Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1504731
M OT I O N P I CTU R E S O U N D E D I TO R S 31 all the props per reel. BF: What is the toughest Foley you have had to do? SSS: Twister (1996) was both the best and the hardest movie I've worked on. So, my favorite film and hardest film are the same movie— Twister. In Twister, we had three pre- dubs—footsteps, props, and torna- does. Foley was a major contributor to tornadoes. We couldn't record tornadoes. We don't have the ele- ments to make the horrible winds, thunder and screeching and all the stuff that you hear with a tornado. But what we could do is the results of the tornado. What do tornadoes do? Well, they throw everything around. So what we did is we started throwing everything around. We started throwing tricycles, branches, boats, toys, etc.! We actually appeared on a TV show on TBS called How'd They Do That? They wanted to know what Foley was and its contributions to tornadoes. They had cameras and lights on the mixing console, and interviewed each one of us! It was very fun! One of my favorite experiences on Twister was how I decided to take the element of weather onto different surfaces. It was the third tornado. As they go up the street, you see all the telephone poles are being ripped out. In the distance, you could see the tornado forming. And then it started to hail. They were in a truck with this metal con- traption called the Dorothy in the back of the pickup. So, when we cut to the windshield, you could see all this hail hitting. Then we would cut to the street, the asphalt, and you could see all the hail hitting. Then we cut to the Dorothy, and you see all this hail. I decided to record different surfaces of hail. I recorded a minute of asphalt, a minute of a car hood, a minute of a windshield, a minute of slicker, and then a minute of metal. And every time we cut to each sur- face; I would cut to that sound. They went nuts on the dub stage. They loved it. They thought it was so cool. They did not expect that at all. My favorite cue in Twister, what I am famous for, is the cowbell. The second tornado splits in half. The girlfriend is in the backseat in the middle of a therapy session talking to her patients on the phone, Bill and Jo are in the front seat checking out the 'sisters,' and suddenly, this cow flies by—I put in a cowbell for a joke. I'm thinking of The Wizard of Oz, right? So, I put a cowbell on her, and it made it to the final. To this day, you will faintly hear a cowbell as she flies by! Not only does Twister have phenomenal sound, it also was way ahead of its time in CGI. Every tornado was CGI, and they did an incredible job. The sound was amazing. All five tornadoes had their own personalities. And Stephen Flick, the sound super- visor, hit them all. He nailed every one of them. Did it get an Oscar nomination for sound editing? No. Why not? That's the question of the day. It not only should have got a nomina- tion, but it should also have won. BF: Good sound is when you do not notice it. SSS: That's right. I completely agree that it is sound that you don't know that makes it so good. Former MPSE President David Bondelevitch CAS mimics Solange with her boa during the presentations at the 62nd Annual Golden Reel Awards, 2015.