Tonebenders Live: Sound Design for Franchise Films

Welcome back to the Sonic Days Podcast. In this episode, moderator Timothy Muirhead from the Tonebenders Sound Design Podcast brings together a panel of sound designers to discuss the workflows, challenges, and expectations they face while working on some of the world's biggest film franchises. We thank Timothy Muirhead for putting this episode together.

And be sure to check out the Tone Benders Podcast. Enjoy.

Hello and welcome to Tone Benders where we talk with the Sonic artists behind our favorite films, games, and series. Excellent. As you can hopefully hear, I'm in front of a live audience. We're at Sonic Days in Kohling, Denmark. We're starting the last day of the festival, the conference, and it's been amazing so far.

I want to thank everybody at Sonic Days for uh having us all and putting on this amazing conference. Uh we have people here that have traveled from Sweden, from Portugal, from Germany, from all points around the globe, and it's really amazing to have an international uh conference where we all get to meet each other and share our common love of sound and be all nerds together.

It's been a really inspiring couple days. And uh I want to thank everybody that got up early to come and partake in this. Let's introduce our guests here today. We're gonna have a talk with some of the featured guests who've traveled to Sonic Days. First up, we have Kim Critching, who traveled here from California.

You work at uh Skywalker Ranch. Yes, uh Kim is got IMDB, oh yes, there we go. There we go. Kim has IMDB credits for uh supervising sound editor, re-recording mixer, dialogue editor, sound effects editor, foley editor, studio manager, studio builder. Uh he's done it all, and uh it's great to have you here.

Thanks so much for talking with us. Thank you for having me. Uh next up we have Tormud Ringes. Tormid, uh, I first discovered you a couple years ago when I saw an amazing documentary called Songs of Earth. It's uh this Norwegian documentary that blew my mind, and I immediately thought I have to figure out who did the sound for this because it was so great.

Tormund and I did an amazing interview for that, and then uh now Tormud is here to talk about his work on the neutron movie, which your presentation was yesterday, and it had the strongest opening of any presentation. He played the light bike sequence with no music or dialogue, and like everybody's hair just like pinned back, and it was really inspiring to hear that on its own.

Amazing work. Welcome, Tormid. And our third guest, uh, longtime listeners of Tone Benders will know James Mather. He's been on Tone Benders to talk about his work on four Harry Potter films Mission Impossible, Dead Reckoning, Top Gun Maverick. Uh, he's one of my favorite all-time guests. Thanks so much for coming out today, James.

It's a great pleasure.

Thank you for having me.

So uh the first question I want to ask is uh, what was the moment where you kind of put sound to a picture and it made your brain light up and your neurons just like fire, and you were like, this is something that I want to do. Or maybe it was a first field recording you did, uh something along those lines.

Tormid, you want to maybe take that first?

I think about the film I did. We had a short film festival in Norway. One of the presses is a Dolby Award press though. So Ian Allen came every year to Norway to do like short films. I think the biggest thing was for producer, director, and everything. That was the biggest prize. So we always strive to make the sound as good so we can win the Dolby Prize because that was the biggest prize on that festival.

So that was amazing. So we got uh, and I did a film called The Kosmonaut, and it was about a Russian kosmonaut in there that got lost. And you have to be there alone. And making that sound of him alone inside that capsule and losing everything, and then we started to hear himself and all the small details that we added, and I just felt doing all those things and without music and anything, and just the feeling of being there was something just uh uh uh blew my mind.

That was a cool James.

Wow, Blimey. I think when I started when I started on film, so I think the first time that I worked on sound in the days in the 80s, this the assistant film editor would work with the editor on the soundtrack as well as the cutting the picture. So you'd you'd carry on, you'd continue through the sound process.

And I remember sitting in the cutting room on a steampack flatbed, and um I had to go through and check the sink of the tracks to the picture, and whenever there was an issue with the the sink, I would just cut frames out of the picture to make it work. So clearly, clearly, sound was far more important to me than the picture was.

But I think when I traveled to I went travelling and I I ended up in in uh Melbourne, and I got a job on a film called Mad Max Beyond the Thunderdome, and that was again that was all on film, and somebody came in with a uh I think it was a Fairlight, St. Clapia Fairlight, and they were demoing how it works linking to picture, and it was like it just blew my mind because working on sound when you're on film, it's very it's it's a slow process and it's laborious, and it it's creative, but it's you know, it's limited.

