Nausicaa of The Valley of The Wind is without a doubt my favorite Studio Ghibli film and one of my top favorite animated films in general. But for as much as I love it, it definitely shows it’s age. One of the biggest indicators is it’s sound mix. Granted, this mainly is due to films during that era using what was available to them in terms of technology and what’s in their budget.
So, in order to further enhance the world of Nausicaa, I made a custom sound mix using more modern effects. There are bound to be many opinions out there as to how the film should sound. Due to this, I wanted to enhance the sound mix by simply adding effects rather than completely replacing the existing sound design. A good comparison to this approach is how one of the Superman Blu Rays simply took the already existing stereo mix and added more dynamic sounds to enhance the range of it’s sound design.
For the basis of the sound design, I felt that using effects from the vast library of Skywalker Sound would work for the film. I feel the texture of their effects works really well. This does of course include quite a few effects from Star Wars, but I made sure to mainly use sounds from vehicles that sound similar enough to real world aircraft. For example, because Nausicaa’s glider is jet powered, is smaller than most aircraft in the film and has an energy core that lights up, I felt using the sound of A-Wings from Star Wars would work perfectly for that. I could go all day talking about the specific sounds for each vehicle or aircraft and explaining why they fit them, but long story short, I feel I matched them well.
To still incorporate the distinct style of classic anime sound design, I also incorporated effects from other properties such as Samurai Jack, Dragon Ball Super and other miscellaneous sources. Below are both the video and audio sources for this edit.
Audio Sources:
-Skywalker Sound SFX (Star Wars, Indiana Jones, ETC.)
-Samurai Jack
-Dragon Ball Super
Video Sources:
-Sacra Studios Naussicaa DVD
-Gkids Blu Ray (Soon to be used for revised cut)
I plan on making a revised cut using footage from the Gkids Blu Ray. When I originally made this edit, I used an up-scaled version of the DVD from the Sacra Studios Ghibli Collection. It’s not the best quality, but since I can now rip Blu Ray footage, I’ll layer the 1080p footage over it when I revise it. Can’t say when since I’m currently working on other projects and don’t have the hard drive space. I’ll edit this post later on when the revised cut comes out. I’m also contemplating including a up-converted 5.1 mix as an optional bonus.
For anyone who is interest, go ahead and leave a reply and I’ll PM you a link to view it. Hope you all enjoy it.