Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1448505
56 I M PS E . O R G washboard. We went to Home Depot and bought this wash bin and a broomstick. You tie a string onto one end of the broomstick, and then thread it down through the top of the bucket. By adjusting the tension of the stick with the string, you can get different pitches on the string. So we could make these "boing" kind of sounds, and then manipulate those in Pro Tools to create really nice, rich, fat, boing, bouncy sounds. So that was one of my favorites. Another thing that comes to mind is we did a movie called Monsters vs. Aliens which was really fun and really wacky characters. We kind of made it a challenge for ourselves. The whole end of the movie takes place on this spaceship. And the villain's name is Gallaxhar. We thought it would be really fun to try to make every sound on this spaceship with our mouths, like hatches opening and hover vehicle. The villain has suction cups, kind of like octopus tentacles. I think we pretty much got every sound in the final of the movie done with our mouths. PL: That is so freakin' crazy. So, editors have diˆerent ways of searching for sound eˆects using a database. What do you use for your library?• EA: Our sound library workhorse is a Soundminor server, it's all server based. Each show gets its own code, like a few letters, you know, abbreviation of the show name. And then each sound gets a tag number attached to that show code. So, for example, Kung Fu Panda, the first sound effect we record might be KFP 001. And then we incrementally add sounds until you're up to like KFP 2348. You then you add a simple description for the sound, so if it's, say a water drop, the first word would be water, and then drop. Then there's a metadata field, and you can add some more descriptions with more keywords. You can also add what mic was used for recording, who did the recording, that kind of thing. Often I will attach a picture to it. So if it's a specific kind of location that we're recording, if we're in Costa Rica recording atmospheres, or if we're recording as specific prop or a type of muscle car, whatever it is, we'll attach a picture. And that just makes it really easy. It's fun going through the libraries when you're working, because it's almost like a personal diary. I remember, "Oh, yeah, that's, that's when I was over in this part of the world recording this". PL: I'm going to call my sound eˆects library a sound diary from now on. I love the idea of adding pictures to my sound files too. What if you are on another show? Can you use any of the sounds you created for Kung Fu Panda for instance?• EA: If it's a signature sound, I won't use the sound on any other project. Oftentimes, as you know, the ratio of sounds that you might record and actually use in the movie might be 1000 to one. So there's often all these gems that were never used, when working on a movie or going out recording (sounds). And so it's fun to find those sounds, it might be years later, and you go "Oh, got this. Perfect!" Like when I recorded howling wind in an outhouse in northern Norway, that never got used for that project, but I can use it in the storm scene for this movie. So I love that. PL: So how much do you rely on Foley? It sounds like you do a lot of your own recording anyway. Do you hand oˆ a lot of the recording and ask the Foley team for specific sounds?• EA: Yes, it's so important for animation. You know you don't have a production cloth track or whatever, you know it's important for making the characters physical, and having presence and weight and feeling real. It's a really important part of the process. We work a lot with Jonathan Klein as our key Foley supervisor since I think Transformers. Oftentimes there's specific things we'll discuss with Jonathan and our Foley team. Sometimes they'll do samples for what we're trying to establish like, what are the sounds of this character's feet, or whatever. They'll do some samples for us. And then we'll say, oh, option four is the best. But maybe we'll pitch it down a little bit or something like that. One of my favorite things to do, and it's more often on animation than on live action, is to spend a few days doing what we call "wild" Foley. So we'll go to the Foley stage and I'll have a list of what I want for the project. And then we'll record to picture blind and start recording fun sounds. PL: And I never heard anyone doing that before.• EA: It's really fun, because you can just kind of experiment and play, sometimes use surprises and happy accidents. For instance, one time we were playing with this big block of dry ice and it was for something totally unrelated. We're trying to use metal against it to create weird squeals for creature vocals, and between sets, Jonathan was in a rush and slid the block of ice across the surface to kind of reposition it. The ice had been melting for a while so it had like this kind of concave cavity under it. When he moved it, it sounded like a giant creature guttural sound. That was just one of these happy accidents coming out of wild foley where you're like, "Oh my gosh, that's it, that's the giant creature sound." So I love that kind of playtime because some of the best sounds are accidents. You can never plan to capture it. But if your ears are open, and you're there, once in a blue moon, you'll get something crazy that belongs in the movie. I love those happy accidents. Serendipity. PL: When I was researching you for this article about animation sound, I saw that you were the supervising sound editor on A Quiet Place and A Quiet Place Part II, some of my favorite films in regard to sound design. The sound itself, or the lack