5.1 Surround Terakoya Lab / サラウンド寺子屋塾

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Fellow M. AES/ips

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　UNAMAS-Label・Surround Terakoya

Introduction

While Dunkirk won the 2017 Academy Award for Sound Editing, its design—composed entirely of music—It did not capture my interest. Therefore, I will analyze the sound design of Blade Runner 2049, the 35-year-later remake of the 1982 masterpiece Blade Runner, as it is an outstanding nominee 2017.

Canadian director Denis Villeneuve, who won the Best Sound Editing award in 2016 for Arrival, once again breaks the mold of science fiction films. Rather than relying on CGI and green screens, he prioritized filming on realistic sets, brilliantly realizing his concept of integrating music and sound design.

1　Production staff

Director: Denis Villeneuve

Sound Design: Mark Mangini

Ted Green. Dave Whitehead

Final Mix: Ron Bartlet. Dug Hemphill

At Sony William Holden Theater by Dolby Atmos

Music: Benjamin Wallfisch. Hans Zimmer. Howard Scarr

Music Final Mix: Alan Meyerson

Foley Artist: Andy Malcolm. Goro Koyama

Production Sound: Mac Ruth

Sound Recordist: Eric Potter

2. Story and Main Characters

In 2049, Earth is devastated by climate change and nuclear pollution, and the wealthy have migrated to an extraterrestrial planet called OFF WORLD. The protagonist, K, is a second-generation replicant working as a “Blade Runner” for the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD).

He finds a box buried under a strange dead tree after eliminating Sapper Morton, an old replicant, at a synthetic protein farm where Morton lives.

Inside the box are human remains and photos of a woman and child. Investigation reveals that the bones belong to a female replicant who died during a cesarean section.

K's superior, Joshi, fears that this could lead to war between humans and replicants, and orders K to find and eliminate the replicant child.

K visits the headquarters of Wallace, a replicant manufacturer, and discovers from the DNA archives that the deceased woman was a replicant from quite some time ago. Wallace, the company's CEO, desires to grant replicants reproductive capabilities to expand the colonies. He intends to achieve this reproductive function using the replicant bones K brought and their offspring, and instructs his secretary Luv to carry out the plan.

Returning to Morton's farm, K sees the date 6-10-21 carved into a tree trunk and concludes from his childhood memories that he is not a replicant. He searches the DNA records and discovers data on twins, finding that the girl is dead but the boy is listed as alive. K investigates the children at the orphanage in San Diego and finds a wooden horse carved with the date 6-10-20 engraved on the back from his memories.

To verify the authenticity of this memory, K visits the laboratory of Dr. Anna Sterling, a memory designer. There, he learns his orphanage memories are genuine and becomes convinced he is the son of the woman whose bones he found. As his investigation progresses, he detects a life signal in the ruins of Las Vegas. Visiting the site, he encounters Deckard, a former Blade Runner.

He tells her the woman's name is Rachel, and that he erased the birth records to protect the child, entrusting it to a replicant. Luv tracks him to Deckard's hideout in Las Vegas, kidnaps him, and brings him back to headquarters.

Wounded in the Las Vegas battle, K is told by Fraiser, leader of the replicant liberation movement, that he is not Rachel's child. Dr. Anna Sterling, the memory designer, is her daughter, and the memory of the wooden horse belongs to her. Fraiser then asks K to eliminate Deckard to keep the secret.

Luv takes Deckard to headquarters and offers him a clone of Rachel in exchange for revealing what he knows, but Deckard refuses.

While Luv transports Deckard for interrogation offworld, K intercepts them and recaptures Deckard. Severely wounded in the fight, K takes Deckard to Dr. Sterling's laboratory, where he prepares to die quietly while gazing up at the snow-filled sky. Meanwhile, Deckard enters the building and meets his daughter for the first time.

3. Distinctive Sound Design for Each Phase: Introduction-Transition-Main Body-Conclusion

3-1 Introduction: 00'00“–23'31”

● Opening

The use of music at 3'08" to draw in the audience is truly excellent.

