The Legend Of Ochi features some of the most impressive original, practical creature design that movie-goers will find in modern cinema, but what’s amazing about the titular fantastical beasts isn’t just limited to their physicality and splashy orange-and-blue coloring. Their way of communicating is a wonder, and the sounds they produce are not just beautiful, but also a key element in the story.
I left watching the film at a preview screening earlier this month fascinated by the Ochi language, and I thusly felt compelled to ask writer/director Isaiah Saxon all about its creation when I participated in the virtual press day for The Legend Of Ochi later that week. He started by explaining that there was a real world basis for how he wanted the creatures to talk, and while particular inspiration came from the sea and the sky, he knew that there would have to be some simian influence as well. Said the filmmaker,
I knew I wanted a believable animal language, something that had a musical quality to it. I was inspired by bird song and dolphin communication something that had complexity and high pitch pulses was my instinct. And I started looking into that space, reading books on whistled languages and human animal communication, animal communication. And I knew it needed to be a human-produced sound, actually, because this is an ape, and we’re apes.
This led Saxon to do what just about all of us do in this modern age when we have a question or a curiosity: a turned to the internet. With a basic idea of what he was looking for, he typed a vague query into YouTube, and, strangely enough, the search result led him to the man who would come to produce the sound of the Ochi in the film. Saxon continued,
I started searching for the term throat whistling on YouTube, you know, because I knew if you whistle with your mouth pursed, it just kind of looks dorky and it’s too romantic. But if you were whistling from back in your throat, that feels animalistic. And so I didn’t know throat whistling was a thing, but I typed it into YouTube and I found this little video from this guy named Paul Manalatos, Paul ‘The Birdman’ Manalatos.
It’s perhaps a lesson for all the folks out there with a unique talent: if you record a video of yourself doing it and upload it online, you may one day find yourself hired to be a part of an upcoming A24 movie!
Isaiah Saxon was actually so impressed by the video he found that the actual audio from the clip on YouTube was ultimately used in a key point in the finished film:
He had one video and it just was him in his basement. And he said, ‘Hey guys, I learned how to sing like a bird in my throat.’ And he went, ‘ah,’ and literally the sound of that he made in that one little clip is the sound of the Ochi when you first see them, just no edits. That’s the sound. I lifted it from the YouTube video.
The video of Paul Manalatos is still available online, and you can watch it below. Per the video description, he first recorded it back in 2012:
The Legend Of Ochi doesn’t just use Paul Manalatos’ talent as exhibited in that one video, though. As Isaiah Saxon explained, he was recruited to be a part of the production. He noted that the sound we hear in the finished film isn’t exclusively Manalatos, as he wanted the sound to maintain the aforementioned influences from creatures of the sea and sky, but the filmmaker gives the YouTuber a great deal of credit:
The rest of the film, we brought him into a recording booth and he performed the lines like any actor hitting all of these emotional articulations with his throat. And I mixed in a little bit of mockingbird and raven and whale for the more resonant tones. But yeah, it’s really, Paul Manalatos is performing the Ochi.
Featuring a talented cast including Helena Zengel, Willem Dafoe, Finn Wolfhard and Emily Watson, The Legend Of Ochi made its world premiere earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival and is now in theaters.
