Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1470109
M OT I O N P I CTU R E S O U N D E D I TO R S I 35 The Discovery crew working, I began to realize the kind of work that had been done for Star Wars and Indiana Jones, and movies like this went beyond the expected into something that might not be directly perceived, but will just have a tremendous impact on the audience, and that really began my education in sound design. SS: You have 46 credits as a director and 125 credits as a producer. In 2002, you won two Oscars for Best Director, and Best Picture for A Beautiful Mind, a brilliant movie! Many kudos to you! What was your all-time favorite film to work on so far? And why? RH: (gasp) Wow. SS: (Laughs) I agree with you! RH: Well, it's, you know, I, I love them all to some extent. The cliche is that they're all like your children, but it's a cliche for a reason, it's very true. You know, it's really hard not to place Apollo 13 [1995] on a certain kind of a pedestal because it was the first movie that I made based on true events, and yet, I found that even though we were dealing with fact-driven narrative, it was still incumbent upon us to be as creative as we possibly could, from a cinematic standpoint, to try to convey what it was we were learning. So creatively, it was very ambitious at all levels, including sound design, and also just the experience of learning and understanding the details of that mission, what was at stake, physically, emotionally, politically, and sharing it with audiences in a way that they really embraced it and were satisfied by that. It was a huge turning point. On top of everything else, it was a real adventure to make it. We actually filmed in these weightless environments. I got to meet so many of the men who had actually walked on the moon, and the individuals who had made that possible back at Mission Control. So as the life experience it was, it was very, very unique. But I've loved so many of the films. SS: What was your most complicated film? RH: Hmm. Well, because of the state of visual effects at the time we were doing it, Willow [1988] was very, very complicated. We had one of the very first digital effects in that film. But it was much harder to achieve the illusions, and required a lot more physical effects on the set, so that was a difficult one. Apollo 13 was very difficult. I just finished a film called Thirteen Lives, which is about the rescue of the kids soccer team trapped in a cave in Thailand in 2018. That was very complicated. It was vitally important to me to allow people to understand what it's like in those dark caves, what was entailed with the rescue, but also culturally, that this blend of individuals, sensibilities, cultures, languages, mores, attitudes, that actually had to come together and meshed in order for that rescue to succeed. And, we had non-actors, along with, of course, tremendously experienced actors from both the Thai and Western cultures, and so from a directorial standpoint, it's one of the more complicated films I've done. Sound-wise as well, as you can imagine. SS: I am really looking forward to seeing it. Is there a release date coming up? RH: November of this year. [2022] SS: Okay. Chic Ciccolini! Let's talk about Chic. Do you remember how you met Chic Ciccolini, and what kind of impression did he give you at that time? RH: Well, I can't say that I literally remember the very, very first meeting, but my early impression was that this guy was a walking paradox, because Apollo 13 [1995] Top & bottom: Ron Howard with actors Tom Hanks and Gary Sinise. Photos ©Universal.