#5 Resul Pookutty on the Sound Design of LOVE SONIA

In conversation with Resul Pookutty - Sound designer of the film LOVE SONIA


Can you tell us about your relationship with Tabrez Noorani, the Director of Love Sonia?
RP: I have a very special equation with Tabrez. He was one of the line producers in Slumdog Millionaire. More than that, when me and Danny had a fight on set, and I walked out of the film, he was the one who actually talked to me and brought me back into the film. So I am eternally indebted to him for whatever happened post Slumdog. Tabrez was hellbent that I should finish the film. So I came back, finished the film and rest is history!

And actually when they sent it to the Oscars... when they made the DVD cover, to send the film for submission, Tabrez sent me the layout with a note saying that, “I feel so proud to see your name on this DVD cover”. That's why I have kept the DVD at the entrance of my studio! So that way, he is very special and we clicked very well as friends... we became very close friends. I believe every director has his core team. Tabrez found his core team in this film. And Love Sonia is one such film for me.

Just look at the crew he assembled for this film! You had a director, Indian, but living in LA. You had a producer who is from Israel, but living in LA. So, an American, in that sense. You have an Argentinian editor. You have a Danish composer. You have a Polish cameraman. And an Indian sound man. And you have Indo American writers. So it's an amazing combo.

Tabrez made it a point that all of them came down to India during the shooting of the movie. When we bagan shooting, they all came down. He made sure that everybody was there. So the first week we were all together. I didn't know Niels at that time. Niels Bye Nielsen is the music director. Or Martin Singer, the editor at that time. So they all came down. We all hung out. But we were so engrossed in working and shooting that I couldn’t pay much attention. But at the same time, during the post in LA, we all were together again. It was like one bunch of all these enthusiastic guys, who are very highly experienced, have very high artistic integrity, and who are artists in their own spirit. So every evening, we would meet and we'd discuss and we'd talk, in a way like a film school gathering. So for me it was one of the most memorable experiences of my life. And when I left LA after mixing the film, I was miserable. I came back to Mumbai and I started missing Tabrez. And he also felt the same way. So we started exchanging messages like, “Yaar, how do we work like this. You come to LA...let's do something. You shift to LA” To that extent! I even started thinking that if at all I have to buy a house in the US, I'll buy a house in LA next to his house. So, we became that close... the writers, the editor, their friends, we would all get together...we’d cook….it reminded me of Tarkovsky and how he worked with his team. When I came to know Bergman, how he had his core team. I felt that I have found my director. Or he has found his sound man. He cannot work with anybody else. Very few people you meet in life in the course of your work, with whom you have such an association. For me, Tabrez is one such artist I have found in my life. I think that will go on till we are on this planet.

You tend to become like a family when you work on one film.
RP: Yes, you do...but here, it's more than that.

For that matter, I did Slumdog, but I don't (feel that way) apart from a few people. But post Slumdog, yes, everything in that film, everyone connected with that film became special. Again, you move on. I did Best Exotic Marigold hotel….you move on. The other day, I was watching Inferno with my son…..I worked on Inferno...little bit….but you move on.

But I think with Tabrez, it is not like that. We keep coming back. We also have a deep core friendship. Which goes beyond making cinema. We interact on everything that he does. There is an artistic interaction... is it right or is it not right. Even at times, very core decisions of the film... edits of the film, or how the film should be presented, how the film should be pitched. So for all those, he comes back and discusses with me. So it is not just one sound man and a director kind of relationship. That's why I said, I found my director. Or he probably.... found his sound man!. So if he wants someone to do sound in his films, he would first ask me.

Even all the girls in the film. Mrunal and Riya and Richa...we all sort of found each other and became a very close knit group. Freida….I met Freida after Slumdog….I was AMAZED by how fine an artist she has become in the last eight years. You know, I was super thrilled. First day of shoot, I was blown out of proportion.

