWs[/embed]

He chuckled: "I'm going to be very honest with you. The answer is no because JJ is buried in editing to get [the film] ready and I've been very busy on other films.

"I purposely wanted to wait until I'm finished with the film I'm currently on, which is the new Terminator, then I will call JJ and say, 'Now is the time, let's watch the film.'

"I wish I could share but I can't because I truly have seen no more than the trailer."

bryanlim@asiaone.com

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