Typically, the story introduction in films uses a quieter, lower-level approach to focus the audience's hearing, gradually increasing the volume. This film, however, uses music at full volume, like a TV show. After the situation is explained and the main title appears from an eye close-up, the music shifts from the previous 4-channel setup to an immersive soundscape utilizing the height channels. A Spinner carrying Blade Runner K flies from the basic channel Ls-Rs toward the front center. The visuals also make full use of expression, transitioning from the big close-up to a wide shot of the polluted LA of 2049.

● Sapper Morton's representation of indoor space

Although dialogue is the main focus here, the faint sound of garlic cooking bubbling away in the kitchen and the dialogue echoing in the enclosed space resonate up to the height channel, effectively conveying the size of the space. The basic channel only adds reverb to the dialogue, but the height channel adds reverb to dialogue with a slightly lowered pitch, creating a three-dimensional effect through the difference between the two.

● K and Sapper Morton's Confrontation

K has come here to eliminate the old replicants. Their confrontation unfolds in a 56-second scene, where Foley sounds like punches, knives, and footsteps are placed in the height channels and front left-right channels, creating a sense of realism that spreads across the big screen. (With a 7.1-channel mix, there is a horizontal sound field in the center of the screen, but by utilizing the height channels, it is possible to express a sound field that spreads across the entire screen.)

● The Three-Dimensional Ambience of LA's Bi-Bi Bar

This stands out as an exceptional example of designing a remarkable immersive space using only ambient sounds.

It three-dimensionally portrays the city through diverse elements: voices from around the world, passing cars, footsteps, vending machine mechanical sounds, and especially from the height channels, various advertisements echoing through the streets, all enveloped by the sound of rain. This scene reappears frequently throughout, serving as a superb example of how immersive audio can express vibrant urban noise.

3-2 Transition 23'31“—58'36”

●Rain 7.1CH Recording

Rain is a crucial sound in this work, but reportedly good surround sound material had been hard to come by until now. Mark Mangini had been waiting for an opportunity to record rain in surround sound and had prepared the equipment. By chance, he encountered rain that started falling in the middle of the night and was able to record it. This recording is used in various scenes.

It appears in scenes such as LAPD K's boss Josh, K's flight to Wallace Corporation, and scenes of the city of LA.

3-3 Main Body 58'36“—1h40'34”

● Spinner heading to the San Diego waste disposal site

This is the design for the interior sounds of the Spinner carrying K as it flies through the rain.

The main elements are the sound of rain hitting the windshield and the vibration from the vehicle's movement. To capture this atmosphere, the design team reportedly placed a subwoofer in the rear of Mark Mangini's wife's Honda SUV, played the LFE signal, and recorded it using surround microphones.

3-4 Conclusion 1h40'3“–2h32'51”

● Deckard and K in the Las Vegas Ruins

After detecting a life signal, K enters the house where Deckard is hiding within the ruins of Las Vegas. The two fight, then calmly discuss Rachel and the child's whereabouts. This is a long take lasting 15'30", but Mark Mangini stated in an interview that it was a very rewarding scene to design because the director requested no music be used. It was created primarily with a base CH, layering numerous elements to build a three-dimensional sense of depth and atmospheric ambience, expressed through ME using wind chimes and guitar samples.

● The billboard woman calling out to K

This is the scene where K, who was abducted by Wallace Corporation and suffered severe injuries himself, returns to his apartment. From a billboard tower in the city, a woman's sweet voice calls out, “Tough day? Want to play with me?” As the shot transitions from the LA cityscape to a close-up of the billboard woman kneeling before K, the voice—previously heard off-screen across the full height channel—becomes a distinct, clear voice heard only on the front left and front right speakers of the height channel. This is another example where the full screen and height channel expressions are effectively utilized.

