Paul N.J. Ottosson: Sound Designer

After Paul moved from Sweden in 1987 to USA he became a musician and in 1995 he was introduced to the movie world, and since then has been well known for his work for "Zero Dark Thirty" (2012) and won an Academy Award (Best sound editing). As well as 2 Academy Awards and a BAFTA for "The Hurt Locker" (2008) (Best sound editing and sound mixing), won an Emmy for "Rat" (1998), and 3 Oscars! Since then Paul has worked on over 117 projects.

This is an interview of Paul Ottosson on the movie 2012: http://designingsound.org/2009/12/exclusive-interview-with-paul-ottosson-sound-designer-of-2012/

In this scene called the LA Escape where the family is trying to get to the airport to get away from the collapsing city, we hear a mixture of sounds and effects and music throughout. The continuous is extremely dramatic and tense which seems like multiple drums beating fast and speeds up as things begin to fall, then as they drive through a collapsing building the music stops to create suspense then starts back up again as they carry on driving fast. As they reach the airport on the plane, the music changes, still dramatic and tense but higher as they're trying to fly up as the grounds cracking, this kind of music is very gripping and keeps the audience eyes glued to the scene as you want to see if they escape, the music sort of indicate that they're heading for death and you'll want to see if they survive or not. When the scene is zoomed out and you see the people looking out the plane looking at all of LA sinking and cracking, the music suddenly becomes much slower and sadder, still dramatic but to ultimately scare you and make you think 'what if this really happened to me, what would I do?'.  For effects the sound of the wheels is very much exaggerated as they are driving through the falling city, also so is the sounds of the ground cracking and the crashing of buildings and other vehicles, the loudness of these diegetic sound effects indicates how widespread this tragedy is, and just how many people are dying. 

Paul described the scene above as "A very hard scene but also rewarding." "Besides getting all the onscreen mayhem you had to maintain the chaos off screen to let us know it is happening everywhere" "I had to try to find places where we could quieten down a bit, arc the mayhem to be able to get back to huge again." Referring to the scene where they drive through the building. His main challenge/concern was the sound of water. "The only thing we triggered with a sub synth harmoniser in the movie was the water. It does something that always makes it sound the same, it doesn't react correctly to what is happening in the main speakers so it ends up sounding like its a separate sound."