With Richa again, over a period of time, we realized that we had similar social concerns. So on that level, we connected. But as friends and artists and co-workers, we had a very different equation. It started with a small thing that happened with the sound crew. An assistant of mine wrapped a transmitter pack on her leg, and he had wrapped it so tight, it got pressed against her leg and she got a blister. So at the end of the day, she came and showed it to him and he sort of took it very lightly. And that really pissed her off. And she said, “I'm telling you it's not for you to laugh. It has really damaged my body”. So that night, I wrote her an email. First, basically apologising for how my crew supposedly behaved!. And secondly, how important it is for us that an artist gets miked up in a film. I remember, I wrote to her, that “Every breath you take within the frame is my concern. I think you should allow us to live with that concern during the shoot because I am not dealing with Richa Chadda, I am dealing with that Madhuri...that character. For me, she is mine”.

And Richa came the next day to me and said, “That's one of the most beautiful letters anybody has written to me. And what you said is so right, and we often take it for granted, we artists, we only look at our comfort, we never understand what other people are going through. So I completely agree with you and I mistook it and don’t ever apologise to me!”. And she came and apologised. So that was the beginning of our friendship and that still continues. So for me, Love Sonia is not just a film that I have done. It has become much more and beyond that.

And so also with David Womark (Producer). I knew David because I did some ADR for Life of Pi, and we had spoken to each other on the phone and with Ang Lee when he was in the New York studio.

So David and I, we clicked. He also has some social concerns which resonates with mine, probably, that's why we have all come together, in a way. And I found an amazing artist in David. He was a first AD in the beginning of his career. He has worked with all kinds of people and he knew how to conduct a shoot. More than that, I realised the value of a producer and what is the role of a producer. I came to know about that in this film through David.

He has a clear understanding of what the film is...what we are making. And how to make it in the best possible way...he knew. And whenever...wherever...we faced a crisis, he jumped in. And he has not jumped in as a person who is spending money, but he jumped in as an artist. We had some concerns with Mrunal during certain sequences of the film. Of course, as an artist she knew what she was doing, but when it comes to the physicality of doing things, especially in a film like this ….she is a very young girl...20-22 years old girl….she would break down on set, and she would need time to do, what she had agreed to do! Or her state of mind at that moment would throw her off. And everything would stop. There were two sequences like that….one in Mumbai and one in Hong Kong when we were shooting. But, it was amazing to see how David dealt with it. He would take everybody out of the room, sit with her and talk to her. And one example that he has brought out … very very touching….during the making of the film, he said, “Mrunal, remember, you are not doing it to be a star. You are doing these sequences for all those millions of girls who suffered. You are representing them. And remember, what you are going through now is only acting, all of them have gone through this, or much more...thousand times more than this... in real life. Imagine their pain. You are depicting that pain. And we are the torch bearers of that. We need to take it to people, and say that we should change. That's what we are doing. That's what you are doing.”

What an amazing way to put things across to your lead actor! And I realised, “WOW, that’s a ‘Producer’!” Probably a director would say, or a writer would say, something like this...but no, that's the producers job. He understood it in the nicest terms.

So in a way, for me, working and interacting with all of them at a personal level has actually enriched me. So this film for me was really like ... opening up myself.

Can you talk a bit about the music score and your interaction with Music Director Niels.
RP: Niels … what an amazing artist he is, first of all. And I loved every bit of the score that he has done. And suppose if you want to change things, immediately things are changed. And I would call him to the mix stage and I'd show him what we have done, how I have used his music. This is a film that we have done in DOLBY Atmos.

So what we have done is...he scored all the music….what happens when we work in films like this, after the edit is done, once the edit is locked, we do a temp mix. In the temp mix, I had stereo music, which came from Neils. And a lot of sound design cues which the editor has left, …. so I pretty much heard all the cues. Because we were working on a tight post production budget, I wanted to do all the pre dubs in Mumbai at my place. And so, Niels has sent all the music to me. There were a lot of Indian instruments in the score. I recorded all of them without the music director in Mumbai, like what a music supervisor would do. I heard all the demo tracks and then we got all musicians to play the santoor, the flute, tabla, and drums….we got these musicians in the studio and over two days, recorded all the music. Then a couple of themes that we had to work out, which me and Tabrez had been discussing...like the Faisal theme, and theme for the girls etc. In all these, we wanted to use voices and we were very clear that we didn't want to use a western voice. We wanted to use an Indian voice. So I got in touch with Sunidhi Chauhan and Kailash Kher….and we got them to the studio...and got it recorded, then editing all the music….fitting these recordings within the Score and then I went ahead to do all the music predubs.

