The man behind the sound for Better Man

PRODUCTION sound mixer Guntis Sics has been named among the finalists in the upcoming AACTA Awards for his work on the Robbie Williams biopic Better Man.

Sics, from Coopers Shoot in the Byron Bay hinterland, was listed in the Best Sound in Film category, alongside his colleagues.

The winner will be announced at a ceremony on the Gold Coast on February 5.

Sics has a long and illustrious career in the film industry, working on movies such as The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert; Aquaman; Kong: Skull Island; The Great Gatsby; Australia and Wolverine.

He won a BAFTA for his work on Moulin Rouge, and was nominated for an Oscar.

Sics said he was enormously proud of Better Man and felt honoured to be an award finalist.

“It’s a rollicking musical biography but done in a really original, unique and exciting way,” he said.

“When I was first told that Robbie Williams was going to be a monkey I thought ‘huh?’, but then I watched the promo and it works.

“It’s a really clever idea — Robbie used to say he felt like a trained monkey being dragged onto the stage and told to perform.”

Sics said the movie, which was filmed in Melbourne in 2022, was enormously fun to work on.

“Robbie turned up on the second day and sang us a few songs,” he said.

“When he was doing a concert at Rod Laver Arena we used his audience of 15,000 people as extras.”

But he said it was also a complex and challenging film to make.

One scene involved the monkey coming onto a stage to perform alongside the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, and the music and dialogue had to be perfectly timed.

“I used a lot of extra technology, such as earwigs, so people could hear the timing of something,” Sics said.

“It was really cutting edge in every way. I recorded all Jonno Davies’ dialogue for the film and then they put it through software that changed his accent to be more like Robbie’s.”