“Cabbit” is a short animation film by the artist, Soogie. It has been in production for over 3 years and is now being co-produced and sound designed by John Kassab (Kickstarter campaign). We spoke to John about his sound design work on ‘Cabbit’ and why he decided to sit in the producer’s chair.

What attracted you to Cabbit?

I am a huge fan of visual art and animation so, predictably i watch a lot of animation on Vimeo and often go to art galleries. Unfortunately, this sort of saturation had began to create a numbness in the way i looked at art. When i saw a trailer for ‘Cabbit’ on Vimeo, it made me completely still and my throat dried at just how beautiful it was. Its just so honest. Everything down to the clunky editing and animation flicker. Its just so raw – which is quite punk with all this clean cold dehumanised refinement thats going on in animation at the moment. i loved the handmade-ness of Soogie’s work. Its simplicity is brutal and the complexity of the cross hatching is mesmerising. I was instantly inspired.

I understand this is your first experience as a producer. Is this something you want to do instead of sound?

No, not at all – first and foremost i am a sound designer. However when i was starting to get to know Soogie early in our collaboration, I learned that he had not really considered a festival plan and was struggling to make ends meet working on a mini-mac from his home in montana. Furthermore, he is largely housebound due to illness and did not have a network or means with which to complete his film properly or get it out there. As I work with producers everyday, i see how they go about things and i have always been interested in how they operate. Similarly, so much of what i do as a sound supervisor involves this kind of organisational tasks and dealings with other businesses and facilities. So i have become well versed in this kind of stuff anyway. Plus i have dear friends in virtually every department of filmmaking which makes it easier when seeking guidance and favours.

On a more personal note, I took on this role because i felt so strongly that Soogie had created a true thing of beauty that i really wanted to be apart of. So i decided to offer all of my efforts to give this film the exposure i feel it deserves.

What is your brief for the sound and how have you undertaken the sound design?

‘Cabbit’ has a very nostalgic feel to it. Not only in the way that it looks but also in the way it recounts its story. it plays like memories and so we wanted it to sound like memories too.

Seeing that the film was going to be grounded in wall-to-wall music, i felt the sound should be impressionistic and minimal – as in, i wanted to hint at the sound things made without being overly detailed and clear about it. I felt that reverbs could be used effectively to creating this effect.

So I decided to bus the tracks into three separate AVID TL Space reverbs that were tuned differently:

1. Recent Memory – this is a light reverb i added to foley which i wanted to feel most present.

2. Fading Memory – this was a heavier/wetter reverb with a longer tail. This was used for the fore-and middle ground sounds such as vehicles, war and industry. I started to think of these as “impression sounds” or “sounds the future would rather forget”.

3. Distant Memory – this is the wettest and longest reverb used. This one was used on the back ground sounds and as reinforcement to the fading memory cues if i felt a sound was somewhere between fading and distant, if you know what i mean.

You mentioned “wall-to-wall” music being used in the film. Did this become an issue for the sound?

We were all very much in love with the music which we felt complimented Soogie’s style perfectly. It is grounded in an earthly guitar riff but has electronic elements which dances above it with some degree of abandon. Sadly the hard drive that the music session was kept on was stolen from the composer, GreenGender (who is based in San Francisco). So all that was left of the session was the exported stereo track from his album. It would have definitely been great to have access to the stems for mixing but when engaging in guerilla filmmaking, we learn to take all limitations in our stride and own them as decisions.

The wall-to-wall really works on this project because of its mediative qualities. However, we really didn’t want the film to read like a music video. So i started to add some transient low frequency sound effects and Adrian Medhurst’s foley in the midrange. I kept the high frequencies free for the music to have as much space as it needed.

However, after many listens i started to play with a narrow Q point on a parametric EQ. i’ve always enjoyed the sound an EQ makes when you sweep up and down music through its various frequencies. i always find interesting sounds hidden in there. For example, high up in the range there is a screaming frequency which i found complemented the screaming in the film perfectly. i also made a filter sweep from high to mid to compliment the image of the comet falling through the air from the heavens. Automating the EQ of the music in this way seemed to have bridged the barrier between sound design and music – music had become the site of sound effects manipulation and this automation also allowed me to free up frequencies monetarily for sounds to poke through before being engulfed with the music. This was particularly useful for giving a voice to high frequency sounds as birds in the background which would have otherwise cluttered the track.

My hope is that by bleeding the experience of music into sound, and vice-versa, this cohesion would enhance the mediative quality of the film without causing any distraction from the images.

I see you have set up a kickstarter campaign to raise funds. Can you tell us a bit about this?

Thanks, Miguel. Yes, we have set up a Kickstarter campaign to raise money for finishing expenses such as a 5.1 mix, website, dvd duplication, mastering, festival applications, etc. We are hoping to raise $5,000 but we kept the goal at $1,500 because of Kickstarter’s all-or-nothing policy. Even $5000 will keep us at a shoe-string budget but i think it is doable if we stay a little bit punk about it and its for a good cuase.