So Niels...apart from all the cues he had sent me, all these additions...he never heard the music in its fully finished state.So I called him to the mix stage and played him all the music, and when he heard his music in Atmos, he was blown away! He was blown away by what he heard. And he is like a little boy, he came to the stage looking at the Atmos panner and seeing the ball moving all around asked me,….so he was like, “My God, what you have done with my music, It’s amazing!”

So I said, “Stay back.”

So he was like, “What? Can I stay back? Am I allowed to sit in the mix room?”

I said, “You are the music director, of course you can sit in.”

“No no no no, in LA, we are not allowed in the mix room.”

I said, “That's in LA. This is our mix session and you are my partner. Without you, I have no existence. My sound is not complete without your work. So please stay in.”

So that for me was a revelation. You have music directors here, who are so impatient and so insecure. They always want their music up, they only hear their music! Here is somebody who is saying, can I sit in? If I invite him for a screening, he will be more than happy.

That was amazing. For me that was completely different….that kind of a session. Niels was like that.

Martin, the editor, with whom I have interacted so much during the editing of the movie...he put in all my notes, except one thing. There's a shot of a snake, when Faisal and Richa make love, and I said it was like a cliche image...used and done...but Tabrez was hell bent on having that shot there.

So, I had an amazing relationship with all of them.

Of course, it's had its challenges shooting. When I read the script, I felt it had all the possibility of becoming another Slumdog...in a different way. Real locations ... very tough locations ... The film travels from a small rural village to Mumbai, to Hong Kong to LA. So everything had a different soundscape. And planning out all that, executing all that. Making sure that all those come into place, making sure that I collect all my raw material. All those things were there. But it all went beyond that. All these working relationships…..I found all these wonderful people in my life. Such a great association. One thing I have to say about Tabrez. All of us were together in every journey that we made with this film. We were all together. We were together in the London premier, we travelled from the London premier to Edinburgh. We came back. We went to BFI. Then Melbourne, it was like that.

Film is of course a collective medium and no individual work stands out, it's the collective work that makes the medium of cinema as an art, more interesting than ever. But there are also individual journeys which contributed to the bigger picture. So for me, Love Sonia is very very special.

So were you recording sound on location for the entire film?
RP: Yes. After I read the script, I had a serious discussion with Tabrez about what I would want to do in the film. Of course, recording live sound was one aspect. But I told Tabrez, for me, I am not just recording live sound, or recording dialogues. For me, I am also collecting my raw materials for my sound design. So you have to allow me to do it. He was one of the deadliest sound friendly directors I have ever worked with. I can only equate John Madden to him, and then Danny. I think, to me, Tabrez comes first, then comes John Madden and then Danny.

Because he was clued on to it, he knew that everything I am doing is for the film and that I need to be supported, especially when we were working in the brothel. We were working in a real brothel. And production had big issues with me carrying my big booms, and stereo mikes and all that...they wanted a lean crew and one person, because the cameraman was working with one operator...so we were like three or four people and the director....but he understood when I refused. I said, “Either I will record it my way, or otherwise you go ADR it...if I am recording, I will record only this way... this is what I want. I will not be able to go back into those spaces, after the film is edited. And you all will run away. It will become my struggle. I don't want it to be my struggle alone. I want this help, now….I want this support system...and I have the support system now!” And Tabrez stood by me.

