Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1504731
46 M PS E . O R G MM: You know, I've got to give credit again … there's another brilliant sound, when they get to the spaceship and they encounter the mechanical spider. I was struggling to make a sound for that. Frank Welker had done some really deep gravely spider voices for it. It still wasn't working until Mike Minkler, who I think was our sound effects mixer—hit "rewind" without muting the monitor. And we heard Frank Welker's spider voice backward and sped up. We both looked at each other like, "THAT'S IT! That's the sound!" SL: Amazing. There are so many great layers to that! There's the low-end gravely stuff, the high- end bubbly stuff … and those two suction tube characters… MM: Oh yes! One was Fred Newman, and the other was Frank Welker, doing another complete set of cartoon voices. And they argue with each other! SL: I love that film so much. It's really one of my most favorite sound jobs you did. I want to talk a bit about Star Trek. MM: Which one…? I did four of them! SL: The Voyage Home is a very special one. It's all about the whales… I remember that your brother helped gather some of that stuff? MM: I knew I needed good fresh sounds of Humpback whales as fodder not only for the onscreen real whales but as fodder for the language the Probe speaks with the whales. I started the gathering process, by doing the research to find out who had already been doing whale recordings. The preeminent person in that field of cetacean recording was Roger Payne, who had a successful album—a vinyl release—of iconic sounding Humpback whale voices and singing. The US government also had a group in San Diego called NOSC—The Navy Operational Support Center. I was given access to their archives. The Navy drops something called a "sonobuoy"— literally a buoy that captures sound—in oceans around the world to record the migration of whales "Always over- dressing for the wrong occasions." Mark Mangini recording a Mars rover for Good Night Oppy.