For pledges upward of $30, there is lots of artwork (original and prints) up for grabs. But any donation would be warmly welcomed, great or small. Thanks for your suport.

Project at Kickstarter

The busiest man in Hollywood (North), John Lasseter returns to the Directors chair in Cars 2 as Lighting McQueen and tow truck Mater head overseas to compete in the first-ever World Grand Prix.

Helping to bring to life the sound and music of this international espionage adventure include Composer Michael Giacchino, Re-recording Mixer and Sound Designer Tom Myers, and Sound Effects Editor Al Nelson. Git-R-Done!

SoundWorks Collection

June’s issue of AudioMedia magazine features an interview with sound designer John Kassab for his work on “The Lost Thing”. You can read it here.

You can also check an interview I had with John some months ago and also a great video from SoundWorks Collection.

SoundWorks Collection has published a fantastic profile on the sound of “The Lost Thing”,  featuring sound designer John Kassab, who we recently interviewed.

The story of “The Lost Thing” is about a boy who discovers a bizarre looking creature while out collecting bottle tops at the beach. Having guessed it is lost, he tries to find out who owns it or where it belongs, but is met with mute indifference from everyone else, who barely notice its presence, each unwilling to entertain this uninvited interruption to their day to day lives. For reasons he does not explain, the boy empathises with the creature, and sets out to find a ‘place’ for it.

Supervising Sound Editor and Sound Designer John Kassab discusses his extensive work on this animated masterpiece bringing to life the world of the Lost Thing.

Directors Shaun Tan and Andrew Ruhemann were also winners for Best Animated Short Film for “The Lost Thing” at the 83rd Academy Awards in 2011.

“Rango” is ILM’s first animated feature. I was blown away by the level of detail in both the look and the sound design. Sound designer Peter Miller was kind enough to share his film making experiences with me.

Designing Sound: So how did you become involved in the project?

Peter Miller: I worked with Gore (Verbinski) on The Ring and we’ve wanted to work together since. I think he knew this film was right up my alley – he pitched it to me as Sergio Leone meets Hayao Miyazaki meets Carlos Castaneda. How could I refuse!? My good friend Craig Wood edits for Gore and the three of us have a great rapport in sound language. Both Gore and Craig are very sound-aware, and really great collaborators.

DS: How was it different working with the director on this film compared to the last?

PM: I think we kind of slotted quickly back into the way we worked on The Ring. We followed a similar process, even though Rango was a lot longer in creation. Gore is very much what I would call a ‘contributive’ director. He likes to be involved in as much of the process as he has time for. Typically, that means we start working very early on in the production time-line and discover our ideas together. It’s not a situation where he just gives a brief and then turns up for the final mix. Even though Rango is a comedy, I found the emotional requirements for the construction of The Ring and Rango oddly similar. In the same way as setting things up to scare an audience becomes a very subjective and intellectual exercise in a horror film, so does making people laugh in a comedy. After you’ve heard the jokes a few dozen times the initial funniness has worn off, so finding the humor takes a fairly cerebral approach. Which is not to say that we didn’t laugh a lot when we were making Rango – we just hoped the audiences would laugh at the same things.

DS: When did you start sound designing the film?

PM: I started on Rango in 2008, when the storyboard edit was almost complete. There had been some sound work already as the ideas came together, but Gore felt it was important to get me on-board as soon as he was able. I did some work on the ‘Metaphor’ sequence, where Rango is thrown between the cars on the highway, and the ‘Ritual’ where the townsfolk do their odd dance. Over the next months I also built a large library of atmospherics and fx and then went to Los Angeles later in the year when Craig came on. Craig mostly cuts with 5.0sound when he works, and we’ve found it a great way to start forming the shape of the final soundtrack. It is very unusual for sound people to be pulled into a project this early, and it is a measure of Gore’s great skill and commitment to sound that he insists on this happening.

During 2009, as the digital animation phase commenced, I worked from my studio in Australia providing sound effects and sequences as they were needed. In July 2010 I traveled back to the US for the next 7 months to complete the sound. At this time the full sound crew came on-board and I was very fortunate to have as my co-Supervising Sound Editor an old friend, Addison Teague, who I had worked with previously on ‘The Ring’. Addison headed a very talented sound crew from Skywalker Sound, and together we set about realizing Gore’s vision for Rango.

DS: Did anything from your first wips make it to the film?

PM: Oh yes – many of my first ideas for Jake, the rattlesnake, were carried through to the end. A lot of my atmospherics are there also, and many structural elements. There were other sequences that made it through too – my good friend Tim Nielsen did some early work that was so good we really couldn’t lose it. That’s the great thing about working on a film in this manner. It is truly a collaborative effort.

