Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1500189
M OT I O N P I CTU R E S O U N D E D I TO R S 57 make sure dramatically is moving the storyline for it. So then we have to figure out how are we going to make that cut work? And again, it wasn't just like one cut, it's every time this guy walked, as well as some of the other characters. So that was a bit of a challenge, but that was fun early in my career. SSS: It really does make you realize how much we take for granted. The picture editing is very severe. It's very serious. It's very hard. The next feature film is The Long Riders, 1980. JR: The Long Riders. Well, this film, we can thank my former partner back in the day, Tim Sadler, for coming up with the idea of having a Sony ECM 50 utilized. Wait a second, what does that mean? Well, the Sony ECM 50 is a microphone. Today, I believe they're called an ECM 55 something-or-other. If you watch the nightly news, that's what the lavalier mic is, usually on a lapel. In fact, usually you'll see two, in case one fails. But the precursor of that was the ECM 50, a battery-powered microphone which is incredibly small. And how does that fit into The Long Riders? Well, The Long Riders is an unusual picture where you had all sorts of things happening with these close-ups—horse feet hitting the ground in slow motion with a huge need for weight and in size, and oh my gosh, all of the sudden, this poor guy is getting shot and it's going through his jaw through his mouth. And, in slow motion, you need to get that detail and this little mic saved us, I'm telling you. I was working on that with Gordon Ecker who was the supervising sound editor and Joanie Rowe, my Foley partner. So how do we do that? Well, yeah, I guess if you want to have a bullet through a guy's mouth, you're going to take a shammy, but it just didn't sound focused. It didn't sound big and over the top because this is like huge on the screen! Take that little microphone, stick it down at the base of the heel of a cowboy boot, put a little foam around it, tape it on there, and I can kind of grind it in and around some shammy and some celery and boy it sounded big and just like, huge, yucky! For the horse footsteps, the same thing. In fact, on each boot I had on the microphone on the base of the boot, and I would literally, instead of doing the rhythm with MGM horse hooves, or plumbers helpers, whatever, I do it with the boots, and/or especially if it's slow motion, I could do it really slow and big. So that's how that came about. And I'm here to say, you're going to maybe see other people claim that they were the first. No, no, no. Tim Sadler is the gentleman that came up with the idea! SSS: ECM 50 microphone and it's as small as a lavalier. JR: Sony ECM 50, it is probably an inch and a half in length, maybe an inch width. SSS: The next feature we have is Tron, 1982. JR: Tron. Well, this one, I'm going to talk about a couple other things besides just the Foley, but bear with me, I think you'll see why. Steve Lisberger, the director, was way ahead of his time. Here's basically a picture where this gentleman, Jeff Bridges, is sucked into a digital world where he becomes a character in the digital world. Everything was about constructing the digital world, I mean, what does a footstep sound like in the digital world? So, to the rescue again comes Tim Sadler with, now I'm going to say, and I'll need to double-check the research but pretty sure it was called a Publison. It was a device that he had used because his background was music recording. There was one section in the film where the characters pull their rings off of their backs and fling them around and try to destroy the other character in a fight. So, doing Foley Stage Control Room at WB Main Lot (2013), later converted to a dub stage. Animation Footstep setup Skywalker Jack Foley Stage.