So, this is the end of the Erik Aadahl Special. Hope you’ve enjoyed it. Here are the answers to all the questions made by the readers on comments, email, twitter, etc. Thanks for participating!

Designing Sound Reader: Hi Erik, I see you’re using the 191 for most of your SFX gathering. Do you ever record in other stereo formats like XY or ORTF?

Erik Aadahl: Some people find the 191 Matrix box cumbersome, but unfortunately it’s needed to power the mic no matter if you shoot XY or MS because of its funky pin arrangement.

I never use the 191 in XY mode. I like the flexibility of shooting MS when I’m editing, to dial in a stereo spread that I like. When I record, I set my Sound Devices 722 to monitor MS-decoded over the headphones.

But if I want to smash up a mic I’ll use a more bulletproof XY mic like the AT825. For atmospheres, spaced pairs can give a nice wide image too. I haven’t shot ORTF (microphones angled 110 degrees, 17 cm apart) since film school but I do like the effect of it. 99% of the time I shoot MS.

DSR: Hello Erik. I just finished to read your interview. Thanks for all the questions, terrific stuff! I read you studied in the university and got lots of learning there. I’m curious about the status of a self-studied person (like me) in the film sound industry. Did you know someone who learned sound design by himself? I really worry about it and would be great to hear your opinions about this kind of education.

EA: Yes I went to film school, but I have to say that most of what I learned was on-the-job. There’s no match for learning from a mentor and just going through the experience. A lot of what I know is from endless hours experimenting and working. The best education was starting in television, where I had to crank out an hour’s worth of editing every 5 days, switching from sci-fi to period dramas to animation from week to week. I learned more practical knowledge that way than in film school. But I still have tons to learn. The learning should never stop.

DSR: What was the special trick with the rack of plugins controlled by a Theremin Erik Aadahl discovered when he was working on Transformers – Revenge of the fallen.

EA: I’ve been getting that question a lot. The most important thing I want to convey in all these sound design dialogues is this: it’s about the process, not necessarily the end goal. For me, the art of sound is not about reproducing the work you like, but experimenting, improvising, making a challenge for oneself and finding your own voice. That’s the fun of it!

I like to be open about how I make sounds, but the modified theremin is one of the few things that I’d like to keep secret. With it, we made signature sounds for Transformers ROTF that I’d like to keep exclusive to that universe. We’ll be evolving the technique even more in Transformers 3.

DSR: How much percent of the sounds you create are sort of “finished” in your mind before you even start working on them? Respectively, when do you think is it better to have a pretty detailed idea of the sound in advance or on the other side, when do you prefer to sort of jump into the wild and go by intuition? Hope this question will be picked ; ) All the best and many thanks in advance!

EA: Great question. When I start working, I’m looking at a blank canvas that I can fill with any combination of colors. It could be minimalist, it could be complex. When I begin, the possibilities are infinite.

Sometimes I know exactly what I want it to sound like, and then all I have to do is reconstruct the sound in my head. I also like to make noises with my mouth when I work, and use that as a “sketch” for design.

But other times I don’t know what the best option is yet. I might try something and decide later that it can be better. In this case, I throw out my work and start over.

It’s good to have an improvisational attitude though, and not get stuck in any one way of doing things.

PS: I think you were looking for a way to decode MS footage within Soundminer. You can do that by typing “M/S” into the >>Channel Layout<< column. (works for playback AND transfer)

You are absolutely correct! My associate P.K. Hooker adds that for the ability to adjust the stereo spread — beyond the default 1 to 1 decoding in Soundminer Pro — putting a VST like Waves Stereo Imager in the VST Rack is a great method. Thanks for the heads-up!

DSR: Hi Erik. I’m following all the posts from your special. I really love all those great articles. We know a lot about your actual job, your work on transformers, etc. But what about your start? What were the first sounds you create? What are the best experiences you had in the early days?

EA: The first sounds I made were for music, when I was still a kid playing with MIDI. But once I got into television, because of the speed required for the short schedules, I almost exclusively used sound effects libraries. It was a really important learning experience and forced me to be clever and manipulate the “wrong” sound into the “right” one. The first design I did in a serious way was using an old Eventide harmonizer, hooked up to my KT-76 keyboard which I’ve had since I was 17 and still use to this day. It was for a PBS series called “The Shape of Life”, for an episode featuring dragonflies fluttering around. I didn’t have any good recordings of dragonflies, so I cheated with some design. I recorded wing flaps on the foley stage using a piece of stiff plastic clamped to a bicycle wheel spoke. I spun the wheel, letting the plastic slap rhythmically against different textures to make fast wing beats.

Then I took those sounds in the harmonizer to make dopplers out of them. They became the sounds of little dragonflies flying past the camera. These days, with Waves and other tools, it’s much easier to make dopplers.

Another fun experience I had was for a Disney television movie that had soapbox derby races. I remember squeezing into one of those tiny carts and racing down a hill with zero control, headphones on and recording to DAT. The recording turned out terrible, with tons of wind noise and mic handling. I’d do it a little differently these days; a windsock and shock mount would be a good start.

DSR: I’m a big fan of Transformers, and as a sound geek also love your work on the robots and all the sound effects there. Each robot has a lot of different sounds. I can detect some of the sources of those sounds, but some others are rely difficult to me. Could you tell me more about the sources for the robots transformations, or how you process some king of sound, etc. Many thanks erik. Keep the amazing work!

EA: Some of my favorite sounds are sounds that you can’t tell if they are synthetic or real. One of those is the sound of Frenzy hacking into Airforce One’s network. It sounds synthetic, but it’s actually a very squeaky hinge in my kitchen. I could swing the door open and closed and make all sorts of “SQEAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIKKKKKK!!!!” noises that sounded to me like a modem spitting out shrieks of data. There’s a bunch of stuff around my house that badly needs WD-40 lubricant, but won’t get it until I’ve recorded the squeaks.

Some other sounds are totally processed. One I like is the weapons power-up for Blackout in the first movie, when he destroys the Soccent military base. You hear a whine that starts low pitch and starts to rise and rise and rise until it turns into a laser blast-style gunshot. I made this exclusively with a signal generator, Waves SoundShifter and Altiverb. I took a tone, graphed a slow rising pitch bend from -6 semitones to 0, and at the peak quickly dropped the pitch to -12 semitones. I put some Altiverb on the peak of the pitch, so it could ring out to give a laser energy decay feeling. It sounds like a complicated series of sounds, but it’s actually as simple as it gets :)

DSR: 2 questions: 1) when it comes to processing audio what plugins do you always you head back to and was there something specific you used to create that quintessential electronic vibrate that really defines the Transformer feel? And 2) After you finish working on a film and having the freedom while working to record such fantastic sounds (at the film budgets expense), do you keep the sounds or do they all remain the property of the studio who fits the bill? If you do get to keep them have you ever thought about releasing/selling libraries?.

EA: I commonly use the Waves bundle, Altiverb, GRM Tools and SoundToys. The Transformers signature electric vibration can be made in a bunch of ways depending on your tools. Rather than say exactly how I did it, and avoid copies appearing everywhere, I encourage people to experiment and come up with their own methods.

Yes, I retain the mastered recordings and design I’ve made over the years. Things put in a movie are the property of that movie. But sounds made in my own time, which there are many, are my own. Maybe one day I’ll make some public.

DSR:Hey Erik. You’re a fantastic person. Thanks for sharing all your great knowledge. I’m just wondering what is your favorite sound design technique? Is there a technique or a specific process/chain with effects you use a lot? If so, could you told us what are your favorite plugins or tools to work with?

EA: My central design technique is recording different flavors of sounds specific to the movie, palettes of sounds I use to edit and design with. Before I record, I’ll often make a list of categories of sounds I want to collect.

If I know I’m doing a robot movie, I record anything that is appropriate for that: the sounds of every motor and servo I can get my hands on, for example; the sounds of energy would be useful too, so I’d record anything buzzing or groaning. That might involve recording things that you’d never associate with “energy”, like groaning metal doors or the rumble of a washing machine or my dog growling.

I guess I’m trying to say that it’s important to allow myself to think abstractly.

My most common tools are the simplest ones: the ProTools pitch tool, EQ and compressor. Waves is also a favorite tool. Like I mentioned, I use SoundShifter and Doppler a lot.

DSR: In following this site and the works of the sound designers featured. One thing has come to my attention. The lack of women, I have only ever seen Anne Scibelli mentioned. As a professional in the industry for many years, (with some great titles under your belt!!!) what is your take on the lack of women working within the field?

EA: You are absolutely correct, women are under-represented in our field. I don’t really know why. A lot of the women I work with are Dialogue/ADR supervisors and editors, or work in foley. Ann Scibelli is definitely a big inspiration.

On “Shrek Forever After”, I have the pleasure of working with my friend Anna Behlmer, who has mixed almost all of Dreamworks Animation films and has something like 9 Oscar Nominations under her belt. She’s definitely another woman to look up to.

DSR: I’m still wondering what was this special trick with the rack of plugins controlled by a Theremin you discovered on the last Transformer… Hope you’ll let people know what was the secret one day ;-)

EA: Thanks for the question. Please refer to question #3 ;)

DSR: First of all, Thanks for the interview, really opened my eyes. Now, I’m new on this.
I want to know what’s the best order to work on sounds on a motion picture? First Voice then Ambience/Room tones or should i start with the first layer sounds? Any book you recommend for beginners?

EA: There’s an old adage: “Dialogue is king”. Because of this, dialogue is often mixed first. Re-recording mixers Andy Nelson and Anna Behlmer have a nice technique where Andy does a pass of final mixing on the dialogue first, then music, then Anna comes in and does her effects pass, balancing against the dialogue. Usually, you don’t want the audience to strain to hear the actor’s lines. When I work, I always refer to the dialogue track and balance against it.

A good book that will give you an overview of sound for film is Tomlinson Holman’s “Sound for Film and Television”:

http://designingsound.org/2010/03/new-book-sound-for-film-and-television-third-edition-by-tomlinson-holman/

Tom was one of my teachers in film school and the inventor of THX. He’s got some fantastic insights.

DSR: I thought I had the coolest sound design trick on the block with a few of those hematite magnetic balls to record. Such interesting sounds. Then I watch the SoundWorks vid on Transformers 2 only to find that you have already taken this idea to the next level with the Reedman robot. Great work. How many of those magnets did you work with? And any tips on recording them? I’ve been trying some contact mics.
How about the processing afterward? The sounds seemed to cascade together as the robot formed. Mindblowing secret techniques are welcome :)

EA: Hah! Cool you picked up on those magnets too. I worked with two different types of magnets: the round types you saw in the video, and some oval-shaped ones I found. The oval-shaped magnets gave more interesting “twirl” sounds. The round ones were sharper and buzzier.

