Three-time Emmy Award nominee Brian J. Armstrong has worked on several period pieces in his career as a sound editor, including “Deadwood: The Movie,” “A League of Their Own,” and “The Right Stuff.” But the FX drama series “Shogun” – the acclaimed adaptation of James Clavell’s novel set in 17th century Japan – presented a unique challenge: a period piece without any available historical recordings to use as research.
“We were shocked by how little there was [in terms of original audio],” Armstrong, the “Shogun” supervising sound editor, jokes during an exclusive video interview with Gold Derby as part of our Meet the Experts: Sound panel. “But, no, it was definitely a challenge because of what co-creators Justin Marks and Rachel Kondo wanted above all else: authenticity.”
So what Armstrong and the sound team did was outreach. They asked sound designers in Japan to send nature recordings, but not necessarily to use because so many modern recordings have modern noises, like planes, cars, and other forms of technology.
“It was more to get nature recordings that we could sort of source ourselves. The crickets, for instance, make sure they sound like they do. It sounds funny, but crickets sound different, frogs sound different [depending where they are],” Armstrong says. They even researched bird migration patterns to make sure the proper sounds were represented.
From there, the challenge became capturing the “delicate” and sometimes barely audible words from the show’s cast. “Every line had been considered – written originally in English, translated to Japanese, sent to a Japanese playwright to sort of put a period spin on it and add the poetry to it, and then translate it back to English for the subtitles. And then even at that point, it was still going back and forth,” Armstrong says. “Every nuance down to what character is talking to what character as far as rank – one samurai talking to another samurai is different from the samurai talking to the lord. So all of that was under such scrutiny.”
Star and producer Hiroyuki Sanada and producer Eriko Miyagawa also made sure the ADR sessions were handled properly. Armstrong says Sanada and Miyagawa were at every session where Japanese was spoken.
“They were there to have oversight on things like making sure the villagers weren’t saying anything that they weren’t supposed to. If they even said anything at all,” Armstrong says. “That was really a big lesson for me. It’s like pulling back and having that restraint – even though we’re in a village and historically, every TV show that we do, if you’re in a city, you have callouts. To be able to be challenged and be okay with that quiet and rely on other sounds was a really great lesson for us all.”
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