The Secret Sound Design of "Longlegs"

Plus: The 90s Blockbuster Tricks Behind "Twisters"

Author

Steve
July 16, 2024

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The Secret Sound Design of Longlegs

It was a huge weekend for Neon’s horror film Longlegs, which did surprisingly big box office for a film made for under $10 million, noted as the highest opening for an indie horror film in a decade.

I saw Longlegs over the weekend and really enjoyed it! If you haven’t watched it yet but plan to do so, maybe skip the next few links so that you can go in cold (and stay off TikTok, the kids are on there showing footage from the movie!).

IndieWire has some fascinating articles about Longlegs and the ideas behind its creation, particularly the conception of the titular character’s face and why he looks the way he does.

Particularly interesting is filmmaker Osgood Perkins’s use of sound design to the overall feeling of dread that blankets the movie, and its surprising ties to rock-n-roll:

One of Perkins’ instructions for [sound designer and supervising sound editor Eugenio] Battaglia was giving the sense that something was being “projected to the mind” of Harker as she tracks Longlegs. So Battaglia understood there should be something hypnotic or trance-like about the aural world around the protagonist.

“So that just made me think, ‘Oh man, wouldn’t it be cool if this movie, given the fact that [‘Longlegs’] has themes of hypnotism and mind control, if it was just backed with subliminal stuff, like those ’70s rock records, with reverse sounds,” said Battaglia. He’s referencing what was commonly referred to as backmasking, a tape-to-tape backwards recording technique famously employed by The Beatles. Later, Christian groups accused bands like Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Queen, and Styx of using it to subliminally promote Satanism.

Battaglia decided he would do the same, thinking of his soundscape as a scratchy LP (rather than a projector) that plays throughout the movie. He used a binaural microphone that records in 360 degrees, so sounds had more of an all-encompassing hypnotic feel, rather than as if coming from one specific direction.

Sound design is the oft-unsung hero of horror films, from infrasound in the films of Gaspar Noé to the score in giallo movies. Having seen Longlegs in a Dolby ATMOS-equipped theater, to paraphrase Red Letter Media: your ears may not notice, but your brain will.

The 90s Blockbuster Tricks Behind Twisters

On perhaps the complete opposite end of the spectrum from Longlegs is the Universal/Warner production Twisters, a semi-sequel to the 1996 Twister.

I don’t need to spend a whole lot of time on the movie, as its trailer’s near-ubiquitous presence in movie theaters this summer has done the job perfectly well! I love a good preview but geeze Louise!

However, it does have two fairly interesting tidbits about its production. First: it was shot on film!

That alone might be enough to get me out to a film-projected movie theater, a welcome respite from some of the drab, flat, green-screen backgrounded blockbusters that have plagued us these past few years (cough Deadpool & Wolverine cough).

It also appears that Twisters relies pretty heavily on practical effects. Almost 30 years ago we marveled at the CGI cow, now we will marvel at Glen Powell standing in front of a fan made from a jet engine!

Here’s a round-up of cool and interesting links about Hollywood and technology:

Anti-AI hackers pull over 1TB of Disney Slack messages. (link)

Will the Skydance merger be good for Paramount? (link)

The metaverse was supposed to change the workplace. What happened? (link)