Sound recordist Ellie Williams captures the sonic details of the natural world
"Microphones reveal layers of intricacy, intelligence and beauty. Sound is a way into worlds we could never imagine exist."
If you've watched a natural history show on the BBC, Netflix, National Geographic or Apple TV lately, the sounds you’ve been listening to may well have been recorded by Ellie Williams. For the last twenty years, she has travelled the world capturing everything from the minute arpeggios of swimming scallops and the chatter of stridulating ants, to night-time frog choruses and warring elephant seals. Having camped out with Arctic foxes in Iceland and been hoisted into the Amazon rainforest canopy to record sounds from the perspective of howler monkeys, it’s not surprising Ellie says her holidays tend to feel quite underwhelming in comparison.
Most recently, Ellie has worked on two almost concurrent natural history series explicitly focussed on sound - Earthsounds, on Apple TV, and The Secret World of Sound, hosted by David Attenborough on Sky - something which in itself is rather new. “Microphones reveal layers of intricacy, intelligence and beauty,” Ellie says, reflecting on the recent increase of interest in the acoustics of the natural environment. “Sound is a way into worlds we could never imagine exist.”
For this latest Through Sounds interview, I was delighted that Ellie agreed to answer some questions via email, sharing her experiences of twenty years of nature recording and an ongoing attempt to pinpoint the ineffable feeling that accompanies the most profound moments of listening. Or in Ellie’s wonderful words, “The sound-triggered neurochemical cocktail of dopamine, endorphins and adrenaline!”
What are your earliest sonic memories and were you always drawn to sound and listening?
My early sonic memories are like hazy daydreams: The sound of wood pigeons in our garden ‘who stole those green peas… me’. Exploring fields of tall grass and wildflowers buzzing electrically with insects during a hot endless summer. Being driven at bedtime in our old mustard car to a common not too far from home and scrambling, yawning, through brambles at dusk to listen to nightingales.
My listening started with music. I’ve never been able to listen to a piece of music without focussing on the rhythm or melody of a particular instrument. As a child I was fascinated by layers of sound and how they play together. If I wasn’t playing an instrument, I’d be working out the pattern of the notes of a song with my fingers. I was drawn to pieces that gave me certain feelings and I’m still fascinated by how music and sound taps into emotions and surfaces memories long forgotten.
I spent 10 years working as a music journalist before I ever picked up a field recorder. It was recording a stream up in the Hebrides that was a kind of ‘a-ha’ moment with sound. Was there a moment when you realised that you wanted to do this professionally?
I think it was more of a volcanic-style build-up than a single moment for me. It reached its peak when I was living in New Zealand. I’d been sent there by the BBC to set up a filming base for a series called South Pacific. I’d been working for the Natural History Unit for a few years but in a different role and I had what can only be described as a burning desire to become a field recordist. Location sound recording combined everything I loved: nature and the outdoors, working with kit (I’d been a gigging musician and dabbled in studio sound before the BBC), being in the action of filmmaking and having my own creative autonomy. Part of the series filming kit was a gorgeous SQN4 mixer. At the time, I was living in a wooden house surrounded by bush on the edge of the Waitakere Ranges with its own wild acoustic panorama of birdsong (tuis, fantails, bellbirds) and that was pulling at my soul. So, you can imagine, it was all coming to a head and soon after that I began to record.
To what extent has sound and recording been a way into learning about the natural world?
I think recording the natural world has really changed me, especially in what I notice and value. When I started out, recording on location was a much simpler task: capture the sounds of a place to build into a soundtrack. Then I began to work on more niche projects alongside wildlife biologists and my eyes really began to open.
Working with scientists has this wonderful symbiosis - I gain access to new sound worlds and learn about the meaning of the sounds and animal vocalisations I record. In return, I can use my kit and techniques to record perspectives and data that they may only have had theories about. Handing my headphones to someone who has a complete specialism in a species and for them to hear something they have never heard before is the best feeling.
