Soundelux’s Mark Mangini Goes Bird Calling for Mr. Popper’s Penguins

Mark Mangini’s job is for the birds. A sound designer at Soundelux in Hollywood, Mangini led the sound team for 20th Century Fox’s Mr. Popper’s Penguins. The family comedy stars Jim Carrey, as a businessman whose chilly relationship with his family heats up after he inherits six mischievous penguins.

The penguins play a prominent part in the film and interact with Carrey’s character and others in decidedly non-avian ways. Each also has a distinct personality that is communicated, largely, through the sound it makes. “We have Captain, the leader; Loudy, who has an ear-piercing scream; Nimrod, who’s intellectually challenged; Lovey, a cuddler; Bitey, who’s a bit aggressive; and Stinky, who has a problem with his digestion,” Mangini observed. “We had to create a voice for each of those archetypes and do it using naturalistic penguin sounds.”

That task was more difficult than it might appear. To begin with, very few penguin sounds were recorded during the production. “On the set, penguins, like most animals, make very little sound,” Mangini explains. “In general, they only vocalize when they are alone or threatened, which, of course, they never were.”

To gather appropriate penguin sounds, Mangini searched stock sound libraries but found that little was available. Most of the penguin sounds that he did find were recorded in the natural world and were marred by wind and other environmental sounds that rendered them unusable. He also considered using human voice talent to mimic penguins, but quickly concluded that would not result in the natural sound required by the film.

Ultimately, Mangini determined he needed to make his own penguin recordings and so he arranged to have access to the birds that were used in the film. “We couldn’t use a regular recording facility because penguins need to be in an environment that is 40 degrees or colder at all times,” he noted. “So we built a recording room equipped with a special air conditioning system. It became our ‘penguin ADR room.’”

Sound recordist Ben Cheah spent the next several days working with animal trainers who tempted the birds into vocalizing by offering them fish. It was slow going. The more than 16 hours of recordings captured by the crew resulted in a scant five minutes of penguin chirps, honks and cheeps. But it proved to be just enough.

Through judicious editing and clever digital enhancement, Mangini and his crew used these precious penguin recordings as the basis for creating human-like personalities for each of the birds. “For Nimrod, we developed a kooky, zany sound by editing little pieces together and changing their pitch. It makes him sound loony — the Daffy Duck of penguins,” Mangini observes. “Another ‘miracle’ sound is Lovey’s ‘coo.’ We found a beautiful coo that sounds like the cutest nuzzle you’ve ever heard.”

The team also used their recordings to illustrate a huge variety of behaviors, both bird-like and anthropomorphic. Among other things, they developed specialized sounds to suggest penguin laughs, screams and, yes, flatulence. They also created a signature sound indicating a penguin’s urgent need to relieve itself. “I imagine there will be penguin trainers in the audience who will recognize they are hearing the genuine sounds of gentoo penguins,” Mangini says, “but they’ll leave the theater scratching their heads and wondering how we got the birds to do it.”