- Amy Edwards So many dragons on screen seem to have similar voices and sounds and this dragon and Merlin's (John Hurt's voice) dragon are my top two favorites. Where did you get the inspiration for your dragon and where or what were you modeling his sound from?
David Farmer The FIRST thing I wanted was for the beast part of Smaug to be an alligator. I love the sound of an alligator growl, but have never heard it featured anywhere for a film beast. I didn't want him to just be a lion or tiger, or some pitched version of those and the alligator fit the bill. I'd heard alligators before but never had the chance to record them. I want to thanks Colin Hart for sharing his knowledge of Alligators which led me to get several days worth of recordings.Jackie Cooper What was the most complicated sound to perfect?- David Farmer IMO creature sounds are the single hardest to make, and make them interesting and also believable. There are only so many animals in the world to record, yet visually they can be anything you can imagine. So we're working with a finite source palette, to satisfy a limitless visual potential. We can also only twist them so far before they sound unrealistic.
- James Henry Pendziszewski What did you do to make Benedict Cumberbatch's voice more dragon-like for Smaug?
- David Farmer It helps to start with a great performance which Benedict gave us in droves. His voice is arguably the best I've been able to work with. The key was the right amount of pitching, with other low end enhancers, for the most part. But then there was the reverbs to make it sound like it excited the space, as well as vocoding alligator growls to add an extra layer of girth underneath. There were quite a few processes, some added quite subtley, but in the end the sum of the parts created something I hope sounds natural, but yet authentic.
Details the process and rationale David Farmer applied for processing Benedict Cumberbatch in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.
A short example from the 'Lion King' studio sessions featuring the human voice with the use of a hardware resonator in the form of metal bin to accentuate and attenuate certain frequency formants.
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