Some sequences were realized slightly differently than I’d originally mapped them. The ‘Metaphor’ scene was set up structurally the way I designed it but it changed a lot in the last few weeks of sound post. The notable difference was the orchestral piece that Hans Zimmer wrote for it, which replaced my earlier more abstract percussion work.

DS: What were your main sound design challenges?

PM: Rango was an interesting project because right from the start Gore had pushed for this ‘ultra realistic’ animation style. When we were looking at simple pencil sketches – not even animated – he was vibing us up to think of the film as a ‘movie’, rather than ‘an animated movie’. Crash McCreery, the production designer, created amazing concept art and character designs, and we had that on the walls all over Blind Wink as we worked. Crash and his team had previously designed the Davy Jones crew for Gore’s ‘Pirates’ movies and we knew that we were aiming at that level of realism.

The thing is, there was also an other-worldly aspect to Rango which needed to be captured as well. There are several dream sequences, flashbacks and surreal moments that had to be included in this realistic world. So the difficulty was walking a line where the ‘real’ needed to feel real and the ‘surreal’ needed to feel like it belonged somehow. In addition, Gore was emphatic that he didn’t want this to be a cartoon, so (except in some special cases) we tended not to use any of the kinds of sounds that might be associated with, say, a Warner Brothers cartoon-style world. The way we approached it in fact was as a standard Western in most cases.

Things like quiet desert environments are tricky for any kind of film – the problem of having ‘the sound of emptiness’, as it were. We used several approaches to pulling this off, but it mostly works when there is some decent dynamic contrast.

Additionally, because we were trying to build a working 5.0 track as the movie was assembled, we needed to try and embed as much of the sound in as we could, as early in the project as was possible. This is a great way of working, but it does require a very present participation on the part of the sound designer (it’s why I started so early on the picture). The huge challenge is to get the flavour of the sound working as soon as possible, but not end up handcuffing yourself when it comes to further possibilities outside the technical restrictions of the cutting room. Although there are some things I wish we’d been able to do, I think we ended up with a pretty viable compromise.

DS: How closely did you work with the animators conceptualizing the sound of the characters?

PM: The animators were constantly referring to our sound. Some sequences, such as ‘Metaphor’, required a lot of attention from the animators and I’m sure it drove them nuts. By the time ILM came on board, the soundtrack was a fairly comprehensive 5.0 map, and some things were rhythmically structured and we didn’t want to alter them too much (since we’d spent a lot of time on getting them to work). Very occasionally Gore would hear a sound effect we made and get the animators to match it. An example is the glass crack in the bank vault at the end of the movie. Gore liked it so much that he had the animators redo some animation to fit better with what we’d done.

On the whole though, we just sat back and watched all the amazing stuff coming in from ILM and had a great time working with it.

As far as character design is concerned, Gore’s main instructions had to do with the ‘dirtiness’ and ‘unglossiness’ of the world and the characters. We talked about squeaks and creaks, groans and grit, dust and rust. It was all about making a world that felt worn and lived-in. Crash’s characters and the realization of them by ILM were so magnificent that it was no chore!

DS: Can you talk a bit about Jake and how you helped make him a villain?

PM: Gore talked about Jake like this: ‘He’s big, he’s threatening, he’s mean, and I want little kids in the audience to say, “Mummy, I want to go home now!”‘ He’s obviously a great character for a sound designer to play with: he is a big slithery metal-scaled creature with a machine-gun for a tail instead of a standard rattlesnake-rattle. His body movement components alone were composed of six or seven 5.0 groups, depending on the surface he was slithering on.

To make his tail rattle, I found some actual recordings of rattle-snake tails and slowed them right down to listen to what was happening. It seems that in a real rattle, a series of bone ‘clicks’ are causing interference patterns with one another as they speed up and slow down, and I used this idea to recreate the sound from a half-dozen different socket-wrench ratchets that I recorded. To be truthful, I was surprised that I cracked it quite so quickly. The first few takes I assembled sounded fantastic and I knew I could make it work. Of course, there were many different articulations needed for Jake throughout the film, and that was where I spent most of the time. I tried to make his rattle (and his movement for that matter) a kind of extension of his speech – a snake equivalent of hand gestures, if you like.

DS: What was the most interesting field-recording you made for the film?

PM: I spent some time on a hillside at Skywalker Ranch rolling a plastic water bottle down the hillside. It was pretty funny. I kept thinking ‘I’m getting paid to do this!’ I spent a very hot summer day in Joshua Tree recording all manner of things including more rolling bottles. I got some great recordings, and also got to understand that the main thing you hear these days in the North American desert is planes flying from one horizon to the other.

DS: Was the process different due to distance?

PM: Not so much for me. There is a sizable advantage for me to work in Australia on a US production, in that at the end of the US day, the editing department can send me requests and I can work on them for almost a full day and send them back so that they have a whole heap of new material for their next working day. The main problem with the distance was that Gore really likes that one-on-one rapport, and that’s hard to do even over a video link. I totally understand it, especially with someone like Gore – his personal enthusiasm is really infectious. The bottom line is that he really likes to be sitting there and mucking-in, even if it just means shooting the breeze for a half hour.

