Neon's Anora tells the story of a young sex worker from Brooklyn, who gets a chance at a Cinderella story when she meets and impulsively marries the son of an oligarch. Once the news reaches Russia, her fairytale is threatened, as the parents set out for New York to get the marriage annulled.
The feature was directed by Sean Baker and shot by director of photography Drew Daniels back in January of 2023. Mikey Madison stars in the title role.
Andy Hay, CAS, and John Warrin, CAS, MPSE, served as re-recording mixers and supervising sound editors on the project, and recently shared details on their experience creating the film’s soundtrack.
How did you get involved in working on the sound for Anora?
Andy Hay: “I met Sean on The Florida Project, which I mixed for him back in 2017. We struck a relationship in pretty short order, both personally and professionally, and had a wonderful time completing the film. When Sean was cutting his next film, Red Rocket, he reached out and asked if I’d like to come on board to supervise and mix the sound. Of course I said yes, and I asked John to join me as co-supervisor and to mix the sound effects. We all had the best time working together at John’s facility, Esho Sound, and Sean was so happy with the results that he asked us back for Anora.”
Photo (L-R): Andy Hay and John Warrin
John Warrin: “I’m grateful to Andy for bringing me on to Red Rocket, because Sean has been a fantastic person to work with, and inspiring. I feel that a highly-creative, relaxed and comfortable environment is important to Sean, and that’s what we’ve tried to create here at Esho Sound. Andy and I both come from the music industry, so I’ve tried to make our facility feel like we’re all creating a great album together. I think Sean connected with that, and after working on Red Rocket, Sean and Alex recommended us to other fantastic filmmakers, such as JT Mollner, who we did Strange Darling with.”
What’s it like working with Sean Baker? What’s his approach to the sound?
Andy Hay: “Sean is a dream client. He’s very clear and concise in his direction and his approach to sound. He’ll guide us in terms of how he wants to feel in any given moment and trusts us to interpret those ideas and make choices that deliver on those intended emotions. There is no score in the film and only occasionally does the source music function as score. As such, we rely much more heavily on the sound design and how loudly or quietly we mix those elements to act as underscore throughout the film.”
John Warrin: “Sean loves keeping in all the odd sounds that happen during production. Before the dialogue editors start, we tell them to keep all the stuff in. They can get rid of the clicks, pops and hum, but are instructed to leave in all the other stuff happening around the dialogue, and then we remove what we need during the mix. I love it, because that was in line with my approach to creative sound design and music production. There’s a Spanish term I often use, which describes the sound of the string squeaking on the classical guitar as the guitarist moves his finger — the term describes that squeaky sound as being the life of the music, the realism between the beauty. So I loved how Sean wanted to keep in all these weird sounds that were happening off-screen. To me that acted as part of the realism that gelled together the emotions…Weird crosswalk beeps, sirens…It all stays in.”
Were there any unique sound needs for this film?
Andy Hay: “Sean’s style of filmmaking is rooted in realism, which guides us towards creating a believable sonic landscape throughout. It’s quite rare for us to go hyper-real or subjective, but instead to rely on that realism to help us connect with our characters. For example, in all of the strip-club scenes, we need to feel like we are at the club, complete with all of the different areas feeling authentically unique in terms of the balance of music versus dialogue versus crowd. What type of speakers are blasting the music? Where are they located? How much of the pounding music from the main floor are we hearing and feeling spill over into other areas of the club? All of this requires careful crafting of each area to feel as real as possible. I spent a lot more time thinking about treating and balancing the source music than is typical. What is it about this particular track that makes it identifiable? How do I preserve the track’s identity while also making it feel in the space, playing it as loudly as possible, and then also making room for the dialogue? It becomes a balancing act in terms of sacrificing frequencies for dialogue versus music.”
John Warrin: “One of the most unique parts of the sound in Anora is that a fair amount of it was shot docu-style. So, there’s a ton going on in the production tracks, not only people talking on top of each other, but crowds and sometimes music, and all sorts of stuff. It presents a big challenge, because it all has to flow together. The scene in Tatiana’s was especially challenging. There really was a party going on in that scene, in real life! So there’s all sorts of bleed that we have to deal with and make seamless, which our dialogue editors, Jesse Pomeroy and Nick Pavey, handled wonderfully.”
What tools were you using for design, recording and mixing?
Andy Hay: “One of the challenges of Sean’s style of shooting is that he allows his characters to speak on top of one another quite often. As the dialogue supervisor/mixer, it’s my job to ensure that every word that needs to be heard comes through clearly while embracing and maintaining a degree of chaos so that we don’t lose the spirit of the moment. This requires a more surgical approach to the dialogue editorial and mix, often with radical clip gain, fader moves, EQ moves, etc., so that I ‘rack focus’ on who we need to be paying attention to from moment to moment, from word to word, to move the story forward.”
John Warrin: “In keeping with the theme of realism, I knew from the first time working with Sean that we had to make all the Foley and sound effects feel as real as possible. I use transient shapers on all the Foley to make it sit back and feel more realistic. Our fantastic Foley mixer, Jo Caron, who I’ve worked with for almost a decade now, turns over Foley that is already in a really good place, which helps a lot. On Sean’s previous film, Red Rocket, we used analog tape emulation on the sound effects, Foley, as well as the dialogue (but not on the backgrounds/ambience), and some light distortion on the Foley. Red Rocket was set in a gritty environment, and I wanted to take any gloss off the sounds. For Anora, I didn’t try to make it sound gritty, since it’s a different type of story, but it still needs to feel very real, so it was more about playing with the transients and reverbs. We also had some great wild recordings that the production mixer, Boris Krichevsky, handed us. Those were very useful.”
Is there a scene that you would point to as an audio highlight?
Andy Hay: “There are two scenes that I’m particularly proud of. The first is the sequence when Ani and [company] return to the strip club to pull Ivan out of his private lap dance with Diamond. It’s absolute chaos, with everyone yelling over each other. Ani, Toros, Ivan and even Diamond all have their own agendas in that moment, and we need clarity on all of their dialog and all of their intentions. That was a delicate balancing act to give everyone their due. That sequence is also emblematic of the variety of sonic treatments of the music throughout the strip club as we move quickly from room to room. The other scene that I love for its power and simplicity is the final scene with Ani in the car. The rattle of the Mercedes engine anchors us in reality, while the pitter patter of snowfall conversely evokes a feeling of calm, but it’s the progression of the squeaky windshield wipers that go from annoying and harsh to almost imperceptible and, dare I say, soothing, that underscore Ani’s emotional progression throughout the scene. That squeaky windshield wiper is largely from production and had its own natural progression that we further manipulated in sound editorial to better match the emotional pace of the scene, and then layered additional field recording elements of the wiper mechanism to enhance that progression.”
John Warrin: “The final scene in the car is one of my favorite scenes in the movie, as well. We've had so many people commenting to us about the sound of that scene, which is great, because Andy and I spent a good amount of time on that scene to get it to work both emotionally and temporally. Our background in music came into play as we crafted the timing together. We’re proud of how it’s connecting with people. Another scene that’s important sound-wise, is when Ani leaves her place and goes to Ivan’s. That’s where we establish the tone for the different environments. Typically, a mansion would have really soundproofed windows, but there’s an important scene in the movie when Ani is screaming ‘rape,’ and Toros is panicking that someone will hear her. That wouldn’t make sense if the mansion was completely soundproofed, thus giving us the opportunity to bleed in lots of sounds that we could use to help with the emotional arc of the film — overhead planes, traffic, boats, etc. Our fantastic sound effects editors, Chris Smith and Adam Kopald, gave us lots of great sounds to play with in the mix.”