But this thing just blew the doors off, and it was like you can do anything you want, and you can do it a different way every time, and you can and it was my first sort of eye-opener to digital sound, way before Picture was going digital sound, went there because of music, really. At that point, I just went, Oh, I've got to do sound.

This is way cooler, this is way more fun, and it's tied into music, which we all as kids, you know, we've played in bands. And so when I came back from Australia, I I kind of I bought my first digital workstation and and got into it then. And that for me was like it was like playing with mercury instead of carving stone.

It was just it was freedom of expression, freedom of opportunity. So that that's when I suddenly realized sand is like forget picture. I'm I'm gonna do sand then. This is the way to go. Kim?

It's a really good question. I mean, I I luckily still feel like um you work on certain things, and sometimes you don't know what you're gonna do to make it work. And I will often go back, maybe a few months later, to something and go, I have no idea. This sounds pretty good, but I had no idea how to get there.

And so I still get that feeling, but uh and and that so it's happened a lot where you where I still surprise myself, either with the stuff I do or colleagues. Uh, first time probably was which I talked about yesterday a little bit, but I was in the basement uh at the Francis Cobbler's building on my own, working uh on the Bremsorchus Dracula, and was trying to figure out how at that time to put a wolf's voice into a man's mouth and make it work.

Somebody had the great idea of recording Tom Waits, who was in the film. And Tom Waits gave us all these sounds. I mean, he went clearly, I mean, he went nuts, just like he does in the movie, and he was amazing. So I had him and I had Wolves recorded by Alan Splitt, and I had the very first version of the, I don't even know if the audience is so young, uh, the uh the emulator box.

It was a box where you could pitch things down. Still works brilliantly. Just pitching things down is surprising how effective that is. But I had that box, I could put Tom Waits' voice in there, and then I could pitch it down. I could only uh you could only load one bank. Yeah and then the thing would crash.

So you work and then you restart and wait five minutes, get cup of coffee. But I think when that worked, and I didn't know if it was gonna work, and I, you know, and and that was that was a really important, but it still happens. It's not like that was just that. It's just it was so often you do something, they go, yeah, that that really makes things shine.

Uh and then hopefully the director or producer will come in later on and go, we like that off. And they go, Yeah, no, we don't like that. Let's just do this. So yeah.

If you'll indulge me, I'll tell my story really quick. Um, when I was walking home from school in high school, uh, to get home, I went along a main thoroughfare in the town that I lived on. And I was walking, and in the ditch beside the road, there was a pelican case just sitting there. So I climbed down in the ditch and I got it, and I opened it up, and it was a DAT machine.

With microphones and everything. And it was the recording kit of uh CBC, I'm from Canada, that's the national broadcaster. One of their reporters had had it on the back of their motorcycle and it had fallen off. And so I get home and I open it up, and I there's a manual, I read the manual, and now I'm recording myself making noise.

I'm recording my my oven beeping, and I was just making all these sounds, and I was having the time of my life, and I was like, this is the greatest thing I've ever owned. And then my parents came home and were like, You don't, this is not yours. And uh they made me, there was a business card and they made me phone the guy, as they should have, they're good parents.

And but he came and picked it up and sat down with me for about 20 minutes and showed me really how to use it. And uh, I was just like, This is the greatest thing in the world. And uh the next semester I started taking media courses in high school, and then I went to film school. And in film school, I figured out I wanted to do sound for everybody's film.

And but it all started from that random uh pelican box sitting in a ditch that I happened to notice, but I just had my eyes nowadays. I would have been looking at my phone and never seen it. So uh it was uh that that was the kind of changing point for me. So you actually fell over sound. Yeah, it fell right into it.

Fell into it, yeah. Um let's talk about you've all worked on uh kind of IP franchise stuff. Um you started with it with uh Dracula. It's not just an IP Well, it's a big huge. And there have been previous versions of it made, so you uh had to kind of figure out I wondered if we could talk about how you take something that people already have have an idea of what maybe the first version sounded like or maybe the first multiple versions, and how you kind of go about trying to find a way to make it yours, like put your own uh secret sauce into it.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, first off, of course, I was I was just the the assistant sound designer, so it's not like I was the one doing the big picture, but uh I was part of of you know, after the ideas from from Leslie Shatz, I was the one who executed them. I mean, crazily. I mean, I I'm not sure if I would have that confidence somebody to just go, leave me.