DS: You’re a musical sound designer, so did you have to approach things differently to stay out of the way once the musical score, or were those decisions made in the mix?

PM: Oh, I think Hans and I have great mutual respect. He is always so gracious about my sound, and I really admire his enormous musical talent. He did an amazing job on Rango – walking a very difficult line between not handing off just another Morricone Western pastiche, and still capturing the flavor of Westerns that so much tip their hat to Morricone. When I’m working with people like Gore and Hans and Craig, I don’t ever feel musically compromised. As I mentioned earlier, I structured several pieces that later became the domain of the music people – it’s just the way we work on these projects. When it came to the mix, Gore knows the structure of the sound so well that mostly he makes very good calls when it comes to the music/sound blend. Also, on Rango, both Craig and Gore were very consciously allowing the sound to have its moment, rather than having wall-to-wall music.

Our mixers on this film, Paul Massey and Chris Boyes are two of Hollywood’s most accomplished sound guys and there was a great effort made by them, and the rest of the sound team, to meet Gore’s expectations on this picture. This is often very challenging, because Gore hears EVERYTHING and is particularly aware of musical and sound cadences that he has set up in the cutting room. He hears music and sound as one big ‘musical’ progression, and understanding that is key to getting into his brain.

DS: Do you have a favorite scene?

PM: One of my favorite scenes in Rango is one I didn’t even do myself. It is what we called the ‘Suicide Walk’, where Rango, exposed as a fraud and disillusioned and dejected, walks across the highway amidst the hurtling trucks and cars.This sequence was designed very early in the process by Tim Nielsen, and it was always so effective (and I would have to say ‘perfect’) that we couldn’t improve on it. It’s the kind of sound design one always wants to claim for oneself, but in this case, it’s all Tim’s work.

As far as sequences I did do, I am fond of the scene where Rango is chased by the Hawk in the first reel of the movie. The many perspective cuts of Rango in the rolling bottle, and the general frantic-ness was lots of fun. I forgot to mention that I used a lot of convolution processing in the film in the creation of the sounds, and for this scene I made bespoke convolution maps for all the interior bottle environments. The constant cutting in an out of the bottles and up into the air, with all the different environmental changes, gives the scene a berserk manic quality that I love.

DS: What was the most challenging aspect of working on this film?

PM: I often find that the most challenging things in my job haven’t much to do with the sound itself, but with the process. On Rango, we had a very lengthy process of creation and discovery, and it was an enormous challenge to get that working in the edit room and then make sure the best parts of it remained intact for the many months it took to get to the mix stage. Because there are numerous highly talented creators involved in a project of this magnitude, sometimes extremely good ideas have to go the way of mediocre ones, simply because to change one aspect of the track means re-examining ideas that are already very effective. That can create unpleasant domino effects. Juggling the overall design is a hard job when you know there might be a better way to do something, but that better way would throw a big spanner in the workflow, and possibly wreck things that are already strong. The challenge is, of course, to make sure that an opportunity for actual improvement is not missed. It’s tricky.

It’s a problem that I never have if I’m working on a project all by myself, but the size of something like Rango calls for a lot of diplomacy and ego suppression. I’ve never believed in the concept of sound designer as auteur. Sound design is almost always a collaborative effort on the part of many talented people.

DS: What’s next?

PM: I’m currently working on one of my own image/sound works, Europa, which is something that has been kind of relegated to the backburner over the last year and a bit. I did the sound on Gore’s company Blind Wink’s website a few weeks back – nice and weird. There are some intriguing things happening later in the year, which I can’t talk about just yet. For the moment, I’m enjoying the great responses we’re getting back from Rango and looking forward to working again with all the brilliant talented people who created it.

Disclaimer: I am writing these articles as an independent sound designer. Any views or opinions expressed here are simply my own, and do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of any company, corporate entity or anyone else. Any images or sounds presented are subject to copyright by their respective owners, and are presented for educational purposes only. Any information given is correct to the best of my knowledge. No artificial color added. Refrigerate after opening.

I love the sound of jets. They are one of the few things that sound as great in real life as they do in films! (Good ol’ single engine prop planes are also a favorite of mine). Real vehicles at high speed create fantastic air distortion sounds that can’t be beat.

“Stealth” was directed by Rob Cohen. My main challenge was the signature sound of the near-future technology of the three superjets’ propulsion systems. In the film, they were powered by “pulse detonation engines”. The UCAV (Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle) was even more advanced, with “twin hybrid scramjet turbos”, and artificial intelligence and computational sounds.

Some internet searches on pulse jets showed me that the technology is real, though used more often in rocket type applications like the V-1 buzz bomb in WWII. I even found video of a guy in New Zealand who had built small ones in his garage for a go-cart. (That was 2004, I just checked online today and there are a lot more amateur pulse jet videos now!)