But with these connections comes an increasing weight of awareness of the fragility and state of the natural world and not a day goes by when I don’t think about this. The era of being passive documentary filmmakers is long gone in my eyes. If we can help, whether that’s through collaborating with scientists, or making conservation part of the main narrative, then that’s the mission. We’re all in this industry because we have a deep love of the natural world and, as a community of filmmakers, we see the realities on location and want fiercely to help protect it.
You’re involved in two new series focussed on sound. Why do you think there is an increased interest in listening and nature now?
This is something I’ve been thinking about too. Nature is the tonic to modern life, right? The faster and more technology-driven life becomes the more we need time out and that’s what being in wild spaces or watching wildlife films gives us, that much needed escape.
Natural history programmes are so popular across the world. There have been breath-taking advances in camera techniques and kit as a way of telling stories and showing new perspectives. But during this time sound has often been an afterthought, even something that can be created retrospectively (entire shoots can come back without any sound recordings at all).
But so much of the natural world is led by sound, with sound often being the most important sense. So if we’re going to really get into the lives of animal characters and tell their stories then recordings need to be accurate to truly reflect this. Microphones reveal layers of intricacy, intelligence and beauty. Sound is a way into worlds we could never imagine exist.
There are some fascinating advances happening through the decoding of animal communication using AI. We may soon be able to have ‘conversations’ with animals. I can’t quite get my head around the implications of this yet but I know film soundtracks need to be more authentic than ever in line with this. The natural world needs to be heard to be understood and with that understanding we can only connect and protect it further. And that is why capturing sound is as important as the moving image on location.
What’s it like to work with and record for David Attenborough?
Being with David is all you could imagine and more. Despite his extraordinary life, he is down to earth and the warmest company. He is accompanied on shoots by his daughter, Susan, and always wears his comfortable brown Clarks-style shoes. He’s full of good stories and enjoys filming, so we always have fun. The shoots can be intense as the crew are meticulously ready to capture his delivery to camera, which he prefers to only do once (‘a one take wonder’). When he started out in the ‘50s, alongside producing and directing, he recorded sound. There are some exquisite field recordings he made of indigenous music whilst on wildlife filming expeditions, so he’s quite the legend for me and I think he appreciates sound recordists because he’s been in our listening world.
What have been some of your most important, enjoyable or memorable experiences recording?
The remote places are the ones that stay with me. Recording arctic foxes in Iceland was one of those. We were based at the northern tip in Hornstrandir, just a few nautical miles from the Arctic Circle, and it was so peaceful and a joy to record there. The soundscape was very minimalistic: the dog fox’s barks, the vixen’s calls, the pups’ hungry yaps, the odd raven’s cronk and distant kittiwakes all reverberating off a huge natural rocky basin above the ocean rumbling far below. We filled our bottles from a waterfall and treaded carefully on the plant-rich ground, I’ve never seen so much biodiversity. The cinematographer beckoned me over at one point to look into his viewfinder as he’d framed up an iceberg on the horizon for me.
A shoot with Jill Biden was one of my most memorable. National Geographic had partnered with the White House to close off a section of the Grand Canyon for us. Before dawn, secret service officers checked our kit using sniffer dogs. After landing in Air Force Two, The First Lady arrived into the national park with an entourage in swish black SUVs. We had just two hours with her to record her pieces to camera and filmed with the most spectacular backdrop. It was intense and a complete adrenaline high.
There are a couple of other life-enriching (and mind exploding!) recording experiences too. Recording in a forest of noisy coqui frogs in the pitch dark with fireflies drifting around me whilst my levels danced brightly triggered by all the sounds, like a jungle disco. And a shoot I did in Liberia where we recorded some traditional artisan fishermen from Ghana and we went out, again in the pitch dark, in their boat carved from a single trunk. Phosphorescence lit up the wake which was wonder-filled enough, but then when they pulled in their huge, heavy nets they began to sing together to get a heaving-in rhythm going and to keep spirits high, and it totally took me by surprise. Magic! I’m not sure when I’d ever experience moments like those without the access my work gives me. When I go on holiday it’s often quite underwhelming in comparison!