I tried recording them on the first Transformers movie, but couldn’t really get it to sound right. The mic I was using wasn’t directional enough, and I wasn’t in a quiet enough recording environment.

The sounds of the close up ballbearings zipping around in “Revenge of the Fallen” are completely unprocessed, believe it or not. That’s what I love about those magnets.

The sounds for when the balls combine were made by individually cutting each little “pop” a thousand times to make an exact clicking zipper pattern. A short delay creates an electric feel that weaves in and out of the zipper sounds.

DSR: Sometimes I don’t have the field recordings I want or need, and I’m unable to get them.When this happens to you, how do you work around it?

EA: If you don’t have the ability to record something fresh, you don’t have it in a library, and you don’t know anyone who has recorded it that you can borrow from, you need to get clever. This is the part of sound design I love more than anything.

Each and every sound is nothing more than a collection of frequencies that change over time. You can use these frequencies like paint, combining them to make new colors.

On Superman Returns, I needed the sound of a continent rising. This would have been impossible to record, and even then probably wouldn’t sound very expressive anyway. So what I try to do is think about scale; what can I record on a small scale that magnified is similar to what is up on screen. So for the rush and roar of water, I used waves on the beach. For the crunch of rocks, a made a steady rumble out of crunching rice cakes. These smaller sounds, when slowed, become magnified and grow in scale.

I try to think of all sounds as being on a continuum of reality. Different sounds from tiny to huge are just on different scales. The same way a nucleus resembles a planet, a Ritz cracker snap resembles the Earth splitting open.

So if I don’t have a sound, I try to think: “what does this resemble?” … “What can I record that is similar to this thing?” In one movie I used the snap of a firecracker, pitched to 1/10 speed, as a distant explosion rolling out over a vast canyon.

If it’s something really specific you don’t have a way to record, like a 1941 Spitfire prop engine, then you might be screwed. If you can’t record it, find it from a friend, or use a library effect, then the best you can do is reproduce it as accurately as you can. The internet is a great tool to do some research; find out what a Spitfire sounds like so you can best match it.

DSR: Hello Eric, big fan of your work. I was curious what are some of your favorite plug-ins for processing recorded sounds? I remember hearing in some interviews that you like the soundtoys plugs, and others. I also would like to know what you are using for doing all your pitch shifting (Serato PitchTimePro, X Form?)? I am assuming that you do most of all your editing in Protools.

EA: Yes, I do all my editing in ProTools. Above I mentioned some of my favorite tools. Most of the pitching I do is with the Soundminer search engine pitch function, the ProTools pitch tool, Waves SoundShifter and once in a while Pitch N Time. If I want to do a realtime performance, I use my keyboard pitch wheel triggering Native Instruments Kontakt.

With Soundminer, I sometimes slow things down to extremes. Recently, I took a recording I did of a river in Thailand, slowed it to 5% speed, and recorded it into ProTools via Rewire to make underwater ambiences.

Soundhack is also a great tool for more extreme pitching. On “I, Robot” I used it to cleanly slow hummingbird chirps -40 semitones to make robot motors.

Thanks to everybody for the great response and all your excellent questions!

Cheers, Erik

When it comes to preparing sound effects for a mix, there are lots of ways to approach things; I don’t claim this to be the end-all methodology. For this article, I’ll be slanting discussion towards sound effects, regretfully leaving out music and dialogue.

I’ll be covering two avenues of mixing: traditional mixes and Icon mixes.

OVERVIEW

The art of mixing is the art of storytelling. Many elements come together in a mix, and one of the challenges is distilling those elements into a cohesive and dramatic whole that works with the picture and story.

In a sense, the mix is like a funnel, where thousands of elements are distilled down to 6 final channels: L-C-R-Ls-Rs-Lfe, also known as the 5.1 printmaster.

When I cut, I try to make things sound the way I think they should sound. This means not waiting until the dub stage to get it sounding right. It’s best to make it sound right editorially, so that the mix can elevate the material to the next level rather than wasting time sifting through too elements to make it “play”.

This means, editorially, I hone and clean and simplify as much as possible. I also volume-graph, so everything has a nice balance and flow. Sometimes I also do 5.1 panning on my elements, for myself and for presentations that may arise before we even get to the mix. These pans are typically dumped when we bring the sounds to premix, unless we’re doing an Icon mix which I’ll get into in a bit.

It’s interesting how in recent years the lines between editing and mixing have become more blurred, to some people’s consternation and others’s joy. But ultimately, it’s all about “how it sounds” and we now have better tools enabling us to bring things closer to the end product much, much earlier than we have in the past.

Erik and Greg Mixing FX

PREPPING SOUNDS FOR THE DUB

Organizing sound effects units into predub groups is one of the most important parts of making a soundtrack. If things are disorganized or grouped improperly, I don’t care how awesome your sounds are, you will have an uphill battle. It’s all about predub layout, which can be a real Rubik’s Cube of a puzzle sometimes, but which always will pay off if approached logically and carefully.

The first thing to keep in mind when laying out a predub groups is separation. Which sounds go together, and which sounds stay separate? This is important, because once predubs are mixed, if things are tied together in a 5.1, they are married forever. For example, this means if while predubbing, you mix a tire skid with your car engine into a predub, and in the final the director asks to dump the skid, you are screwed. That’s why we keep skids on separate predubs from engines, for example.

When laying out units for predub, always ask “what do I want individual control of all the way to the final mix?” Keep those elements separate. I generally think of predubs as “food groups”. Keep your potatoes separate from your sauce and separate from your meatballs and separate from your garnish.

Of course, the danger is to have too much separation, which can overcomplicate the final.

Another thing to keep in mind while laying out units for predub is the order. When mixing, you want to mix the big things first. Best to mix sweetening elements after the big things.

I’ll use some metaphors to explain the philosophy. it’s like sculpture: throw the big chunks of clay together first, and then sculpt the details after. It’s also like building a house: foundation first, then beams, then walls, then paint. Big things first, then the details.

Gary Summers Mixing Dialogue

Recently, we predubbed a dragon. In this situation, we’d want to predub vocals first, then its big footsteps, then its talons clicking against the ground. Balance the details against the main sound. As an example, in the Transformers films, we typically dubbed the robot footsteps first, then the motors and textures and so on.

Some mixers like to put up banks of four predubs at once, printing on four recorders. But generally, we’ll work a predub at a time, building mixes one by one. Finished predubs then get “hung” on the stage playback ProTools machines, so that every subsequently mixed predub can be balanced against the earlier predubs.

The ideal predub situation is that when all the predubs are finished, they can be put up on the final console with faders at unity and play together cumulatively in harmony and in the pocket. There are some effects mixers that are expert at entering a final mix with faders at unity, already balanced skillfully against dialogue.

When we mix, I sit at a ProTools playback system on the stage next to or behind the console so I can communicate with the mixer. Since the old days, cue-sheets have been used as road maps for the mixer; what sounds come on what channels and when. Newer consoles have TFT displays that give a graphic waveform representation of each channel and what’s coming up. But the quickest way to get though predubs is verbally: “Goose honk, screen left, coming up at 320 feet on channel 1.”

FINAL MIX

By the time we hit the final mix stage, all of our printed predubs, now in ProTools playback “super sessions” and conformed to the latest version of picture, are loaded.

The “final dub” version of cue-sheets, also known as “topsheets” or “binkies”, serve as road maps for the mixer. These might be (rarely) handwritten, or printed on paper from ProTools dummy-regions lined up against our predubs in the super session. These days, a lot of mixers just use ProTools monitors mounted on the console, which saves a lot of assistant time and trees to boot.

Greg P. Russell Mixing Transformers

While in final mode, I’m always going into our printed predub material and making adjustments. I might cut out chunks of certain predubs that clash with music, for example. Maybe certain impacts in my effects are “flamming” with music percussion, and need sync adjustment. Most stages these days have remote switchers that allow me to pull up any ProTools predub session instantly onto my screen for a tweak.

In the final, these predubs all combine to create a “stem”: the combo of all the predubs.

On a final, I also have a sound effects ProTools “fix rig”, chasing to stage timecode and outputting to the board. I have a search engine and all my design tools at the ready. If a fix is needed, I’ll go offline, throw on my headphones and cut a fix. This fix will either get recorded into the FX stem with everything else, or more commonly, go onto an additional “sweetener stem”. On the Transformers films, I had an additional off-line ProTools design rig in front of the console, because when the fix rig is in chase I can’t be cutting new stuff at the same time.

ICON MIXING

Both Malick’s “The New World” and Bryan Singer’s “Valkyrie” were mixed on an Icon console at Warner Bros Stage 6. Since it utilizes the powerful editing and automation-conforming capabilities of ProTools, it’s a very useful tool for films that have extended temps and final mixes that keep coming back.

While editing, I’m often doing a lot of 5.1 panning in ProTools to get things working in the editing room and to present our track to filmmakers before we reach the mix part of the process. All of that panning, sometimes pretty intricate, is typically dumped when we hit the predub stage. This is often fine since it’s truly great to hear an accomplished mixer do a slick pan. But on the other hand, it’s a lot of work to be dumped. I would love to be able to send panning automation from ProTools to any traditional DFC, Harrison or Euphonix console, and have the mixer use that as a starting point to build upon. Pans could be dumped and redone, but at least all that work in the ProTools wouldn’t be nuked and disappear completely and arbitrarily. Sometimes in ProTools we can do a more accurate pan on a bullet zipping out of the surrounds, for instance.

This is where the Icon is very useful. Every 5.0 pan, every send, every compression automation is retained through the entire process, even for a reel rebalance, for example. During a final on a traditional console, your fader, send, pan and EQ automation are the first things to go in a rebalance. On the Icon, not a problem.

Craig Berkey and Icon

On traditional consoles, if there are vicious version changes with tons of conforms, sometimes the stems and predubs can be salvaged by an editor in ProTools. Well-organized predubs make this easier. But it’s unlikely board automation will survive without severe choppiness if there are moves and shot swaps. On the Icon, every EQ sweep, every Impulse Response Reverb setting, every fade — every parameter — can be smoothed and tweaked graphically by the conform editor, before being put up on the stage. On films with many changes throughout a long final mix, this can be invaluable.

I recently worked on a film mixed with an Icon on Stage B at Audio Head, at the old Warner Hollywood lot, now known as The Lot. I can tell you without doubt that our final desk automation would not have survived a single version of the sweeping conform changes we saw on that film, had it not been mixed on an Icon.

This flexibility gave the filmmakers an ability to allow the final mix to profoundly affect the picture cut of the film. Picture changes could be made after a playback on the stage, with shot swaps and moves and all, and the Icon automation could quickly be conformed and smoothed graphically in ProTools. Every delicate fader move crafted over months could be preserved.

