Fight Like a Girl: How Sound Editors Crafted Eve’s Evolution in “Ballerina”

When we first see Eve (Ana De Arma) fight in director Len Wiseman’s From The World of John Wick: Ballerina, you can tell she has yet to hit her peak. She, nonetheless, can irrefutably kick my ass and yours too, but it’s like watching a bear cub trying to climb a tree – it will eventually reach the top but there’s plenty of flopping and flailing on the way up. You see, Eve is fresh out of definitely-gonna-murder-you training and is just a shadow to the certain set of skills Baba Yaga (Keanu Reeves) has paraded in the John Wick movie franchise. She needs real-world reps and gets them during an initial mission to collect a high-profile target (Sooyoung Choi) at a nightclub. It’s here where a group of well-groomed bad guys allows her to punch, kick, and stab her way into the ass kicking business – struggles and all. But even after months of seasoning, shown on screen via a violently delicious montage, the fight choreography doesn’t overtly become a one-sided cape-wearing clash, but rather, it’s grounded in the character’s physical presence. Instead of miraculously overpowering anyone standing in her way, she turns to the objects around her, whether that’s nunchakus, knives, kitchenware, or ice skates, for the upper hand. It’s a lesson she’s learned from a former trainer who told her to “fight like a girl,” meaning: strategy over strength.

Sonically treating Eve’s opportunistic fighting style was the post sound team at Formosa Group that included supervising sound editors Luke Gibleon, Mark Stoeckinger, and Casey Genton, the latter also serving as rerecording mixer alongside Andy Koyama, with music editing by Ben Zales. “Early on, Eve is a novice. She’s a little weaker, sloppier, and nervous to an extent. As she gains experience, she gets powerful, precise, confident, and graceful,” says Gibleon. “We design and mix the sound to reflect that growth, making sounds more powerful, violent, and sometimes more showy fun as she uses unique objects to fight with.”

Ballerina joins the growing John Wick saga and takes place during the events of John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum, unfolding as an origin story that sees Eve bent on revenge over those who wronged her family – the plight of which had production filming across parts of Prague, Budapest, and Austria for several pulse-pounding scenes. Dance club brawls, hotel shootouts, John Wick standoffs, and a flame war fiesta where Eve trades in bullets for a flamethrower, turning baddies into BBQ. Sound navigated each with visceral intent, enlivening the aural tapestry of the story, characters, and underlying themes.

Below, the team shares how they approached the soundscape behind one explosive scene, in which Eve improvises her way out of a gun shop full of goons wielding knives, guns, and grenades.

What goes into balancing real-world sounds with the sonic elements of the Wick world?

Luke Gibleon: We always try to find elements from whatever region you’re at, while at the same time, when you’re in the Wick world, we try to find elements that feel otherworldly and exist outside of our present time and space. We put in a lot of interesting tones and other sounds that are more meant to make you feel something than hear something, so it’s a little bit of a balance of both.

Mark Stoeckinger: Also to speak for Jason Freeman, who edited all the dialogue, he helped and paid attention a lot to casting people who spoke Czech or German or another language to really give this diverse tapestry to different locations, or to give them a sound that you know your ear might not pick up specifically in what it is but you can tell it’s different.

What’s cool about the sequence is how Eve does most of her murdering with grenades. Was there an overall direction to the approach?

Casey Genton: The direction from Len was that he really wanted each one of those grenades to feel like it was shaking the earth. He wanted to feel the impact, the resonance of those explosions from behind doors, or right in your face. And it really comes through in the music, which drives the narrative…there’s this rhythm to it when you’re handing it off to the effects.

Luke Gibleon: Len also brought the idea of misdirection. And in this scene, that misdirection moment happens when we are brought into the shop, and we’re meant to feel like, okay, we’re gonna get this cool gun moment like we’ve gotten in other movies. And then boom, we take you right out of it with this attack by these bad guys.

Did you treat the grenade explosions with any interesting design elements?

Luke Gibleon: It’s really a mix of all kinds of layers. We want each grenade to sound a little different, and it all depends on where that grenade explodes and what the environment is around the grenade. We’re ensuring it makes us feel like we’re in that environment.

Casey Genton: A favorite moment is when Eve slams a guy behind a metal door, and then she blows a hole through the wall. Nick Interlandi, our sound effects editor, added one of these crazy bullet ricochets just before the explosion. It’s those fun little elements that sort of catches your ear and creates a different feeling.

So, did you navigate each explosion differently then?

Casey Genton: It was really important for us to build moments that were loud and significant, but then also have sort of throwaway grenade moments that were equally important and great but didn’t need to be quite as big as the other ones.

Luke Gibleon: One example is where we go into a tinnitus moment with Eve. We asked, How do we come out of it and it actually lends itself to a lot of dynamics. It’s not just one big constant wall of sound.

Casey Genton: Len was all about trying to find a cool way to introduce the effect of the grenades in such close proximity. Luke made this really great tinnitus-ish sound that wasn’t quite the same sound you always hear every single time you’re in that headspace. We were able to make our own version for her concussed state.

Another standout moment is when Eve flips over a table to barricade herself just before several grenades kill some henchmen. I loved how the soundscape dips, allowing the audience to immerse themselves in the impact. Was that always the intention?

Ben Zales: Our composer Joel J. Richard said when Eve goes into the room with the table and she starts searching for stuff, the moment lends itself for the music to come down to a lull before this really big table flip and big explosion. It was quite a dance between the music and sound effects.

Speaking of music, sequences like these are fueled by stunts, camera, and the unexpected, but also by music. How did you finesse the latter into the soundscape?

Ben Zales: For us, it’s whatever the moment needs. Whatever tells the story best. Dialogue is usually king, and in an action movie like this, sound effects are probably right up there with it. But there are definite moments where the music does shine. We try to find the best way to tell the story and give it the best impact for each scene and each moment.

Casey Genton: We have a lot of experience with Chad [Stahelski], and he comes from an action background, and the action part is related to the sound effects, but then the emotion and the fun and the energy are all about the music. Chad never wants to subjugate that by not having the music appropriately played in the scene, but he doesn’t want everybody to be fighting for the same sonic space, so he expects all of us to work together to find the best solution to that.

Mark Stoeckinger: When it comes to the music, it can be big and energetic, but doesn’t have to be a sonic hog. We always want to find a way to make the space so that everything that’s appropriate can play at the same time without everything competing.

From the World of John Wick: Ballerina is in theaters now. 

Featured image: Ana de Armas as Eve in Ballerina. Photo Credit: Larry D. Horricks