Culver City, CA (September 12, 2023)—When the motorheads on the post-production sound team at Sony Pictures heard that director Neill Blomkamp was making Gran Turismo: Based on a True Story, they knew they had to be involved.
The film is based on the unbelievable true story of a team of unlikely underdogs—Jann Mardenborough (Archie Madekwe), a struggling working-class gamer, a failed former racecar driver (David Harbour) and an idealistic motorsport executive (Orlando Bloom). Together, they risk it all to take on the most elite sport in the world.
For supervising sound editors Kami Asgar and Erin Oakley and re-recording mixers Kevin O’Connell and Beau Borders, the film provided them with an unprecedented opportunity to recreate the sounds of some of the world’s fastest cars and one of its most popular games.
“When I read that Neill was making a Gran Turismo film,” says Asgar, “I immediately thought, ‘We have to do this movie!’”
Asgar explains that he, Oakley, O’Connell and Borders are all “motorheads” with deep connections to cars and a love for racing. “I used to manage off-road race teams and participated in several Baja 1000s,” he relates. “Erin is super competitive. She rides a Harley and takes part in off-road sports. Beau is a professional racecar driver and Kevin is also an avid car and motorcycle lover.”
Blomkamp was insistent that the cars—real, and in the game—sound authentic. For scenes where the characters are playing the Gran Turismo game, the sound team was provided with original sound elements from the actual game by PlayStation and the developer Polyphony Digital. To gather real car sounds, recordists traveled to airfields and racetracks in London, California and Florida to capture pit crews, crowds and other ambient sounds along with cars identical to those in the film.
Dialogue spoken by actors in cars traveling at high speed presented a challenge. “Getting clean dialogue tracks was critical,” Oakley says, “but it was difficult during racing scenes because actors were talking over engine noise—and they were often speaking very fast, in unfamiliar accents, using racing lingo. We had to work hard both in editorial and in the mix to produce dialogue tracks that were clear and natural so that we didn’t lose a joke or miss a story point.”
Final mixing was performed at Sony Pictures in Culver City in its Cary Grant Theater. O’Connell and Borders removed extraneous sounds from the production tracks, sculpted the sound design and weaved in music. “The story has highs and lows,” says O’Connell “It moves from exhilarating action on the racetrack to quiet, emotional moments from Jann’s personal life. Neill had a clear direction for us: to be faithful to this incredible, true-life story.”
