Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1500189
60 M PS E . O R G things combined would hopefully create a palette that you believed, which I think we accomplished. It was an incredibly difficult film, Joseph Sabella was the Foley artist who worked with me on that, and we did not have a day off. We started that picture and we didn't take a day off until after we finished it. SSS: How many days? Do you remember? JR: I want to say between 30 and 40. That was an incredibly tough picture, incredibly tough. There's a scene where the crew is looking out a large window and seeing this huge crane rope and apparatus coming down and hitting the surface in front of them, kicking up a spray of mud and sand and silt, and then going over the side and pulling the whole rig forward. A huge underwater oil rig. We Foleyed all of that. Now again, and I say this for any picture I mentioned, I'm not taking anything away from the supervisors that put it together. We are a small cog in a very large wheel. But I was grateful. In fact, Dody Dorn and Blake Leyh were the two supervising sound editors who were brilliant. Dody went on to do a lot more picture editing and Blake is still amazing. I've been lucky enough early in my career to work with great people. Thank goodness. SSS: Very cool. The opportunity to do underwater effects, and then do regular Foley effects. And then pitch them down and cut them with the underwater effects… I've never heard of that. Who thought of that? Who came up with that concept? JR: Guilty. SSS: How on earth did you come up with that idea? JR: Well, again, Tim was working with us on that and he was absolutely brilliant. And, you know, it's just the mother of necessity as I say, that truly is it. Your mind in a Foley-esque way works on a different level and frequency to some degree, pardon the pun, where in your mind you really try to hear the sound and therefore, how do you perform it? Really, that's what it gets down to. And I'll tell you a very quick aside, by the way, with Jim Cameron, which I love his films. He came for a playback and it was not at the Foley stage, which was unusual, because we had another facility downstairs. So he came in, I heard he was there and I went downstairs, we're going to play back and he said, "whose motorcycle's out there?" "That's mine." He said, "Oh, that's great." I guess he rode his in or something, I didn't go out and see it. But we kind of had a moment in a sense of that was kind of cool. And I said to him, "By the way, I love your work, and of course, Aliens, I love the Foley in Aliens," and he goes "Yeah, well, I threw out 80% of it the first time I heard it, so let's hear your stuff." [Laughs] But it went pretty well. SSS: I am still focused on the concept of doing underwater Foley and then recording regular Foley and pitching it down and cutting it with the underwater Foley. That to me is mind- blowing. I have never heard of such a thing. Well, what on earth? What was it that gave you that idea in the first place? JR: Well, I can tell you in one sentence, you do not want to The River (1984) SMALL rain track in small water tank at TAJ Soundworks. EFX reels of Kay Rose–The River (1984) and Clan of the Cave Bear (1986). We figured that's fine, that's something that's going to come from the effects library. Not so. On that film, Kay [Rose], working with us said, "You know, I want to see what Foley can help add to this." And indeed, that's what we did.