All of us who know sound, know how drastically adding sound can affect the pace and tempo of a scene.

The ability for a director to quickly adapt a picture cut to a final mix, continuously and fearlessly, is I believe one of the biggest breakthroughs artistically in the relationship between sound and picture.

Chris Scarabosio, Joel Dougherty, Jared_Marshack and Craig Berkey

Perhaps the biggest advantage is the Icon’s ability to have “Virtual Predubs”, mixes than can be unfolded all the way to a unit level. This means we have individual control of every sound element all the way to the printmaster. Because of this, the process of predubbing is, obviously, very different.

For very elaborate films, we still have a way to go. The sheer horse-power needed for 25 predubs worth of virtual automation to the unit level — with pans, EQs, sends, reverb snapshots and so on — is beyond what ProTools is capable of ….. yet.

(left to right: dialogue-music re-recording mixer Chris Scarabosio, 1st Assistant Sound Editor Joel Dougherty, recordist Jared Marshack, and Supervising Sound Editor Craig Berkey, seated in Audio Head Stage B by a Digidesign Icon mixing console)

But ultimately, the bottom line is not the technology. The tools may be different, but it’s the artist who wields the tool that is the most important piece of the puzzle. The Icon, like any other piece of technology, is nothing more than a tool.

Like life, sound is what you make it.

Unfortunately, the Erik Aadahl Special is coming to the end. Here’s the last interview I had with Erik, this time talking about the sound design on the two Transformers films. We talk about everything, from the initial aspects to the creation of the robots sounds, the mix, and more.

Designing Sound: Let’s start with the beginning… what were your initial thoughts about the sound design on Transformers when reading the script for the first time?

Erik Aadahl: When I first read the script, I remember thinking how huge it seemed. But I hoped that there could be more to the sound track than just “big and loud” Bay-hem. Fortunately, from the very first scene there were sound moments built in for us to exploit.

“Transformers” opens with the Soccent Airbase sequence, where a Decepticon combat helicopter named “Blackout” hacks into a secret military computer network. The script describes a terrifying alien “shriek” as the bad robot uplinks to the network.

This “shriek” is the only clue that investigators have to the origins of the attack. Ethan Van der Ryn worked on this sound before I ever came on the show, and it gets referenced throughout the movie.

Also, we knew we had to pay homage to the classic original transformation sound. The original was a really simple, iconic sound that everybody remembers and loves. Our hope was to find that iconic quality in the new movie.

DS: How was the work with Michael Bay? What’s the importance he gives to the sound of Transformers films?

EA: Michael has said many times that sound is 50% the movie-going-experience. He told a story about Spielberg telling him it was “30%”, and Michael countered, “Well, we have room to negotiate”.

As soon as Michael’s picture cut starts to come together, he wants to hear sound. I don’t blame him; the picture works a lot better when the sound is good. And vise versa. So we try to get as much done early as possible. In the case of the second movie, we were already well into editing before principle photography had wrapped, because of a strike-induced compressed schedule.

Michael Bay on Stage

DS: And what about the relationship with the Visual FX team? Any strategic alliance there to have a better union between sound and visual effects?

EA: Ethan knew the ILM guys from his days working at Skywalker Sound up north. They would get our tracks, and hopefully some ideas. Bay Films had a high-speed video uplink set up to ILM in San Francisco. But for our crew here in Los Angeles, it was a little tougher to have direct contact with those fellows. Fortunately, they sent us artwork, and we’d ship them sounds, so there was some back and forth.

On the first film, I noticed how the animators gave attention to our track. We put in a temp sound effect for Starscream flying by, before it had been animated and all we could see was a plate of Hoover Dam with a camera pan. When we finally got the animation, the animators had exactly animated to our F22 jet sound temped in to the blank visual. We didn’t have to even adjust sync.

Washer Dryer used for "Devastator"

DS: I think one of your best challenges was to give different life to each big robot with sound, retaining the idea of they’re a same species. Could you tell us about the use of sound to enhance each character

“personality”?

EA: The biggest part of the job was to create unique sounds for each of the robot characters. Our sounds needed to convey each robot’s “soul”, a sonic reflection of its spirit. We also wanted to avoid existing robot clichés and think outside the box stylistically. The goal was to create sounds we’d never heard before.

So in the beginning we defined philosophies for each robot. Ethan and I sat down with a pad of paper and brainstormed all the different characters and what “signature” we could give each one. Every robot needed its own sound personality: Optimus was based on air, Bumble Bee on buzzing, Jazz on jazzy rhythms, Ratchet on ratchets, Ironhide on heavy iron and weaponry, Blackout on rhythmic chopping rotors, Starscream on screaming turbines and so on.

Bumblebee’s entire vocal performance was based on sound effects that our team created from scratch, so in effect we vocally “acted” for him. Most of it was our own voices, Mike Hopkins and my voices processed. I have a friend who says that when Bumblebee lost his legs in the first film, and cried out for Sam’s help, it made her cry. I think Bumblebee wound up being the most emotive character.

Texture and realism was a critical task for the foley department, who collected props specific to each character’s personality to make every robotic joint and ligament feel real. John Roesch, Alyson Dee Moore and Mary Jo Lang made the “sonic glue” that held these robots together.

Two of my favorite scenes from the movies are when Bumblebee communicates through his radio to Sam. P.K. Hooker took up the task to search through Paramount movies for lines that conveyed Bumblebee’s meaning. Michael had given us lots of latitude, and it was P.K. who found those takes from Star Trek, Chris Farley, John Wayne, and Jimmy Stewart. You even hear P.K.’s voice preaching a sermon to convey that the Autobots had come “from the heavens above, hallelujah”. With due credit to the screenwriters, P.K. in a sense “wrote” many of Bumblebee’s lines in those scenes.

Stove used for "Jetfire"

DS: How you do to make the difference between Decepticons and Autobots? How does the sound identify the Evil side and the good side?

EA: With the overwhelming action taking place on screen, a goal was for the audience to be able to distinguish between “bad” and “good” by simply listening.

In music, why does a minor chord sound ominous, and a major chord uplifting? We are somehow to programmed to interpret combinations of frequencies emotionally. It is a mystery of the brain, and one that sound can exploit exquisitely.

The “zang” sounds for the Fallen are purer and more fundamental than his fellow Decepticons, because he is the original Decepticon. We wanted his energy to sound dangerous and volatile, synthetic and unreal, like a mythic version of the other robots. His sound, which originated from a glitch in our software that wound up making a whole variety of fantastic zangy Fallen sounds, feels instinctively dangerous — though I’m not really sure why. Maybe it resembles buzzing electricity that implies danger.

Perhaps the clearest distinction is between Optimus and his evil brother, arch-nemesis Megatron. Both have “airy” sounds, but Optimus is smooth and warm, and Megatron is hissy and sharp. Though both are “airy”, one feels “good” and the other “bad”.

Also, vocals really help convey personality. For the bad guys, we often use vicious animals or ominous deep growls. The good guys breaths and efforts tend to be smoother and friendlier.

DS: And what about the little species? There are a lot of fantastic little robots. How was the sound design decisions for that little ones?

EA: In “Revenge of the Fallen”, the Reedman sequence was my favorite. Thousands of tiny little ball-bearings combine into a razor sharp robot named Reedman. Our goal was to play the opposite of “big” …. to get tiny, quiet and intimate. To make the audience lean in, not get pushed back. For me, the scene plays like a symphony of little sounds.

We made Reedman with buzzing magnets, surging air rifle beebee pellets, rolling metal ball-bearings, “chiming” steel washers dangling from strings, and a bunch of zippery sounds we constructed out of thousands of little metal clinks. His gurgling chatter was voiced by Reno Wilson and his shrieks by Frank Welker.

In the “hut scene”, a little Decepticon fly scout comes buzzing through the wall, and Sam catches it. I was trying to figure out how to make its buzzing sounds, and one morning while shaving it came to me: my electric razor! I wiggled it around like a fly, and that became the sound for the little critter’s wings.

We also had fun with the “kitchenbots”. We made some of their little machine guns with a typewriter and their missiles with bottle rockets. Their vocals are combos of human and small animal vocals. My favorite is the warthog garbage disposal.

There’s a character named Alice, an attractive coed that turns out to be a killer robot. Ethan and I originally experimented with using orgasm-type screams for all her vocals. We used our own voices, embarrassing to hear before tweaking them. We pitched our recordings to sound female and processed them to sound robotic. It was a little over the top so we toned it down, but you can still hear a few of those sexy sounds in the track.

In “Transformers”, we meet a vicious little Nokia cellphone robot that fires wildly at everyone. Towards the end of the schedule we had an idea: we thought it would be fun to have him yelling in Finnish, since Nokia is from Finland. We recorded some Finns cursing in their language, and pitched them chipmunk-style to fit into the little robot. But Michael had already fallen in love with an earlier sound, so the Finnish curses wound up on the cutting room floor.

I also really enjoyed the little Decepticon Frenzy from the first film, transformed from a boombox to infiltrate Air Force One. His voice was performed by Reno Wilson, who can do amazing contortions with his throat. To supplement the vocal performance, we made Frenzy’s growls, chatters and movements. His clicking growl was made with ticks from a metal wind-up clock, synced to the waveform cadence of a young cougar growling.

DS: How was the processing and treatment to the dialogue of the robots?

EA: Mike Hopkins was the master of robot voices. He recorded all the actors’ ADR, and treated them with dialogue re-recording mixers Kevin O’Connell and Gary Summers on the stage. In the beginning, we tried doing what you’d expect from “Robot” treatment – processing the voices to sound really freakin’ awesome. Well, Michael hated it. We persisted on the second movie, giving Soundwave his classic “glass resonance” voice, but updated for the 21st century .That voice gave me goose bumps. But guess what? Michael hated it.

Something about processing voices just bugged him. Any short delay, any zangy tuning, any gentle waveform synthesis, any ANYTHING was shot down. Eventually, Mike found a happy medium. Typically, dialogue comes out center channel–but for Optimus for example, every channel including the sub is being used. For the big guys, we could deepen and widen and rumble the voices, but they all had to sound natural. Our first instinct was to go wild with the voices, but who knows, maybe less is more sometimes.

With the Decepticon alien languages, we had the green light to go crazier. We surgically edited human vocals with morphed, synthetic treatments to give the sense of evil data transmission.

Mike Hopkins had a method of extrapolating a language from the English-scripted lines and it turned out to mold well with sound effects. A lot of the language data sounds were made from a malfunctioning iPod that Ethan broke on the first movie. It made all sorts of insane garbled bytes of sound. We tried to make the morphing of human vocals and synthetic effects seamless.

DS: And your main tools/effects to tweak and get the transforming sounds? Could you give us an example of any crazy effects chain to make a particular sound or sequence?