What other sounds have taken you by surprise or made you feel something particularly special?
I’m very lucky as, with my work in natural history filmmaking, I’m sent to record sounds that constantly delight me. The most exciting are sounds that we wouldn’t normally know are there because they are just so quiet or outside of our hearing range. When I’m asked to record things like this it’s often to find out whether there will be any sound at all. On the Earthsounds series, I used contact mics to listen to delicate vibrations such as the wave movement of a starfish’s tube feet and the chatty stridulating conversations of leafcutter ants on the rainforest floor. The most delicate was an unassuming scallop which, as it propelled itself through the water, made a perfect arpeggio of ascending notes captured by a hydrophone. When I hear music in nature those are the stand-out moments as I find them just so beautiful.
There’s a great video on your Instagram of what looks like you being winched up into the forest canopy in Peru. What were you recording up there and what are the most unusual places you have recorded in?
That was such a fun shoot. We were in the Amazon to film howler monkeys. The cinematographer spent weeks up on a platform in the canopy filming at the height they liked to hang out. Meanwhile, I was recording their group calls (which sounded like a big stone mill wheel grinding). The researcher would track them (at a gentle distance) to bed then in the dark of morning I would set up at the same spot to catch the chorus as it began. I got some fantastic recordings of them from there but it felt strange to be recording from the forest floor when their world was up in the canopy, in a very different soundscape, and this sequence was, after all, from their perspective.
Our rope access expert had this marvellous swing with him and he (assisted by the rest of the crew) pulled me and my kit high up a giant fig tree. It was quite unforgettable. More people have been up Everest than hoisted up to the rainforest canopy. Being lifted up through the layers of sound and hearing the acoustics, which open up the higher you get, was quite magical. I heard bird and other animal calls ranging from close by to what seemed as far as the horizon, waves of breeze travelling through the canopy and everything up there felt unaware of my presence (apart from the sweat bees tickling my legs).
To what extent have advancements in technology played a role in what you can record, and are there things you are excited to be able to do now that weren’t possible at the start of your career?
My kit has grown over the years into a box of recording tricks. I’ve been building on it bit by bit so I can be experimental in the field. I want my mics to go where the human ear can’t and bring back the feeling of a completely different environment for an audience who might never experience places far from home. Kit has become smaller, lighter, more intuitive but often it’s about how playfully you use it that brings back the best results.
A simple technique I use now is a drop rig: I leave a mixer (in a dry bag) and a stereo pair of omni mics recording in a good spot then collect it some hours later. When a person (or recordist) walks through a wild space like a forest, the sound changes. Birds alarm-call, animals hide and go quiet. But if you can record without physically being there, you get that natural, rich, undisturbed soundscape (and you can pick out the best bits later).
One of my favourite mics is a Geofon which is an audio-adapted geophone designed to record seismic sound. Scientists actually use the most interesting equipment in the field but it’s when these instruments are converted to capture broadcast quality audio that new worlds open up to me.
There’s a lovely interview with you on BBC Radio 4 in which you described sound as being “really understated”. I wondered whether you could expand on that idea a little more. Why do you think people are less conscious of their sonic environments?
Humans are vision-led so our perception of an environment is dominated by what we see. We hear but are often not in a state of conscious listening. When we do listen we take in so much more of the world around us. We slow down, connect and think at a deeper, more inquisitive level.
Sounds can be very manipulative. An unsettling noise will send us into a state of high alert. A beautiful sound can relax and excite us. A soundtrack plays on this, using sound to make the audience feel wonder or tension. If the recordings, music and narration are done well and work in synchronicity then you can feel a chemistry - your brain accepts the story, the edges of the cinema screen disappear from view and you sink into the world of the film. The thing is, you might not be conscious that it’s the sound that is creating this magic. If the sound is wrong you notice it, don’t connect with or care about the story, but if it’s right then a film gets under your skin, it moves you. That is the understated power and importance of sound.