End Credits: 2h32’51”-2h43’27”

4. Scoring Music

The score began with Johann Jóhannsson, who composed the music for the previous film Arrival, collaborating with Ted Green. However, following his unexpected death, the score became an homage to Vangelis, who composed the music for the original 1982 Blade Runner. It was based on the sound of the YAMAHA CS-8 analog synthesizer, with Benjamin Wallfisch and Hans Zimmer taking over the scoring duties.

Director Denis desired a chaotic soundscape where music and sound became one. The source recordings included vocals, ethnic instruments, violin, and bass guitar, produced at Remote Control Productions—Hans Zimmer's home studio. Masterful scoring artist Alan Meyerson finalized the various stem materials. Rather than finishing each stem in surround, they were kept as 2-channel mix stems. Their positioning was finalized during the final mix to seamlessly integrate with the sound design for each scene. For example, using only the front L-R height channels, or the Ls-Rs height 4-channels and bass channels, creates a mix where immersive audio is achieved holistically.

Musically, it employs a chaotic sound where it's difficult to clearly distinguish between the scoring music and the sound design (Blur the Music and Sound). This approach, differing from traditional full-orchestra scoring, is a new technique actively embraced by director Denis. Many composers employing this ambient-style music approach are not traditional scoring composers but rather active in other genres. Trent Reznor, who composed the music for the 1999 award-winning film ‘The Matrix’, can be considered a pioneer in this field.

5. Foley. Sound Effects. Law Material sound and MIX

Sound Design Supervisor Mark Mangini, who stated that the entire team staff performed the music, prepared thousands of materials and gave the entire work an organic sound. This process is also featured on YouTube, so be sure to check it out.

British-born composer Ted Green handled specific sound design elements, creating sounds for the Spinner car, the DNA recorder, and diverse indoor and outdoor ambience.

The director believes that video editors and sound staff should participate from the very start of production. If they only handle post-production after filming wraps, it doesn't truly function as a team. He brought Ted and video editor Joe Walker to the Budapest filming studio, where they worked on sound design in the sound pre-production room while observing the actual filming. Below are some notable sound design examples for your reference.

● Spinner Car Interior Sounds

The source material includes the vocalizations of native Australian cattle, air sounds produced by spinning wooden boards and cables, and vibration sounds recorded using a 7-channel setup inside Mark Mangini's wife's Honda SUV, where speakers were placed to capture low-frequency vibrations.

● Blaster Rifle

Recorded the Barrett rifle—known for producing the loudest firing sound among sniper rifles—in the field. Combined only its reverberation with kick drum samples from the Roland TR-909 sampling keyboard. This example demonstrates achieving maximum impact with a very simple composition.

● The Sound of Falling Snow

Mark Mangini filled a bathtub with shaving foam and dropped small objects into it to record this sound. He notes that designing quiet ambient sounds like this is more challenging than designing gunshots or explosions.

● Rainfall

Mark Mangini crafted a custom rain cover and recorded it using a Holophone 7.1 microphone.

● Quiet Indoor Ambience

Ted mentions that the ambient sounds in his living room and his friend's studio are so quiet with very low background noise that he recorded the ambient air sounds there in 7.1 surround sound and used them as source material.

●Street Noise

The noise of LA's decaying streets envelops the scene in a three-dimensional cacophony. This design truly showcases the maximum benefit of Immersive Audio.

Multinational voices, passing cars, footsteps, vending machines, rain, and ambient sounds blend seamlessly to create a magnificent three-dimensional space. The various advertising sounds reverberating off buildings were recorded using the Worldize technique, where sounds are played through speakers in the studio.

● The Final Battle at the Coastal Breakwater

Sound Recordist Eric Potter recorded a variety of wave sounds, while separate 4-channel recordings captured emphasized sounds like splashing waves. These were then synthesized together.

He noted that recording in 4-channel created a feeling for the audience of being engulfed by the waves. This scene features a superb mix where sound effects and music blend in and out with exquisite timing.

⚫️ How to Use Various Plugins Employed in Final Mix

As mentioned in the interview, They designed using plugins applied to organic material, so here are a few examples.

