The sound crew behind the recordings was Sound24, the BAFTA winning and Oscar nominated team from Slumdog Millionaire. The team included supervising sound editor and sound designer Glenn Freemantle; sound designer Tom Sayers; dialogue/ADR supervisor Lee Herrick and field recordists Nicolas Becker and Hugo Adams. They chose the 4006s for their clarity, transparency and sound quality, as well as the mic's low signal to noise ratio and high SPL which meant they could record people whispering one minute and roaring the next.
"The clarity of sound from the mics was amazing," says Tom Sayers. "Even though the location was on the edge of a busy industrial port area, the level and quality of the recordings enabled me to focus on the voices and not the backgrounds. Often single tracks were pulled out of the recordings and the mono voices could be panned in theatre as required."
Agora was released in Spain in October 2009 where it became 2009's highest grossing film in just four days, earning the sound crew a nomination in the prestigious Spanish Goya film awards. It is being rolled out internationally over the coming months.
(Jim Evans)
