All about the VFX, costumes and sound design on The Wheel of Time

Sound designing The Wheel of Time

Finally, sound designer Ben Meechan told Nerdist about designing the soundscape for The Wheel of Time. What does this world sound like?

“We wanted it to feel familiar, but also feel like it was a slightly different time,” Meechan said. “It’s quite easy just to go quite generic in sound, but we did want it to feel that it was of this Earth. That the creatures you were hearing were familiar, but they were somehow metamorphized into something a bit more futuristic, really. And then we used it as a device to make people feel comfortable when they’re in the Two Rivers. Then as our characters venture off we all had an idea that maybe we could just make it slightly feel a bit more eerie. We tried to introduce sounds in the woods and the distance and things that people were hearing around us really. That was what was quite fun, was trying to create a lot of the atmospheres that supported visually what we were seeing.”

Of course, there are things in this world that have no equivalent in our own, like channeling. What does that sound like? “The thing about the channeling, and the magic, and that bit, is that it’s so small and feminine and beautiful and light and delicate, and within the blink of an eye, it’s Armageddon, world-changing, things flying around your head, people being split in two,” said sound designer Luke Gentry. “And so, to create something that sounded like it came from one source and that it was all of the same family, but be able to be two sides of that, those dynamics… Then beyond that, there’s the female side and the male side. It was hugely complicated to try and tell those stories all the time, and I think we were successful in building some core sounds that always feature and then we can sort of extend those as and when [needed].”

"And those sounds are usually used in the same stuff, so there’s always voices and whispers, but it depends whether they’re male or female whispers. We use some Old Tongue in some places and sometimes it’s almost sing-y and angelic and other times it’s demonic. So, that was allowing us to add these flavors. It’s all voice, but it’s different variations of voice. This layer, upon layer, upon layer of that to help create this expandable and changeable and dynamic thing drawn from the One Power."

According to Meechan, they referenced “the lightsaber” when thinking about how to indicate aurally that the One Power was being used…suddenly I’m going to be listening for that a lot more closely.

There’s a sound effect whenever someone affects the Pattern

Here’s an interesting tidbit, according to supervising sound editor Matt Skelding, there are some sound cues that come on “when the protagonists affect the world and do something,” which is definitely something to listen out for. “[Y]es, there are some triggers in there that are reflective of the One Power at times,” Skelding said. “Shouldn’t really say more about where they are really.”

Finally, Meechan talked about creating the screeches for the frightful Fades. “Predominantly, we used like female screams, which I then built around birds of prey screams, which were put into samples and we twisted and twisted as much to just give it that edge that it just felt really uncomfortable without damaging people’s ears,” he said. “We went back and forth quite a bit on that with with Rafe. We sent him few that he liked. Funny enough, I think the first three that we sent, he was just like, ‘That’s it. That was great.’ But we continued to develop it. We just wanted it to sound… Because you see this thing ride up on quite a creepy horse, and then the mouth opens and just this sound comes out. And it just wanted to be shocking and almost damaging. So, this is our evil person really.”

"But it was made of screams and bird screeches, owls, vultures… I think, at one stage, we got my young kids. They’re two young boys, but their voices are quite high pitched because they haven’t broken. So, I even tried some of their inhales and exhales on the opening and closes as well just to give it a slightly more weird feeling. That was quite fun."

One of the guys also used his dog and daughter for some of the Trolloc noises. Use what you have, I suppose.

Amazon is working on The Wheel of Time season 2 as we speak. Hopefully it’ll be along later this year.

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