105 - Jane Campion and the Sound of The Power of the Dog

Director Jane Campion joins us today to discuss her harrowing new drama, "The Power of the Dog." It is a dark, psychological thriller made even more thrilling by the incredible sound work by Academy Award-winning supervising sound editor Robert Mackenzie, sound designer Dave Whitehead, and re-recording mixer Tara Webb, all of whom joined in our discussion.

So many aspects of making this film were unique to Jane's filmmaking approach. Or as Robert put it:

"With Jane, you have to throw out all the rules. There are no rules."

— Robert Mackenzie, Supervising Sound Editor, "The Power of the Dog"

This episode offers a fascinating glimpse into their unconventional process: How they experimented with Dolby Atmos® to sharpen tension in what is a particularly quiet film, how they crafted the sonic character of an old house, and how they worked with Jonny Greenwood's brilliant score... which came in before the film was even edited.

"That's something I learned from 'The Piano' — how powerful that was. Obviously because Holly Hunter's character, Ada, needed to play the piano during the scenes quite often, we needed to have those piano pieces from Michael Nyman. And so he really wrote most of the music before we began shooting that film. And I loved that so much. And saw the benefit of it and the freedom of it — for the composer, actually. And so ever since then, I've tried to create a situation where the music comes really at the same time as the shooting."

— Jane Campion, Director, Writer, and Producer, "The Power of the Dog"

Be sure to check out "The Power of the Dog" in Dolby Vision® and Dolby Atmos® on Netflix.

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