De Bont has worked on many high profile films, including Twister, Basic Instinct, Die Hard and Lara Croft Tomb Raider. Having covered road and sea transport as director of Speed and Speed 2: Cruise Control in the 1990s, it was appropriate that he should finally be able to turn his attention to a rail-themed project.
Filmed by cameras mounted on the front, sides and rear of a train, which traversed HSL-Zuid several times, the finished project involved the audience standing on a raised dais at the centre of four screens in Rotterdam's LP2 venue, each showing the respective view. To add further realism, each was filmed and presented in 3D.
De Bont had to construct the soundtrack in post-production, which comprised a mixture of music, sound effects and drones. Mixed on an Alcons VR8 system in Amsterdam studio FC Walvisch - appropriately close to one of the city's rail depots - the final presentation used a 7.1 system of seven VR12s flown at the top of the screens with two BF181 subwoofers in the centre.
"We had to devise a custom audio setup, as all four screens were equally important," says the project's sound designer Eelco Bakker. "The dubbing stage at FC Walvisch is big enough to fit the installation, so we used extra screens and slave bonsai drives for the video projection, then set up the speakers and moved them around until we had the right positions. It allowed us to mix in a situation that was almost identical to the final installation.
"I did most of the atmospheres and drones, with FC Walvisch sound designer Lea Jurida creating SFX elements, which I mixed using the Alcons setup. The VR8s are great because they are compact but deliver great power and clarity."
"The sound was a very important part of the project," confirms Guy Molin, who was in charge of overall co-ordination. "Jan wanted the stage to 'rumble', to give the audience the physical sensation of the journey as well as sights and sounds. To achieve that we placed the Alcons subwoofers against the dais and it worked really well."
(Jim Evans)