● DSpatial

This is a surround reverb plugin for Pro Tools developed by a Spanish company. It can configure up to 48 channels of convolution reverb. While most plugins only support up to 8 channels, this 48-channel capability makes it excellent software for IMMERSIVE Audio.

● LoAir

Recorded source material inevitably consists of steady sounds without variation, so this tool is used to add a realistic rumbling effect that creates a sense of movement.

● Mondomodo

This is a plugin that creates a Faeser effect, used to create the movement of the Spinner car.

Conclusion

This film is an Organically integrated world created by the music and sound design teams working together towards fusion. Since Dolby Atmos, an immersive audio format, was introduced to film sound in 2012, the know-how of how to utilize immersive audio in film design has been established, and this can be felt in this film.

The sound team, led by Mark Mangini, went on to work with director Denis Villeneuve again on Dune-Part-01 in 2021, winning the Best Sound award at the 91st Academy Awards too .

Mick Sawaguchi Sawaguchi

Introduction

The sequel to Dune part-1, which won six awards at the 91st Academy Awards in 2021, was awarded Best Sound at the 97th Academy Awards in 2025. The sound team this time around is the combination of Richard King, a veteran of great design work on action films, and a sound team from New Zealand. The music is by Hans Zimmer and his team, who have continued to build the world of ME with a contemporary sound, using height channels in almost every track.

The desert sounds are an important part of the design of this work, so the field recording team traveled to various deserts to record a large amount of material.

Compared to the previous work DUNE PART-01, a large amount of various low-frequency components was used, and how they were organized and finished is also worth listening to. --- “CRASH and BURN” -----------------------

1 Sound Staff

Director: Denis Villeneuve

Sound Design: Richard King

Final Mix: Ron Bartlett. Doug Hemphill

Music: Hans Zimmer and 4 composers

Music rec and mix: Allan Meyerson at Remote CTL Production

Foley Artist: Dan Connell/Jhon T. Cucci at One StepUp studio

Production Sound: Gareth John

Sound Recordist: Eric Potter/ Charlie Campagna/George Vlad

Pre-Mix at Park Road Post N.Z

Final MIX at W. Brothers stage-9

2 Story and Main Characters

On the planet Arrakis, Lady Jessica, the mistress of Duke Leto Atreides, who was murdered by Emperor Shaddam IV, and her son Paul, the heir to the throne, plan to escape from the planet. He challenges the emperor.

Jessica, pregnant with her younger sister, takes over as the “Mother of Teachings” and spreads the word among the Fremen that Paul is the long-awaited savior of the Fremen, the “Lisan al-Ghaib (Savior from the outside world)”. Paul, on the other hand, drinks the “water of life” and gains the power to predict the past and future in order to fight the emperor and the Harkonnens.

With the help of Fremen leaders Stilgar and Chani, Paul rides the Sandworm, and the people of Fremen recognize that he has the qualities to live in the desert and that he is our savior.

Paul sends a letter of challenge to Emperor Shaddam IV, leading millions of Fremen warriors to hunt down the emperor and his Harkonnen army, and finally challenges the emperor to a duel.

Paul is victorious, defeating Fido Lausa of the House of Harkonnen, who had come forward to duel on behalf of the emperor, in a mortal combat. Chani, who is in love with Paul and was present at the scene, agrees to marry him in exchange for the life of her father, Emperor Shaddam IV, and leaves, unable to hide her annoyance, even though she understands Princess Irulan's actions in recognizing Paul as the next emperor.

3 Distinctive sound design for each chapter

The sound of this work is characterized by a design that combines sound effects and music more than in the previous work, so we paid attention to the position of each within the ME structure rather than to the excellent design of sound effects alone. The height channel, in particular, is characterized by the Atmos Mix, with the basic music taking over the entire sound.

3-1Introduction- 00h00m00sec-00h34m48sec

⚫️ Monologue appearing at the beginning of the FILM,

“He who controls the spice, controls everything.”

