How do you make a room full of battling superheroes sound enormous without it becoming one exhausting wall of noise? And just how wet is too wet when someone is being ripped apart? Those are some of the perfectly normal questions we put to sound effects editor and sound designer Russell Topal in the latest episode of Geektown Talks To.
WARNING: This interview contains major spoilers for the final season and series finale of ‘The Boys’.
Russell joined ‘The Boys’ for Season 4 before returning for its fifth and final season, with his work on the series finale, ‘Blood and Bone’, earning him an Emmy nomination. It is one of two nominations he has received this year, alongside his work on ‘The Rip’, bringing his career total to four.
During the interview, Russell takes us back to the beginning of his career, explaining how his love of music and classic sci-fi films led him towards sound design. He also reveals just how much of what we hear in a finished TV episode has been rebuilt during post-production, from traffic and background ambience to gunfire, superpowers and exploding body parts.
Joining a well-established series presented another unusual challenge. Russell inherited the existing sounds for characters including Homelander, A-Train and Starlight, but also needed to develop that sonic language as new powers, characters and increasingly ridiculous situations arrived.
He discusses working with supervising sound editor Wade Barnett and showrunner Eric Kripke, who often asked to hear several radically different versions of a new sound before selecting elements from each. Russell also reveals what happened when his initial ideas for one particularly unpleasant Supe were rejected in favour of something far more piercing and uncomfortable.
The final season frequently throws numerous superpowers, fights and weapons into the same scene, but simply making everything louder was never the answer.
“If everything sounds huge, then nothing sounds huge. Or if everything’s loud, nothing’s loud.”
Russell explains how frequency, rhythm and careful choices about what not to hear helped turn those huge sequences into something closer to sonic choreography. We also delve into the gloriously revolting side of ‘The Boys’, including Kripke’s frequent requests to make the gore sound “wetter” and “grosser”, and the scene that left Russell needing to step away from his desk and take the dog for a walk.
The conversation also explores the sound of the series finale, including the challenge of giving its different battles their own identities and what happens to Homelander’s familiar sonic presence when his powers are stripped away. Russell also reveals some of the surprisingly ordinary materials used to create one of the final season’s most extraordinary body parts.
Away from ‘The Boys’, we chat about Russell’s work as a sound effects editor on the global phenomenon ‘KPop Demon Hunters’, and how particularly special the film became once his young daughters discovered it. We also touch on the much more grounded soundscape of the ‘Yellowstone’ universe and his work on ‘Dutton Ranch’.
And, just before the end, Russell offers a tantalising little hint about where he is heading next…
You can listen to the full interview below. All five seasons of ‘The Boys’ are available to stream now on Prime Video.
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