I mean, he left me alone for three weeks. He only did one reel. But I think the film was so unique at the time that it sort of, it kind of made itself. And everybody was there was there was absolutely no interference. I mean, we did the sound design, I mean, Francis might have looked in once or twice, but there were there were absolutely no interference.

And we came up to mix, he's he has uh probably still has a mixing uh room up on his uh property. Uh it was just sitting and mixing. The biggest thing was to make the music fit, and he had barred the studios from from being there, which is why he had the thing. So nobody was allowed. They uh finally had some poor old soul executive they put up there, and all he was allowed to was to sit outside the door.

Wouldn't allow him in. So I so I I don't know. I mean, we for that particular thing, we just kind of did what we thought was gonna work. There was really no guidance, which is remarkable, you know. And then I was I sat in a very sweet seat because I was behind the mix, and I was the one who knew where all the stuff was for this design, and that was my gig.

And I knew at the time, luckily, that this this does not happen that often. Yeah. That, you know, because I was not really in the line of fire. There was plenty of other people in front of me, so I could just kind of sit and do my thing, mess up a few things, and just kind of be away from everything.

So I think it's a unique and it's still a unique film. You know, yeah.

Torma, do you want to talk about putting your own kind of voice into the Tron franchise?

Oh yeah. For me, it's like a respect of the previous uh Tron films. When I'm kind of start building my kind of sound and palette, I watched the previous films and I tried to find the core kind of what it sounds like and how it's built up. Um but uh Tron they don't have any like a specific like Star Wars, have like this iconic sounds, it's just more a feeling.

It's like so for me it's like try to find the core feeling of those two previous films and do something f fresh. But there are fans that are so into the sound of the light bikes, you need to be quite precise of what the the previous one, but you you need to make it fresh as well. So that that's my take on it.

And James, so you you have encountered this a couple times through the Harry Potter series, where it was an ongoing series. Like the previous movie was just a couple years before the one that you started on, and then you have other ones like Top Gun where it was 30 years between the two films.

You inherit the DNA. Well, the directors inherit the DNA of previous uh uh versions, previous films, the basic elements of all the characters and the world they live in. Um so you respect the DNA because it works, which is why you're employed on another film that keeps making another film and then and but you but you are uh you the you have ultimate uh expression and bandwidth to uh create what the director is their vision is always gonna be unique to the previous.

So respect the DNA of of the of the original and and the all the work and the the time and effort that's been put into it, but expand it into the world that the director is now taking you. And I think um in Harry Potter it was about the emotional maturity and the anxiety of teenagehood became more aggressive and more and darker.

And so that was a different world for us to explore that really hadn't they hadn't got to until we started. It was just, you know, that was we that's where we came in. And with Mission, it was uh again, it was a new director who then carried on through for the last four. So it was the way he wanted the films to be like the fact they were real stunts, the fact that it was um uh it was the same group, same people with people coming in out.

The DNA was the same. So you just as long as you you respect that, because the audience need that, that's what they depend on. Um, you can then go whichever way you feel is the right way to go to tell the story that the the director's after. Um every feature, every project is unique. You go, I mean, it doesn't matter how many you do, there are always things that come up that are not that are unexpected.

And you'd have thought, you know, well, they've done three of these, so they've done that, it's gonna be fine. It's never fine. It's always it's always a challenge. And every film is like that. And so you kind of you you have it's it's it's not copy-paste. It's not like you can just take from one and give to the other.

You have to come at it from a fresh standpoint. What's the what's the art gonna be? What's the point of this? Where's the drama? You know, and and then the composers change. And that's a big deal, right? When when when you've got something that has always had John Williams and now it's got Han Zimmer or Lormouth, it's like, well, okay, we've got a different creature here.

This is a different vibe. So um I I always think that that uh inheriting other people's work is a it's fascinating. It's fascinating because you're looking at somebody else's hard work, effort, design, and respecting it and going, okay, this is an amazing job. You know, Randy Tom did a fantastic job, and the Harry Potters, and it doesn't mean that that's what you have to continue, but you can take that, use it, enjoy it, build on it.

