‘Leo’ Sound Editor Odin Benitez on the Importance of Realism in Sound Design

Odin Benitez served as the sound editor for the recent Adam Sandler animated film Leo, currently streaming on Netflix. Here, in an interview with Awards Daily, he details how much realism of sound is important, even in animation. He also dives into the challenge of balancing sound with everything else onscreen. Finally, he reveals the extra work Adam Sandler undertook when it came to the noises of characters.

Awards Daily: First thing I thought of after watching Leo was what was behind the noises that the kindergarteners were making when they were running in hyperactive mode?

Odin Benitez: That is mostly Adam himself. Initially they wanted to try a bunch of different things and we threw the kitchen sink at it. I had my boys record when they were young. Then we looped some kids to be crazy kindergartners. But Adam had a scratch test for what he wanted them to sound like that sounded crazy. So then we had the loop actors do those noises and they weren’t as successful as Adam. Some of the kids’ voices are in there but mostly it’s Adam. We took all his takes and layered them on top of each other. In some cases they were sped up ever so slightly because if we went too high it got into Minions territory and we wanted it to be unique. I did use a plug in called Particles to layer it and make it chaotic. But ultimately we went with the tried and true and took each little take of Adam and layer it just perfectly for each kindergartner. So 90% was Adam.

There was also this one sound for a singular person, the kindergartner who wanders in at the end and bonks his head on the doors. That was an old sound effect that the picture department put there as scratch track. But whenever the picture department does that usually it lives with the rest of the film because they get used to it. That sound is from an old Hanna-Barbera track. It was taken from a stem (a combination of a bunch of elements) so it had this gibberish sound and this grunting sound to it. There were two characters in the original sound effect track. So we painstakingly took out the grunting sound so we just had the high pitch sound in there.

Awards Daily: Another thing I noticed is the drone is given a lot of personality both in its motion and sound. What went into that?

Odin Benitez: We did a lot of tests for the drone. Listening to realistic drone sounds, and the variation we picked was interesting because it had this kazoo type quality to it. So you had the sound of the drone with this weird humming sound that was almost comical in and of itself. We also layered on a bunch of different accents for the propellers but kept it simpler at the directors’ request. Then there were the gyros of the arms and then some beeps when it made a hologram or had an error message. All those together make up the drone and the animation for it was very active. When we covered it, it almost got to be too busy. So we had to scale back and make it simpler.

Awards Daily: In bringing the singing moments into the film, a lot of the songs were more subtle and quiet than you get in most children’s films. Did that change how you approached it in any way?

Odin Benitez: Oddly, no. Because, with my time working on the Frozen movies and Princess and the Frog, where the music is finished by the time we start working on it, gave me insight. So, even though we go through and complete the whole soundscape with sound effects to add to everything, we generally scale way back on that because we want to protect the music. In this case the same principle holds.

While the music started this quieter way the music supervisor Kenneth Karman and the composer did a lush treatment with more instruments. Then the director Robert Smigel said, Let’s go back to the original version because there is a charm to that, and that similar version kept to the spirit of the songs they were trying to do. So it didn’t really help to add sound effects on top of that. We had them and played it for them and they listened and in some cases they would say lose all that and then later ask where is that sound? So it was a long process of putting sound in and taking it out. I think the directors were happy with the final result, but we could have mixed for another two weeks noodling with it.

I would say in general, and especially with the opening song, we had it covered. As the film progresses more sound effects made it into the film. That had a lot to do with the way Robert Smigel approached comedy. If something kills he doesn’t want to change it. We may have wanted to experiment but he didn’t want to mess with a good thing. Watching it recently I saw we did get a lot in but that it had the proper balance.

Awards Daily: The chaos at the party with screaming kids, animals running around, and the music — how did you balance all that input?

Odin Benitez: That was a contribution of our entire editing team. Basically how you approach this is you see a sound, you cover a sound. With our edit we had a cacophony of stuff. Brandon Proctor as our mixer looked to see what we think will play with the score. Then we would present it to the directors, then they would ask if we could heat this or extend that. One example when the monkeys go down the line of light bulbs we had done the sound of that for the first strand and they wanted it completely to the end. Another was Adam wanted a big splash when the zebra went into the pool. We tried to be accurate with the animals’ noises. But sometimes the picture department would have to cut a sound in there that told the story better. So at one point we had a heron but a parrot was making the sound because it made the right emotional sound.

Awards Daily: Looking at your filmography, you have done live action and animation in both TV and films. What gets you interested across these mediums?

Odin Benitez: Every movie you approach is brand new. There is no cookie cutter way to do sound. I try to approach everything as live action and I love putting people into the environment–be it surround sound 5.1 or 7.1. With animation I discovered when you cover it like a live action feature film there is a lot lacking. So you need to do another layer of a heightened reality. Because characters in animation do these movements that require swishes to cover the movements you wouldn’t find in a live action movie. Then, when that is done, there’s this comic layer. Where there is a balance of doing something funny that is high quality and unique, and at times, you need a sound that everyone recognizes like a cat screech. While we try to do new things sometimes, the classics are best.

Awards Daily: Final thoughts?

Odin Benitez: I want to thank Adam Sandler and the directors of Leo who brought us into this project early. It gave me a great chance to collaborate with editors like Mark Glassman, Elmo Weber and dialogue editor Catherine Harper. The music editors Kenneth Karman and Christopher J. King were terrific. It was the hardest musical mix job that I have been a part of. The directors tried every permutation of music. Then our mixers Brandon Proctor and Deb Adair did an amazing job. It was one of the funnest mixes of my career.