EA: The original “Transformers” cartoon featured a very iconic transformation sound, the 5-beat rhythm of rising or falling splatty pitch.

To make this basic sound, I can start with anything; a 500 HZ tone, for example. Then I’d add a little “Metaflanger” in the ProTools, adjusting the rate to get a nice splatty sound. Then I’d automate a pitch rise from start to finish, so the tone ramps up. Then I’d add a tremelo pattern, and tweak that to get the 5-part rhythm. And that’s basically the original cartoon transforming sound.

For these movies, the transformations were usually a little more complicated than that, but the basic idea stayed the same: a multi-beat rhythm with an escalating or decelerating pitch.

We used lots of tools to achieve that. The very first transformation in the movies was for our evil helicopter Blackout. His transformation started with a weird drone that was basically an equalized medium delay applied to a slowed UPS battery buzz recording. As the copter’s rotors fold up, we hear a whining motor, made out of a very simple scanner servo with a pitch acceleration, followed by big shingy shears made out of sword blade slides.

As his transformation intensifies, we start adding big metal crunches as his big parts rearrange and lock into place. The main element for this was big ice crunches, recorded at 192 kHz, slowed to about 20% speed and fattened out with compression. The most important thing to sell the ice was to make it rhythmic — I picked a tempo I liked and matched the ice cracks to that tempo. We supplemented the ice cracks with shotgun cocks to sell the idea of pieces locking.

One specific plug-in story involved making sounds for “The Fallen,” where I was playing with a plug-in called Echoboy. I had taken some metal groans we recorded, and was running the sounds through different treatments on a ProTools insert and re-recording them onto a new track. I often like recording treatments in real time, as opposed to rendering them in Audiosuite, since I can do real time parameter adjustments.

As I was re-recording the treated metal groans, twisting and turning the plug-in knobs at random, the ProTools played over a missing fade which “popped” the plug-in in an unexpected way. It made this unreal ZAAAAAANG that turned out to be the Fallen sound I was looking for. Mistakes can sometimes be great opportunities.

DS: We already know about some great field recording stories such as the weapons recordings, the jets, helicopters, or lovely things such as the buzzing magnet balls… Could you tell us more about other sound sources recorded to have those great morphing and crazy sounds of the robots?

EA: Optimus Prime was designed with the concept of “air”: air brakes from a semi truck, pressure hose releases recorded in a Sacramento metal working factory and some foley air bursts all became the sources of Optimus’s signature air sounds. BMW car door latch clicks became his eye blinks. Dry ice on metal became his collection of energy groans.

His body movements were made from a scissorlift recorded on a construction site. The first week I started working on “Transformers”, I noticed renovation happening in the adjacent Technicolor Sound Services building. I’ve found that these great sound recording opportunities often appear serendipitously, and it’s up to us as sound designers to grab those opportunities while they’re ripe. No random whistling window, LAPD helicopter sweep or road construction jackhammer should go unrecorded.

Speaking of which, a jackhammer I stumbled across at Sony Studios became a Decepticon weapon in “Revenge of the Fallen’s” final battle.

For Bumblebee, I caught a fly in a tall cup at home, and shoved a microphone in to get sounds for his motors. My old home HP printer gave some good purring servo motors for his legs.

His splatty vocals came from a garden hose. I came home one night from work, parked in the driveway, got out of my car and stepped on my garden hose. It made this crazy liquid gurgle that sounded like transmitting data. I stepped again and its purr sounded like a creature. I thought: “I gotta record this now!” I recorded some sets outside, but the crickets were so loud that night that I knew I’d regret not getting cleaner recordings inside.

There’s a physics term called the “Heisenberg Principle”. The gist of it is that once you observe something, it changes. I was worried that if I disturbed the hose, it wouldn’t make that crazy sound anymore. I took the hose up into my apartment, threw it in the bathtub, and hoped it would still gurgle for me, minus the crickets. Fortunately, the hose was still squirting away.

I made Jazz using a dying battery-powered electric drill, vari-speeding it DJ-style to jazz it up.

Megatron’s legs motors were made using a palm frond that effects editor Chris Aud recorded. The recording was basically a stiff palm leaf scraping against a hard surface. It had a great, snake-like, hiss quality that made for a really bizarre robot leg motor.

Megatron’s vocals were also fun. Re-recording genius effects mixer Greg Russell lent his chesty roar to the track. We also used ultra-close up exhales and human purrs, manipulated to sound huge and evil, for his breathing, plus a few large carnivorous animal vocals.

DS: In “Revenge of The Fallen” there are bigger robots such as the giant Deception made by combination of constructions machines, the Fallen and the “optimized” Optimus Prime + Jet Fire at the final battle. What are the improvements and decisions to made it sound “bigger” and deal with that battle?

EA: It’s a funny psycho-acoustic phenomenon, that “small” sounds can be manipulated to sound bigger than “big” sounds. In sound design we often find the “macro” in the “micro”.

Devastator was such a cool bad guy from the original series. Frank Welker voiced him, and we did some pitching, processing and widening to help him fit into the colossus. Frank has an amazing ability to rattle his vocal chords in the greatest way, so that there’s always definition no matter how you twist his voice.

For Devastator, we also did a lot of metal recording. My home washer-dryer turned out to be a fantastic source of sounds. Slamming the dryer door became his huge thunderous footsteps. The clanking of my friend Helen’s set of workout machine dumbbells became his huge clattering movements. For his leg motors, my voice, twisted into a deep electric pulse, gave him alien power and energy.

Jetfire is a rusty, aging and ancient old robot. For him, we built a homemade windchime using shards of aluminum, saw blades and a monkey wrench attached to strings. We clanked them together, and used the ringing metal for the aging robot’s beard of swinging metal. His legs and arms were made from my creaky oven door.

The “optimized” Optimus Prime gets the ability to fly after Jetfire sacrifices himself. His flying sounds were made from a very small source: fireworks. His rocket jetpack sounds were made from a fireworks fountain recorded in my driveway. With eye and fire protection I could record the fireworks up close for a nice, rich up front sound. Some cracklers gave an edgy element that I dopplered to make some vicious flybys out of.

Greg Russell (Re-Recording Mixer) on Stage

DS: There are a lot of scenes with really challenging mix, which is another amazing aspect of the sound of Transformers. How was the relationship with Greg Russell (Sound Effects Mixer) to group and choose the sounds and the key elements of each sequence?

EA: I can’t compliment Greg enough. Beyond his incredible mixing ability, he brings an infectious joy and energy to the process. Working with him is plain fun.

After long and exhausting hours of work, it wouldn’t be surprising to hear him break into spontaneous song. On the first movie it was “Give it to me one more time” by Captain And Tennille. Late in the night on “Revenge of the Fallen” he’d break into “All Night Long” by Lionel Richie. I’m curious what Transformers 3′s song will be.

Before mixing, we edit the track to sound as good as it can. We do not include clutter or multiple options, just the sounds we want to hear. We editorially carve out space for clarity, making those kind of decisions before hitting the mix stage. There just isn’t enough time to waste on an expensive mix stage weeding through thousands of superfluous elements.

For Transformers, our basic FX predub groups were:

1-4 : “A FX” : doors, hatches, grabs, beeps, etc.
5-9 : Weapons, explos, impacts, bullet ricos, whizzes
11-14 : Vehicles, aircraft
15-16 : Robot mechanics
17-18 : Robot motors
19-20 : Robot Footsteps
21 : Robot surface textures
22 : Robot weapons
23 : Robot breaths & alien vocals

We bring our tracks already organized into predubs to the mix stage. Greg can then take those tracks to the next level. Greg doesn’t “choose” the sounds, but somebody visiting the stage shouldn’t be surprised to hear Greg mouthing weird vocals to describe an idea for a doppler missile shrieking by: “FFFFFWWWWAAAAAARRRRR!!!!”

Over a month of predubbing, Greg works reel-by-reel to tweak balances, create clarity, find places to punch it up and create size, do all of the insane panning you hear, and carefully and methodically build all of the predubs into 6-channel (5.1) chunks.

Once these predub mixes were all built, we took them to the final stage and, with dialogue/music mixers Kevin O’Connell on the first film and Gary Summers on the second, integrated music and dialogue into the equation over another month of final mixing. At this point, Greg and I work closely together on the effects, adding new sounds as needed from a ProTools stage “fix rig”, through Greg’s console, and into our mix. We’re doing this until the very last moment when we printmaster.

DS: I love the use of silence in Transformers, especially in Revenge of The Fallen. How do you decide when use this silence and when not? How does the silence help in a specific scene?

EA: There can be no light without dark. My favorite paintings are by Rembrandt and Caravaggio, who practiced chiaroscuro, the art of contrast. Dark blacks, contrasted by shafts of bright light. I like sound that has the same dynamic: quiet and intimate, versus bold and intense. Frequencies that go low-end to high-end and back again. Some of my favorite music has the same shape: Mahler, John Adams and “Boards of Canada”, who does it in a modern way.

Quiet scenes help cleanse the sonic palatte. I love them because they are seductive. They create a sense of ease, of calm, that can quickly turn on its head.

One of my favorite scenes is the “hut scene”. Sam and Mikaela are hiding out from Decepticons on the hunt. It’s the silence that I like. We tried to get very quiet, so we could hear the terrified kids trying to suppress their breaths and not be heard. We wanted the audience to hold their breaths too. We go as quiet as we can, before Starscream rips the roof off of with a BANG! Dynamics are the key to both storytelling and sound.

It’s fun to make audiences lean in, have them strain to hear something, and then give them a jolt. I like this kind of filmic emotional manipulation, and I think anyone who enjoys a ride on a roller coaster does too.

Different filmmakers work differently, with unique approaches to the sound design process. For some, there’s intense interest and scrutiny, for others there might not be any interest until the end.

I prefer having an actively engaged filmmaker. It makes it much easier to work together and evolve the track over time to make it right for everyone. It doesn’t matter if I think the sound work is great. It’s not my movie. It’s the filmmaker’s baby. If they haven’t signed off on our sounds, things can get really risky as we approach the dub. There’s nothing worse than spending months recording, designing and working on a sequence, just to have all your sounds dumped on the final mix stage and replaced with crappy AVID “omf” temp effects, simply because those are the sounds they’re used to.

That’s why with inexperienced or reluctant filmmakers, we try to engage and instigate the interactive process early. Sometimes all that’s needed is a little inspiration; doing a 5.1 presentation of a favorite sequence early in the schedule is a good way to get everyone off to a good start.

The central strategy we’ve adopted to work with picture editors and directors is to deliver complete sound effects mixes as early as possible. We do these in ProTools. These FX mixes get integrated into the AVID picture cut and completely replace temp effects. Typically we start with stereo bounces. If there’s a piece that a director or editor doesn’t like, they cut a piece out of our mix in the AVID, and put in a sound they prefer. This then serves as a “note” to us, a marker that we need to reexamine that section and try something different. This way, every turnover of a new version evolves the track. Ideally, the whole sound track gets sussed-out this way before we hit the pre-dub stage.

