Designing the Sound of the Olympics

It can be said that great design is often invisible. That’s not to say that it goes unnoticed. Rather, great design often presents itself in a way that doesn’t draw attention to its own design.

For our second installment of Better By, we turn our eyes and ears to the art and craft of sound design. One need only turn the volume off on their televisions to realize how important sound is to the experience of high-action sports enjoyed from the comfort of our living rooms. Read on as we explore the exquisite intentionality behind the sound of the Olympic Games.

Special thanks to Jessica Vician for her research and writing on this piece.

Enjoy!

–Stratton Cherouny

–––

The design surrounding the Olympics is carefully curated, from the overall brand identity to each country’s opening and closing ceremony attire to the individual athletes’ uniforms and gear. But outside of the visual design of the Olympic Games is the sound design, which is vital to the experience for those of us watching remotely.

The Games

When you remember watching Chloe Kim in the halfpipe competition, the slap of her board hitting the snow after landing a frontside 1080 is part of that memory, as is the visual of her twirling through the air during the 1080. Remembering the sound of Mirai Nagasu’s skates slicing the ice after landing a triple axel and the resulting roar of the crowd reacting to her history-making feat might bring goosebumps to your body even now, months after the event happened. Those sounds, coupled with the visuals, elevate and complete the overall experience.

Event organizers leveraged technology to ensure the screen experience was as spectacular as the in-person experience. In some cases, it was even more augmented on our screens and in our speakers.

“Picking up the sounds from the field of play gives the viewer a lot more, and they are hearing things they have never heard before,” said Karl Malone, the sound design director for NBC Sports and NBC Olympics, in an interview with Sports Video Group. “The audio in the bobsled is like the audio you have from the POV in the cars at a NASCAR race, and it’s better than the best seat in the house: you’re an athlete.”

Sound designers and their teams even buried microphones in the ice to pick up those slices and landings, which further enhanced the experience at home. Malone said, “The Winter Olympics is all about blades on snow and ice. If you’re a skier, listen to the skis, and you will be able to tell if they are on snow or ice. That is one of those things that a skier can feel, and, if the listener is able to hear that, they will have a better sense of how the skier is feeling.”

The Opening and Closing Ceremonies

Besides the games themselves, the opening and closing ceremonies set the tone for the massive, two-plus-week event. At this year’s opening ceremony, sound — especially music — played a big role. Psy’s “Gangnam Style” looped over a few times, Korean singers performed a cover of John Lennon’s “Imagine,” and the music sparked ample dancing by performers and international teams. The two-hour long ceremony required sound design and organization for thousands of performers, sets, and moving pieces (and people).

This year, Sun Hee Kil, a South Korea native and sound professor at SUNY New Paltz, influenced that sound design. As the associate sound designer for the 2018 opening and closing ceremonies, she played a critical role in creating an immersive experience for audiences in Pyeongchang and across the world.

“My job is making sure that all the communications are working correctly, and that everyone is in sync, so that we can make sure the athletes walk in at the right time, with the right music and the right microphones being heard,” Kil said inan interview with SUNY New Paltz.

She compared the project to producing the sound in musical theatre, saying, “Everything needs to be planned in real time. In musicals, if an accident happens and one automation doesn’t work, we can cover it and fix it with a longer scene change or something. But for the Olympics, everything has to match perfectly.”

The 2012 London Olympics sound designer, Bobby Aitken, echoed the comparison, saying in a 2012 interview with Metro, “As a theatre sound designer, I’m the one responsible for what the audience hears…Performing the opening ceremony was unlike anything I have ever done. Transmitting the show to the largest television audience in history, while being in the stadium with 80,000 people, was intense. The concentration and talent from the 10,000 performers, along with the goodwill and encouragement of the stadium audience, combined to make that a night that no one who was there will ever forget.”

Kil went on to explain the difference between live musicals and the broadcasted Olympic ceremonies, stating, “It’s different too, because of the broadcasting. I’m used to working on musicals that are closed performances. All the timing is relative to the internal audience. But for this project, I have to think about the audience inside the stadium, and also the TV audience and the broadcast team.”

As Kil and Aitken suggested, the behind-the-scenes at each Olympics is intense. The athletes, coaches, and event organizers perform an immense amount of work to create, prepare, and execute their roles. We’re lucky to be able to sit back, relax, and enjoy the spectacle, reaping the rewards of their hard work and planning. With this insight into the sound design, we can’t wait to get Olympics fever again in 2020 and see how new technology enhances this tremendous experience in Tokyo.