Ends June, and the Randy Thom Special too. Let’s see some interesing interviews and articles by Randy talking about his work, his techniques, and special sound development for several movies and games.

What is Sound Design?

You may assume that it’s about fabricating neat sound effects. But that doesn’t describe very accurately what Ben Burtt and Walter Murch, who invented the term, did on “Star Wars” and “Apocalypse Now” respectively. On those films they found themselves working with Directors who were not just looking for powerful sound effects to attach to a structure that was already in place. By experimenting with sound, playing with sound (and not just sound effects, but music and dialog as well) all through production and post production what Francis Coppola, Walter Murch, George Lucas, and Ben Burtt found is that sound began to shape the picture sometimes as much as the picture shaped the sound. The result was very different from anything we had heard before. The films are legends, and their soundtracks changed forever the way we think about film sound.

What passes for “great sound” in films today is too often merely loud sound. High fidelity recordings of gunshots and explosions, and well fabricated alien creature vocalizations do not constitute great sound design. A well-orchestrated and recorded piece of musical score has minimal value if it hasn’t been integrated into the film as a whole. Giving the actors plenty of things to say in every scene isn’t necessarily doing them, their characters, or the movie a favor. Sound, musical and otherwise, has value when it is part of a continuum, when it changes over time, has dynamics, and resonates with other sound and with other sensory experiences.

That is only a part of an entire article called “Designing A Movie For Sound” written by Randy Thom for Filmsound.org. (link below)

Articles

• Designing a Movie for Sound
• The Machinery Aimed At The Ear
• Confessions Of An Occasional Sound Designer
• More Confessions Of A Sound Designer
• A Few notes on “FORREST GUMP”
• Are Movies Getting Too Loud?
• On Being Creative
• A Few Notes On Music In The Final Mix

Interviews

• Buskin, Richard: Making Contact
• Shatkin, Elina: Randy Thom, Sound Designer,  ‘What Lies Beneath’
• Harnessing The Elements On Cast Away
• Cast Away
• Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Here ends the Randy Thom Special of June.

For July I prepared an amazing featured Sound Designer. Names like Finding Nemo, Peter Pan, Minority Report, Hulk, Monsters Inc sounds familiar? Wait for more info about the July’s featured coming soon ;)

“The game spent five weeks being mixed in the same way that a Hollywood motion picture is mixed: balancing dialogue, sound effects and music on a THX-calibrated sound stage at Skywalker — something that has never been achieved before in video game production and ensuring every sound will be heard as the developers intended it.”

Academy Award winner Randy Thom served as lead sound designer, in his first work in the video game space.

“Scarface: The World Is Yours will deliver a surprising audio experience that will add life and power to the experience of playing as the one-and-only Tony Montana,” said Randy Thom. “By bringing the game and its developers to Skywalker Sound and remixing the game on-site, we were able to create a more detailed and engaging audio experience that goes beyond what other games have achieved.”

This is a part of an entire post on Team xBox with some information about the sound mixing of the game realized at Skywalker Sound Studios.

Here is an interesting interview with Randy Thom, talking about the sound of Scarface video game:

You can know all about the sound of Scarface at Gamasutra on this amazing article with all the information about the sound of the game.

Scarface Official Web Site

Continuing with the Randy Thom Special, let’s talk about Forrest Gump, a great 90′s movie with the awesome work of Randy Thom on the sound.

He said:

“Working in Northern California, I’m lucky to be able to wear several movie-sound hats. I think it would slowly drive me nuts to be a rerecording mixer all the time or to edit or “sound design” all the time. So I try to alternate between these different jobs, trying to be facile enough in each while keeping a kind of useful innocence and naivete at the same time. Though all movies have some things in common, it is usually a big mistake to assume that what worked on the last one will work on the next one. Doing the sound for Forrest Gump may have been the most pleasant working experience I’ve had. Steve Starkey, the Line Producer of the film, approached me about working on it at the Lucasfilm July 4th picnic in ’94. He knew I had grown up a Louisiana redneck and he figured I would know what kinds of sounds to put into this movie about a southern guy.”

