They Will Kill You Sound Engineers on Action Film’s Retro Feel & More

Posted in: Movies, Warner Bros | Tagged: they will kill you

They Will Kill You Sound Engineers on Action Film's Retro Feel & More

Sound engineers Jeff Pitts and Duncan McRae spoke to us about the Warner Bros.' action romp They Will Kill You, retro inspirations & more.

Published Mon, 06 Jul 2026 14:47:08 -0500
by Tom Chang
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Article Summary

• They Will Kill You sound engineers Jeff Pitts and Duncan McRae break down what made Kirill Sokolov’s film so irresistible.
• Pitts reveals how They Will Kill You twists its action setup into something stranger, bolder, and creatively freeing.
• The team explains how They Will Kill You used tape decks, mono mixes, and vintage tools to build a gritty ’70s feel.
• From Kill Bill to anime-inspired effects, They Will Kill You blends retro action influences into a sharp sonic identity.

Supervising sound editor Jeff Pitts (Cuckoo) and rerecording mixer Duncan McRae (Masters of the Air) have worked in most genres throughout their respective careers, but haven't encountered the action-comedy spectacle of Kirill Sokolov's They Will Kill You. As a love letter to 1970s kung fu action cinema, the film follows Asia Reaves (Zazie Beetz), who comes to the Vigil, a high-rise building in New York City, after being separated from her sister (Myha'la) 10 years earlier, a building that has been the center of numerous disappearances over the years. Pitts and McRae spoke to Bleeding Cool about working with Sokolov (who co-wrote the script with Alex Litvak), experimenting with older sound equipment, and tapping into multiple inspirations from older action flicks to anime.

How Sound Engineers Jeff Pitts and Duncan McRae Helped Create '70s Retro Action Feel to 'They Will Kill You'

BC: What intrigued you about 'They Will Kill You,' and how'd you both get involved?

Pitts: I read the script before they started shooting, and one of the things that struck me when I first read the script was the setup for these main characters, and then after that first battle, they all get killed, but not killed, and then they reincarnate. Right up to that point, you're like, "Oh, this is going to be a normal thing and then it totally veers off onto its own path, and for me, I thought that was really interesting about the film. I consumed that script in an hour and then had ideas of exactly how we should go with it. When I talked to Kirill [Sokolov] about it, he was like, "Yeah, this is what we should do, man. This is awesome!" That helped a lot with it, and then Mr. Duncan here.

McRae: For me, I've known Jeff for quite a while now, and I can trust Jeff's enthusiasm. When he came to me about this project and was more than excited, and hearing that Kirill allowed Jeff to explore all his ideas in the way that he can, I couldn't say "No" to that. That's just a room full of creativity and pushing all sorts of boundaries. So it was the collaboration of that hive mind that really excited me as well.

What was it about Kirill as a creative that stood out to you versus others that you've worked with in the past?

Pitts: Oh, man, you're going to put me under the bus with all these other people, okay. Well, I will say Kirill is very receptive to creative input. He does have his ideas and how he wants it to go. He has these concepts, and he's the director, so he should have those things. There's that time that we're on the stage, and we collapse the music down into that very old-school mono moment, and he didn't really understand what we were doing while we were working on it, and it takes time to do all this stuff. You must spend time on the stage, but he let us do it, and he's like, "Okay, I don't know what's going on, but you guys explore it, then we'll see," and then it's in the movie. Stuff like that is cool; possibly, some other director would not allow you to veer off in those directions. Personally, most of the directors I've worked with are fine with that, but maybe that would be the case.

McRae: Yeah, [Kirill] definitely invited everybody into the conversation of ideas and exploring the different possibilities his filmmaking style allows and lends itself to really approaching things stylistically. He certainly has a vision from the beginning of how things are laid out to go, but he opens it up to all of us to share how we're interpreting it and what we can lend to it, elevate it, and make it. It was pushing for a lot of power at times that it came from all disciplines, whether it was the dialogue, music, or sound effects. He allowed a lot of handoffs in that kind of way, too, which really complemented each other, so the whole group really had great input together.

Were there any other projects or filmmakers that might have influenced the way you tackled the film, perhaps 'Battle Royale' (2000), video games, or similar things that come to mind?

Pitts: Yeah, I mean. When we discuss this style, first off, it's very heavily influenced by the 70s genre film style, and, obviously, 'Kill Bill' (2003/2004) is a huge influence on this, so we went back to some of those styles. A lot of the processing was done through tape decks to degrade sounds and make them not so perfect. There was also the anime aspect where I've done some cartoon stuff, but I haven't done anime style, specifically, so it was cool to like deep dive that whole thing, and figure out how they used to use like frequency shifters to design sound effects while using those old techniques to like recreate some sound design that going to go into the film, so that was fun.

McRae: Yeah, the film really has clear chapters of progression as we evolve through. There is a little bit of, I suppose, that video game aspect that you're mentioning there to it, but there's a lot of clear cause-and-effect or payoff moments that we accent and really focus on for the audience at times as well. There's that satisfying feeling in the approach as well.

Warner Bros.' They Will Kill You, which also stars Paterson Joseph, Tom Felton, Heather Graham, and Patricia Arquette, is available on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray and DVD, and can be streamed on HBO Max.

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