Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1470109
34 I M PS E . O R G RH: It gets back to that idea that sounds can just be subliminal, and the audience isn't really thinking about it, but it's still speaking to that audience. It's still communicating something about the story that's being conveyed about the environment, about what could be looming around the corner or what's behind the characters we are invested in. So those can be both the subliminal sounds or the more literal. The impressionistic is something that I began to learn later in my career as I began to work with more and more ambitiously creative people, and that was the idea that sometimes literal sound doesn't actually express the importance of a moment and a situation and perhaps something more heightened, and even synthetic or manufactured, can do the job. We used some wild animal sounds underneath our fire, for example, in Backdraft [1991]. Now, we didn't invent that, other people had used animal sounds in situations.—I think, in Raging Bull [1980], they used some animal sounds in some of the boxing scenes to convey the sort of primal intensity of what the audience was experiencing. So sometimes, a great sound designer in concert with everyone else on the project can understand what it is that's trying to be conveyed, and find a sound that isn't exactly realistic, but it speaks to and communicates something very intense and particular for an audience, and it can be worked with so that it doesn't feel like a cheat necessarily for the audience either. Again, they don't even notice, and yet, they're reacting to this thing in a more primal way. SS: Right! That is the definition of sound design. Thank you very much for that. I really appreciate that. RH: Absolutely. SS: You have a long history with George Lucas. Did you get your filmmaking start with him? And what was your experience at that time? RH: George Lucas cast me in American Graffiti [1973] as an actor, and in our first conversation, I told him that I had just been accepted to USC Film School. We spent our get-to-know-one-another lunch, mostly talking about what I could learn from film school, and how much he got from USC Cinema and so forth. But no, I was already dedicated to the idea of being a director. And George was very well aware of my teenage passion for it, and followed me with some interest through my early 20s, Roger Corman experience, and my TV movies. I know he was a big supporter at the Ladd Company, which was the late great Alan Ladd, Jr. (1937-2022) who we just lost on March 2. He greenlit Night Shift [1982], the first movie that Brian Grazer and I did together and it was my first studio feature. Alan Ladd, Jr. had also greenlit Star Wars [1977] and was a close friend of George's, and I know George sort of advocated for me on that movie. SS: That's incredible! You stated during your time at Skywalker, "Through creativity and experimentation, sound design could elevate the way an audience experiences a moment." Would you please elaborate? RH: Well, that gets back to my answer a little earlier. I think it was working with the team on Backdraft that I really recognized how potent and impactful a very creative kind of impressionistic approach to sound design could be. Now, I really wanted to heighten the relationship between the audience and the fire that they were seeing on screen and personalize that as much as possible to bring that fire to life. So it was a clear signal to begin the experimentation. But as we were Actors William Baldwin and Kurt Russell with director Ron Howard. Backdraft [1991] ©Universal. On location of Splash [1984] - Photo courtesy of Touchstone Pictures.