Interview: Renganaath Ravee

MovieRecycle.com editor Mahesh Ravi interviews Renganaath Ravee, renowned sound designer from the indian film industry. Renganaath started his career in sound at Tharangini Studios (owned by singer K.J. Yesudas) as a sound recordist. In early 2006, he moved to Mumbai and joined Vivek Sachidanand, a national award winning sound designer, as an associate in ‘Hashtone Post Sound’. It was in 2010 that he worked independently as a sound designer for the film ‘Nayakan’ directed by Lijo Jose Pellissery. He has worked on an array of motion pictures in various languages as both a sound designer and sound editor. Renganaath proved his creative excellence by building a scary atmosphere just with sounds in ‘Nadunisi Naaygal’, a tamil/telugu bilingual directed by Gautham Menon. Nadunisi Naaygal was the first tamil film which didn’t feature any background music.

Tell the readers how important it is to have a sound designer for a motion picture.

RR: Sound designer is a creative technician who is responsible for the entire soundtrack of a movie. He is the ‘Director of Sound’. The duty of a designer starts from the filming location. His presence is crucial from initial ambient recordings till the first print of the film. In south indian cinema’s current production scenario, there still isn’t a dedicated sound designer and that’s quite evident in the output.

Filmmakers, who have grand ideas about how sound might be used, have no rational plan on how to bring those ideas into the realms of film making process. We have an industry that makes movies with dialogues, background scores and sound effects but they do clash more often than their actual purpose of being a mutual enhancement. This happens when there isn’t any dynamics in the audio graph or a pre-planned soundscape. This is where a sound designer becomes relevant. Currently, the whole process of sound in a movie is scattered all across without a technical/creative over-viewer.

One thing I am particularly against of is the over usage of music in movies. We’ve tried to break that convention with “Nadunisi Naaygal” without using any background music for the entire movie.

Usually what’s your work flow like? Do you go through the script and breakdown the cues on the go or is it more like a collaborative decision between you and the director?

RR: Initially I would go through the script and discuss my idea on the soundscape with the director. After the first cut, ambience and effects capturing is done as per requirement, we then come up with a rough sound layout. This rough layout goes to the music director for background scoring. This helps him avoid clashes of music with the sounds. Next comes the voice dubbing and recording foley sounds. The sounds are edited and then it proceeds to the final mixing.

You did sound design for Nadunisi Naaygal. As a viewer, I felt it was a challenging responsibility given the fact that there wasn't a supporting background score. How did you approach the movie?

RR: After reading the script, I was a bit skeptical because even the thought of a Gautham Menon film without songs was hard to believe. My initial meeting with the director shocked me again since he didn't want a film score either. I tried putting across a counter-idea saying, "Let’s do the sound first and then if we miss BGM, we'll add it”. To that he said a big NO. But after seeing the edit, I was thrilled and felt confident. We started recording sounds from scratch. We went back to the location where the movie was shot, recorded every possible sounds including the whole innova driving-cycle and rottweiler barks.

Foley sounds were a crucial part of Nadunisi Naaygal’s sound design. Nadunisi Naaygal was an experiment in terms of its sound and I truly admire the courage Gautham Menon took in pulling it off successfully.

It’s a known fact that veteran malayalam film directors are still reluctant in considering the potential benefits of hiring a qualified sound designer. We still get to hear age-old stock sounds for thunder, kicks and punches. What’s your take on that?

RR:It’s true that the most number of national awards won for sound belongs to Kerala. We have malayalees like Dwarak Warrier, Resul Pookkutty and P.M Satheesh as the top names of indian sound arena, but still majority of our directors have fairly narrow view of what is possible in terms of using sound in their films. Even for a big budget feature, producers aren’t willing to reserve a reasonable portion for technical finesse in postproduction, especially for the sound department. The hard fact is that only 1% - 1.5 % of a movie’s budget is set aside for sound.

Another rather disappointing observation is the attitude that most theater owners have towards maintaining the theater acoustics and aligning the audio levels. Because of this, the effort of a sound specialist goes in vain. It’s sad that the concerned people and the government are least bothered about this.

How do you usually keep yourself up-to-date?

RR: I read a lot. Internet is definitely a blessing where I often do my research. And whenever I get a chance I do attend live workshops.I always observe the sounds happening around me. I travel a lot and record new sounds as and when I hear it. I personally own a huge repository of sounds.

What are your upcoming projects?

RR: Currently, I am working along with Vivek Sachidanand on an audio-visual installation for the Sadhu Vaswani Mission, Pune. I also have numerous movie projects lined up in various languages. I have committed a movie in which I would be handling the entire sound department including background music, songs and sound design.

Tell us about your studio and rig?

RR: Hashtone Post Sound (his studio based in Mumbai) was established in 2005 by Vivek Sachidanand soon after his graduation from the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII, Pune).We have one of the best sound effects libraries available in India with an unparalleled collection of Indian effects that have been recorded and collated. Our library is constantly updated with recordings from various location shoots around the world.

I am conversant with a number of audio software but ‘Pro Tools’ is the most comfortable and is my current favorite. For dialogue cleaning I used to formerly use waves restoration, ‘Izotope RX Denoiser’. Off late, it’s WNS (Waves Noise Suppressor) - the best that I have used so far. When it comes to dynamics and reverbs I like ‘Nomad Factory’ and ‘Waves’. When I require a MIDI Interface I would prefer ‘Logic Pro’. Now we have a stereo setup where we use ‘Yamaha MSP5A’ as Studio Monitors. In a couple of weeks we will be moving to 5.1.


Original Article URL:
http://www.movierecycle.com/showcase/interview-renganaath-ravee/