Sound perception

Audiographer Justin Jose talks about his experiences in Bollywood, Hollywood and other industries

Pics: Justin Jose. Photo by Arun Angela. From left: Justin Jose, Biswadeep Chatterjee, Raju Hirani, Jeetu Chowdhury and other technical crew members of the Bollywood film, 'Sanju' 

By Shevlin Sebastian 

Audiographer Justin Jose is always aware of sound. While relaxing in a hotel room, in Kochi, he says, “There is the sound of the AC, my friend, sitting on the bed, is tapping on the laptop, there is the sound of our conversation and the muted sounds of the traffic outside.” Then he smiles and says, “If you listen, sound is everywhere.” 

Justin had come to attend the inaugural ceremony of the first national Clubby MiniMovie Festival last month. He is a member of the jury. And the audiographer says he had been working on a Malayalam film, Ranjit Shankar’s ‘Kamala’, which is releasing on November 29. “It was a challenging film, but Ranjit gave me a lot of freedom,” says Justin. “I enjoyed working with him.” 

The Mumbai-based Justin has a thriving career. He has worked in more than 300 films, spread across 15 languages: Hindi, Bengali, English, Punjabi, Gujarati, Bhojpuri, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Ladakhi, Latvian, Arabic, Urdu, Malayalam and Konkani. 

Asked how he understands films whose language he does not know, Justin says, “Because of my experience. When I see the rushes, without sound, I usually get an idea of what the story is all about,” he says. “However, many times the mixing engineer will narrate the story behind the scenes, so that I get an idea of what is happening.” 

He seems to get it right because many films that he has worked on have become hits. These include ‘Baahubali’, ‘Padmaavat’, ‘Bajirao Mastani’, ‘Kesari’ ‘Sanju’, ‘Uri: The Surgical Strike’, as well as regional language versions of ‘Spiderman2’ and ‘Karate Kid’. Justin won the National Award for the Best Re-recordist for ‘Bajirao Mastani’ in 2015 and for ‘Walking With The Wind’ in 2017. 

And the work has been fun and rewarding. When Justin was working on Raju Hirani’s biographical tale of actor Sanjay Dutt called ‘Sanju’, the film had two sound designers, Jeetu Chowdhury and Biswadeep Chatterjee. They were sitting on either side of Justin at the Rajkamal Studios and watched him work. “When I did some mixing, they would give me suggestions,” says Justin. “It was a hugely enriching experience from me. Both are top sound designers.” 

After an hour, Justin asked to take a break, went out and stood on the sidewalk. After a while, somebody came and stood beside him. It was Raju. He had bought two Coca Cola cans, from a beverage dispenser inside the studio, and gave one to Justin. “Enjoy,” Raju said, echoing the drink’s advertising tag line. 

They sipped in silence. Then they chatted about the film. Finally, Raju says, “The sound mixing is going well.” 

“Thank you,” says Justin. 

Soon, they returned to the studio. On an average, Justin takes about 200 hours, spread over many days to do the sound for a two-hour Bollywood film. 

Asked to define his work, Justin says, “I do sound design and mixing. This means merging the background score, dialogues, special effects and songs. When there is a scene between two characters, the dialogue level is different for both, so I have to adjust the sound. As for the background score, I have to see the scenes between five to ten times to get it right. It is a creative process." 

Meanwhile, Justin says that directors are unique characters. “The story begins in their imagination,” he says. “So they know it inside out. The film is like a child to them. They have a tremendous passion and love for film-making. It consumes their day and night. They will forget their families. Till the movie releases, nobody exists for them. But even when the director is working with me, he is also doing the colour corrections, the VFX effects and checking the music at the same time. There are so many aspects to look into.” 

The Thrissur-born Justin is himself consumed by his work. “Yes, I love it,” he says, with a smile. “Last year, I worked on 23 films in a row, and enjoyed every moment.” 

His future projects include a couple of big-budget Bollywood projects, a Tamil film by Jeethu Joseph as well as the Kochi-based show director Manoj K Varghese’s debut film. 

(The New Indian Express, Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram)