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Randy Thom Special: Articles and Interviews

June 30, 2009 by Miguel Isaza

randy-thom

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 ;)

Filed Under: featured, interviews Tagged With: article, cast away, harry potter, interview, randy thom, randy thom special, sound design

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