And there were situations when we got beaten up….you know, I got locked up in a car ...and left behind...everybody ran away...and I couldn't just get out of the car because the goons were chasing us. All this happened in Mumbai...in Kamathipura! Because of course, goons rule those places….and some money was not given or somebody misbehaved...I don't know what had happened….but we are sitting in the car, we are shooting and taking a travelling shot, and people just barged in...the driver runs away...everybody runs away...and me and the artists, Sonia, got locked up in the car. And you know, hundreds of people around the car….beating the glass of the car to open up….and from there to make an escape...leaving all your gear...thinking that it's ok...it's just your gear. So in all those moments, Tabrez was there, not just as a director being there...but as a friend, as an artist, as a support system … as somebody who is like believing in what we are doing.

So Tabrez was always supporting you... always had your back…
RP: Yes...for me that was more than being behind me. In Hong Kong also, we had a tough time...we had a very difficult time...because we went to Hong Kong and some of my crew members were not allowed to step in... they were sent back. I don't know what happened, but I think there were some visa issues. So on the first day of shoot, I had nothing. I didn't have my gear! So I only worked with my small Zoom recorder, which I had sort of refurbished with a height layer microphone system, custom developed by my friend for me. Because I knew that in places like brothels, I will not always be able to take my big booms … sometimes I will have to hide….I will have to stroll around in a brothel, or the brothel area to capture the real ambience, probably like a visitor. And I had a similar experience in Slumdog...because when I was recording something like this inside the Taj Mahal in Agra, I got arrested, by the police, and I was put behind bars. So I didn't want to repeat the same story, because when I am working, I just don't see what is happening around me.

So I had this very close friend from Delhi, with whom I have been working with while he was developing this mike called Brahma...it's a 4-track height layered kind of recording system. So it was the perfect microphone for me….I tested it … many times, I tested it and gave them my feedback, and they improved upon it. So we bought a Zoom H2n recorder, and I removed the Zoom recorders microphone and we put the Brahma microphone inside, which is a miniature version of the real big Brahma mike. So it gave me a 4 track height layer professional quality recording, in a small form recorder, which I could hide anywhere.

Similarly, I also had microphones developed by the same guys, for me to capture small rooms acoustics...especially in the container...we shot in real containers and I wanted to capture the ambient acoustics of the real containers, especially in dialogue sequences. Like we are recording the dialogues, specially Madhuri's monologue, to the camera in narrating her story, when they are smuggled to LA from Hong Kong….. I knew that I would never get a real container ever again...so when we were shooting in the container, I had microphones placed for capturing the acoustics of the container. In this contraption, I had these four dpa microphones, which are all measured up and placed equidistant on a plate….we called it plate array.... And we had that 4... 5... 6 feet away from the characters, depending upon the situation... it captures the ambience, mainly acoustics...just the reflections in the space, and we used that very heavily in creating the sound scape, especially in the container scenes. That sequence, if you look at it, became very vulnerable...that this girl just slipped... that someone just slipped in a situation of life...that vulnerability of her performance in her voice...that got captured very well with this mic array.

So I have done all these things, apart from working with my regular methodology...and Tabrez knew I was doing all this and he was solidly behind me. I had serious differences with the production at occasions during filming. Their hands were also tied, I understand, but I don't want them to decide how I should do things... I want them to come and have a discussion with me. I don't want them to come and tell me that you take only one microphone...or two microphones. So why am I there then, if they are taking those decisions. You tell me the problem, and I will find a solution to it. I am there to find solutions, not create problems. Tabrez understood these dynamics more than being a Director.

And without him, I wouldn't have been able to do the film, the way I have done it. Not a single word in this film is ADR, including the voice overs in this film! All recorded on location. During filming I suggested that we record scratch VO as we might need them for picture edit. During the Sound post we wanted to record voice overs, and we didn't find it interesting. We didn't find it good. And Mrunal was doing ADR for the first time and she just couldn't understand what we were trying to do. She couldn’t come up with the same performance as was in the guide track. Or maybe we were too fixed with what we were used to with the guide track.

And she is telling me, “Sir, please make me understand.”

So I said, “Follow what you have done on location.”

And eventually, we had to go back to the tracks we had recorded on location, which was supposed to be a scratch. Which had crows and (all sorts of noise). So eventually, we even had to live with some change of lines…. So though we did ADR, we came back to location tracks and used them in the final picture. Those were tough decisions, there were tough times.

