Bond fans will have to get through Casino Royale on just three key action scenes, one of which is, of course, one of the famous opening sequences. But while Commander Bond himself may have gotten younger this time, in his fifth thespian incarnation, the audiences haven’t. Maybe they'll be in a mood to appreciate a more nuanced audio mix this film brings to the franchise.

"It's bombastic when it needs to be, but we've tried to be as real as possible this time, attempting to move away from the traditional concept of a Bond film," explains Eddy Joseph, supervising sound editor at Soundelux’s studios in London’s Soho district. "It is certainly huge in the three key effects sequences, but hopefully we've added nuances as well. I'm always pleased to have the opportunity to put in those little sounds that help to tell the story."

Chris Munro, the production sound mixer, recorded field audio to a Fostex PD6 multitrack recorder. Audio dailies were transferred to hard drives and when picture came in, the edit decision lists were conformed using Titan software on Soundelux’s Pro Tools systems.

Joseph says the production’s SFX design was purposely skewed towards the organic versus synthesized. "As a rule, I prefer to use one perfect sound rather than a combination, so we did a lot of custom recording based on the picture," says Joseph. There were exceptions: “With guns, for example, we would use three or four sounds together. But for the most part here, we looked for the sound that would define the time and place – the perfect insects sound at night, the perfect ocean sound, to establish that you were in the Bahamas. Casino Royale is a critical film in the Bond series. It’s the film in which Bond becomes Bond. [Director] Martin Campbell’s brief to us was to make it a raw, transitional experience for the audience, and to do that with sound. So instead of creating a dense, multi-layered sound design for the film, the soundscape is made up of many carefully chosen individual elements that are based on the scene and the setting. You get a cleaner-sounding film that really tells the story."

The reliance on individual elements is made clear in the car sounds. Hollywood and auto makers have gotten intimate on numerous occasions in the past, such as the Mini Cooper in The Bourne Identity, and while Bond has always driven nothing but an Aston Martin (except once, when he defected to the Germans and drove a BMW Z3), the auto maker saw Casino Royale as an opportunity to tie in a new model with the film’s release. Aston Martin provided a prototype of the new DBS sports coupe – the car doesn't go into actual production until January – as well as well as a DB 6 and a classic DB 5. "The engineer on each car stamps his name on the engine, and we were being driven around this figure-eight track at an old airport site by that same guy whose name was on that car," says Joseph, still giddy from recording the interior sounds at 170 miles an hour. "We used a Neumann RSM 191 M/S? microphone to a Sound Devices RSS 422 two-track recorder for the exterior panning drive-bys. We used a Sanken CMS7 M/S microphone and a pair of DPA 4060 microphones on the static drive-by panning and Doppler effects. For the interior sound we used Schoeps CCM41 and CCM8 M/S microphones and on the engine and exhaust we chose a DPA 4060."

Joseph says he was aware that the car sounds in the film would be part of a larger marketing campaign. “It had to sound sweet, like a perfectly tuned engine,” he says. "But Aston Martin were completely cooperative, they didn’t try to control anything. That DBS was sensational. Shame we had to crash it."

Field audio was combined in post with elements from Soundelux's huge library. Foley, recorded by Nigel Heath, sometimes went to great lengths to hew to the simple-sound element philosophy. "There is a sequence that takes place on a construction site and we wanted to get the sound of the girders just right, so we brought in one that took six guys to move," says Joseph. "We put some contact microphones on it and also miked it from beneath, and made sure that the Foley artists were wearing the same types of shoes as the actors. Then the re-recording engineer would enhance it with a little bit of reverb. But for the most part, you’re hearing what the actual sounds are, and not much else. The same with other Foley elements, such as punches. There’s more control over their sound; they’re not Hollywood Rocky punches. If a fist hits a brick wall, that’s what we’re recording. And it sounds like it hurts. They’re not in stereo surround. It’s a direct punch. It’s all about making the sound believable."

Casino Royale‘s crew collected a huge array of organic sounds during and after the filming, including cars, trucks, airport tugs, police vehicles and fire engines, and all the guns fired live ammunition. "And we all used Pro Tools HD systems linked together on our dedicated server with all the sound editors being able to access the Soundelux library and each other’s work," he says of the later editing process.

Casino Royale‘s mix is being done at De Lane Lea Studios in London on their AMS Neve DFC 80-fader console, which offers up to 350 inputs in a mixing situation. All premixing is virtual, utilizing a Digidesign Icon console and a Procontrol. Much of the dialogue premixing was done at Liondubbs, in Somerset on re-recording mixer Mike Prestwood Smith’s Digidesign Icon console. Workflow was aided by SohoNet, a third-party networking connection linking Soundelux in London to the Pinewood and Shepperton film studios, and that, Eddy says, reflects how European mixers are increasingly emulating U.S. methodologies.

The final mix was made using an NEC 2K projector fired from a Sony HDCAM SR player. "There is a lot of detail in this film, so we need a good image to work to," says Eddy. "The challenges are of course the time constraint. The post period on the movie is 12 weeks to answer print. That means going from temping for a preview to premixing without a break, knowing that the picture will change during the premix period. It's easy to make a lot of noise in big action scenes, but difficult to play the detail without getting louder and louder. I think we've achieved our objective. "This one isn’t Pearl Harbor."