The real things are powerful and loud, but they oscillate so rapidly that they buzz like a huge “pfffffbltt”. I first tried the literal approach, condensing large machine gun and minigun sounds to approach the right speed. The results were too even sounding and lifeless. Real things are more complex and variable. I eventually created several usable combinations featuring a few layered pitches of an overdriven feedback sound I had made years before. Some very light flanging added even more movement. Once I had my “steadies”, I used doppler plug-ins to create maneuvers and pass bys.

These sounds established the unique signature sound of the aircraft, but they weren’t enough on their own. I processed nearly every jet recording I had access to with a combination of eq and modulation to artificially add the “pulse” sensation to real jet sounds. I used Waves Mondo Mod and/or the GRM Doppler plug-in to create the pulsing effect. Carefully shaped automation of both the speed and depth of the pulses kept it from sounding too static. The results worked well, and I applied the same techniques to explosion and thunder sweeteners as well.

“Stealth” was my last show at SoundStorm, and the only one in my career so far, where I spent most of my time creating source material for others to cut to picture. Supervising Sound Editor Bruce Stambler knew we needed a large, unique library for these jets and other scenes, so he kept asking me for more and more material. If I remember correctly, Bruce and sound editor Kim Secrist cut all the jets. I made wing tip air whistles, jet turbine whines, afterburner blasts, jet malfunctions, shockwaves, high speed winds, tracer fire, mid-air fuel fire balls, explosions, you name it. In typical Rob Cohen fashion – the film was a blast (literally) to work on.

Here’s a new montage of some sounds that are similar to one’s I might have made at that time:

The sound crew for “Stealth” (from the DVD credits):

• Supervising Sound Editor: Bruce Stambler, M.P.S.E.
• Sound Design: Tim Walston, M.P.S.E.
• Assistant Sound Editor: Paul Aulicino, M.P.S.E.
• Dialogue Editor: John C. Stuver, M.P.S.E.
• Sound Effects Editors: Steven F. Nelson, Steve Mann, M.P.S.E., Stephen P. Robinson, M.P.S.E., Kim Secrist
• ADR Supervisor: Becky Sullivan, M.P.S.E.
• Assistant ADR Editor: Marc Deschaine
• Foley Supervisor: Paul Curtis
• Foley Editor: Bob Beher
• Foley Artists: Vince Guisetti, Pamela Nedd Kahn
• Foley Mixer: Brian Ruberg
• ADR Mixer: Howard London, C.A.S.
• Supervising Sound Mixers: Jeffrey J. Haboush, Bill W. Benton, Rick Kline
• Re-Recordist: Tom Burns

“Astro Boy” gave me another chance to explore the universe of rocket and jet sounds. I had the pleasure of working with legends Richard Anderson and the late George Simpson. My sound design was mostly focused on: Astro’s rockets, the “police pod” vehicles, small flying robot balls, the blue and red energy, and the robot voice processing. All the other wonderful sounds in the movie were created by Richard, George, Mike Chock and Dan Hegeman. Everyone was a designer on this one.

You’d think that I would already have in my library all the jet and rocket sounds I’d need for this one. I did too, at first. As it turned out, Astro’s rockets needed to be smaller, more refined, and not so ratty as those I’d previously collected. Astro Boy’s character in the film is high-tech in a retro-futuristic kind of way. I created his rockets from new material derived from flame throwers, smaller rockets, ricochets and lots of whoosh by sweeteners. I really gave the sampler a workout on this one. His movements were so quick and specific, that I often ended up crafting his maneuvers with little pieces of sound, bit by bit, inch by inch, moment to moment. It was painstaking work, but well worth it in the end.

Another sound I’m particularly fond of is the flying police pods, called “stingers” in the film. Several of them chase Astro early on, and I wanted them to have lots of energy, but cut through the mix. Since Astro’s sound was mostly rockets and noise-based, I made the stingers’ engines more tonal, or pitch-based.

I had a recording of my electric drill, where I’d pressed the button only just enough to make the thing barely turn, very slowly. This produced a very high, thin whine or a creaky low buzz, depending on the button. I amped up the sounds, looped them, and loaded them into the sampler. The rough, uneven loops added character. I pitched the whine WAY down until it was a mid range sound like a small Formula 1 race car. I performed dopplers with the mouse, and pitch changes on the keyboard to simulate gear shifts and acceleration and deceleration. My two hands were very busy, so I taped the keyboard key down while I recorded long source pieces!

