Hot Fuzz Sounds Good With Hackenbacker

Audio specialist Hackenbacker looks set to notch up another major film success when the British comedy 'Hot Fuzz' is released nationwide on February 16.
Audio experts at the London-based film and television post production facility
have spent the last five months crafting sounds for the film, working with the production crew during and after the filming to create rough mixes, handle the sound design and record dialogue and sound effects. Hackenbacker director Julian Slater was given the task of Supervising Sound Editor, while his business partner, Nigel Heath, has spent the last six weeks mixing the final product.
Hot Fuzz was written by Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg and reunites the creative force behind Shaun Of The Dead, which was one of the most important and commercially successful British films of 2004. Wright directs as Pegg leads a stellar cast, which includes Jim Broadbent, Nick Frost and Timothy Dalton. Pre-release screenings with random audiences in both the UK and US indicate that once again the production team have a massive hit on their hands.
"The audio is very complex on different levels but there is a reason for every element of the soundtrack," said Julian Slater. "To capture the atmosphere and to enhance the comedy, the film uses layers of sounds and effects so that they provide aural jokes as well as illustrating the dialogue."
Nigel Heath comments that although this was not a high budget movie, the end result is so spectacular that it easily equals most blockbusters.
"To couple the detail there are also a lot of 'bag for your bucks' moments. A film with this amount of detail in the soundtrack would normally have a sound crew twice the size of the one we used," he added. "For us, it was a labour of love. Our staff put in huge amounts of overtime to achieve the final result, simply because they wanted it to sound great."
The recording, sound design and mixing for Hot Fuzz took place at Hackenbacker's
three-studio complex in Bateman Street, Soho.
(DS)