Company 3 Toronto’s Senior Re-Recording Mixer, Christian Cooke, discussed with postPerspective his latest work developing the soundscape of Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein. Rich sonic texture, with guttural, animalistic layers, created unsettling sounds that grounded ‘The Creature’ in an atmospherically haunting world. Cooke, as lead mixer handling the film’s dialogue and music, and long-time collaborator, re-recording artist Brad Zoern, responsible for the majority of the film’s sound effects, together made “sounds more or less present, depending on The Creature’s emotions,” laying the groundwork for immersive storytelling. 

Cooke and Zoern shared a 2048-input Avid S6 console, with Dolby Atmos, to adjust the mix, compression, filtering, and more. Cooke credits working in Company 3’s renowned Toronto studio as a crucial part of the process, “You want to do the best for the environment that you’re mixing in. In this case, it was a 100% Dolby‑certified room—the best in Canada and possibly the best on the East Coast.” Interestingly, Cooke notes that no two sounds are the same: “It’s about dialing back certain sounds and accentuating others to get a different sense of the sounds from the various perspectives of the shots,” essential for relaying character emotion and tone. Cooke and Zoern also closely collaborated with Toronto sound editing company, Sound Dogs, and foley company, Footsteps to elevate “final edit on all the dialogue, including production sound and ADR”, to diversify the overall mix. Furthermore, Cooke often utilized a tool called ‘UltraReverb’ to control the distance of a sound via pre-delay, frequency, etc., to allow audiences to instinctively anticipate what’s next. 

Read postPerspective’s latest feature, Re-Recording Mixer Christian Cooke on the Sound of Frankenstein.