Here are some similar sounding examples:

The sound crew for “Astro Boy” (from the DVD credits):

• Supervising Sound Editor: Richard L. Anderson, M.P.S.E.
• Sound Mixers: Jim Bolt, Elliot Tyson
• Supervising Dialog Editor: Thomas Jones
• Sound Effects Editors: George Simpson, Mike Chock, M.P.S.E., Daniel Hegeman
• Special Sound Design: Tim Walston
• Foley Editor: Paul Aulicino
• Assistant Sound Editor: Ronnie Morgan
• Foley Mixer: Nerses Gezalyan, C.A.S.
• Foley Artists: Catherine Harper, Christopher Moriana
• ADR Mixer: Thomas J. O’Connell
• ADR Recordist: Rick Canelli
• Recordist: Ryan Cole
• Re-Recording Engineer: Tom Lalley

SoundWorks Collection has published a new fantastic video featuring Supervising Sound Mixer and Sound Designer Randy Thom, Sound Designer Al Nelson, Sound re-recording Mixer Gary Rizzo, Director Chris Sanders, and Film Editor Darren Holmes talking about the sound of “How to Train Your Dragon” in the M.P.S.E Sound Show at Skywalker Sound.

The Sound Show gives the general public a chance to go behind the scenes of the creation of a major motion picture and hear the details of the sophisticated sound work crafted by key members the movie’s team of audio artisans.

Excerpts from the movie are presented with special “pre-dubb” mixes to illustrate the variety of elements used to create a sonic environment of moods and thrills.

Guiding us through their processes is award-winning Supervising Sound Mixer and Sound Designer Randy Thom, Sound Designer Al Nelson, Sound re-recording Mixer Gary Rizzo, Director Chris Sanders, and Film Editor Darren Holmes.

This event was produced by the Motion Picture Sound Editors organization, Skywalker Sound, DreamWorks Animation, and Paramount Pictures.

Steinberg has published an interview with Steve Tushar and Ron Eng, sound designers on “Coraline”. They talk about their work in the film and also the use of Nuendo for their sound work.

Hello Steve, hello Ron! You’ve recently worked together on the film Coraline, which was directed by Henry Selick. What was special about the collaboration with him?

Ron: The best thing about working with Henry was his creativity and dedication to detail. He has very acute hearing and knowledge of sound design.

Steve: Plus, Henry really stepped it up a few notches with this film compared to “Nightmare before Christmas”. It looks so good that I don’t think the average person would even realize that it’s stop motion animation. Sometimes even I forgot that fact while looking at the scenes. I would only be reminded when I saw an unfinished scene to work on.

What were your roles in the production process? How did you use Nuendo in that project?

Ron: My role as sound designer was to create sounds for things that you wouldn’t normally find in a sound effects library, for instance, making a sound for a haunting mirror squeak, weird crickets or a world crumbling around us. Steve Tushar’s role was to concentrate on all of the real world sound effects such as impacts, cars, doors, hits, bangs, squeaks, etc., and organize them for the final mix.

Coraline is a 3D film using the elaborate stop motion technique. The film is often described as a “visual masterpiece”. What was (technically) the biggest challenge during the post-production work on Coraline?

Ron: The biggest challenge was to cut sound while only having a storyboard and unfinished pictures. Some of the more complex scenes we didn’t even see till late in the final mix process.

Steve: I agree with Ron here 110%. That is always the biggest challenge for animation jobs. Especially when they drop in a rough sketch that is only one frame per three or four seconds and they expect you to come up with the sound for it and you end up scratching your head for an hour.

Continue reading…

Thanks go out to Tom Myers, Michael Semanick, and Al Nelson from TOY STORY 3 for taking time out to answer few questions about their work on the film!

TM = Sound Designer/ Sound Re-Recording Mixer Tom Myers
MS = Sound Re-Recording Mixer Michael Semanick
AL = Sound Editor Al Nelson

JAKE: “Day & Night” the short film that played before “Toy Story 3″ was so creative in the way it used sound. Were there discussions early on about how sound design would drive the story? Pixar has a rich tradition of selecting short film ideas from fellow Pixar employees’ pitches. Who does sound for these short films at Skywalker?

TM: The sound duties for Pixar’s shorts are split between Skywalker and Pixar. For some of the earlier shorts, we did all the work at Skywalker, but over the last few years Pixar has developed a small staff of very talented sound folk. On “Day and Night” the sound design was done by Barney Jones at Pixar with guidance from Sound God Gary Rydstrom who splits time between the two companies. I did the mix here at Skywalker with the director Teddy Newton and Barney present.

MIGUEL: When did you guys start on “Toy Story 3″? How did Lee Unkrich interact with the sound department and what was his take on how sound would be utilized in the film?

TM: We saw a storyboarded version of the film in early 2009 and then had preliminary spotting sessions with Lee and composer Randy Newman. I started sound design in late 2009 and the rest of the crew started in January of 2010. Lee was very involved in the process and knew the library very well having been the editor on the first film and codirector on the second. He is very detail oriented, even spending time with the foley crew. His first concern sound-wise was that we make the third film a continuation of the world created in the first two. All three films needed to feel organically part of the same aural universe, just as they were visually.

