Sound Perspective

Garth Davis is a director from Melbourne whose credits include the 6-time Oscar nominated Lion (2016), Mary Magdalene (2018), episodes of Jane Campion's show Top Of The Lake, and most recently Foe (2023).

This episode we chatted about his beginnings in directing commercials, his first documentary feature in 2000 (one of Greig Fraser's first projects as DOP), his long-standing collaboration with previous Sound Perspective guest Robert Mackenzie, and his newest film, Foe: a heady blend of sci-fi and drama starring Paul Mescal and Saoirse Ronan in a dystopian future Earth.

Foe is currently in cinemas in Australia, and will soon be streaming on Amazon Prime.

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Thomas M. Wright is an Australian director in Melbourne. He started as an actor and has since directed 2 features, the most recent being The Stranger, a Netflix original crime thriller starring Joel Edgerton and Sean Harris which premiered at Cannes 2022. He's incredibly intelligent and articulate.

In this interview we chatted about everything from dreams, to his bizarre writing style, and how he likes to develop the tone of his films.

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WARNING: In this episode, I repeatedly mispronounce Leo Grande. Sophie was really nice so she never corrected me and I didn’t realise till I uploaded. It’s not easy being this dumb but somehow I stumble through life.

Sophie Hyde is a super talented Australian director from Adelaide whose first fiction feature, 52 Tuesdays, won directing awards at both Berlin and Sundance. Since then she’s been making a bunch of phenomenal work in features, doco and TV, most recently the film Good Luck To You, Leo Grande, starring Emma Thompson.

We chatted about everything from her background in documentary, shooting 52 Tuesdays over 52 weeks, her collaboration with Irish sound editor Steve Fanagan, rehearsing over Zoom and the challenges of shooting a film in one location.

Good Luck To You is currently screening in theatres across Australia (maybe still in the US and UK?) Either way watch it it’s so good!

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Lauren Hadaway is a director based in Los Angeles and Paris whose debut feature, The Novice, premiered this year at Tribecca to great reviews and several awards; it's since been released theatrically and has been nominated for 5 Independent Spirit Awards. However even before this phenomenal film, she was achieving remarkable success in post-production sound, having worked in ADR and sound editing for directors such as Quentin Tarantino, Zach Snyder and Damien Chazelle.

In this interview we chatted about how she wrote this feature whilst recording ADR on Zach Snyder's Justice League, what she learned from other directors through working in sound, the challenges of indie filmmaking and the appeal in a niche story such as The Novice.

Read more about The Novice here - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11131464/

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In this episode I had a great interview with supervising sound editor Robert Mackenzie and sound designer Dave Whitehead about their work on Jane Campions psychological thriller Western, Power of the Dog. We chatted about their collaboration with Jane, finding the right sound of spurs, working with Johnny Greenwood's score, how Jane personally directed and oversaw the loop-group, and their thoughts on mixing for Netflix.

Catch Power of the Dog now on Netflix!

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Ben Lawrence is an Australian director whose credits include Hearts and Bones, Ghosthunter, and most recently Ithaka, a feature documentary following John Shipton, Jullian Assanges father, in his fight for Julian’s freedom. It’s premiering at Sydney Film Festival this Sunday 7th November, with music by Brian Eno.

In my first face-to-face podcast interview in over 18 months, me and Ben chatted about how he pitted Hugo Weaving against first-time actors in Hearts and Bones, how he unwillingly became a character in his documentary Ghosthunter and how he collaborated with Brian Eno to find the right music for Ithaka.

Get tickets for Ithaka at Sydney Film Festival here: https://www.sff.org.au/program/browse/ithaka

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David France is a documentary filmmaker, writer and journalist in New York, whose directing credits include Oscar-Nominated How To Survive a Plague, The Death and Life of Marsha P Johnson, and last year's Welcome to Chechnya, the horrific story of the genocide of queer people in the Russian state of Chechnya.

In this Skype interview we discussed his transition from journalism to film, how he ensured the anonymity of his subjects through ground-breaking VFX and ADR, and his working relationship with legendary mixer Lora Hirschberg, who has also worked on films such as The Dark Knight and Inception.

Find out where you can watch Welcome To Chechnya here https://www.welcometochechnya.com/seefilm

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Kate Simko is a composer in London who's worked across a wide variety of docos and fiction films as well as having had a long career as an EDM DJ. Her most recent work is on the documentary Underplayed, which explores the issue of the lack of female-identifying DJs and the history of women in electronic music.

We chatted about the influence of her upbringing in the Chicago music scene, her career as a DJ, finding a sound palette that sat between the music styles of Underplayed's participants, and why there are so few women composers.

Check her music at https://open.spotify.com/artist/2KXLSIzI7CY7AJg5ARUOSb?si=68tiq752Qb27zqtpJmt_XA

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Email at contact@soundperspectivepodcast.com