It's lovely. I mean, it's like you know, the worst thing, I don't know if you guys find, but when you start a project and it's completely blank canvas, and you're like, I just need to work out where to start. What's the first footprint? You know, how it's like an artist, what's the first line that you draw?

And when you pick up a picture that's got history or it's got you go, okay, well, I know I've got a foundation, so this is great. I can just add, and then that might then allow me to take away what was there previously.

I think also the talk between us as some designers and with the director, what his direction is. So because on Tron he wanted to be more gritter, more like uh real life feeling, and so the talk we had like where he wanna go, that's uh important. So you try to keep the legacy but also do something that uh well and of course, yes you said when you have a new composer that from Tron from Daft Punk to Nine Inch Nails, that's a totally different film so we can kind of do.

So we we fan out earlier that we started doing more digital, more like on the previous Tron. But when we kind of start working with Joachim and he asked us to be more use real engines and be more like physical and more gritter and take away all the electronics and uh because the 90 snales will be more analog so that you compared to death one.

So that's yeah.

I mean other times too. You don't really want to do what's been done before, regardless of whether or not it always works, and that's kinda almost the hardest thing. Because to try to figure out well, what I know the wheel is round, and that's the best way that it rolls. But there's gotta be a slightly different way of really uh, you know, like let's not put in that red-tailed hawk in there just because there's a there's a please, please, let's do something else.

So, you know, and and when you and you you were talking about having you know this just this open canvas, and I've found you sit there and you can sometimes just go, again, I don't know what to do. And the only thing I found is I'm just gonna focus on one thing and just start there. And then for the most part, that keeps the ball rolling.

But if you start worrying about the whole thing, you it's kind of game over. You just you can just go home and go to bed and curl up in a in a ball and then come back the next day. But just finding that one little piece, you can you know it doesn't matter where. No, just find something, go, oh, that works, and then all of a sudden things, you know, slot gates might confidence.

Oh, yeah, they're confidence, yeah, which sometimes you have, other times not so much.

And you should think sometimes you can have too much. Yeah, and that doesn't work. Well, I thought this was great.

No, it's a shit.

You can cut that up, right?

No, no, no. It's in. It's in. Well, that leads me to kind of my next question. We all the people in this room can't really relate to the first film they're working on being a Ford Coppola classic. Uh like that's or even a Mad Max film. But we can all relate to the idea of we cut something in, we're really proud of, and then the director doesn't like it, or it doesn't work when the music comes in, and then you're stuck with uh this doesn't work, and then your brain starts spiraling.

I don't know what I'm doing, I'm never gonna be able to figure this out, and then you again you have to. Do you do you maybe want to talk about how you deal with uh I guess like that imposter syndrome, that like the panic of how and hell Xanax, I think. Okay, next question.

Torment? It's a good idea to have that because I remember when we got Tron, man, we were mixing young Joachim had this talk with uh the producer, and he kinda came to us and said, Okay, we're gonna uh you wanna join doing Tron? And we was oh that's like a $200 million project with so iconic previous films.

For me, it's like I always try to not be afraid of failing. That's uh because I just wanna and I think sometimes to do things that are wrong is a good idea because then you can find where you should go. So I've always tried to do stuff and and show it to Joachim and show it to other directors and have a conversation.

And sometimes when we have a screening and I feel something is wrong, I tell them that oh I'm I agree, or I can it's a discussion. So I'm never afraid of showing things that are not perfectly, but this is like an ongoing uh collaboration or like a process. The process is where things can happen.

When I first started doing bigger films, um and there was more time and more people involved in the sound team, we used to have this kind of right, we're gonna do we're gonna do the vanilla, and that would be all the backgrounds, neutral backgrounds, so so you'd have this sort of canvas of audio that you could then put your colours in, and then you'd sort of layer it.

So you'd you'd start with the really broad strokes, and then you'd get down to the fine details. And weirdly, inversely, now forget backgrounds, backgrounds are irrelevant, they're just noise, they just take up soak up the dynamics. I don't need backgrounds. What I need is the doors and the functional sounds that are gonna make this thing come to life, and then it's like.

Okay, there may be somewhere where backgrounds are essential because they're going to change the viewers' perspective of where they are, and it you can't do it any other way. But it's like I think the difference is you start off putting everything in and then sort of taking away what you don't need, and then as you get more into the process and as you get more confident, maybe, um, or lazy, but you you just go, okay, I'm just gonna put in the bits that I know are like definite, you know.