Only in the LA schedule, I couldn't be with the unit. So I called up my dear friend Mark Ulano. Mark is also a very close friend of David, and more than that, he loves my work and I love him….very close to Mark and his wife. So any issues that I have, he is the first person that I would call. Mark was not available for the duration of our schedule...I wanted Mark to work on this film. So he suggested one of his trusted associates, Steve Nelson. Later on, when Mark saw the film, he said, “I wish I had that one week free!”

So Steve came on and did that one week schedule in LA. He has done big films. So to brief him about how I was recording the film, I wrote him a very long email, detailing him about what kind of tracking that I am doing etc. And he wrote me back saying, “Resul, to understand what you are doing, I need to be with you for one week! So what I will do is, I will keep it very simple….I will do it my way. It's just a two character simple situation. You just tell me what microphones you have been using, and I will faithfully record it and give it to you”. Very nice of him to say that. Such a senior person who has done films like X men and all those franchise films. Probably on paper, it did sound very complicated. But for me, it was my regular work. I generally do a mix on location because that's my intuitive behaviour to the performance of the actors in a given space.

We had Lucas Bielan as the cameraman on this film and he is one of the best camera operators in the world! I can tell you, this whole film is hand held. But you will not hear a single camera movement….footsteps….of people moving around...he has done it so well... so well. We had our fair share of heated moments and we were like …

Cats and dogs?
RP: No...we were like snake and mongoose! But we respect each other. I used to compliment him, for he does unimaginable stuff. Amazingly good work!

But it is all part of our work... we work, we fight….but in the evening, we don't take anything home. The next day, we come back to the set with new energy and new found enthusiasm. At the end of the film, he said, “You are one of the best artists I have ever worked with.”

And I also felt the same way. We really understood each other and respected each other….the visual language that Lucas had given for the film is something very very special...of an artist of a very high order.

And yes, we had some pretty tough locations. Jaipur was very very tough. From our past experience, we always knew that you do the toughest one in the first few days. We had planned for seven days and we wrapped up in five days. So we came back two days early and we went ahead prepping the Bombay schedule early.

Could you talk about your approach to the sound design of Love Sonia?
RP: So for sound design, I had this idea with me. For me, the film is not only about this girl, who gets trapped into this sex trafficking. It's a true story. This is of course, a serious social issue.

But for me, I also looked at the film as a film about displacement. A film about people who get displaced, from their spaces that they know...a space that they understand for generations, a space where they make a living. More than that, they have a communion with nature. From that place when they get uprooted, what happens to their life. For me that was my idea of the sound. So I had to devise three sets of soundscapes.

And secondly, the film is about global warming. When we talk about global warming, we talk about big things, big discussions. The Paris summit for example. For me, it's not just about all that. It's also about how global warming affects a small person's life...in a small village, in a country like India. Or a country like Uganda. Or elsewhere. This can happen anywhere in the world. For me, the film is also about global warming and it's personal aftermath.

So the girl gets displaced from her place because the guy can't make a living because it's a long summer, high temperature, no rain, no crop, no living. So he is forced to sell one of his daughters. And the elder daughter goes in search of the younger daughter...her younger sister. And how she gets trapped into this sex trafficking racket...and she gets into Mumbai, which is completely different from the space that she has grown up and what she knows. A quaint, dusty, stormy, village...to the cacophony of Mumbai. Where everything is maximum city to you! Then she gets trafficked to Hong Kong. She spends 14 days in a container on a ship, gets to Hong Kong. From there, she gets trafficked to LA. That is a completely different sound scape, very orderly, very soothing, very sophisticated, very upmarket. But underneath all that is muck... there exists a different life, completely different from what she knows and familiar with... and her eventual escape!.

