Sound Perspective

The Big Dog is playing at a cinema near you! Tickets available here https://www.2cpictures.com/films/thebigdog

Dane McCusker is a director in Sydney, whose debut feature The Big Dog is about to start its theatrical release after sold-out sessions at Sydney Film Festival.

The Big Dog is a dramedy about a married stockbroker with a penchant for the esoteric fetish "findom" - financial domination. When his secret dominatrix cleans out all of his bank accounts, he has one day to save his life from ruin.

It's a hilarious, heart-wrenching and nuanced interrogation of class, gender and toxic masculinity. I couldn't recommend it highly enough.

Check out Dane's other shorts here

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Follow Dane's production company 2c Pictures here

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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Hlynur Pálmason is an Icelandic filmmaker and artist.
films include Godland, A White White Day, and Winter Brothers. He's won awards at Cannes, Toronto, Locarno and more. I saw Godland at Sydney Film Festival last year and had an absurd out of body experience, he's very quickly become one of my favourite directors.

Happy awards season! Todays episode is with Frank Kruse and Lars Ginzel, sound supervisor and re-recording mixer of the new Netflix war film All Quiet on the Western Front, which recently won the BAFTA for Best Sound and is nominated for an Academy Award. Frank and Lars chat about their history in the German film industry, the extensive crowd recording done with hundreds of extras on set, and how they communicate with director Edward Berger.

All Quiet on the Western Front is now available on Netflix and is still in consideration for the Academy Award for Best Sound.

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Maya Newell is a documentary filmmaker in Sydney whose body of work is a beautiful testament to the power of documentary to engender empathy. Her first feature documentary, Gayby Baby, followed the experiences of children of same-sex parents, and her second, In My Blood It Runs, is a cinematic portrait of a young Indigenous boy in central Australia - it was selected for the Sundance Music and Sound Design Lab.

Often working with her participants as credited collaborators, Maya's documentaries are emotionally stunning and politically vital. Her most recent film, The Dreamlife of Georgie Stone, is a half-hour Netflix Original following teenage trans activist Georgie Stone.

In this interview, we chatted about her beginnings in video art, the experience of recording an orchestral score for In My Blood It Runs at Skywalker Sound, and how she and Georgie Stone discovered a format and tone that would suit Georgie's story.

More about The Dreamlife of Georgie Stone here

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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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In this episode I chat to sound supervisor Wayne Pashley and composer/music producer Elliott Wheeler about their work on the new Elvis biopic directed by Baz Luhrmann. I joined Wayne at his studio Big Bang Sound Design, and Elliott Skyped in from the US. We chatted about their history working with Baz Luhrmann, the intense collaboration between sound design and music necessary for a soundtrack this dense, the contextual news recordings that Wayne used as “sonic glue” and the joy of bringing Elvis’s music to a contemporary audience.

Check Wayne’s IMDB at https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0664563/

Elliott Wheeler at https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1395268/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0

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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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