When a car starts, the engine ticks over, that's a sound that needs to go in. So it's like you said, you start on things that they may not ever change or they may get scrapped, but you start with the basics, and it it builds up slowly like that. The sounds that I always like to start with are the sounds that I don't expect anybody to comment or notice.

They're the kind of obvious things that should be there, and and it's like and it warms you up and it gets you into things. But it everybody's got a different, everybody's got a different approach, and you you feel what gives you the most confidence is the best thing to start with. If it's sound design, start with some crazy sound design.

That's always going to change because of music and because of cuts and everything else. But if it's foley, start with foley. If it's dialogue, start with whatever gives you the sense of satisfaction that you're achieving something and moving forward. That's that's I think the the first part of the process.

Yeah, I mean, if you really start off, you can't quite understand what it is that either the director or maybe the supervisor asks for, uh, and you go, Well, what is he really thinking? Because I'm looking at this, and he says, I want it to sound like popcorn. You know, but there's no popcorn there. And you're like, ah, what is what does it mean?

And he so, and you can't often you cannot see what's inside the brain and how this whatever sound that comes in. So you go back, and so I think the most trying to get yourself the confidence to go, I'm gonna do something that I like. I'm gonna do this thing that I know works. Now, whether or not you know the supervisor or the other do not like it, that's quite okay because hopefully I've been hired because you like how I do things.

And so if so I have to do things that I like and go, I'm I'm okay with this. We can change it. But so if but if I hand something over that I try to do because I think that's what they're thinking, then it's like you know, you're standing on one leg in a tutu, you know. I mean, and and the plate most likely is going to fall down.

And then, but so and then you can also very easily take the criticism or the feedback as to, well, you know, did you realize that blah, blah, blah? And often I'm I'm not even seeing the whole movie or I've watched it without the dialogue. And so sometimes I miss like, no, no, the action is that person actually is dying in the next reel, like, oh, okay.

Whoops, I didn't, you know, uh do that. So I think work for yourself first, or at least for me. Uh, and I think we maybe restart a little differently because I do like kind of have a place where things are put into, but I don't like vanilla backgrounds.

No, no.

Because I I don't see the point. I don't see the point.

It's like, it's like, it's like, yeah, exactly. It's like painting a wall white before you're gonna paint it blue. Yeah, just paint it blue.

There's enough noise, there's enough noise already, exactly. Even just to clean out in the dialogue.

It's a it's a barrier of insecurity, I always think. It's like, uh, okay, you're just wasting time. Yeah, you do the stuff that needs to be done, not there. Yeah, I think that's the problem with sound effects, sound design. The world of sound is is an extraordinary place that is it that is from going digital to expansive, immersive, atmos, you know, IMAX, it's all sound has had, in my opinion, more investment and more experimentation and more uh evolution uh in in a shorter period of time than than picture has.

And so sound can do so much more. And the the problem can sometimes be what matters, you know. Do you fill every speaker? Do you make everything happen? Or is less more important because there's now so much happening all over the place. The last I've got directors that I've worked with who cannot stand anything that isn't on the screen.

It's like we might as well mix in mono. Because he's like, What that why am I why what's that? What's going on out there? He did um he directed uh zone of interest. And uh what was really interesting about zone of interest is all the sound was in the room. It was every but not none of it was on the screen.

So he's changed his he's changed his uh his flavours. But it's it's you know that that notion that you you you never really think about how you're gonna start moving the sands around the room. You know, that's that's the joy of what we do. We we we put it all together so that when we get to the mix, that extra level of expertise, craftsmanship, artistry, the mixer comes in and he then or she then has thoughts about how this would work, and you go, yeah, yeah, I put this there so you can do that with it, and that.

And then we become the kind of I don't know, waiters. You know, we're there to do that.

Well, it's it's the coolest thing. You build things, and if you have the good mixers, and you think, yeah, this is pretty good, and we can do so much in the edit rooms in terms of sort of setting things up, but then you put it into a mixer who this is what they do all day. I I don't quite understand why you want to always sit for 12 hours, but anyways, it makes them very, very good.

Yeah, and all of a sudden they go, Well, how about this? And you go, that is I didn't even think of that, and that is the best. That and that's why the call, you know, collaboration, when you find the right, you know, it's personalities, and you find that right, and and that happens, and and hopefully that happens enough.

