The readers’ voices were a key ingredient, as we knew it would take some care so that they would land and not feel like an audiobook. The level of projection, pitch, loudness, and performance were all taken into consideration; we tested with multiple voices and reads, and also didn’t rule out having no voices at all. After a lot of tinkering, we found a structure that felt good for each reader:

- 1st stage - A strong focus pull in the soundscape, filtering out the ambient sound

- 2nd stage - Soft, whispered reading, on the edge of intelligibility

- 3rd stage - An explosion of detailed sound design as the books come to life

This allowed us to go to town on the rest of the mix, keeping those little moments of quiet reading time guiding us through!

It was clear from the beginning that this was going to be a special film. Films with multiple visual mediums are rare and tend to have so much opportunity for creative expression that we thought it was a great opportunity for us to split up the scenes and have a little window to add our own personal touch to.

Each scene required a different sound design repertoire, drawing inspiration from classic cinema. We aimed to be as authentic as possible, using idiosyncratic processing techniques used in Manga, getting the right thump in the frequency spectrum for Sci-Fi, and being light and tasteful in the stop motion boat scene.