MPSE Wavelength

OB: We set the tone early on, too, when he's up there at the very beginning. You don't want to have too much of a good thing, too. EM: It was striking! Odin, you were the supervising sound editor for both Frozen movies, which also included a lot of ice, snow and wind. How does your approach change when working on those films compared to Togo? OB: Yeah, Frozen informed Togo just because I worked on that prior. Another movie that I had worked on was Joe Penna's Arctic with Mads Mikkelsen, so it seemed like with each one of those movies I would find certain techniques and refine them and say, "Okay, this is gonna work." For snow debris, I would use sand debris from a sand storm that's flying around. I tried that on Frozen, and I used that same technique on Togo and on Arctic. That being said, every film is different, and the image has to inform what you're doing. Ericson's sensibilities might say, "I want to do this and that." I would say that each film built on the next. Frozen was a big job for me, and then my experience with Arctic built off what I did on Frozen, and now Togo built on what I've done on those previous movies. EM: On the Frozen films, how early on did you get to work with the music? OB: Yeah, those songs are super important, and they're there from the very beginning. The movie almost revolves around the songs. They literally use the songs to tell the story, so the songs get set first, and then the movie fills in around that. We do have access to those songs early on, and we also know not to tread on those songs because they're so important. At the same time, we can't help ourselves. [laughs] So we cut those sequences with the songs as if there were no song there, and we flesh it out as much as we can knowing, painfully, that all that hard work is either going to be lost or barely be heard. But we have the satisfaction of knowing that we did it, you know? [laughs] And honestly, those songs in the movie, they do need a little something. TT: Even if you just feel it. Otherwise, it's just a music video. OB: Right. So every sound effect that we add is meant to play off the music. In Frozen 2, Steve Robinson did an amazing job on his sequences. It was so great that Jennifer Lee, the director, was just beside herself with joy. In the end, all those great elements had to be brought down though. [laughs] TT: With Disney animation, even though there are full songs you still have to cut everything and then present it. They want to hear everything, right down to every Foley footstep. And they don't play the dialogue and the music necessarily while you're presenting it, so you have to fill everything out as if the music wasn't there. And then they know that you did your due diligence, and they know what's there. Then it mostly disappears when the music comes in. [laughs] OB: But like Todd says, you do kind of feel it. There is a sense of it. There's an air pressure in the room or something. [laughs] EM: Yeah, I do remember in the first Frozen during "Let It Go," there was a magical ice crystal moment during that song that really stood out. OB: Oh, yeah. That one ... boy. During that whole sequence, we built everything out, and Gabe Guy, the effects mixer, was just brilliant in weaving those sound effects throughout the song. Every time we would play back for the Disney execs, we would be like, "Are they gonna tell us to remove the sound effects or is it gonna be okay?" [laughs] EM: What advice would each of you have for a young sound editor nowadays, looking to grow in the years to come as a sound editor? TT: When people ask me that, I'm half joking but I'm half serious... I tell them not to do it. [laughs] Most of the people who will take the time to ask that question are generally the type that are going to do it one way or the other, you know? There was one day a couple years ago, I was having lunch and there were these young sound editors, and they were asking questions about the career path and what I did, and I realized, all three of them—it wouldn't matter what I would tell them to discourage them, they were in. They were on their paths. It's definitely a different industry than what I entered, but I think newer people have the advantage of, they've come up with this technology. Odin and I both started on 35mm film, which in itself was a great training ground to cut individual sounds, one at a time, and not be able to hear them all played at once until you go to the mix. You're constantly hearing it in your head and figuring out how the frequencies are going to work and interact. The up-and-coming generation has that benefit of the technology and the tools, but that's not everything. You still have to really listen, and that part of it is still analog—it still can only work at a certain pace where your eyes and your ears meet up. If something feels right or looks right, a lot of it's intuitive. There's no right or wrong, it's all subjective. You definitely have to be collaborative, and some days you're going to get shot down. Some of your best ideas are not

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