And that's just do you do you talk to I know you mix as well a lot, but but uh you know, do you converse with the mixers? Do you kind of know who's gonna mix the movie when you start? And do you ever often yeah? Do you do you talk to them and share ideas about it?

Yeah, I mean I I I mix the small things that I do. I don't I'm I don't touch when it's when when it's 200 million that is not gonna sit there. I'm not gonna sit up. But if it's me and a director and they barely got the budget together, we we can talk, you know. No, it's absolutely you want to know, and and there and has nothing, it's just there's certain uh mixes that you will work better with.

Yeah, and and who understands you? Because luckily everybody's got a flavor. We all have a flavor. I'm pretty sure if you put something up and you know, you can see, well, that's that there's a flavor and personality, which is how it should be. And so so it is with with mixers that they understand because the worst, I shouldn't be, I'm not gonna mention names.

So, way back in the past when we put things onto tape, now we have sort of a kind of sort of mix already ready. You can put the faders up to zero and in sort of kind of place. Uh, when I started out, we would put things down to tape at zero, everything. Even though in the room you would kind of sit and go, yeah, this is gonna work.

So the mixer would sit and just for the very first time hearing things. And I had a mixer who would just go, one? No, I don't like that sound. I don't like that sound. Oh, I know that area. Yeah, yeah. And it was awful because you no, no, no, no, these two things go together. Yeah, so if they don't understand how you think, and and it's sometimes, I mean, it's hard to sometimes you have to take over some other uh people's uh things for about a week or whatever, and you've got to you open another session.

And you're just like, I don't understand what's going on. What did he do? Why is that there? Why did this make no sense? You know, so finding somebody who who kind of goes, yeah, that guy's a little nuts, but I get it. They're gonna predict it. Oh, yeah, and I know all that stuff that can usually we we don't need that.

It's it's it's cute, but let's just do this and this will work. It's funny because your psychology of an editor, and you get this when you're mixing somebody else's work, the psychology of an editor is in the tracks. They don't lie. You know, you you you someone turns up and you look at it and you go, amazing.

This is beautiful. They've cut A and B, everything's checkable. You could run this, gives you the freedom to then express yourself. And you get other editors, and you're like, What the why is why is that there? There's Foley in the dialogue tracks, there's there's backgrounds in the design. And you it's the mindset of the person that's that's laid the tracks.

So discipline is a really important thing because when you're working on your own, it doesn't matter. Nobody else is gonna get involved. But when you're working in a team, which most big films have, discipline and process and and structure is essential because everybody's working to the same template.

The mixer has to know that he's got 15 buses that he can play with or she can play with, and and you've got this. I think that's the key difference with the big movies, and that's why mixing is fun on the small things because you're in control of it from the get-go. But on the big ones, you where it's coming and going and being conformed and fixed and updated, and the automation is changing.

And we the we now we are now responsible for so much that we never had to think about before.

It's so much more complex.

So much more complex. We're involved, what we present is the mix that then is mixed in a way that the uh the director and the engineer want it to be. But in the old days, it was like, okay, you conform the tracks, the mix text are going to conform the automation on the desk, on the AMS or whatever it is.

And uh you'd look at it and go, oh god. So everybody would, if things weren't right, if the automation, fader automation wasn't working, it was their fault. Great, we'll go and have lunch. Now it's all down to us. It's all down to us to get everything ready, which is nobody ever pays us for that. We don't get the compensation for that.

I've got to have some conversations. We need to have a chat.

But it's it's it's very interesting how the work how the how the responsibility has evolved. As a sound editor, the the creative artistry is is only a portion of it now, whereas it used to be a much more, used to be much more about that, and now it's about technical ability, pro tools, knowledge, um, avid anger, you know, the kind of frustrations that we have to deal with.

Um, and also people, yeah. Like you're saying, you know, working with a people, a team of people, you have to get on with them.

So you have to I agree with the like uh whole definitely hope. Just start working and put things in tracks and start. I always like to do that. But for me, also I like to create a record lots of stuff and create the palette and try to find like a red thread for the whole film and try because then because as well, since I'm also mixing, when I start mixing, I'm I'm a mixer, not doing the sound design at all, or refracting, I just put another hat on.

