Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1500189
58 M PS E . O R G those footsteps using this Publison really gave it an incredible feeling of you're inside this digital space. I can't even describe it, but it worked great! That was also then carried on in other aspects. Now, Tim didn't do this, Frank Serafine worked with Gordon Ecker Jr. on that picture and I remember seeing both of them watching the light cycle race, where one of them would have a microphone and they would literally go "rrrrrrrrrrr, rrrrrrrrrrr" [verbal racing sound] in the microphone. But the way Frank had manipulated it in his 'harmonizer,' or whatever it was that created this incredible detail, that was really endemic to the whole picture, which I really, really loved. And we had to come up with sounds for these huge devices that would go around and blow people up so to speak, so we had to come up with these big iron armor things but treat them. How did we do that? Well, we really had to work our way through it and again, Tim was a big part of that. SSS: When you "treat" something, what does that mean? JR: We would have the original footsteps but we would put it through a system or a device that would give it a different feeling. In other words, during the 'ring fight,' there's probably another term for it, we would have this device create a footstep where it gave a little bit of a ring off, but not an ambient ring off, which I know that sounds weird, but that's what we wanted, to have it sound a little weird. So it didn't sound like it was based in reality, for sure. We wanted it to be like we're in this digital world. It's completely separate from what you and I know. SSS: And treating it means you would record it normal and then treat it through a system? JR: I'm glad you asked that question because the way we did it was we had Tim treat it as we were doing it, and we wore headphones to hear the treatment while we were doing it. It really was wonderful. Because it was directly giving us feedback how it was going to sound. SSS: Wow! What was the name of the instrument that was used? JR: I believe it was called a Publison. SSS: A Publison. And it created its own sounds or was it used to treat sounds? JR: It was a device to treat sounds. SSS: The next movie is called The River, 1984. JR: Well, The River is near and dear to my heart for many reasons, none the least of which is that Kay Rose was awarded an Academy Award for that film, for the sound effects. For the record, not to bore people, but back in the day, Kay was "noted for" her work with dialogue, for which she was brilliant. But what people don't really know is her incredible work in effects and backgrounds. A-mazing! She never got enough credit for that. That being said, here's a picture which starts out very bucolic; kid casting his fishing line into a river, beautiful day, then we cut to see a leaf and a little drop of rain on a leaf, we realized, oh, it's going to start to rain. Probably eight minutes later, it's flooding. I mean, there's been so much rain and water movement, etc. We figured that's fine, that's something that's going to come from the effects library. Not so. On that film, Kay, working with us said, "You know, I want to see what Foley can help add to this." And indeed, that's what we did. So, we created a custom rain machine that was a garden hose on the top of, I think a little tray table, which had holes in it. The holes went from very small diameter to very large. We could also utilize a valve so the amount of water coming out of the hose would variate, and we'd use that for various sections of the movie. Now, of course, the one drop on the leaf, yeah, okay, we got a nice big leaf, and I just dropped a drop on that. But once the rain starts, then we have to really amp up our game, so we used the rain machine. Interesting side note, we had done about two days' worth of work on this and decided, well, you know, gosh, we better start playing some of this back. We played it back, and it was terrible. And why, you might ask? I did not realize rain, especially when you put the background rain in, it's such a soaking sound of all frequencies, that the detail in the foreground was lost. In other words, we realized after two days' worth of work, we had to redo all the foreground stuff because the backgrounds, which we were asked to do background rain also, which we did, sucked the life out of the foreground stuff. So from that point forward, whenever I did anything like that, rain or waterwise, etc., I'd always do the backgrounds first to lay the foreground against it. That's the trick. We also had to move large amounts of water. This was at the TAJ Soundworks facility that was custom designed by myself and Tim Sadler and a couple other people, and we realized our water tank was not quite big enough. So a huge Doughboy pool was put in the center of the room. But we needed to move a lot of water. How do we do that? We can't use a garden hose, that's not going to do it. So we got a variance from the Department of Water and Power and put what's called a J or an eddy valve on the fire hydrant down at the end of the block. We asked our neighbors if we could run a fire hose over their building tops, which we did. Ben and Ed Bannon created a method where it could come into the stage without being a