In A24’s new fantasy adventure movie The Legend of Ochi, the titular apelike creatures communicate via strange chirps and whistles. Their unique vocals become a pivotal plot point, especially after lonely 12-year-old Yuri (Helena Zengel) runs off to return a baby ochi to its colony deep in the forest. For the most part, people like Yuri’s father (Willem Dafoe) view the ochi as aggressive, but Yuri learns that they’re not as dangerous as her village believes.
[Ed. note: This post contains slight spoilers for The Legend of Ochi.]
Yuri eventually learns how to communicate with the creature, and later, learns from her estranged mother (Emily Watson) that the ochi sometimes engage in a beautiful, harmonious song all together. Writer-director Isaiah Saxon had a very clear idea of what he wanted the ochi to sound like — a mix of musical birdsong and dolphin noises, but realistically made by a primate. One serendipitous encounter on YouTube really made everything click together.
“I was looking for human sounds, and I looked up the term ‘throat-whistling’ on YouTube,” Saxon told Polygon ahead of the movie’s release. “I found this guy named Paulythebirdman Manalatos. He just had one video on his account, and it was him in a hoodie in his basement. And he’s like, ‘Hey guys, I figured out this thing I can do in the back of my throat. I sound like a bird.’ And he goes, ‘Aah!’ The thing that comes out of his mouth is the actual audio that we used in the movie. I’ve ripped it from YouTube. The first time the ochi speak is that recording from that YouTube video.”
Saxon says he reached out to Manalatos, who was immediately drawn to the movie’s script.
“He said, ‘Oh my God, this is my life story. My mom was out of the picture, and I turned to black metal and throat-whistling to express myself,’” Saxon said. “We got him into the booth, recorded him for a couple of days, just going through the whole script, and just like any other actor, hitting every little emotional beat through throat-whistling. It was incredible. In the edit, I mixed in a little bit of mockingbird and raven and whale for the larger adult ochi, but it’s almost all him.”
Manalatos taught Saxon how to throat-whistle, though he says he can’t do it to the extent that Manalatos can. And even though Yuri eventually is able to replicate the noises, Zengel didn’t actually make them — she just mimed the process. The technique, it turns out, is very intensive on the vocal cords.
“I taught Helena, and she could kind of do it too, but the amount of time she needed to do it, she could have permanently ruined her voice,” Saxon explained. “I was like, That’s medically unsafe.”
The Legend of Ochi is out in limited release now, expanding to wide release on April 25.
The post How the Legend of Ochi director found his perfect throat-whistler appeared first on Polygon.