So then I need to know that my editors or all of a sudden had the tools of all the sounds and have the variation and everything, and we are in the same kind of palette, or we have an ID that we have talked about and discussed and yeah. So it's so important to start the project to kind of just make lots of stuff and try out things, just not just start.

It's okay. Uh I love to just start working on the feature because there's so much to do, and you can just and better to like to really create something and design something that uh are like free from the picture, but you have it in your toolbox real library that's fresh in the that's for this film, and so that's for me very important.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, for for the big movies, once you get whatever it is, this that swinging staff or whatever, that zoom or whatever that now everybody likes that you now have that specific, that's the specific library, so that whoever, once you start mixing, you know that okay, we gotta get we have to get the lower one, but everybody has access to that particular library, so you don't have to go back and try to redesign because there's no time at that point.

So there's the library specifically for the show, and the library specifically for the sound design that now has been decided on, plus personal and facility and so on and so forth. But it's you know, so so yeah, for so for the big productions, really so as you said, everything's really striped streamlined.

This the session should all look the same, and uh it's really important. Templates. Yeah, templates, except for everybody's templates are different. Some there's another plugin.

Why have we got this plugin? Why are we who's using this reversal?

Well, this is this is where the youth comes in. That's where I call the the young, the young person going, I don't, and they go, Boink, and like, okay, there you go. Okay, I that's just like I couldn't even see it because it's so tiny. And if there's any avid people in here, why are things so tiny? I can't see them anymore.

You know, and I work from sound designer too, and it just keeps getting smaller and smaller. I'm just like sometimes I just feel like I should have a person, that young person standing next to me and just go, yeah, there. It's that one. This that one, not that one.

Um, I was wondering if we could talk. Maybe it's not specifically about the sounds we're making, but uh like Tormid, when you got the phone call saying that you were gonna work on Tron, you hang the phone call up. Do you start dancing around the room? Who's the first person you call? Like the the joy of, oh my god, I got this new amazing thing.

And maybe, James, if you can talk about when you got the Harry Potter phone call, maybe first you get uh very happy, and that's like because it's a dream film for some designers. Um but so and then you get very afraid and scared and shit, and uh how uh but uh and but for me it's like uh of course uh uh I was sitting with Board, my colleague, and we've been working together for so many years.

So we just started, oh okay, let's go back and watch the previous films. We started break down the business, no no partying at all, yeah. And uh watch YouTube and read about when they call us for it. She's a big inspiration for us, like and of course, my and that was late in the process when we knew that nine inch nails will be part of it, and they are my heroes from my oh really, I didn't know that.

Oh, yeah, yeah, because everything they have done. Uh so um I remember the first swim call. We have been working with different people and directors and composers, but uh I remember the first swim call with those with them. I was so starstruck because of and you know, I've been into all those uh nerdy stuff they had done, and they're so great.

So I was feeling that's great, but you got that enthusiasm, yeah, definitely. It's really cool. And just be working with them and do the great collaboration was amazing because uh especially both of them are great, but uh the the taste and uh the what how um Atticus works is amazing, and he is a big part of the how it sounded, how this film sounded.

I'm I'm originally from a town city called Bristol, which is in the west coast of England, and um a home of trip hop, I think, is probably its biggest club. Oh, and Banksy, so that's where it's that's where it's from. So I would work in London, I'd do a drama or an animation, and that was my kind of shtick, that was what I was doing.

That was as far as I'd got. And I did a film for Terry Gilliam, which is kind of low budget, mad cap, crazy movie. It was he was making it while he was making Two Brothers, and it that was his passion project, and Two Brothers was a studio film. Anyway, I get a phone call. Uh Mike Preston Smith has put me forward for Harry Potter, like, yeah, right, okay.

And I get a phone call. Uh, would you come in and meet the director? He's keen to meet you. Now, the director had been doing TV dramas, so he was very fresh, very new to this tent pole Malarkey. And he felt it was important to get key people in the system who were also uh not familiar with that scale of project, which I thought was very brave and slightly foolhardy, maybe, but very I was very grateful to get a chance to meet them.

Um, and you come out of the meeting going, Wow, I they wanted to talk about Terry Gilliam. I don't know quite why I was there. It was just, you know, that seems to be the only reason why they asked me in. Three weeks later, or three days later, it's a blur. I get the phone call. Um, we'd love to offer you the opportunity uh to supervise Harry Potter.

