By Hugh Hart
It’s not like Michael J. Benavente was dying to do sound when he graduated from UCLA film school in 1978. The Orange County native just wanted a job. So he talked his way into a mail room gig at local TV station KTTV, then spent a couple of years at KABC before getting hired as an assistant sound editor on TV soap “Dallas.” There, he found his groove as a guy who helped make stories pop through his deft handling of audio. In 1998, Benavente secured his first Sound Supervisor credits for “Dr. Doolittle” and “There’s Something About Mary” followed by more than 50 movies from directors including Richard Linklater, Paul Verhoeven and the late Ivan Reitman.
In 2022, Benavente began supervising sound for HBO series “The Last of Us.” Co-created by writer-director-producer Craig Mazin and based on a 2013 video game, “The Last of Us” tracks Ellie and Joel (Bella Ramsey and Pedro Pascal) as they fight for survival in a post-apocalyptic world over-run by violent zombie-like humans known as the Infected.
“I’m not a gamer,” Benavente told CineMontage. “I learned about the Infected just like the audience learns about the story, only a few months earlier.” Benavente caught on quickly: He won Outstanding Sound Editing for a Comedy or Drama Series (One Hour) Emmys for each of the series’ first two seasons.
Mazin, the “Last of Us” boss said that, “When I came back to North America after ‘Chernobyl’ to make ‘The Last of Us,’ my sound supervisor list had just one name: Michael Benavente. I am fastidious when it comes to sound and Michael’s a masterful coordinator of all aspects of his craft.”
Speaking from his home in Studio City, Benavente unpacked the team effort behind Season 2’s explosive soundscapes and detailed the challenges and gratifications of working on an acclaimed show. (Some mild spoilers follow.)
CineMontage: You’ve handled sound for a lot of comedies and action movies but not so much for horror. What was it that brought you into the fold for “The Last of Us”?
Michael Benavente: It actually was comedy that brought me into “The Last of Us.” When I did sound for “Scary Movie 3” in 2003, we had our first preview in Parasmus, New Jersey. The studio put us up at a hotel and we had dinner at the mall where I sat across from this very nice young gentleman who’d written the movie. I liked him immediately and we sort of bounded. That was Craig Mazin.
CineMontage: You also sound-supervised Mr. Mazin’s directorial debut “Superhero Movie.”
Benavente: That’s when I learned that he can be incredibly specific even on a wacky comedy. I remember thinking “This is a fart joke and we’re obsessing over how it’s going to work.” But I love the fact that Craig obsesses. That’s why we’re winning Emmys and that kind of thing for “The Last of Us”.
CineMontage: What kind of learning curve did you experience in shaping the show’s horror element?
Benavente: When we started working on the Infected in Season One, we quickly learned that the sounds were too monster-y. Craig always wants to make sure the audience believes they’re really in this world, so if something is a little too big or a little too violent sound-wise, we’d have to pull back and re-think things. Which meant that Season One was really rough. I drank a lot when I got home [laughing]. Craig’s incredibly talented and also incredibly demanding. If you’re not amenable to that, you better get off the train.
CineMontage: For “The Last of Us” you supervised the ADR sessions. What’s your secret for coaxing naturalistic performances from actors in the isolated setting of a soundstage?
Benavente: I think the key is to make the actor feel comfortable and express clearly why you need them to re-do this line that they thought was perfect. Pedro was great, giving me the breaths and efforts all the way through each scene. Sometimes the grunts might seem corny [in isolation], but [mixed] underneath everything else they really suck in the audience. And when you hear Bella Ramsey’s subtle breath of fear in the middle of a loud action sequence, it plays beautifully.
CineMontage: The 11-minute battle sequence in your Emmy-winning “Through the Valley” episode artfully melds sound, cinematography, VFX and performance to mesmerizing effect as hundreds of Infected freaks attack the civilian fortress in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. How did you coordinate all that sonic mayhem?
Benavente: Well, it’s not just about The Infected. There’s also cannon balls and flamethrowers and tons of gunfire and giant ramps falling down and alarm bells and horses and dogs and this wooden trailer that hits the fence when the Bloater comes through the fence – – all these elements have to be layered. We organize the sound effects and creature stuff in pre-dubs, even the sound of snow falling on someone’s shoulder. On Episode 2 we had like 65 pre-dubs just because there were so many things happening.
CineMontage: You assembled a formidable team to pull all this material together. Who were your key associates?
Benavente: “The Last of Us” is a busy show so our sound team was rather big. My dialogue editor ,Ted Ship, is fantastic. Sound effects-wise, Chris Battaglia and Chris Terhune are our main sound designers, plus I have Randy Wilson’s excellent Foley team in Toronto who does clever, detailed work. Sam Ejnes, our effects mixer, goes through this combination of library sound effects, stuff we record fresh for the show, and Foley to feel out what sounds best. And if Craig doesn’t like something we always have backup material to give him what he wants.
CineMontage: The show’s fear factor goes through the roof whenever we hear the guttural moans of The Infected. Where did you source these zombie-like utterances?
Benavente: Craig and the post producer Greg Spence brought in Misty [Lee] and Phil [Kovats], the actors who did the Infected sounds on the video game probably 12 years earlier. We wanted them to do exactly what they did then but just be a little bigger, since it’s a big Dolby Atmos sound job. We did a whole session with Misty and Phil. From that, we made a great library of fear and anger [noises] for Chris Terhune, who is solely in charge of the creature sounds.
CineMontage: Long before “Last of Us” came along, you worked as an assistant for Mark Mangini, Stephen Flick and Richard Anderson renowned for their work on Steven Spielberg movies like “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” What lessons did you pick up from these master craftsmen?
Benavente: To not be afraid of making mistakes. I’ve been yelled at by big directors and yes, it hurts in the moment, but if you’re a good creative artist you get over it and learn from the experience. That’s what Mark, Stephen and Richard taught me: Trust your talent.
CineMontage: “Through the Valley” modulates from this epic battle involving a cast of thousands to a handful of people in a cabin. It’s a claustrophobic scene of horrible brutality when Kaitlyn Dever’s Abby character beats Joel to death with a golf club. How did you choreograph the sound cues for that sequence?
That was difficult because one of the edicts was, they wanted to feel the cold outside environment, inside, when people aren’t talking. We had to make wind coming through cracks in the window and get the floorboards squeaking because it’s an older cabin.
CineMontage: And the beating itself?
Benavente Our sound effects supervisor Chris Battaglia has some great videos of him hitting golf clubs on different objects in his editing room just to get the whooshes and the impact. Pedro was great on set but Craig, I think, wanted him to grow a little more in intensity so he came in during post and re-did all his vocals on an ADR stage. Caitlyn also did some vocals where she’s whacking him.
CineMontage: There’s a lot of yelling and screaming in “The Last of Us” but the show also leaves space for quiet moments. Were you tuned in to those more intimate character beats?
Benavente: Oh yes. As much as I love Episode 2, I also love the flashback episode [6] when Joel takes Ellie to an old [abandoned] space museum for her birthday. She gets in this capsule, puts on head phones and listens through a Walkman to this old cassette recording of a space lift off that Joel gave her. That was fun because we found an actual recording from the early ’70s of a space launch that was very noisy and crappy-sounding. Mark Fishman cleaned it up and made it gritty again the way we wanted. The sound of this space shuttle rocking and groaning and rumbling really sells this special moment for Ellie. You feel what she’s going through in a [post-apocalyptic] world where kids don’t have great birthdays.
CineMontage: The sound literally amplifies the emotion.
Benavente: That’s the goal: to make the audience feel something.
Hugh Hart is a freelance writer in Los Angeles.
