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www.postmagazine.com 30 POST MAY 2017 SOUND DESIGN can only go so far before it disappears out of your hearing range. To keep the pitch rising, we played with the Shepard tone concept. You take a few lay- ers of the sound, each set an octave apart, and you cycle them around in a staggered way. It's a way of creating the auditory illusion that the sound is con- stantly rising when really what it's doing is looping. That was a fun thing to play with." Spark: A Space Tail offered Germann and Mercer a wide range of sonic opportunities, from con- structing theater-rumbling spaceships to enhancing Looney Tunes-esque slapstick moments. "There are Matrix-style martial arts in 'bullet-time' that slows down and speeds up again. We have wormholes and a massive space battle. There are giant flying insects whose movements we articulated by click- ing uncooked lima beans together. It was a thrill to build such a wide range of new, exciting sounds for this film," concludes Germann. GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 2 The Guardians of the Galaxy just saved the universe from Ronan the Accuser (Lee Pace) and deposited the purple power stone safely into the hands of the Nova Guard on Xandar. Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, in theaters now, picks up the story several months later as the Guardians seek out the father of Peter Quill (Chris Pratt). Supervising sound editor David Acord, who led the post sound team on the first Guardians of the Galaxy film, welcomed Addison Teague as co-sound supervisor on Vol. 2. Both are part of Skywalker Sound in Marin County, CA (www.skysound.com). To handle the tremendous amount of sound design, Teague and Acord began work on the film during the director's cut last June. Teague was embedded with the picture department at Disney's Riverside Editorial in Burbank, CA, where Marvel had set up camp. Picture editing, visual effects and previs, plus sound editorial, are all self-contained in one location. Teague says, "It's amazing what you can learn by being in the same space as these peo- ple, and they liked having access to Dave or me just by walking down the hall. We always want to get involved early on so that we have an imprint on the track and our sounds get carried along. That way, there are fewer surprises when you get into premix- ing and the final. This setup gives us a better chance to give them what they want in terms of sound." Director James Gunn wanted what he described as a 'pulpy' vibe for the sound on Vol. 2, which Acord translates as having a Flash Gordon (1936) sci-fi sound. He applied that direction to the sound design of Ego's power. Ego (Kurt Russell) — Peter Quill's father — can produce a power that ranges from benign to malevolent. While it's always a chal- lenge to create a sound for something that doesn't exist, Teague notes it was even more challenging since they lacked a visual reference initially. "Since we were involved so early, they were still developing some ideas themselves," he says. Teague and Acord created a demo session for Gunn that contained roughly six different power sound ideas. Gunn could pick and choose specific aspects of the different ideas to create new ideas. "We evolved the sound until it became what he was looking for, but it was a trial and error process. We were evolving the sound while James [Gunn] evolved the visual effects," says Acord. Ego's power needed to represent the sound of light. It also had to be versatile: magical and beauti- ful in one instance and gigantic and evil in another, yet still retain its core characteristics. "There had to be a signature thread so that you could tell acousti- cally that this was the same power," says Acord. Acord created one core element of Ego's power sound by recording a ladle swirling around inside a metal mixing bowl. This produced a resonant sound akin to that of rubbing the rim of a wine glass, only more metallic. Acord applied flange to create a warpy feel and time-stretched the sound to give it a screamy vocal quality. He used Ina-GRM Tools Warp plug-in to help round off sharp edges, particularly when the power needed to sound more benevolent. "I could use Warp to lower it, soften it, to give it an Teague Acord Because of the enormous task at hand, sound designers began work on Guardians during the director's cut last June.