This is a male voice, but in order to impact the audience at the beginning, the original monologue is placed in the hard center and the slightly pitched lines are placed in the L-R and further pitched down and reverb added components are localized in the LS-RS, which is an example of a large sound image to strengthen the impact. Spectrum is also introduced.

⚫️ The voice of the mother of the Faithful commanding Jessica to become a mother of the Faithful on the Holy Mountain.

The Fremen Mother of God urges Jessica to drink the water of life. [Drink it”] is a short phrase, but in order to give it impact, the LS-RS has been placed with slap delay and chorus effect components in addition to the original line.

⚫️This is the scene where the Fremen people test whether Paul is really capable of surviving in the desert.

It is a surreptitious design in which creatures such as insects and birds that hide in the heat during the day wake up and become active at night. The material used here was recorded by field recordist George Vlad in the African rainforest. Spectrum is also presented here for reference.

3-2 Transition- 00h34m48sec-00h58m00sec

⚫️ The sound of gunfire is developing in the height component as Paul and Fremen attack the spice collector vehicle and then jump on the shovel that slides in to avoid the bullets of Ohni Bee, who fires back at them from above. The explosion LFE spectrum in this scene is also presented.

⚫️ This is a 4m35sec scene of Paul riding a giant sand worm, which the sound team says was their most important work. The first half of the scene revolves around the sound effects, and after he rides the worm, the music comes to the fore to heighten the drama of the scene.

First the vibrator to call the sand worm - the thumper - echoes in the low frequencies, and the sand worm appears. Paul jumps onto its back and struggles to control the worm with a hooked wire. The sandstorm, the wind noise, and the sound of the worm running are all low frequency components on parade, but the mixing is brilliantly done by dividing the bandwidth according to the scene. Here is another spectrum.

3-3 Main body- 00h58m00sec-2h06m17sec

⚫️ Fighting scene inside the arena celebrating his niece Faid Lausa's birthday on Jedi Prime, the planet where Halkonen lives.

Halkonen is holding a major ceremony at Colosseum to determine the qualities of Fayd Lausa, who will replace the short-tempered and aggressive commander Laban, who is having trouble collecting spice on the planet Arrakis. His opponents are three surviving soldiers of the Atreides family. In the stadium, there is a 360-degree crowd and a PA blaring, and in the hard center, the metallic clang of both their daggers. The metallic sound of the opera glasses switching magnification is carefully Foley'd as Margaret Fenring, the god mother next to Harkonnen, watches the competition, although it is difficult to hear because of the dense sound.

The material was created by a New Zealand sound team that recorded the screams of a local punk rock group and synthesized them into a multi-synthesized sound.

----- previously recorded the shouts of a large crowd in the 2002 award-winning film “Road of the Ring Two Towers” the director personally instructed a crowd of 20,000 spectators during halftime of a cricket match at Wellington's Westpac Stadium. This is another example of a thorough recording. ------

The spectrum of this scene is as follows.

⚫️ God mother Jessica's line ordering her servant to “Let's him try”.

The lines of the Jessica's speech are short, but they are required to have impact, The dialogue was recorded not by Jessica herself, but by Ron Bartlett, who recorded his own voice at home, slightly distorted it, lowered its pitch, and added a low-frequency component of reverb to the LS-RS.

⚫️ Sandstorm encountered by Jessica and the Fremen group heading south on the Sand Worm

Paul is left alone in the north while the rest of the group heads south on the Sand Worm to meet up with the Fremen people in the south. On the way to the south, they are confronted with a huge sandstorm, which can be called a natural defense wall. I expected that Hight would also design the sandstorm, but the basic music and designed the sound effects in 5.1CH.

The sound of the sand worm's progression was designed with a hard-center Foley and a huge LFE, and the sandstorms surrounding the entire surface were designed with the low-frequency component in the front and the high-frequency component in the LS-RS. The material field-recorded in various parts of the desert is used effectively. This also presents the spectra of the overall and LFE components.