And uh I still I still smile. I mean, how can you not? It still makes me uh warm inside. I remember walking across Hungerford Bridge with from Waterloo Station to Oldwich, the other side of town, of the river, sorry, and I was looking at London like it was the first time I'd ever seen London, and I was like, fuck yes, I've done it, I've done it.

And that was it, that was my moment walking across the bridge, I'll never forget. And then what the fuck am I doing? How am I gonna do it? So I phoned up a good colleague, Eddie Joseph, who had done one of the previous ones and had supervised Angel Heart and the whole, you know, it was Alan Parker's supervisor.

And I just said, Eddie, what the hell? He said, It's just a movie. Just it's just a movie. Just think of it, it's just a movie, and you'll be fine. And I'm like, okay. And actually, going back to the DNA thing, I a lot of the crew from the previous one who had worked with Randy and other other um supervisors, I kept on board because I kind of needed that safety net that that I had people that I knew and could work with, but also knew the the ropes, had been in that circus before and and and would kind of steer me through any of the it's just political, that's the only difference.

The bigger the money, the bigger the politics. And if you can stay away from that, then you know the job is the job, really. But I love the fact that you get inspired and and that you still, you know, I you you meet people, we did the Bob Marley movie, and Ziggy was on the stage with us, and I'm like, I don't think Ziggy's no, he's not Bob Marley, but he's Ziggy Marley.

Close enough. And when he says and when he says something, it's like, oh dude, you're so cool. And uh yeah, I love that. I love that we get that opportunity to be able to meet people and work with people. And be normal with people that we'd otherwise go, oh yeah.

Nice. And doing these films like working with so great, many great people, so like we know missing Ron Bartlett and Mike Press, and we have yeah we had done the film together.

It's good. I mean, I had conversations. I mean, I I was never I didn't when you sit down, you just it becomes normal, luckily. Uh it becomes somewhat normal, but I mean, also spent the night with Keanu Reeves, you know, and I was the one who was he had just flown in from doing Little Buddha in India, so he was more jet-like than I am.

And but I was told, well, you know, we need to help him out a little bit because his British English in the movie didn't quite didn't quite get that. So I was out, I was charged to go out and get some burp and I sat with him in in the theater for a bit and we had a good time. But I mean, people are just they are for the most luckily for the most part, they're regular people.

Yeah, and then there are other people where you go, really? Yeah, I'm I'm just a sound guy, man. I'm not, I don't make the rules. We're trying to make you look the best. But yeah, it's it's lovely. I just uh I finished a um a documentary about uh Pete Asher, which you're British, you know exactly who that is, I don't know if you know who it is.

But it was just I just said yes because uh I mean there was I was just doing effects and there was just a few you know archival stuff and things, but it's Pete Asher. Yeah, and he's amazing, and so just to be part of that, and I was supposed to meet him, and then apparently there was a big Beatles memorial or something bash in New York the night before we were starting to mix, and he didn't show up, so that was disappointing.

But it's just nice to be part of something. You feel like you know, you because we work so hard, yeah, and it's nice to feel, and it doesn't really matter because you still do the work, but it's nice to feel part of something, yeah. And so now I feel like I'm like, I don't know, a million years, but slightly connected to the McCartney kind of thing, uh Asher, and I know more about him.

And it's it it's completely silly, but it it's it's a nice feeling that you feel okay. Community, community, yeah. And you it's and the little bit that we do actually kind of matters in our world. Yeah.

It's hard to do that. Yeah, you can make them sound really bad if you don't like them. You can't do that. That is true. That's true. That is true.

So well, unfortunately, that's our time, but uh I like that we ended on the idea of community because I think that's what Sonic Days is all about. Uh it's what Tone Benders is trying to be all about, bring the sound community together. And uh I really appreciate you guys talking with us today and coming out Sonic Days.

And James, you haven't done your presentation yet, but Tormid and Kim, your presentations were amazing. And uh thanks everybody for coming out, and uh, we'll uh see you in the hallways around. Thanks a lot. Thank you.

Thanks for listening. If you like what you heard, be sure to leave a rating. And if you'd like to keep up with Sonic Days, please follow us on Instagram. See you next time.

Tonebenders Live: Sound Design for Franchise Films

Kapitelklicken springt direkt hin

Shownotes

Transkriptvom Podcast bereitgestellt · Zeitmarken springen hin