Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1448505
M OT I O N P I CTU R E S O U N D E D I TO R S I 59 opposite direction. And as soon as we started doing that, the scenes just came way more alive. It's always a process. PL: I believe in the monster not being seen, and maybe even a monster not heard, your imagination can far outweigh what you can see or hear because you're creating it in your mind.• EA: Right, totally. I mean, that was one of the magical accidents from Spielberg's Jaws where, you know he would have shown that shark way more if the thing had been working on set, but unfortunately, it wasn't. And the less you see it, the more impactful it is when you actually do see it. PL: You've had such an amazing career. Is there a filmmaker that you dream of working with one day, but you haven't worked with yet? EA: Yes, there's filmmakers that I absolutely love and would love to Ellie and Joel stealthily evade enemies in The Last of Us. work with. But I respect their sound teams so much, I'm such a fan of them that I would never want to, if you know what I mean? PL: Let's just say the entire sound team won the lottery and retired to their private island and they had no choice but to find another sound supervisor and they picked you. EA: Yeah. Well, you know, one of my good friends and colleagues, and I'm a big fan of his, is Mark Mangini. He's done such incredible work on movies like Mad Max and the film Dune for Denis Villeneuve. Denis directed films from Arrival to Blade Runner, he's incredible. I was reading those books as a teenager, and I'm such a fan of his filmmaking and that story (Dune). PL: Is there anything you'd like to share with sound editors just starting out? EA: Well, one of your questions that you wrote was, how many audio tracks do I normally use for sound effects? PL: Yes, I forgot to ask that question! EA: And I think it's a really interesting question though, because it gets to kind of what I think of as the essence of what we do. To be organized, obviously, we're spread out over dozens of pre-dubs typically. But I don't like to use a lot of sounds. If I can be using one sound at a time, but it's the right sound, that's going to be the purest essence of what I'm going for. As soon as you start layering sounds, it's kind of like using the painting metaphor; again, it's like combining colors. And as you keep mixing colors, invariably turns brown. And sound is a similar thing. So I, and this is something Craig Berkey taught me back when I was working with him on X-Men 2, it's like, the simpler you can be, the more pure and impactful it's going to be. And there was this interview, I had heard with Ray Charles. He was asked, L-R Erik Aadahl, Justin Davey, Brandon Jones, Peter Persaud, Steve Baine