3-4 Conclusion- 2h06m17sec-2h36m46sec

⚫️ Pole and Fremen forces make an all-out attack on Harkonnen and the Emperor's army.

Paul and his men split into three separate attacks in three directions. First, they launch a missile attack on the mountain behind the base, the blast of which cascades down, and the aftermath of the blast echoes through the ceiling of the emperor's troops in the palace. This also presents the overall spectrum and the spectrum of the LFE component.

4 Recording of sound effects and Foley

The sound team started working on Part-02 immediately after the completion of Part-01, 2.5 months before the final mix, a very tight production period that everyone put in full energy until the pre-mix.

-------------------There was a lot of working from the gut----

Richard King, sound supervisor and designer, considered how to achieve a fast and efficient final mix to meet director Denis Villeneuve's request for documentary-like realism in the FILM. The pre-mix stem was done by Park Road post, the same company that produced the Lord of the Rings series. The following designs are presented here.

4-1-A Production of sand material ranging from dense sound to vast amounts of sand dust, which is the mainstay of the Arrakis planet.

Field recording in the desert by two teams; Eric Potter/Charlie Campagna spent several weeks in Death Valley and Kelso dunes recording material with an eye to all possibilities.

The other team, George Vlad, recorded alone in the Sahara Desert, from quiet winds to sandstorms. The material totaled about 100 tracks, which he organized into 4-5 track stems and brought to Final Mix.

The recording equipment used was a Zoom F6 and Sennheiser MKH8090 and 8060 with Aquarian Audio H2a hydrophones for the ground-embedded microphones.

4-1-b Sand Sound Foley

The sound of sand footsteps and walking is also enormous. Dan Connell/Jhon T.Cucci, who was in charge of Foley, brought tons of different types of sand to One StepUp studio, where Foley was conducted.

4-2 Sand Worms

The movements and voices of the Sand Worms, the inhabitants of the planet Arrakis, were also recorded in the desert.

To give the worm, which is a huge lump of meat, a heavy object was brought along to give it a sense of weight, and the material was recorded from overhead microphones, or moved over microphones buried underground, and then composed into many pitched layers.

4-3 Processing of Colosseum Crowd, Ohni-Bee, etc. from the Fremen language Chacobsa

The creators of the unique language are New Zealand sound designer David Whitehead and his colleague Michelle Child.

Some readers may remember this name. They are the team that created the voice of the alien heptopod in the same director's film “Arrival” which won Best Sound at the 89th Academy in 2016.

The crowd at the colosseum was also created by Matin Kwok with many layers of material from the screams of a punk rock group.

5 Scoring Music

Scoring was done by Hans Zimmer and his team, same as in the previous work. The sound structure was inherited from the previous work, with 4 CHs for the basics and the LFE CHs left to the sound effects. The height is 4 channels, and most of the scoring was done in 8 channels (4+4).

The percentage of use in the film is 59% at 1h38m16sec, which is less than expected.

Allan Meyerson, who was in charge of the music mix, said the key was not orchestration but how to create an expansive wall of sound with unique independent sounds from unique instrumentalists.

In terms of unique sounds, two Canadian keyboard players have joined the group, and their original synthesizers, which can produce continuous sounds, are used to create the base of the ambience.

In closing

The effort to record the production sound in the harsh climate and temperature changes of the desert deserves an award, as does the final mix by the duo, who have managed to get it just right from hundreds of tracks of pre-mixed material. They are masters at balancing the most important elements, and I think it was a major factor that they have been sound colleagues with Richard King for 40 years.

PS:For those of you who work in post-production, you may be familiar with some of the plug-ins we used for processing in Final Mix.

⚫️ Elastique Pitch V2 active in pitch processing

⚫️ 8-channel multi-slap delay used for the voice of the god mother The Cargo Cult

Slapper

⚫️ Fab-Filter HP-LPF in action in the scene where Paul rides the sound worm