Paramount Pictures and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures’ Ben-Hur remake’s official trailer includes The Hit House’s sound design elements.
An epic tale retold for contemporary times necessitates the grandeur and opulence of past empires. What better way than to interweave a fatal fraternal fight, Jesus of Nazareth, and death defying chariot races? That is what the new Ben-Hur movie encompasses. For epic scale the trailer needed the perfect sound design, so The Hit House provided elements from the “Framework: Layer I” album by Chad Hughes. When chaos reigned in ancient Rome, we filled the silences with nuanced sound to set the stage.
Directed by Timur Bekmanbetov and starring Jack Huston and Morgan Freeman, Ben-Hur weaves a lurid tale of a Judah Ben-Hur. After a Jerusalem prince’s family is brutally murdered by his own adopted brother, he rises from subsequent slavery, becomes a justice dealing avenger, and ultimately a chariot racer who seeks to vanquish an evil empire. Adapted from Union Civil War General Lew Wallace’s 1880 historical adventure novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, the 2016 remake seeks to fill the gaping shoes of the 1959 Charlton Heston-starring version that won an unprecedented 11 Oscars!
Serving the exact purpose for which it was released, The Hit House’s album, “Framework: Layer I” is an incredible collection of original hits, rises, wooshes, crashes, booms and bangs, and original field recordings written by three-time Emmy Award nominated sound designer, Chad Hughes. Certain unique elements of the album served just the right tones for Paramount and MGM, and thus can race into your next project as well.
Ben-Hur gallops into theaters on August 12.
