Team FYC: 'Spring Breakers' for Best Sound Mixing
Monday, December 9, 2013 at 5:27PM This FYC series brings together all Film Experience contributors to highlight our favorite fringe Oscar contenders. Here's Glenn Dunks on the sound mixing of Spring Breakers.
The neon-infused opening credits to Spring Breakers are accompanied by the peaceful echoes of a beachside before the hordes of teenagers arrive for Spring Break. Director Harmony Korine barely gives audiences a minute to relax before he throws the kitchen sink at the screen and turns the Skrillex up to 11. The images of drunken, sexually open teenagers cavorting about the ocean could hardly come with a better, more abrasively confronting soundtrack. If you were lucky to see this violently satirical black comedy on the big screen then you’ll know the propulsive impact this soundtrack choice had blasting out of the speakers to a crowd of (mostly) unsuspecting victims. Korine wasn’t mincing words: so long to any chance for a nice time at the movies. His movie was to be in your face. And boy, was it ever. And in your ears, too.
It’s not just Korine’s soundtrack choices that made me choose Spring Breakers for sound design but rather the inventive, puzzle-like work he does throughout. There’s the repetitious dialogue that Korine layers over the top of unrelated sequences to discombobulate the viewer (or beat them into submission, who can tell?). There’s the bold way he builds and deconstructs entire soundscapes throughout a single scene. There’s the way he blends in the original score of Cliff Martinez and the aforementioned Skrillex, perfectly harmonised with Benoît Debie’s cinematography to juxtapose moods.
Independent cinema is frequently where one finds some of the most creative sound work. I could have easily chosen the dense layering of cultural beats in Lucy Mulloy’s Una Noche, the piercing cacophony of Blackfish, or the pin-point precision of Park Chan-wook’s Stoker. I find these works infinitely more interesting uses of sound than most of what will likely make up the Oscar nominees. The work on Spring Breakers is truly definitive. It’s impossible to imagine the film without it. In keeping with Korine's chaotic tone, the sound work is constantly interesting and ever-changing. It morphs just as often as the film from abrasive dubstep to a tender Britney Spears ballad. Just like the action movies with their voluminous walls of sound that so often find Oscar success, the ebb and flow of the sound mixing here is as meticulous and carefully constructed as you can get. It’s the ace in the film’s hole (pardon the salacious pun).
previous FYCs
Sound Editing The Conjuring | Actor Tye Sheridan | Editing Stories We Tell | Screenplay In a World... | Supporting Actor Keith Stanfield | Song The Great Gatsby | Score Nebraska | Costume Design Lawrence Anyways | Foreign Film Neighboring Sounds | Supporting Actress Cameron Diaz | Picture The Spectacular Now | Make-Up Warm Bodies | Sound Mixing World War Z | Director Edgar Wright | Production Design The Conjuring | Supporting Actor Ulysses the Cat
Reader Comments (6)
this movies soundscape has never left me since seeing it. SO ANNOYING "spring breeeeeaaaaaaaaakkk" spring braayaaayyaaaak" but also SO PERFECT for what it's doing.
Totally agree Glenn..and now I can't hear Skrillex without thinking of the movie. Such a specific identity to the film.
So many things irk me about this movie - story-wise, racial and sexual politics-wise, James "666" Franco-wise - but in terms of immersive cinematic experiences, it's absolutely stunning, and that's largely due to the sound work. It's just sonic perfection through and through, from that gloriously disgusting Skrillex beginning right on through to that confounding Britney montage and James Franco's bizarre "Four Little Chickies" dirge, as well as all of the work done in quieter moments, where the constant hum of the soundtrack imbues so much fascination and mystery into a movie that'd likely be a dirty mess without such spectacular behind the scenes efforts.
I hated this movie. It tries to be smart by being dumb but I just found it incredibly annoying and stupid. Didn't care at all about what it was trying to be like or say.
Sad man...i hated this film too.
Haters gonna hate. Cannot deny its craftsmanship though.