Michael Babcock has spent nearly three decades crafting soundscapes for some of Hollywood’s biggest films, from Christopher Nolan’s Inception to Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two. He’s a sound designer, supervising sound editor, and re-recording mixer, so in different projects, he’s got his hands in every part of the sound post-production.
He designed sound for Netflix’s KPop Demon Hunters, which has become the streaming platform’s most popular English-language film ever, with more than 236 million views. The animated musical about demon-fighting K-pop stars required him to master K-pop production techniques and integrate them seamlessly with traditional film sound design.
KPop Demon Hunters follows the K-pop girl group HUNTR/X, who lead double lives as demon hunters protecting their fans from supernatural threats. The group consists of lead vocalist Rumi (Arden Cho), rebellious Mira (May Hong), and cheerful rapper Zoey (Ji-young Yoo). But Rumi harbors a secret—she’s half-demon. Just as they are about to defeat their demon enemies for good, they encounter the Saja Boys, a rival boy band who are actually demons in disguise, led by the charismatic Jinu (Ahn Hyo-seop).
The film includes legit K-pop hits that have already topped charts. For Babcock, who oversaw sound, his own background in music helped, including degrees in jazz saxophone and music engineering.
We hopped on a Zoom call with Babcock, bonded quickly over our love of woodwind instruments, and then dove into a conversation about sound design for animation and the unique mix that makes all of the music in KPop sound different from every other movie musical.
Enjoy!
Editor’s note: The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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No Film School: You being a musician and having studied formally, how did that influence your approach to this feature?
Michael Babcock: It wasn’t so much the approach. The musical ears were very, very helpful, for one, to speak the language with the music department.
And also, getting micro already—all the sound in the movie, every single sound you hear in the movie that isn’t the music, went through a music check.
Things are very purposely cut to the rhythm. Things are pitched to the music, so they’re able to work with the songs and with the score. So my music background helped that approach a lot. I made sure that everybody on the crew had some kind of music background, also.
No Film School: I read elsewhere that you did things like using a tuning fork for the sword sound effects. Is there anything else where you brought that musicality?
MB: Well, honestly, kind of everything, in a way. All the magical sounds, all the sounds of the Honmoon, they all had musical genesis to them—but using my ear to, I call it, find the real estate that something’s not using.
So to make it work with music, you either have to make it match the music, or you have to make it do what the music is not doing in the real estate.
So, [it’s] finding a frequency, or sometimes even it’s placing it in the room, a certain place, so they’re able to work together.
No Film School: You’ve worked on a lot of different types of projects. What are the unique challenges of working in animation, where you have to create everything from the ground up?
MB: I love that question so much. The unique challenges are, and this doesn’t just go for musicals or musical-based type projects—there’s a general feel and timing to animation. So sound is called on for story support a lot, which is fun, which is why it’s great to work on animation.
But there’s a particular muscle that you really have to use, and it has to do with rhythm and how things feel. Sometimes the variation of sound effects. And that kind of goes across the board for almost any animation project. Dealing with worldbuilding, a new world canvas.
So a lot of those, it’s really the right sound at the right time. There’s a bit of musicality to any kind of sound effect, particularly or sound design that happens for animation.
The examples that this just gives me excuse to talk about—particularly the first six or seven Pixar movies I think are the absolute highest level you can do of anything film sound, not just animation. It allows you to really show off how sound can support a story. But it takes a certain kind of taste that makes that work.
KPop Demon Hunters Credit: Netflix
No Film School: If you’re watching a film with your knowledge, what are you looking for in terms of sound to give it that sort of praise?
MB: What am I looking for? I’ll try a scientific answer and a non-scientific answer.
The non-scientific answer is there’s a gut check. There’s a personality to it. There’s a reason why we all know what Hanna-Barbera and Warner Bros., and Tom and Jerry cartoon sound effects sound like. There’s a humor to it. There’s a performance to it. There’s a feeling you get. So that would be the unscientific.
The scientific answer is there has to be a real preciseness that helps the story. Everything is so deliberate that you hear and see. I mean, really, it goes across the board, particularly in animation. So you have to be precise with your decision-making, and you have to be very direct in the story.
And it’s something they’ve really learned in the last 30 years, since computer animation has been the majority of what people are seeing these days. They’re framing shots differently. They’re actually framing shots. So you’re focusing. So you even have big action pieces. I’m thinking a really wide shot that shows a particular landscape, or whatever.
There’s much more of how they’re framing it focus to it, and it all comes back to story. Every single department is referencing story.
No Film School: I read that you started your work before the animation had been finished. What does it look like in your process when you’re starting a project and trying to figure out its elements?
MB: It was interesting when I started on it; almost the entire movie was still storyboards. They had a cut of the movie together, and we started talking about certain sequences, and sometimes that’s helpful because you’re coming up with what you think it’s going to end up being and looking like, and sometimes that allows you to come up with something more unique or interesting. And then maybe you have to hone it in as you start seeing the development of the shots.
But it’s nice, because the concepts are still the same. It’s actually kind of amazing how the original concepts you have, especially if the story is together, how much that works.
Even if something really comes to life in a way that you weren’t anticipating, if something’s working in the story—going back to story—you actually can come up with interesting things based on what you’re not seeing.