I think first impressions with a new director is very important. I botched my first meeting with director Alex Proyas on “I, Robot,” keeping my mouth shut about my ideas and making him nervous about what I’d bring to the table. These sort of meetings are an important opportunity to establish lines of communication and start generating concepts. It’s important to listen carefully, take lots of notes, and be prepared with some questions of your own. It’s a chance to present some interesting ideas and pitch them if the situation presents itself. It’s never too early (but often too late) to influence the picture.

I remember the first time meeting the filmmakers of “Kung Fu Panda”. A small room at Dreamworks Animation Studios in Glendale was packed with 10 people I’d never met before, and me. Just getting the names straight at first was hard enough. But what followed was a very intense spotting session of a 7 minute prison escape sequence. Director John Stevenson spent a lot of time talking about concepts: how the depths of the prison were lit blue, and this should reflect the icy cold isolation of the prisoner, which in turn should be reflected in the sound. Co-director Mark Osborne talked a lot about the prisoner Tai Lung’s fighting style. Pages were filled with details like the rhino guards’ armor; iron metal plates, hinged with thick leather and neck chain mail.

This scene alone took us 2 hours to spot, playing for a second or two each time we stopped for another note. I filled my notebook with about 20 pages of single-spaced notes. I remember coming back to chat with my co-supervisor Ethan thinking, “just to spot the entire movie will take us months!”

But things brightened up quickly. The filmmakers absolutely loved our first pass on the sequence, which earned us some trust. We realized that in animation, filmmakers have control of over every tiny little detail from top to bottom. Sometimes they feel negligent, wrongly so, that they’re not delivering us enough notes. But not getting lots of notes can actually be more liberating, freeing us up to follow our instincts. Sometimes it takes a little practice for some directors to be comfortable enough to trust their sound team and relax.

Michael Bay likes having lots of sound work done early. I remember my first week on “Transformers”. Word had come back from picture editorial that Michael was really upset about the lack of sound work done so far for the film. Our response: we weren’t scheduled to start for months!

Well, that changed instantly with a little pressure from Bay’s office, and flash forward a few days and I was working on the first transformation of the movie. It was a Tuesday, and by Friday I had to send the scene to picture editorial at Bay Films in Santa Monica for review. The same thing the following week: I had the week to design a first pass of our autobots for the “Witwicky House” scene, where the robots first show up at Sam’s house. This was a sequence that finally convinced Michael we were on the right track. After that, we could pretty much do whatever we thought was cool, and it would stick.

I think the trick with Michael is to know what you’re doing. He doesn’t have patience for mess ups and won’t tolerate wasting time. Films like “Transformers” are often controlled chaos, or as some of the crew called it: “Bay-os”. How you do can depend on how well you can take the heat.

We continued weekly meetings with Michael through design and editorial, until we started our rolling temp mix in January before the summer release. At this point, we put together a 40 minute presentation for Showest that dovetailed right into premixing and the 4 week final. Michael would come for playback of reels, and to show the movie to executive producer Steven Spielberg. By this point, the film had tested very well with audiences and though we had tons of work remaining, the pressure was off the studio now that they knew they had a hit.

“Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” had a similar structure to the process, though the schedule was much more compressed due to the writers strike. An impending actors strike threw some big curve balls at the brilliant supervisor Mike Hopkins, compressing the already insanely complicated ADR schedule.

Terrence Malick is also extremely involved with sound. I had the pleasure of working on “The New World” and recently “The Tree of Life”. When we first met to discuss sound, Terry gave us a ranking of what he considered most important:

#1 : Atmospheres
#2 : Sound effects
#3 : Dialogue
#4 : Music

I find the ranking to be fascinating, because it completely bucks convention and is the opposite direction of most filmmakers, who are often too comfortable using clichéd and generic techniques. Using too much music can be a cop out, a cheap filmmaker’s trick that should be moderated. Less music usually makes the music that remains more potent.

I’ve also done sound on a few films for director Bryan Singer. Picture editor and music composer John Ottman is virtually Bryan’s second director, and he worked closely with the sound team. But sometimes Bryan’s aesthetic didn’t always match my own. I remember on “X-Men 2″ I had cut a big fight scene between Wolverine and Lady Deathstrike, who both had adamantium skeletons, razor sharp claws, and the ability to heal their wounds. The two characters were stabbing each other violently with their claws. I thought, “how cool would it be to hear the blades hit their metal skeletons as they stabbed?” so I put some vicious grinding blade sounds and lots of sword shings.

Bryan hated it. “What is this? It sounds like a pirate movie!” So we dumped the blade sounds and went in a more punchy direction with the mix.

I remember a similar thing happen in “Superman Returns”. There’s a scene in which Superman goes face to face with a gattling gun, firing a hail storm of bullets. We had the sound of bullets zipping all around us, slicing through the air. Bryan’s first reaction was, “What’s all this zippy stuff?!! Get rid of it!” Turns out Bryan doesn’t like sounds that call too much attention to themselves.

On “Valkyrie”, we hit a little snag with writer/producer Chris McQuarrie during the final mix. We recorded authentic pistols and K98 rifles for a gunfight that takes us to the film’s final execution scene. But Chris got hung up on the “too-clean” fidelity of our sounds, versus the distorted and awful-sounding (but dramatic) production recording cracks. After he had his pass on the guns, I felt upset about the low fidelity of the sounds, and questioned keeping my name on the film. But co-supervisor and re-recording mixer Craig Hennighan, with Ottman’s help, slowly brought our material back in and got a more elegant balance between the production cracks and our FX. My name is still on the movie.

Written by Erik Aadahl for Designing Sound.

Erik Aadahl has worked in animated films such as “Kung Fu Panda”, “Monsters vs Aliens”, and currently in “Shrek: Forever After”. Here is an interview I had with him, talking about his work on that kind of films.

DS: Animation is not a genre and the way to deal with sound in animation films is different from the way you work with sound in a typical film, but there’s one thing: you have to create a whole world starting from computer animated graphics. Do you find something special in animated films? Any difference you find compared with the rest of films?

EA: Animators are extremely detail oriented, and compared to other filmmakers can be much more detailed in their notes.

In sound, like animation, we start with a completely blank canvas. Actors’ dialogue is typically ADR, so the production track is exceptionally clean. This helps our sounds live clearly and precisely in the track.

Beyond clarity, animation is a very fun medium. You get a little more latitude with what is believable. Starting with “Kung Fu Panda”, and continuing with “Monsters vs. Alien”s and “Shrek: Forever After,” we’ve tried to stretch the boundary of the believable.

For “Kung Fu Panda”, the challenge was to keep things whimsical. Our first instinct was to go “big and bold”, which is what our directors John Stevenson and Mark Osborne had asked for. But after playing a first pass of bad guy Tai Lung’s prison escape to Dreamworks Animation studio head Jeffrey Katzenberg, we learned that we were definitely working in a different medium, with different acceptable decibel and violence thresholds. “Panda”, which was aimed at family audiences, challenged us to find ways to make the track interesting without being an assault; to make things dynamic and exciting, but also pleasant, playful and easy on the ear.

So for “Panda” making things musical became our central strategy. This is not new to the Kung Fu genre. Kung Fu films are all about rhythms, beats and hyper-expressive, often musical and tonal sounds. Sound effects editor P.K. Hooker put together a collection of Kung Fu movies, from classics like “Iron Monkey” to newer films like “Hero” and “House of Flying Daggers.” What these films all have in common are intricate rhythms, where punches sound like percussion, most impacts have a WHOOSH leading into them, and the sound effects are often indistinguishable from music.

In “Monsters vs. Aliens”, we felt we could be more comic. The movie is a spoof on monster and sci-fi films from the ’50s, which is fun because we could pay homage to classic vintage-type sound effects, playing on clichés with a wink to our film sound history. This was the film that led to our first theremin experiments, which we elaborated on in Transformers 2.

I think my favorite thing, looking back, in “MvA” was one sound challenge we gave ourselves. When we designed Galaxar’s giant space ship, the principle for making the sound effects was to make every sound using our mouths only. Almost everything in the ship, from the space hatches to the hover bike to Galaxar’s laser gun was recorded vocally and then processed (or not). This sort of thing would be a lot harder to pull off in a live action film.

DS: How is the work with the directors and the animation crew? What is their interest to sound in the pre and production process?

EA: I think most people in animation are very aware of how important sound is to bring the picture to life. That’s why so much work is put into sound on these films very early. In fact, it’s the first thing they do. All the actors’ voices are recorded first, and animators then spend years animating to those vocal performances. Similarly with sound effects, years before we start on the film, the picture editorial crew puts together an intricate temp effects track. Over time, as shots go from storyboard through animation and lighting, the picture slowly catches up to the temp sound track. Then we jump in with our sounds.

We could see how energized the “Panda” team became when we first started sending fresh sounds; that in itself became an inspiration to us.

We sent picture editor Clare Knight FX mixes as often as we could, getting notes and evolving the track so that by the time we got to pre-mixing, everything had been heard and approved by the filmmakers.

We also got a longer schedule on “Monsters vs. Aliens”, but one comment we got in the early days from directors Conrad Vernon and Rob Letterman was: “It doesn’t sound big enough”. We realized the problem: our sounds were being monitored on stereo speakers in the editorial room, often dialed down to play against the dialogue and temp music. So we thought we’d better get a full 5.1 presentation with a bunch of scenes temp mixed in the ProTools to squash the “size issue”. With a sub channel the size complaints stopped.

One of the sequences we chose to present was Susan’s (a.k.a. Ginormica’s) arrival to Area 51, where she slowly learns that she’s trapped in a monster prison. This turned out to be our favorite sequence. The entire bit relies on sound design, with no music for the first few minutes, cuing Susan to explore her mysterious new home. We pitched the idea of playing sound effects only. Perhaps by luck, or maybe by design, we avoided going the music-driven and traditional route.

DS: In “Monsters vs Aliens” Ginormica has to sound “big”, Insectosaurus is a beast-insect, or in Kung-Fu Panda you have the little master mantis and the beast Tai Lung. What were your thoughts about the sound of these characters when you saw it on the sketches and then in the animated sequences? How does the sound help to improve the character design on those films?

EA: I think character design is one of the most important parts of our job. We are literally doing a performance for a character, the same way an actor would.

Po the Panda’s style of fighting is using his rolly-polly body weight to deflect and bounce an attacker’s power right back at them. So for this, we played with “boing” sounds. Supervising sound editor Ethan Van der Ryn built a “gut-bucket,” basically an iron bucket with a tensioned string that we could pluck and bend notes with. I did a design pass on these recordings, making escalating magnitudes of bouncy deflection as Po’s skills developed.

