Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1500189
46 M PS E . O R G
yours was A River Runs Through It.
Just for the beautiful silences in that
film, and the subtle details. What was it
like working with Robert Redford (who
directed it) and collecting some of those
wonderful rivers and fly fishing and that
sort of thing?
GR: I love that movie. Redford was a
joy. I've worked with him on several
films. He was always just a joy. He
was into quiet. And for me, in my
career, it was nice to do both the
Terminators, too, but then to work
on Redford movies, where it's about
the silences between characters, it's
about families not understanding
each other, it's about the beauty of
nature … and A River Runs Through
It—Chris Boyes, who worked with me
during that time on a lot of things did
a lot of recording of rivers. He was a
fisherman himself. He collected a lot
of that stuff. I took a trip to Yosemite
in the winter because I didn't want
birds. I wanted as few birds and get
as many creeks…
Here's a little sound tip for sound
people. One of the things I find useful
for capturing the feel of something
is to record it (with the microphone
pointing) the wrong way. So, you
record a river, just record it the
normal way—you get all that stuff,
it's great—then I found that if I
record it backward, (mics pointing)
the wrong way, into a crevasse or
something—you get that kind of
rumble. That kind of deep resonance.
And then you add that to the higher
pitch river—and now it has scale that
the normal recording doesn't have.
So there's a trick sometimes, when
you're recording, where you say,
this is the way I should record it, but
if I record it like this, it becomes a
wonderful new element.
SL: That's fascinating.
GR: One of the limitations we had
on that one, was that Redford said
to me that—he was fearful that
people associated him with the
environmental movement so much
that he didn't want it to sound
like a nature documentary. Which
meant that we couldn't do too many
birds and nature ambiances. He
wanted it to be simple. But it turns
out that that's good, too. This is a
movie about grace. Every movie's
got something philosophical at the
heart of it that we try to reach for.
So that movie is about grace. Which
is a kind of purity and simplicity and
beauty. So we went for that. And
the fly casting stuff was great. We
used our scoring stage at Skywalker
Ranch, and we had anyone that we
could find who could do fly fishing
casting. Because the movie made a
big thing about circular casting and
all this kind of fly casting. We'd set
up microphones around the scoring
stage and just have fly fishermen
come in and just do their thing …
and hope that you wouldn't get
hooked!
SL: