K-Pop Demon Hunters is an animated feature that combines traditional Korean culture and heritage with highly-produced music that’s a signature of the genre. The film from Sony Pictures Animation was released theatrically in June and is currently streaming on Netflix.
Maggie Kang and Chris Applehans directed K-Pop Demon Hunters, which is centered around K-pop superstars Rumi, Mira and Zoey. When they aren’t on tour, performing for their global fanbase as Huntr/x, the trio are using their secret skills as demon hunters to protect the population from an ever-present supernatural threat. Gwi-Ma, the leader of the underworld, inhabited by demons, recognizes the girls’ power over the people and agrees to support a rival boy band — the Saja Boys — in an effort to win over their fanbase and steal their souls.
Right out of the gate, the soundtrack for K-Pop Demon Hunters is filled with music, in addition to dialog and effects. Michael Babcock (pictured) served as sound designer, supervising sound editor and re-recording mixer on the project, working out of Sony Pictures Post Production in Culver City, CA, where he has a dubbing stage that serves as his home base.
For Babcock, K-Pop Demon Hunters marked one of his first animated projects, and he credits initial conversations with the filmmakers as the reason he was selected to collaborate on the project.
“It seems I really connected with the filmmakers because of my music background,” says Babcock, who is a graduate of the University Miami School of Music, having studied music engineering, Jazz saxophone and electrical engineering. “Some of the questions they asked me, and some of questions I asked them…After the interview, I’m like, ‘Boy, I really hope I get this, because this, to me, is the ultimate right brain/left brain kind of combining my music side with the film side.' So it was that connection that got me hired.”
Babcock had initial conversations about the film’s creative needs in April of 2024, a year before the feature would be released.
“It was the most cross-pollinating…between the departments that I’ve ever been a part of,” he says of the film’s music, dialog and effects. “One really informed the other. One of the first conversations I had with the directors, creatively, was about treatments. I needed a jumping off point as the creative sound person. K-pop has a very definitive sound to it, has a definitive sheen to it. It’s very highly produced, very artfully produced, and I thought everything you hear — sound effects, dialog — everything that you hear needs to go through that lens. You’re building a vocabulary.”
One of the first sound design elements he focused on was the demon treatments, which extend beyond the underworld and the Saja Boys to Huntr/x’s Rumi, who is always in the spotlight, while also hiding a painful secret.
“She has her secrets that she’s grappling with the entire time, and there had to be a vocabulary that you recognize for all the different characters having that same kind of treatment and thought.”
The filmmakers provided Babcock with a musical playlist designed to inspire him. Some of it was of K-pop bands and other popular American artists, such as Billie Eilish, and others were lesser-known singers whose vocal treatments were representative of their ideas.
“(They) had these really interesting effects that added to the emotion of their actual singing performance,” he recalls. The music, he notes, was filled with reverb, delays and layered harmonies, techniques he’d employ on his original sound design elements.
“Harmony was a big one,” he shares. “Trying to actually accomplish harmony in the demon treatment voices — or I should say lack of harmony, until (Rumi) comes to terms with herself, and then things are in harmony…It was a process and a lot of experimentation to come up with a vocabulary.”
Gwi-Ma, the lord of the underworld, who appears as a large mouth made of flames, received similar treatment. While he speaks slowly and concisely in a low, clear tone, his voice is further affected when he becomes angry, with the tail ends of his dialog receiving a bit more processing. And beyond Gwi-Ma’s voice, the underworld is filled with an ambience of whispers that support the idea that secrets are being hidden.
“It’s all story serving,” Babcock explains.
The film’s animation is stylized, combining elements of 2D and 3D, and its songs and score are ever present, requiring the sound design to seamlessly support the soundtrack without calling unnecessary attention.
“The biggest, biggest, biggest thing was those songs, and the score for that matter,” says Babcock of the soundtrack’s elements. “It’s fantastic. There’s a reason why those songs are huge. They’re really well done, so you can’t take away from them. But, they also wanted to have sound design supporting the songs in the movie, so every single thing you hear — even when there isn’t music — everything you hear has gone through a pitch/music check to make sure it’s working with music, and a rhythm check. That’s how you get away with actually putting a lot of sound effects and design even in where songs are.”
One signature sound effect was applied to the girls’ respective weapons — a magical collection that includes a sword, ax and knives that glow. Babcock purchased traditional tuning forks, which he then recorded and manipulated, giving the weapons their own identities.
“There’s a lot of action, period. And it’s all very fast paced. There are a lot of strategic moves in the music and in the sound effects, and even in the dialog, to make sure you’re re-clocking all those things when you need to clock them. There was a lot of laborious (work), going from event to event, even from shot to shot, to decide, ‘Okay, this is the most important thing at this moment.’”
Babcock has three scenes that he calls attention to as highlights of the film’s Dolby Atmos soundtrack. The opening is important, as it sets the tone for the film, it’s pacing and its theme.
“The sound design is really cranking to the beat,” he shares. “We’re really playing with the music itself. We’re making it dynamic. It’s a rock concert.”
The second is fight sequence in which the girls are lured to a bathhouse by the Saja Boys, ultimately having to take on a group of demons.
“There is a lot of sound in that scene,” he shares. “You have to really pick up their dialog. We got away with doing more than you normally can, because you have to have the music driving through the entire time. And there’s a lot sound design on top of that. It all went through the pitch check. It all went (through) the rhythm check. So keeping all their energy up, and their magic and their general badassery.”
Lastly, he points to the film’s finale, where Huntr/x and the Saja Boys square off in a competition that has so much at stake — the souls of their collective fanbase.
“Mixing the music of that, and making the music as immersive and dynamic as possible. Everything just firing on all cylinders. Every single time, the hair on my arms stands up. It’s just emotionally so good!”