In “Kung Fu Panda”, each character represents a different style of Kung Fu, represented by a sonic signature: Mantis is based on wood-instrument ratchets, with doppler zips as he flies; Tigress is based on swift vocals, tennis racket whooshes and precision jabs; Crane is based on feathers and wings; Monkey is based on swingy whooshes; Viper is based on snake rattles (made out of serrated air hisses), and villain Tai Lung is based on sheer brute force, contrasting Po’s rubbery-ness.

Making sounds for characters in “Monsters vs. Aliens” was pretty similar. Our heroes, Susan (the 50 foot woman), B.O.B. (the blob), Link (the swamp thing), Dr. Cockroach, and Insectosaurus (the giant furry bug) all have their own individual soundscapes.

Susan has thunderous feet, designed by sound effects editor John Marquis.

Bob has gloopy blob sounds, created with our mouths, suction cups and latex stretching recorded by sound effects editor P.K. Hooker. Link is all about flippers and gurgling water (my throat was raw after this session). The Doctor is all about the sci-fi mad scientist inventions surrounding him. And Insectosaurus, voiced completely with sound design, is a cute version of the classic giant monster Godzilla, created with metal wails, a pig and a kazoo. The filmmakers mentioned “Godzilla’s” vocal as being created by a sharp metal screech, and wanted to achieve that feel.

DS:  One of may favorite characters on “Monsters vs Aliens” is Bob. Great and funny sound design on it. I think you had a lot of fun, I guess). How was the sound of “Bob” created?

EA: BOB was lots of fun. P.K. did a bunch of recording sets using pudding and jello, and actually got sick after eating too much while recording. After the session, there was pudding splattered all over the canvas tarp we had protecting the carpet. Listening to those recordings still makes me nauseous.

P.K. also found some big sheets of latex off the internet. To this day we’re not sure about the true business of the supplier. Those sounds wound up being used for BOB’s stretchy and elastic components.

The core design elements used for BOB were made using our mouths; suction pops, juicy lip smacks, wet tongue wiggles. BOB’s eye movements were exclusively mouth sounds and tongue clicks. For his arms and body, I layered these mouth sounds with our latex and foley toilet plunger sounds. Depending on the moment, we’d adjust the proportions of mouth to latex or plunger, and that combo of sounds was basically the sound of BOB.

DS: Do you have some filed recording stories on the sound of those films?

EA: When we started recording for “Panda”, we tried to get into the spirit of the genre. It seemed the classic Kung Fu “whoosh” and “punch” could be a starting point. We spent some days on the Hawks Stage at 20th Century Fox when its DFC mixing console’s system software was being upgraded, an used the space to do a complete “whoosh” recording set.

Foley stages are sometimes a little small when recording things on long tethers swooshing around the room. The Hawks Stage is a big space and has an exceptionally low noise floor.

One of the the first things we recorded in there was a jagged piece of metal that we attached to twine and began furiously swinging past the microphone. The slicing sound it made whipping though the air was fantastic. As I checked my recorder meter, I heard a SNAP! and looked up to see the jagged piece of metal, no longer attached to the twine, hurtling through the air.

My heart skipped a beat as I contemplated the damage that jagged metal piece could do to the extremely expensive and newly-installed silver screen in the mixing theater.

It missed.

whew.

We continued to record anything swing-able, from bamboo sticks, to pool cues, wood flutes and spatulas. I think we have around a hundred different varieties of whooshes from that session. Certainly one of the weirdest was a suggestion of sound effects editor Paul Pirola: 30 feet of bungee cord stretched and released across the stage. That sound became Po the Panda’s slow and relaxed whoosh.

We also recorded a bunch of Chinese instruments for “Panda” that later became character sounds: wood blocks, Tibetan chimes, a ringing bowl and gong.

At one point, John Stevenson requested a “sloshing of noodle soup” in Po’s belly as he moved. To attempt this sound, Ethan Van der Ryn wrapped a Sparkletts water bottle in thick cloth, and we recorded those sloshes with varying amounts of liquid. Dan O’Connell also contributed some water balloon gurgles and squishes to the mix. We kept these elements on their own pre-dub to dial in as needed.

We also had some fun recording crowds. Two hundred Dreamworks animators volunteered themselves on “Panda” and “MvA” to perform big exterior crowd sounds; sceaming and cheering for a whole variety of situations. At Dreamworks Animation studios in Glendale there’s a lovely courtyard with a massive fountain that was shut off and surrounded with hoards of sleep and UV-deprived animators that were ready to seriously release some steam.

DS: And what about foley?

EA: Working with Dan O’Connell, John Cucci and James Ashwill at “One Step Up” Foley is always a pleasure. The team is so creative and fast; they just nail it. On each of the three films we spent several days each recording “Wild Foley,” big sets of sounds that fit into the effects palette we need. For “Panda” we recorded punches, which we designed into Kung Fu smacks, and bells, swords and knives, snake slithers, whooshes and whip cracks, mystical chimes and anything pertinent we could think of.

We also spent this time establishing personalities for all the character’s textures and footsteps.

For every film, we typically shoot “cloth tracks” that for animation is especially important. It gives movement and life to a scene, subtle movements of the characters that is critical to create intimacy when a production track is absent. On these animated films, our cloth track is a dizzying melée of cloth, silk, nylon, fur, feathers, hair and any texture required.

For “Monsters vs. Aliens”, Dan gave us tons of great foley material. We did extensive sets of metal screeches, metal slides, air hatch releases, weapon action, and coiled spring twangs and zangs. The more I do this, the more I realize that there is no difference between sound effects and music … both tell a story, it’s just the instruments that vary.

DS: There are a lot of intense fight scenes on Kung-Fu Panda. How were the sound design decisions there?

EA: It’s all about the rhythms. Bottom line. Period. Whoosh and punch. I think of the punches like musical beats, like a drummer drumming. We pick the rhythm: musical and expressive.

The classic “Kung Fu” SMACK! was a sound that took a while to figure out. Both Dan O’Connell and I suffered some bruises smacking a variety of objects into our legs. Interestingly, the sound that reminded me the most of the classic Kung Fu WHACK! wound up being a slowed down chopstick impact.

DS: In Kung Fu Panda the story is in China, in a very cultural valley, and in “Monsters vs Aliens” you have earth, monsters, space and sci-fi stuff. Two different perspectives but the same things to deal with: time and space. How was the sound design approach to give believability to the historical time and the space?

EA: We’ve heard from some Chinese fans that our sounds were very authentic — a lot of this may have been accidental luck, because realism was secondary for us in these films.

We did pay deference to certain cultural sounds. We recorded a bronze singing bowl, ancient prayer bells and chinese gongs for sounds for Master Oogway’s mystical sonic palette. Shifu was much more authoritarian in his sounds, precise and quick whip slashes. We used a slicing spatula for a lot of his movements.

But when it came to “MvA,” there was little connection to reality. The sound for Galaxar’s spaceship was a Didgeridoo.

DS: Every DreamWorks animated film has a lot of funny scenes and unexpected dose of laughter. There’s a way you treat the sound to enhance these comic moments?

EA: Comic timing is a lot of it. With “Panda,” I think the filmmakers wanted to treat the genre with respect, but still be playful. In their storytelling, they timed the scenes out for certain beats, certain realizations and moments. I think it’s important to think of sound “in the moment”, a constant “river of tao” experience that helps tell the story in an unfolding, visceral, and emotional way.

With “Monsters vs. Aliens”, we played our sounds more hyper-real, more neon. I love listening to the old Hanna Barbera collection of sound effects. The sounds are pretty low-fi and gnarly, but also very fundamental and expressive. From the Dreamworks logo on, we tried to capture that spirit.

When it comes to comedy, it works a lot like music does: if you time it to follow a certain rhythm, it’s funnier. Try it.

GETTING THE RECORDINGS

Recording is one of the most fun parts of the sound experience for me, yielding fresh material to work with and inevitably leading to unexpected ideas. I consider it central to the sound design process.

Part of the fun is the stories you’re left with. While recording, I’ve:

• Caught a microphone zeppelin on fire while doing stovetop ignition bursts (twice)
• Had a wolf jump up and attack my mic, hanging on a boom over a fence at a refuge in Arizona and pulling me off my feet
• Crushed a lavaliere mic inside a hydraulic press recording a coffee can crush
• Dropped a piano off a forklift, snapping the cable off a mic planted inside (sorry Kim)
• Watched as my friend Ethan nearly got torched recording the afterburners of a F22 Stealth Raptor fighter jet
• Hung out of the trunk of a Saleen sports car racing at 100 mph while recording the muffler
• Shattered my car windshield, with a mic in the driver seat, after dropping 50 gallons of water from a balcony
• Made a cow cry after separating him from his friends to get some moos. It was heart-breaking.
• Had my rig, with a home-made battery pack resembling a home-made bomb, confiscated by Shanghai airport police
• Been eaten by swarms of bugs recording jungle atmospheres in Cambodia
• Got elephant snot all over my Neumann microphone

I start recording sounds before starting a movie, building the library. Every new sound gets a specific three-letter code, followed by a three to four digit number that then gets catalogued with descriptive metadata in Soundminer for easy retrieval. For example, a big wooden door I recorded for Kung Fu Panda got the code and filename “KFP562 DOOR Big Wood Fox Bldg 29″. The door was at the main entrance to our mix building at Fox Studios, and while recording I could hear a subtle engine hum purring under everything. A little annoyed that someone would leave their car idling for so long and mess up my recording, I looked up from my recorder to ask whomever was parked in front of me to “PLEASE TURN OFF YOUR ENGINE!!!” Sitting in his Bentley was Steven Spielberg. I took a breath and decided to let him off the hook.

I do most recording in my design room, with small props or instruments or whatever I can record close up. Depending on the movie, and especially for action movies, I usually try to avoid getting any “room”, or reverb, in the recording. It’s easy to add later with Altiverb, but hard to remove if it’s tied to the recording. This means having an acoustically dead space.

I’ll also often spend several days on the foley stage recording wild sound effects, not to picture, collecting a palette to use for each movie.

The same way you’d record a musical instrument, you record a prop.

I treat everything I record like an instrument that needs a performance. Only I’m not limited to the instruments in an orchestra … the whole world is an instrument. I try to find the sweet spot of a given thing and not kill it. By not killing it, I mean don’t use tons of force to create a big sound. I find that some of the biggest sounds I’ve made are performed gently, so as to get a nice round richness out of the prop. Once you apply too much force, there’s all attack, all transience, and no round bottom. So for the big stuff, I’m often going gentler. Like in music, when you record a snare drum, if the drummer is slamming the drum with all his strength, all you get is a high end crack, which is fine if that’s what you’re going for. But if you want a rich, full, round snare, you lighten up and let the body ring out of the snare hit. So when I record a big metal hit for example, I try to get a smooth and elegant attack.