That is only part of a wonderful article published at Filmsound where Randy talks about his experience with the sound of Forrest Gump.

Here is a short video (vía usoproject) of Randy Thom talking about certain aspects of Forrest Gump Sound, taken from the documentary “Through The Ears Of Forrest Gump” at the Special Collector’s Edition of the Movie.

Forrest Gump at IMDB

As you know, Randy Thom is the June’s featured Sound designer. Let’s talk about Ratatouille, an animated movie produced by Pixar and distributed by Disney Pictures and whose sound design was done by Randy Thom. Ratatouille was nominated for five Academy Awards, 13 Annie Awards, and won the Best Animated Feature Award from multiple associations.

Well, let’s talk about our part: The Sound.

• Sound Designer: Randy Thom
• Supervising Sound Editors: Randy Thom and Michael Silvers
• Re-recording Mixers: Randy Thom (FX) and Michael Semanick (DX/MX)
• Original Dialog Mixer: Doc Kane
• Sound Mix: SDDS | Dolby Digital EX | DTS-ES
• Studios: Skywalker Sound

“Ratatouille” Sound for Film Profile with Randy Thom from Michael Coleman on Vimeo.

Also, you can read an interview we have with Randy on Ratatouille here.

Ratatouille Official Website

I created a “special category” called Featured. My idea is to make a special coverage of a sound designer and talk about it during each month. The objective is to learn more in depth about each major industry professionals.. For example, this month I decide to start with Randy Thom, and in the next days I’m gonna make some posts about him and talk about his work.

I decided to start with Randy Thom not only by his work as sound designer and recording mixer, but also for his excellent work as Director of Sound Design at the recognized Skywalker Sound.

Mini-Biography (vía IMDB)

Randy Thom started his career in radio and music recording before making the transition to film in 1975, when he was hired on Apocalypse Now (1979) as a sound effects recordist. Since then, Thom has worked in a wide variety of creative capacities within the sound department in over seventy five films. For example, in addition to being the music mixer on Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi (1983), Thom was also the production sound mixer for all the footage shot in the US. Since 1983, Thom has been on staff as a sound designer and mixer at Lucasfilm’s Skywalker Sound facility. He is part of a small group of sound designers that are following in Walter Murch and Ben Burtt‘s footsteps in the continuing work of turning motion picture sound into an art form and not simply a series of technical processes. His work on a film often begins before the film has started shooting, and becomes an integral part of the storytelling and emotional impact of the film. Randy Thom has been part of Robert Zemeckis‘ core creative team ever since Forrest Gump (1994). Through his career Thom has worked with such top Hollywood talents as Walter Murch, Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Brad Bird, Tim Burton, Chris Columbus, Mel Brooks and the Farrelly Brothers.

Awards & Nominations

• Academy Award Nomination for Best Sound Mixing – Ratatouille
  Academy Award for Best Sound – The Right Stuff
  Academy Award for Best Sound Editing – The Incredibles
• Academy Award Nomination for Best Sound- The Polar Express, The Incredibles, Castaway, Contact, Forest Gump, Backdraft, Wild at heart, Return of the Jedi, Never Cry Wolf
• Academy Award Nomination for Best Sound Editing – The Polar Express, Forest Gump

Recent work

• How to Train Your Dragon (2010)
• Coraline (2009) – Sound designer and re-recording mixer
• Bolt (2008) – Sound re-recording mixer and supervising sound designer
• Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa (2008) – Sound designer
• Glago’s Guest (2008) – Sound designer
• Horton Hears a Who! (2008) – Sound designer, sound re-recording mixer and supervising sound editor
• Standard Operating Procedure (2008) – Sound designer
• Beowulf (2007) – Supervising sound designer and supervising sound mixer
• Bee Movie (2007) – Sound designer
• Enchanted (2007) – Supervising sound designer, supervising sound editor, and supervising sound mixer
• The Simpsons Movie (2007) – Sound designer
• Ratatouille (2007) – Sound designer and sound re-recording mixer

Randy Thom at IMDB
Skywalker Sound website