Behind the Scenes - Nanban's Background Music and Sound Design 

Harris Jayaraj's background music in Nanban has been largely appreciated even by his toughest critics. Nobody can deny that Harris' re-recording was one of the pillars for Nanban's success. So, what is different this time about Harris' background score in Nanban compared to rest of his movies? This is Harris' first time working with Resul Pookutty and this combination worked wonders.

Resul's Role in Nanban

For beginners, Resul Pookutty is the Oscar Awad winning Sound Designer who brought the art form of "Sound Mixing" to the fore-front in Indian movies. Sound Designer's job is to layer multiple tracks of recorded sounds (e.g., dubbed voice, BGM, ambient noise, etc.) and bring out fine textures as it fits the mood of the movie. What actually makes the job of a sound designer's job extremely difficult is the ability to over-rule the BGM score done by Music Director. It takes a lot of courage and conviction from a Sound Designer to mute or underplay the background music. It can be a career suicide for many Sound Designers in Tamil Industry especially when the Music Directors or Director fail to stand behind the work of Sound Designers.

Sound Mixing and Tamil Cinema

Mahendran's Uthiripookal was one of the first movies which was keenly noticed in the film world for superior sound mixing. The gradual fading of voice of a person receding from a scene was something path breaking at that point. It was believed that Sound Designer Emmee and Ilayaraja had strained relationship when the former underplayed Ilayaraja's BGM track in scenes. During 80s, 90s and until recently, Sound mixing was just a purely technical job due to the dominance of popular music directors in Tamil Industry.

For example, in recently released Mayakkam Enna, you may have witnessed the two extremes -- either the scenes have absolutely no background sound or GVP's BGM would be overpowering(despite being soulful). A good Sound Designer with more freedom could have made such transitions more seamless and less obvious to the viewers.

Path Forward

With Nanban, Resul has shown how an able Sound Designer can elevate the quality of the movie and keep the viewers more engaged. It takes an Oscar award/western recognition, magnanimity of music director and a backing of a Director to be able to reach next level of maturation in background sound.