That said, some things I want to slam. Guns sound better to me when they saturate a mic or preamp. Vehicles can be the same way. As long as the sound doesn’t break up, I’ll push it into the red.

A lot of recording is done out in the field, like weapons and vehicles. For those kinds of shoots, we’ll run way more channels with a variety of microphones to get different angles and qualities in the sounds. John Fasal is the master of field recording, and I’m always learning tricks from him. On Transformers, we ran 14 channels for our weapons, recording on a Sound Devices 744, two 722s, an HHB 4 channel and a 1/4 inch analog Stereo Nagra for that fat tape saturation sound. We attached a DPA lavaliere mic to the barrel of each weapon, taking care not to get it too hot and melt. I ran my 191 close up, trying intentionally to fold the microphone element for a tasty “thump”. We ran a Pearl Sass stereo PZM about 10 feet back, getting a fuller richer perspective, plus some 4007s, Shoepps and a Sanken.

We were recording on a private range in Colorado, and unfortunately had to battle birds, wind noise, and air traffic. Sometimes you luck out with a location, sometimes you don’t.

We lucked out on the movie Valkyrie. We recorded a lot of the weapons for the North Africa sequence in a canyon, miles away from any road or bird. The natural acoustics of the canyon gave us a beautiful effect on the guns and the WW2 P-40 airplanes we were recording. We were recording during the actual production, and that’s always tricky. Sets are always chaotic, especially during action sequences which are complex and stressful to setup. We were fortunate to be given a production liaison with a gas-powered golf cart and walkie talkies to coordinate with the AD (assistant director), armorer and pilots.

The pyrotechnic crew did a number of explosion setups, which we had a lot of fun with. Ironically, the best explosion recording we got that week was from a cheap little 2-channel M-Audio Microtrack II recorder. I put it in a zip-lock bag and half buried it 5 feet away from a Nazi truck that exploded. The little mic overloaded and gave a perfect, huge, effect. Later in the day, I was caught downwind of a big explosion and spent that whole evening in the hotel room cleaning dirt and debris out of my gear with alcohol swabs and compressed air.

Vehicles often involve complex onboard mic hookups, with mics stationed along the course to get different angles on the rev aways, pass bys and in and stops. But I’ve found that the best racing sounds come from handheld angles, near the muffler, revving at 5000 RPM or more in first and second gears. Onboards frequently lack clarity and “beef”. Also, the skill of the driver is critical. On the first Transformers, we had a really gutsy stunt driver burning rubber for us. On the second Transformers, our driver was a bit timid and needed a lot of egging on. Our motorcycle driver, Tim, was incredible; seeing somebody pop a front-wheel-wheelie and keep it going for 1/4 mile is a sight to behold.

I record everything at 192 kHz, 24-bit, most of the time shooting M-S with my Neumann 191. M-S gives me the ability to dial in the stereo imaging later, getting a clean center or a nice wide image depending on the sound. I’m hoping Soundminer introduces a M-S decoder to their search engine, which would take a step out of the workflow when editing.

Sometimes I experiment with non-traditional microphones. I have several home-made hydrophones, which have come in handy for underwater recording like bubbles, swish bys and tones.

I have a few electromagnetic pickups for recording electrical fields. On I, Robot I used this kind of pickup extensively, collecting weird whines, hums and buzzes by moving the pickup around coffee grinders, copy machines, hard drives and anything electric. It was especially useful for sci-fi power-ups and power-downs, and gives a very nice and real organic feel to the synthetic nature of electromagnetism.

USING THE RECORDINGS

After each recording session, either an assistant will take the time to line up multi-channel angles and get them catalogued, or I’ll set up design sessions with the sounds. Typically I’ll load the raw recordings into ProTools, clean out the crap, and set up a chain of plugins on an insert. These may include an MS decoder, compressor/limiter, EQ, and whatever additional treatment might be appropriate depending on the sound. If I’m doing any extreme pitching or processing, I’ll work in a 192 kHz session to maximize fidelity and have all those extra samples to stretch, twist and manipulate.

I don’t wait to get the recordings mastered. I want to get them loaded quickly so they can be put to use right away. The longer you wait getting sounds loaded and mastered and given metadata, the less likely they’ll get used from the very beginning of the editorial process. I learned this the hard way the first few movies I worked on, where sounds recorded for one movie wouldn’t get used until the next.

One thing I try to keep in mind as I’m designing is how to make sounds that are different and unexpected. We’ve all the heard “clichés” of sound design: monsters made out of big animals, lasers made out of tension coil taps, spaceships made out of processed jets and the like. Clichés can be useful because they instantly reference a sub-conscious convention that is instantly recognizable by an audience. But it can also be fun to twist those conventions and surprise the ear with the unexpected. I’ve made a dragon out of a goose, a laser out of a cabinet creak and a spaceship out of my voice.

I’ll elaborate more on design in subsequent articles. But the ultimate goal is to make a sound that makes you go ” … WOW …”

Written by Erik Aadahl for Designing Sound

Transformers has been one of the most important titles for Erik Aadahl’s career. As we are on his special, I take the opportunity to do a mashup of articles, interviews, and videos, trying to put all the info about Transformers and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen I found in the Internet, including also material from the rest of the crew on the mix, dialogue and foley. Also an exclusive interview with Erik on Transformers is coming in the next days.

Transformers (2007)

I’ve read a lot of discussions lately about defining a Sound Designer. What were your duties on Transformers?

Erik Aadahl: The term “sound designer” can mean lots of things. In some cases, a designer is brought in to handle a scene or a concept, with effects editors handling everything else. In other cases, a designer may have a broader role and oversee the overall track. This movie was a little of both–I was brought on by Ethan van der Ryn to design the robots, but as time went by that job broadened to encompass the entire final track. By the end of the final mix, I had plenty of chances to go over the whole film, tweaking details till we couldn’t do it any more.

Had to ask it. Is the signature transforming sound from the cartoon in the film?

Ethan Van der Ryn: We used the original transforming sound twice in the film. It is used for one of the largest transformers and also for the smallest. More importantly we were inspired by the original transformation sound in the creation of new sounds. The very first sounds heard in the movie which play over the Dreamworks and Paramount logos are an example of sounds which are inspired by that original transformation sound vibe.

How much time did you get to spend on conceptional proofs before going full bore on design and editorial?

Erik Aadahl: It all happened at the same time. The first scene I got was Blackout (at the time his name was Vortex) destroying the Qatar airbase. I had a week to come up with the transformation and weapons and destruction and the shape of that very first pass stayed pretty much intact until the end. After that first week, I had a chance to catch my breath and go conceptual again, spending my days under headphones recording everything that might be useful–scissorlift servos, remote control copters, sliding acrylic sheets, power windows–and then throwing them into ProTools to manipulate them into fun sounds. After a few weeks of that, I had a palette of several hundred fresh robot sounds that I could draw from as the movie progressed.

Out of all the Transformers, which was your favorite sounding?

Ethan Van der Ryn: Bumblebee is my favorite sounding Transformer. For me he is the most emotive robot in the film and the emotional center of the film. He manages to achieve this despite or perhaps because he has a damaged voice box which forces him to communicate with a montage of sound fx and songs and old movie lines.

Erik Aadahl: Bumblebee was my favorite, too. I was a pleasure to give him his voice and act for him. We used our own voices with processing to give him his personality. For the emotional scenes where Bumblebee is in pain, we used the pitch down cries of a baby and even a little bit of vocal that Mike Hopkins performed.

Did you guys do anything differently on this film you don’t normally do on others?

Kevin O’Connell: Yes, we basically mixed the movie with mostly temp music tracks. The final music trickled in throughout the mix and was not all available until late during the final mix. At that point I basically had to re-mix the entire music stem on every reel and Greg (Russell) and the sound effects team had to re-shape a bit as well. Having had the benefit of mixing all of Michael Bays films helped enormously on Transformers. Michael is a guy who knows what he likes but more importantly knows what he does not like and communicates that very well.

Read more at FilmSoundDaily: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Erik Aadahl:

“You always hear cool new sounds every day,” Aadahl said. “Like Ethan found a pogo stick online and we started playing with it and realized that it had a really neat sound to it.”

It became part of the unique sounds of a robot named Bumblebee. So did a car door.

“Took that and slowed it down 25 percent and it sounds like a huge robot footstep,” he said.

For a vending machine that comes to life and shoots soda cans, he recorded soda cans dropped from a building.

“It’s a lot of fun when you get to make a little bit of a mess on the job,” he said.

Read more at CBS News

Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen

Van der Ryn, who worked with Aadahl on the first Transformers, said, “We do a certain amount of brainstorming–how we want shape it and general ideas about what we want things to sound like–but Erik really does the majority of the hardcore sound design work, mostly focused around all the robots, which is what the movie’s all about. Erik’s just incredibly talented when it comes to making it happen. He’s a genius; that’s no overstatement.”

ROTF features 40 or more new robots not in the original film that range in size from tiny insects to 150-foot tall giants. After visiting the art department early on in the film’s development, the supervising sound editors set about creating different sounds for each character from a variety of sources. “We used every trick in the book that we could think of,” said Aadahl. “A lot of it is simple, real stuff, like the Decepticon fly scout–his sound is essentially a grungy old electric razor being shaken.”

He continued, “There’s something very real and immediate about an actual sound that has so much character. It can contrast some of the totally hyper-real absurd things that we’re doing. The goal is that it all fits together like an acoustic puzzle so that there’s the whole spectrum of totally unreal and real–and together they create this universe that transcends the real world but still feels real.”

Work began in August 2008 while Bay was still shooting, according to Van der Ryn. “We went and recorded some vehicles that they had on set, but the main work started at the end of October. We set it up knowing we would want that much lead-time. On a film like this, it’s important to start the sound work in parallel with the shoot and as the visual effects are developing, so the cut can come together with the sound as an integral part of the storytelling process. When you have so many things being created on a computer, the sound really helps bring them to life, so it’s important to get it going earlier. It becomes increasingly important for the sound to start working to ground us in reality and make us believe it, otherwise it just doesn’t work. The sound becomes more valuable in a film like this.”

Aadahl added, “We did the weapons in October. Just on our own, we went on expeditions recording a variety of sounds we knew we would use, just building the palette. We shot a whole array of M16s, AK-47s, sniper rifles, .308s, suppressed ammunition, .22s–but a lot of the robot weapons have nothing to do with real guns. For the RC bots’ weapons, we used compressed air to make squeal sounds, then did little pitch bends on them to make nice little zaps.”