No Film School: What is your favorite sequence sound-wise?
MB: I think I narrowed it down to five… Sound-wise, emotionally wise, the end of the movie is my absolute favorite. That whole stadium, when they do “My Idol,” the finale and Gwi-ma being defeated, and the absolute epicness of the music and the sound design working together and the dynamics of the mix, that’s the one that every single time I get hairs [standing up] on. It’s just one of my favorite things I’ve done, I think, in my career.
This is actually one I haven’t said before, but the whole beginning of the movie. Because the beginning of the movie comes in, and it’s slamming. You’re getting the story, you’re getting all the story points and the players, but you’re coming into a slamming concert and you’re coming into like, “Oh, this is what this movie is,” and it’s out of the gate. I just love how we established what the vocabulary was and what could be coming.
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No Film School: The whole plane sequence is one I just re-watched, also.
MB: I mean, the one that I usually say is the one in the bathhouse, because that, from a creative and technical standpoint, we are right at the edge of pushing the boundary of basically hearing and seeing everything at once. So, that’s usually my answer.
No Film School: With this film being so focused on K-pop and its produced sound, I feel like it sounded different than other musicals. I wondered if you could speak to the way you blended music with the film here.
MB: Thank you. The first thing I should credit is Maggie [Kang] and Chris [Appelhans], the directors. They never once cited any other movie as far as, “Maybe you should check this out.” It was always other, more unique, different conversations about the world that they were building.
I think that had a lot to do with it. And it wasn’t just the sound design and the sound in general that followed that. That’s across the board. It’s with how it looks, it’s within the songs themselves. The songs are legit K-pop songs, but there’s a lot of care in them as far as story and production. So every single department had to hit all cylinders because the hope was to do something that hadn’t been done before.
So, that’s the general sense, but also having the concept of everything’s really handshaking. Everything’s really working together. The dialogue and the sound design, and the music have a lot of the same kind of treatments on them. They’re all very much handshaking almost at all times.
Any other sound that isn’t the music had to be pitched to the music, had to be able to work with the music, and rhythmically had to be in time with the music.
And that’s one of the ways we were able to get away with not just like, “Oh, here’s the song. [Now] we’re back to the story.” Some of that was in the design of the story itself, but everybody really wanted to push the real estate. I think the only thing I remember somebody saying was they didn’t want to make it sound like a conventional musical. And it was left at that.
But that to all of us meant, okay, we need to, whether it’s making the music as cinematic as possible, whether how it’s mixed or how it’s been produced, adding sounds on top of that, making sure the dialogue is treated a certain way. A lot of the design treatments, even on the dialogue, share the same elements as the music does, and that’s great about working so closely with all the departments when you can.
The other reason why it doesn’t quite sound like other musicals is because there was so much handshaking between the departments, and people were open to it.
No Film School: I understand what you’re saying. I think it allows for more immersion in the story.
MB: Exactly. I’ll add one thing to it. I think all decisions really were made from an emotional standpoint, which is that’s what I think makes any project stand out to some degree. But because you’re dealing with music, which is in itself an emotional thing, every single decision, from how loud something was to where something played or whatever, was really based on how everyone felt about it.
Our discussions were about, “How’s that feel? Does that feel good?” There wasn’t a lot of, at least in the creative parts of it, in the film mix and talk about the sound design, it was all, “How does this feel?” It was all left brain. There wasn’t a lot of right-brain.
No Film School: Are there methods that you use as a sound designer that are the same across every project?
MB: I have a weird answer for this, actually. It has nothing to do with the creative process. The best advice I could give, and I’ll be honest, this is as much of a mantra as it is advice. It’s a reminder for myself.
Reading where people are coming from, both from a personal level and from a creative level, and reading people in general, and just finding ways to be in touch with yourself, both your inner creative self and your inner self, I think, is the key to more unique creative experiences.
I guess to explain that a little bit is, unfortunately, there are some really talented creative people in the world, and not all of them have been as successful as they should be or want to be because of how good they are at something. And that might be because you also have to connect with the people around you. You have to find a balance between staying open and having an opinion about something.
This is more like a “woo woo,” like what you talk about in a yoga class. But I actually think that is the key that I think can make you more successful, or certainly make things more interesting in your life.
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No Film School: Is there another thing that you would say a beginning sound designer needs to learn very quickly in their career in order to be successful?
MB: Well, believe it or not, this is also probably not the most patented answer. The technical thing would be to have a bunch of mentors. It’s like jazz. You can learn a lot about who you are as an artist by learning how other people do things. And it’s great to know the tools.
At the end of the day, they’re just tools. Just have a good group of people or seek out a group of people where you can ask them, “What are you using on this? How did you do that?” And the people who are good at it, they know what to ask, whether they realize it or not.
That’s kind of not great advice, but if you’re going to be a good sound designer, you’re going to be asking the right questions, whether you know or not, you’re going to get to the right place.
No Film School: Thank you. We’re very excited to share your insights.
MB: Thank you very much. And hopefully, some of those insights are going to motivate or inspire other younger people. I will say one more thing. I had a professor in college who said to us, “What you’re getting into is a hard thing to get into, but there is always room for somebody good. There will always be room for someone who wants to do it and is good at it to be able to do it.”
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