You also talk about the feeling you get when you’re listening and recording. Can you put your finger on what that feeling is?
When I listen, especially to birdsong, in a forest with the levels turned up I get ‘the chills’. I can only think that it’s a combination of the calm you feel in nature combined with the excitement you get listening to live music. A sound-triggered neurochemical cocktail of dopamine, endorphins and adrenaline. Alongside this, I get a feeling of hyperfocus and a slowing down of thoughts, I notice everything around me and it feels vibrant and textured. It’s a way of stepping out of the fast pace of daily life and it’s my soul food. I love it.
I also loved your description of sound recording as a combination of science, art and natural history. What are the most creative elements of your work and what are the most technical?
The technical elements for me are in the planning. After getting the brief for a shoot, I’ll spend quite some time working out what kit I’ll need to get all the elements and perspectives, and to cope with the environment. I might tap into the sound or scientific communities to bounce ideas if it’s something or somewhere I haven’t recorded before. Then I build the kit completely to make sure I have absolutely everything (the shoots are often remote so forgetting something would not be good) and pack it carefully to cope with the journey. When I’ve arrived and rigged the kit then I can relax into being creative which, when on a sync shoot (working alongside a cinematographer and director) means getting all the sounds needed to tell the story and match the perspectives being shot. I want to get into the world of the animal character so I imagine the role sound plays in their world and how that can be represented and the mics I need to do this. I don’t like to disturb wildlife so I tread lightly and work quietly. I might be up at dawn or find moments away from the crew to get those pure-sounding recordings.
Do you have any favourite animals or environments to record in or have developed a personal relationship with?
Sometimes the best sounds are the ones that connect you with home. I love hearing a dawn chorus anywhere in the world but the sound on a spring morning in the woodland on my lane has the most meaning for me. Could a song be any more pure than that of a wren? I challenge you to find one. And the most enjoyable thing is when I hear snippets of birdsong when I’m rushing through the urban landscape of Bristol, close to where I live. Blackbird, robin, bluetit, treecreeper singing from scraps of green between roads and buildings and the thrum of walking crowds. It kicks me out of busy thoughts and everything lightens. I listen so much that I never miss a sound.
Have you noticed any changes in the sonic environments you’ve recorded over the last 20 years, or ways in which climate change has shifted or impacted the sound of the natural world?
Other than a British woodland, I briefly step in and out of environments, so I don’t feel an expert in change. But I work alongside conservationists who do and are on the front line with this. I filmed in Costa Rica last year with turtle scientists in a national park on the Pacific side. The beach used to feel remote and was protected from development but in the last few years the building sites and bars have crept in. I was recording the sea using a geophone one night and through it picked up music from a booming sound system on the distant far side of the bay travelling not just through the air but through the ground. Female turtles return to the exact same spot where they were born as adults to lay their own nest of eggs and sound helps them to navigate back. Less and less turtles have been returning to this spot and I can’t help but think that human-made noise must be a major reason for this. My equipment makes me more sensitive to anthropophony and more aware of how hard it is to be somewhere free from it.
Sound is an indication of the health of an environment but sometimes it takes being somewhere unusually sound-rich to notice how quiet many of our wild spaces have become. I filmed in a rewilded valley close to home on a summer’s day a couple of years ago and the wildflower meadows were so delightfully rich and alive with insect calls. Resting in the grass, I was surrounded by that busy sound-electricity and I realised I’d forgotten what it felt like. It was like stepping back in time to the sound from my childhood again. The cameraman and I were so excited by this that we went back and made a film about the valley’s biodiversity. We wanted to share the story of how the valley had been revived. Moments like that give me hope. If we rewild, tread lightly and slow down, all the rich layers of sound will begin to come back.
All photos courtesy of Ellie Williams.
Very interesting read. Great article Anton!