Let's Hear It For Mad Max

An Oscar award has been the ultimate accolade for a sound expert.

- Alan Deans

It goes without saying that when a movie director, especially George Miller, calls “action” or “cut”, that is exactly what he expects to happen. But what if the actors can’t hear or see him?

Picture a scene from Miller’s latest action flick, Mad Max: Fury Road. The War Rig is speeding across the Wasteland. The Doof Warrior, aka rock musician iOTA, has the volume cranked up on his flame-throwing guitar and the drummers are in full flight – part of their war ritual. How do they hear the fold back so they can keep rhythm and tempo? How can the actors, engulfed by noise in the vehicles, hear their cues and have their lines recorded? And, how can a communications network cope in the furore of speed, heat, dust and landscape of a remote Namibian desert so that Miller can hear the actors and give them orders?

That’s just a few of the outsized problems Ben Osmo had as sound recordist on Fury Road. He clearly did an outstanding job because he and two other sound techs on the film last year won Oscars for their work. The movie itself scored six Academy Awards, more than any other that year. Actors who win Oscars always snatch the limelight but, without the specialist skills of Osmo and the sound team, there simply could have been no movie.

“Communication was important on that film. We were so remote and we travelled so far away from the towers they erected for the walkie-talkies, they didn’t work,” explains Osmo. “If we went around a corner into a canyon, for example, they couldn’t get reception. But I had reception and put microphones on quite a few people who weren’t in front of the camera – principally George and the camera operators – so they could talk to each other and hear the actors’ dialogue.