What do Jane Austen and Anthrax have in common? Zombies! No, seriously. The Lionsgate and Screen Gems distributed film Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, out in theaters now, is based on Seth Grahame-Smith’s 2009 parody novel of the same name. It takes the Jane Austen classic and imbues it with the flesh-craving power of the undead. So where does Anthrax fit in? Being director Burr Steers’ first foray into the zombie genre, supervising sound editor/sound designer Martyn Zub wanted to make sure they were working with the right zombie sounds early on, during picture editorial. Initially, he began feeding zombie sounds to picture editor Padraic McKinley, which Zub created using his own voice and vocals captured from some of the film’s actors. Then he and director Steers starting talking about rock vocals. “We got this idea to get a vocalist from a metal band to perform some vocalizations for us. We contacted Anthrax’s original founding member Scott Ian (rhythm guitar, backing and lead vocals), who is a huge zombie fan. He has actually played as an extra zombie in The Walking Dead,” says Zub. Ian’s zombie vocalization session produced a whole heap of screams and different variations of heavy breathing and gurgling. “When I listen to some of his vocalizations, if I closed my eyes, it definitely didn’t sound like a human. It’s really cool. His vocals are featured strongly throughout the film.”
Zub reinforced the human vocalizations with animals sounds, particularly bears, wolves, and camels. For processing, he looked to MORPH by Zynaptiq. “Basically, you feed two signals into MORPH, like the sound of a camel and the sound of a chainsaw. You can blend the two sounds together to create something new,” he describes. So instead of it sounding like a camel and a chainsaw just playing over top of each other, MORPH takes elements from each sound and creates a completely new sound. “It was effective in some places, but in other places it sounded like too much processing. We had to pick and choose because ultimately this is a period piece as well, so it can’t sound too futuristic. We tried to stay true to what the creatures might sound like in that era.”
The film takes the quiet, elegant drawing rooms and placid countryside of Austen’s Regency-era novel, ruled by polite manners and eloquent dialogues, and unleashes hordes of zombies upon it. Era-appropriate sounds pulled from libraries were combined with production effects, like horse and carriages, captured on-set by sound mixer John Casali. “The film starts off and the soundtrack is a bit more bubbly, with that lush type of BBC/Jane Austen feel, but as the zombies take over it gets darker, and we include sounds like vultures, crows, and ravens to give you a sense that the world is falling apart and death is certainly on the rise in the area,” explains Zub.
For Foley, Zub turned to Jay Peck and his team at Stepping Stone Foley in Blooming Grove, NY. Although Zub is part of the Formosa Group in West Hollywood, CA, he spent five months working on Pride and Prejudice and Zombies in New York City, splitting time between Deluxe’s West Village studio and Warner Bros.’ New York facility in mid-town Manhattan. The Stepping Stone Foley team was tasked with creating signature sounds for each character, for example, the imposing Mr. Darcy (played by Sam Riley) needed to sound like an SS trooper each time he walked into a room. “He walks around in big, knee-high leather riding boots and wears a heavy leather jacket. We wanted to have this sense of presence that there is something looming about him,” says Zub. From the creak of his leather coat to the weight of his boots, Mr. Darcy’s Foley details shine through the quiet moments in the film. “Often the Foley would be the backbone of the film and we would sweeten areas according to what we were trying to achieve. We had a big Foley track on the film—all the footsteps, including the troops and soldiers movements, the majority of the props, and some horse movements as well.”
As for the glorious gore, Zub chose to take matters into his own hands, literally. “We recorded a few new gore sounds, like sticking your hand into a watermelon and tearing it open. We took different kinds of meat and flopped it around,” he details. The majority of the gore came from Zub’s and Formosa Group’s sound effects library, which includes material recorded for previous zombie films. For Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Zub and director Steers went full-on graphic gore, just to see how far they could push it. But ultimately, “We had to tone it down because we weren’t going to get the rating we wanted. Even still, there’s certainly a lot of gore, you can hear all the peeling and splashing.”
Composer Fernando Velázquez, who scored last year’s Victorian-era horror film Crimson Peak, was a perfect fit for Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. “You have the dance sequences that are classic Jane Austen and then all the sudden it would get to a suspenseful action or horror moment. Fernando did it all orchestral. It’s very true to the genre, both for the Pride and Prejudice half and the zombie half as well,” says Zub, who collaborated with Velázquez on the soundtrack very early on. “I sent him early demos and concepts of themes so that he could hear it and play against it. It was great. The music is really excellent.”
Zub was also the re-recording mixer on the effects/Foley/backgrounds. He shared the board with re-recording mixer Michael Barry on dialogue/music. They mixed Pride and Prejudice and Zombies in 7.1 at Warner Bros. in New York using a two-man Pro Tools ICON running multiple Pro Tools systems for the dialogue, music, and effects stems, plus an additional system for the record. One of Zub’s favorite scenes is the first time the Bennet girls appear in their zombie fighting gear. There is a slow-mo moment where the five of them march into a hall full of zombies and draw their swords. “They are speaking eloquently, and dressed beautifully, and then all of the sudden the zombies attack and they get into attack mode. It’s a fun film. It has funny moments, action, and horror. We have these Jane Austin/BBC quiet scenes with lots of period detail, then suddenly the zombies arrive and all hell breaks loose. We just open the floodgates of gore and horror and all those sounds,” concludes Zub.
Film images courtesy of CTMG, Inc.