Atmospheric audio

Tension through tone.

Two-part series from Longtail Films for BBC Two. Post Production from @filmsat59

Six decades of suffering for the victims’ families and a case that shook the nation. Revelations and newly uncovered evidence as experts pursue answers and, ultimately, justice.

It took the production team at Longtail Films nine months to catalogue evidence for ‘The Moors Murders: A Search for Justice’.

Films at 59 Dubbing Mixer Tom Chillcot and composer Matt Huxley worked closely with film maker Duncan Staff and director Poppy Goodheart to help craft their vision of the films through the use of sound.

Tom’s main focus was to keep the sound design minimal, raw, natural and accurate. Duncan didn’t want to over-sensationalise the narrative with the use of dramatic and provocative sound techniques but instead wanted to let story do the talking. This can be quite a challenge for a mixer, since the majority of docs and dramas we currently see on TV do exactly this.  Instead, Tom used a ‘less is more’ approach, which created an authentic and chilling end result to the sound mix in the films.

Matt similarly wanted the music to have a momentum that did not tip into a sense of ‘blue lights’. To achieve this, he avoided sharp acceleration into edit points and anything too snappy. He created a piano motif to give a sense of moving forward and questioning, but which kept things slightly ambiguous.

Dialogue Driven Narrative

The majority of the film is delivered through Duncan’s dialogue. We as the viewer join him interviewing those involved with the case and exploring documents recently unearthed which provide new details on decades old events.

Tom’s role was to enhance all these scenarios to try and immerse the viewer in this world alongside Duncan, as if in the room with him. The use of Foley was important in these indoor scenes particularly to maintain continuity and to keep the viewer engrossed in the story. Simple Foley additions like the moving of boxes, footsteps, handling of tapes, paper movement and page turns all helped to enhance the feeling of authenticity.

One way these films differ from many documentaries is that they don’t have traditional narration.  This keeps the viewer very much in the action, but provides an unusual challenge for the mixer – Tom was reliant on source material only, and unable to easily fill gaps or make transitions between sections simply with voice over.  Lines of dialogue were recorded wild by the production team to aid with this, and it was Tom’s job to match these to the sync dialogue to audibly maintain continuity. Techniques like EQ matching, reverb modelling and dialogue contour aided with this process.

Sound Design of the Moors

Multiple stylised shots of the Moors were used throughout the films, including wides, aerials, drone shots and archive.  Most of these had no source audio and so had to be re-created in post.

As with the general approach of the film, Tom kept this audio authentic and understated while at the same time trying to give a feeling of unease, emptiness and hostility that the Moors often inherently have. A key part of the films’ power were personal accounts of the Moors and how they sound. Tom tried to re-create these accounts in the sound design using layers of wind, water, ambience and road traffic, as well as other authentic sound effects.  He and Duncan chose individual bird calls for various scenes that were accurate for the Saddleworth Moors area. These helped paint a picture of how visitors experience the bleakness of the Moors.

Composer Matt was very influenced by wide, moorland spaces. There was a strong feeling that the archive and shots of the Moors themselves should drive the composing – to that end, Poppy sent him many images of the Moors shot on location. To translate this imagery Matt made synthesisers from wind noise and whistles pitched very low, which formed the musical palette that he built on.

The overall ‘less is more’ approach to the sound design and music gave an authentic and immersive feel to the films, setting the tone in a way that intentionally doesn’t evoke emotion but enhances the story and images that already exist to tell the story of the Moors Murders – and how the case is still not closed.

The Moors Murders: A Search for Justice Watch on BBC iPlayer