Slumdog Millionaire was a film which took us out of our comfort zones, but
rewarded us by being an invigorating project to be involved in.
Historically, Indian films have relied heavily on post-sync due to various
environmental and financial factors (eg camera noise, excessive ambient sound,
an acting culture with an over-dependance on ADR). However, we were determined
not to follow this path as one of Danny Boyle's key concerns was to present
the "real" sound of India to the audience. The combination of often noisy
sync-sound coupled with the need to achieve clarity from non-Western actors
delivering English dialogue made this quite a challenge for the Dialogue
Department, but one which we believe was met with great credit. The additional
fact that about one third of the film was also shot in the Hindi language did
not make things any easier!
Danny Boyle wanted the film's sound world to be a completely authentic and
immersive experience. The sound design had to convey the kinetic energy of
Indian life; the aim was to grab Western audiences by the scruff of the neck
and place them firmly in the world of the film, but also be completely true
and believable to an Indian audience. To that end, hundreds of new tracks were
shot throughout urban and rural India, including the slums of Mumbai. Great
care was taken to create multi-layered evolving backgrounds which were
constantly moving in space and time; the intention was to try and invoke a
country always in flux. All the hard work done in cleaning the dialogue tracks
helped greatly to facilitate this. Bearing in mind that the film's music
featured hardly any "underscore" in the traditional sense, the sound design
often also had to provide tension and an enhanced sense of mood. In terms of
spot fx and foley, whenever feasible, sounds were recorded "in situ" to achieve
a sense of actuality sometimes perhaps lost in the recording studio: this is
not a methodology we would employ for every film, but it gave us a rawness and
vitality which seemed appropriate for this particular job.