Hong Kong for me was a first experience. Mostly we were shooting in containers and ships and all those places, so I have got tons of stuff, ambience, fx, city scape, waterfronts etc recorded by myself. Then when I did the Foley of the film, I thought, the Indian portion of the film should be done by Indian Foley artist. And the other portions of the film shot outside India will be done by Foley artists from abroad. So I have this friends of mine I have worked with in Spain, Miguel Barbosa and Diego Staub, I asked them to do Foley for those sections. So now, I had a distinctly different texture worked out for Indian portions and for outside Indian portions. So it's become not just Sonia's journey, it's also become a sound man's journey...from one place to another. That's why I said, for me it's a film about displacement.

And to capture this, like I said, I had devised microphones, like the Brahma and the plate array. In almost every dialogue scene, I have used a stereo microphone. It's a very very unusual way to work like that, because you get into a thousand issues of phasing and all that. Of course, I had multiple microphones...like my favourite 2040’s with Tram capsules. And my Cooper (console), and my favourite boom mics...Neumann KMR81, 82 and Schoeps. Plus I had a lot of surface microphones, and my specially designed plate array microphone. So the number of tracks were always never enough for me. Even 10 or 12 tracks are never enough for me. And I had this modified Zoom H2n with 4 track recording, which I used to keep it, for example, in a corner of the room where I can't put big mike's. In such tight constrained spaces, I would use Brahma. So I did a lot of ambience recording with this Brahma microphone...for which Zoom has helped me a lot. So it's almost like an ambisonic recording.

For me, it was a much bigger recording setup for a small budget film. But we didn't compromise on how we captured … what we captured ... how we went about doing it. And similarly, when it came to the post, we did all the sound editorial...because right from the beginning, we knew we were going to have an Indian release and then later, we are going to have a foreign release. So I wanted first to be pleasing to the Indian ears.

So I did all the dialogue edits here, I did a sort of pre dub, and we did all the Foley, we did the Foley pre dub... we did all the sound design, all the sound design pre dub…. all the music, I did all the music predubs….

Then I went to LA. There, I mixed the film with Marti Humphrey and Gabriel Serrano, two highly respected re-recording mixers. When they were working with me on the mix, I was almost like a conductor, in an opera. Because in ten days, it is very very difficult for any mix engineer to understand the complexity of the tracks. And we had tons of tracks. The dialogues itself had something like a hundred and fifty tracks! Cut around in a very complex manner I would say….tons of tracks. And similarly for the sound design.

Interestingly, someone who saw the film said, “Actually, sound is another character in the film.”

I had used a lot of ‘memory’ of these girls, running right through the film. Sometimes very musical...very atotonical sounds, musical and non musical in nature... like lots of tones I have used. And lots of images….sound images that the girls are associated with. For example, the cow, the bull, their guttural expressions...all that. And very stark. Hardly we have used any artificial reverb in the movie. Almost ninety percent of the time, we have used reverbs that I have captured on location with the stereo microphones or the plate array mics. So for Marti, it was something very new and he was very worried about phasing and all that.

I said to him, “Don't worry Marti, I went to one millionth of a second and cross checked the waveforms and matched it.”

And he just went by me. He said, “Ok, Resul I trust you, because you've done it. I know. And to me, it's all sounding good.”

But look at the patience of this man. That's what I love about mixing abroad. He listened to every clip. Every single clip! Only lavs. Only booms. Combination of both mikes with the stereo. He listened to it and then he made choices. And I thought, that's what I want. I want the film to go from my hand to some other hand. Because when we are doing recordings and when we are doing sound editorial, we are only thinking of microphones. I wanted a transition to happen, from the microphones to the rooms! Which Marti has done. (Which of course, Bibin - my predub Engineer, also has done to a great deal, because we worked on that level on predubs.) But there I was taking a completely different position. I was not behaving like a sound editor who wants all his sounds to be heard. I also wanted to respect Niels's work, I also wanted to respect everybody's work. But at the same time, I also respected my sound editors work. Amrit Pritam Dutta, Arunabh and Vijay Kumar, Unni, my sound editors, have done a brilliant job! And we only had, like one month, to put everything together. And all in all, I would say, Love Sonia was a very very satisfying film for me.

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