AN: I came on the show for the first temp mix in the fall of ’09. This was a great broad stroke introduction to how Lee intended the film to sound. We walked away with some great notes to think about for the final, though, I didn’t actually start cutting effects on the film until late February. So, I’d like to acknowledge Dustin Cawood, Terry Eckton and Tim Nielsen who fortunately did all the hard work before I jumped in.

JAKE: How much sound did the animators request before you guys started sound editorial in earnest?

TM: The animators had much of the toy movement sound library from Toy Story 1 and 2 for the returning characters, Buzz, Woody, the Potato Heads, etc. The only new character for which they really asked new material was Big Baby. We gave them a larger palette of vocals for Big Baby that Lee was quite particular about.

MIGUEL: Given the toys’ size in relation to the human world, how important was the sound POV of our heroes? What realistic sounds had to be embellished to convey their size or perspective?

TM: With Gary Rydstrom we continued the conceit that when the toys are interacting with humans, (when they are inanimate objects), they should sound smaller in scale compared to the human “real” world. But when they are interacting with each other, and walking and talking, they have a larger, almost human scale to their sounds. We always embellished sound when a threat was implied, especially in the finale scenes with the garbage truck, bulldozers, conveyor belt, shredder, claw, etc.

AL: We had creative license during certain toy POV scenes to even go over the top a bit. For example when Big Baby is doing that creepy march towards Woody, Bullseye and the aliens, we added low end sweeteners to his footsteps. We also added some rumble and actual diesel truck sounds to some of the RC trucks patrolling to add a sense of tension and danger.

JAKE: Did sounds for reoccurring characters established in the first two films carry over to “Toy Story 3″? Were they cut from libraries built for the first two films and or what new sounds, were recorded or expanded on for these classic characters?

TM: We used all the sounds from the first two movies for the recurring characters. This was part of our mandate from Lee about making all three films an extension of the same world. We developed new material for Buzz when he went through his transformations, first to what we called “Militaristic Buzz”, (when Buzz gets reset and does the bidding of Lotso); Here we sharpened his movements making them more precise, more clipped and less rattley toy plastic . And then for Buzz in “spanish mode” we made him more fluid and romantic adding swishes, castanets and whip cracks.

MS: An interesting problem came up with voice futz’s from the original films to this one. Both Woody and Buzz have sayings or dialog built into them when a child pulls Woody’s chord or pushes Buzz’s buttons. These original futzes were done by Gary Summers. He used what we call a analog futz box. It is an inclosed box, with a set of speakers in them and a microphone. You route the dialog to this box , pick the speaker you want the dialog to come out of (might be an old am radio speaker, a telephone speaker, or a speaker taken out of an old toy) the microphone picks up the sound coming out of the speaker and comes back to the console to be mixed. Well, back on TS 1 AND TS 2 , They only futzed what they needed to, with no addtional lines. TS 3 Had new Woody and Buzz lines. Lee wanted the same effect or futz from the other films… no problem, right? Theoretically, we just pull out the old futz box and do it. Unfortunately, that old futz box had been thrown away. We tried every protools plug in, but we could not match the futz. Howie Hammerman, an engineer at skywalker who built the orginal futz box, is still working there. I asked him to rebuild it. With the new futz box and some tweaking we were able to match the futz’s very, very close, though still slightly different. I would say about-ten-years-or-so-of-wear -and-tear-from-Andy-playing-with-the-toys difference. Ha!

AN: Tom was very thorough about providing us with notes and references to the previous Toy Story films as well as providing us with new material that was consistent. For example, Ken’s neck and arm squeaks which complimented Barbie’s elements from TS2. I think those Ken squeaks are some of the funniest moments in the whole movie. Gary would also come in and review our material. He could recall verbatim sounds he had made ten years ago. Also, kudos to our foley artists, Jana and Dennie who performed many of the signature sounds for the original Toy Story and Toy Story 2.

MIGUEL: How did you distinguish what toy sounds needed to be foley and what would be recorded and cut as effects? Did you start with using the actual toys for their sounds? What toy sounds are designed using sounds that the actual toys don’t or can’t make?

TM: Generally, all the footsteps for all the characters were foley. The movement for all the characters may have been half foley and half effects. Specific character trait sounds like the Potato Head pops and hits, Rex chicken squawk head turns, and Barbie and Ken squeaks were effects. We don’t always start with the actual toys as often times they sound too small. We look for something that is slightly larger in scale. For example, of Stretch the Octopus we used a rubber bath mat with suctions cups on one side.

JAKE: How did the tradition of using Skywalker sounds from previous films (Rex’s “Jurassic Park” roar) in Pixar films come to pass? Does Pixar request using these specific sounds in their films during their spotting sessions?

TM: It has more to do with what is dramatically correct for a given scene rather then paying homage to a given sound or film. They will use other films as a reference but rarely request a specific sound, unless it is something they have used in the guide track and it works perfectly, both dramatically and emotionally.