Building on the Transformer theme, many of the sounds feature an organic element, as Aadahl noted. “One thing that we had a lot of fun playing with was a theremin, which we used as a sound design device. It’s basically an oscillator that you can control with your electrical field and adjust volume and pitch. It’s an instrument but you can physically, three dimensionally, control the tone that you’re generating. We’d run that through different processing tools and chains and perform in real time. We made sounds into motors, vocals, all sorts of bends, accelerations, decelerations. That generated a huge amount of new material that’s really different.”

Transformers Revenge Of The Fallen Sound Team

It’s probably the most ambitious sound movie I’ve been a part of,” said Greg Russell. But, he allowed, “The first film really helped to lay out a plan. The initial layout was crucial, and that was done pretty well in the first film. Our starting point on this one was so far advanced in the approach and what we were going to do to bring this film to life. We’re just trying to support what you see onscreen as best we can so it’s believable.”

He added, “The choreography in this film is improved from the first film. The robots are more graceful; there’s a sense of fun to watch them, yet there’s a visceral, aggressive attitude. It’s rough but pretty!”

ROTF features a lot of battle sequences, he continued. “Michael [Bay] wants to keep the activity of that offstage intensity alive, but when there’s onscreen material that is our focal point, we do need to shape that offstage material. We do that in predubbing and even more in finaling. The objective is to focus an audience on a given moment, a given visual, and not be distracted.”

The biggest challenge of the movie was how to get everything to play. Part of the solution for Russell was to create two stems within the final mix, one for hard effects, such as regular military hardware, and another for the robot weapons and sounds. Still, it was necessary to distill the sounds to provide focus: “What can we do to clean this out, to make this much more specific? What can we mute in our Pro Tools session? What can we mix down, or highlight, to get the cleanest possible sequence?”

Russell gave kudos to Van der Ryn and Aadahl: “I really love their focus on trying to deliver very concise, precise elements to me; I don’t have to spend my time weeding out. In a movie of this nature, it’s critical that they edit and make choices before it gets here. Otherwise, we just wouldn’t have the time and it would be a lot messier. It’s been a wonderful collaboration–and I love the sounds; it’s something completely different than anything else out there. I felt that way about the first one, and I feel that way even more on this; I think we’re stretching our legs a little on this movie.”

Read more at ProSound: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

Via: SoundWorks Collection

How important was it to separate the robot sound effects from the rest of the track?

Erik Aadahl: That was a whole other realm of “meat and potatoes” recording. Because production was still shooting when we started, we had access to all the Transformer vehicles: an Audi R8, Corvette concept car, Ducati motorcycles, Hummers, semis. So with the help of John Fasal, who is probably the premier recordist in the world, we got some stunt drivers, closed off a section of the Playa Vista Studios and went to town burning rubber. We also sent John on board an aircraft carrier, the USS Stennis, to record deck landings and takeoffs, as well as to Edwards Air Force Base, where we had a B-1 bomber at our disposal to record fly-bys 50 feet off the ground.

What was the sound department’s relationship like with Michael Bay?

Erik Aadahl: Michael has been known for being hard on crews, but he let us do everything we wanted to do. He was excited that we wanted to create something big and bold, but also something that was less of an assault. We heard that the picture department couldn’t wait for him to hang out with us, because when he went back there, he’d be in a great mood!

What was your progression on the mix?

Greg Russell: I usually like to do backgrounds first and then build the rest of the track with all the different treatments and reflections within the backgrounds. In this case, I didn’t hear the background pre-dubs that were done by Greg Orloff until the final mix. For Transformers 2, we start sound effects pre-dubs with the robots, starting with the foundation of the feet and building up to the last pre-dubs, which are the vocals. We do a total of nine robot pre-dubs and then we do the hard effects, starting with vehicles, then weapons, etc., for a total of 14 pre-dubs, and then we do the Foley. The dialogue was done on another stage with Gary.

How many pre-dubs and tracks were you working with?

Greg Russell: We created 14 hard effects pre-dubs that were built from around 500 tracks for guns, explosions, firearms, etc. There were nine 5.1 dubs for the robots, with a total of maybe 600 tracks. Greg Orloff, who was brought in as an additional re-recording mixer, contributed another 80 tracks of feet and backgrounds. Altogether, with all pre-dubs and outboard gear, I was out to 256 tracks on the console, which was pretty much a full load. This also includes an additional 30 tracks we needed for more sweetening, as the cut and the visual affects changed during the mix. The pre-dubs were then used to create a huge supersession that represented the 5.1 of all the premixes. We had two ProTools rigs, one for the hard effects and backgrounds, and another for the robots and Foley. The music rig was 60 tracks –– split out to separate the brass, rhythm, synth, keyboards, guitars and music effects tracks. This was a huge breakdown that gave us great flexibility to be able to selectively utilize what best served the movie.

Gary Summers: We didn’t use a ton of tracks for the dialogue and music — 60 tracks of music score and two stereo pairs of source music. The dialogue consisted of four pre-mixes: production dialogue and ADR, each eight channels, and two group pre-mixes, English and non-English. Because they were cutting picture right to the end, we knew the tracks were going to be put through a cheese slicer in the mix, so it was important for conforming and re-synching to have full separation between the human and robot voices. The editors did an amazing job; they would turn over new versions to us daily, and within two hours we’d be mixing the new version on the stage.

How do you keep such a dense soundtrack from tripping over itself?

Greg Rusell: That is truly the art form of this type of movie; I’ve now done 180 in my career. I draw upon everything I’ve done in the past and ask, “How do we look at each and every moment in a sequence and make it great? What do we really need to hear or don’t need to hear. If it’s with music, then so be it; if it’s effects, how do we sculpt it without being muddy and noisy?” Being selective in your creative choices is what will make or break those moments, and that’s what I love most about this job.

Gary Summers: In scenes such as the huge fight in the woods, there is a lot of percussion and you have to make choices as to what you want to hear. Sometimes we left the percussion in and pulled the robot footsteps down because you want to create the driving rhythm while the robots are running through the woods. Other times, you lose the percussion and let the hits and big punches shine. The audience won’t perceive the shift, because you’re just substituting one rhythmic pattern for another. Later in that scene, a major robot character is killed, and there is a major stylistic change, with choral music and voices and effects set back in the reverb. It’s abstract and surreal, and provides a nice contrast to all the frenetic action that precedes it.

Read more at MPEG: Part 1 | Part 2

The voices

How were the robot voices created?

Erik Aadahl: There is a lot of alien language, and I worked on that along with Mike Hopkins, who is the ADR and dialogue supervisor. I won’t give away my tricks, but I will say that conceptually, we wanted it to read as language, but because these are robots, we needed to convey the idea of data transfer. We went frame by frame into these little languages integrating specially designed sounds for each character that would accent certain syllables, and would, for example, replace a consonant with computerized sound for that part of the word. We’d have the shape and feel of language, but it would be a hybridized, digital language.

Mike Hopkins: We shot a lot of robot ADR. Their lines changed quite a bit, so we had a few “go backs.” Also, we had a lot more talking robots this time, so a lot of studio hours were used. As Michael hates ADR, I didn’t cue as much as I would have on any other movie. We only used ADR when the production was totally no good. Even then, it would sometimes take a bit of convincing to be allowed to use it. For the human characters, I would say we used no more than 300 cues all up, including loop group singles.

“All of our sounds are performing almost like actors,” said Aadahl, whom Bay described as the “secret weapon” of the films. (via)

Do you want more? Check:

• Transformers Sound Panel Event Videos
• Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen Interview on AudioMedia
• Kevin O’Connell and Greg Russell Interview on Mix
• Greg Russell, Gary Summers and Geoffrey Patterson – Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen
• Greg P. Russell Interview – Revenge of the Fallen

More Info:

• Trasformers at IMDb
• Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen at IMDb
• Transformers Official Site

Last year’s No Country for Old Men is another great example, where the beep of a tracking device tells us the villain is slowly approaching–a far scarier technique than just showing the guy walking up. What we don’t see is often scarier than what we do see, and sound is a great tool to achieve that.

But sometimes the script can be a little misleading. I don’t know how many times I’ve read “and then they fight”; just four words on the page, but depending on the director those four words may translate to 20 minutes of insane action.

If we’re lucky, we get a chance to visit the art department during production. On Transformers, this was very helpful to give us an idea of the different robot characters we’d be be dealing with, since the animators might not have a finished shot for another year or more. We browsed conceptual artwork and got an idea of what types and sizes of robots we’d be dealing with, and what sort of vehicles they’d turn into, giving us a head start to get into the right head space while prepping.

Sometimes we get started with a little sequence that may be mostly storyboard or animatics, which is blocky temp computer animation. It’s amazing how a crappy-looking previz scene improves once there’s some sound put in to glue it together and bring it to life. Ideally, those sounds get put in the cut and go to the animators who may (or may not) draw inspiration from it. I love that sort of cross-pollination.

We’re lucky to sometimes get schedules were the sound crew gets started before the picture department delivers a cut. This is play time, and because we’re not grounded by the picture, we can design blindly with a completely blank canvas, which can be very fun. In this phase, I’ll start making different categories of sounds depending on the movie.

During this period for Transformers, I recorded every motor, winch, scissor lift, power window, printer, copier, scanner, remote control servo and gizmo I could think of. That started getting boring and monotonous, so about a week in I started manipulating the sounds to un-ground them from reality. Mind you, this is before we even saw a scene of the movie. Ethan Van der Ryn suggested I try an experiment and do a “vocal pass”. I really wasn’t sure what that meant, so I bummed a smoke to get my voice gravelly and raspy and sat in the dark making weird growls and nonsensical babble into a mic for a day, and then played with those sounds, twisting and processing. This is often the most fun part of the process, playing and experimenting and building the show library. Those vocal sounds became the genesis of Bumblebee’s voice, and a good portion of Megatron’s evil vocalizations and breathing.

Before filming of Valkyrie was complete, I was planning on visiting my 95 year old grandma in Europe, and used it as a chance to record more authentic atmospheres.

Before starting work on Shrek 4, we knew we’d need a war horn sound, so an editor we work with –Tobias Poppe–arranged a recording session of easily 50 different conches, shofars, cow horns, antelope horns, ram horns, a euphonium, you name it. We also started collecting large carnivorous animal sounds, mules and donkeys, wood and armor, creaky carriages and magical sounds like belltree glisses and anything sparkly we could get our hands on or create. We didn’t know if we’d need all the sounds, but better having too many at the ready than not enough!

This kind of prep work always gives us unexpected ideas. And bottom line, it’s fun. And doing all this before seeing the film gets us ahead of the game so we can spend our editing time taking it to the next level instead of just playing catchup. Because the bottom line is, no matter how long the schedule, there’s always going to be a ton of work, and falling behind is as inevitable as gravity.

Written by Erik Aadahl for Designing Sound

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