MIGUEL: I love the playful relationship between music and effects in these films, especially when music seemingly acts as Foley for on-screen action (like classic Disney cartoons). How was featuring music or effects for specific sequences decided on?

TM: This all came from Lee and his work with Randy Newman and with us. One example was the scene of Woody’s first escape from Sunnyside when he flies over the wall on the kite and then gets blown up into the sky, the kite breaks and he falls down into the tree where Bonnie finds him. Lee specifically asked for Randy to give that scene the “Carl Stallings treatment” in which he hits all the movements with musical beats and the we support it with sound effects.

MS : Lee was always the one making these final choices. We would experiment from time to time, like: “Try dipping music here”, or “Shift it slightly so that some of the sound effects can live with it” or “Lets clean out all sounds and only add what we need”. The music was very fun to mix; it had a real throwback vibe to it, like you said, very “playful”, playing the action. Lee and Randy had designed it to be that way. I think it fits the film perfectly. It did make it hard at times for sound fx and music to live together, but Lee was very clear and decisive about what was to drive the scene. One of my favorites is the music when Woody gets up in Bonnie’s bed and walks across it. It’s just great. Listen to the arrangement and watch Woodys fingers.

AN: Lee was very specific about how certain sounds felt rhythmically relative to the music. Ambient elements like the crows during Chuckle’s flashback as well as specific hard effects like that last horn honk as Ken and Barbie arrive during the credit roll were all placed in time according to how Lee felt they would sit against the music.

JAKE: With all dialog for the film recorded on a ADR stage, how much of it has to be “placed” in the scenes with reverb and/ or delay? What other creative ways are you able to use dialog when it’s as controlled and clean as it is in an animated film?

TM: Michael can speak more directly to this but every scene and locale had a specific treatment of reverb, e.g., inside the toy box, in the garbage bag, inside the box and outside the box. One of the trickiest scenes was inside the candy machine. The voice treatment had to evolve as Buzz got closer. Lee was keen on all this and playing all perspectives. Also, as all the dialog is clean there is a tradition of panning all dialog in Pixar’s movies.

MS: Every scene had to have a specific treatment on it to fit the scene. It was mostly reverbs. I love the Lexicon 960, so I used it the most. I also used the tc6000 as well as the Lexicon 480. When Dialog is as controlled and clean as in ADR, it does allow you, at times, to get very quiet. When you do not have heavy background noise to fight through, (as you sometimes do with production dialog) it helps the music and sound effects give depth to the film. One of the fun moments of dialog effects, is when Mrs. Potato head sees with her other eye. I had to reach back to my days in the recording studio. I took her dialog, made a copy, advanced it several frames, put it in reverb, recorded only the reverb return, took that and reversed it or played it backwards, like taking analog tape and flipping it upside down and playing it. This effect proceeds her actual dialog slightly, so it had a type of “ghosting” sound. I then added a couple delays and reverb to her original dialog to help fill the room and surround the audience, and the sound effects from Tom helped the dialog sit in there. I think we got a fun “time warp” feel.

MIGUEL: How does the new dolby 7.1 standard allow you to do in the mix that 5.1 didn’t? Is this new channel layout addressed from predubs to printmaster?

TM: It allows you to be more precise in placing things in the acoustic space, pulling things, music, backrounds and effects off the screen and into the room which has the added benefit of clearing up dialog on the screen. We premixed all the effects in the 7.1 format and carried it all the way through to printmaster.

JAKE: Since filmmakers may change a cut to allow some breathing room after a big laugh in a comedic film, was there any attention paid to the potential of sniffles from the audience mucking up your mix during some of the movie’s sadder scenes?

TM: We were very clear where the big emotional moments were and worked hard, mostly through a process of elimination to not undermine or cut short any of these spots. The same goes for the jokes, though those are more precise and rhythm dependent where as the emotional moments are longer and more fluid. It’s a tribute to Lee and the story that there are so many of both kinds of spots in the film. I think of the film as being so funny but much of the feedback I get is of the emotional wallop the film has at the end.

SoundWorks Collection has just released a new video (on top) with a tour of the post production facilities on Walt Disney Studios.

Take an exclusive tour of the Walt Disney Studios located in Burbank, CA hosted by Gil Gagnon, VP of Post Production Services.

The Walt Disney Studios Post Production Services has a rich history in Dubbing dating back to the early 1940′s when Fantasia was mixed in the Main Theatre. Fantasia went on to win several technical achievement awards from the Academy as it was one of the first to mix in “Stereo” and it actually incorporated an early form of surround sound termed “Fantasound”.

The Sound Editorial department is staffed by a talented crew including two-time Oscar-winner George Watter II along with Robert Sephton, and Thomas de Gorter. The facilities include Pro Tools Digital Audio Workstations and 5.1 sound design rooms that are truly state-of-the-art. In addition, this world class facility provides complete sound integration and compatibility with the mixing stages in a conveniently located campus-like environment in Burbank, CA.