Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1533995
M OT I O N P I CTU R E S O U N D E D I TO R S 27 finality to it, which means: Oh shoot! You're locked in! Now, whatcha gonna do? Every sound pretty much tells a story. In Higher Learning, we were really trying to get all that stu• right as far as the environment. We wanted it to be right so that [the audience] would do what you did, which is relate that to their experience at college. TM: In 2008, a movie called Iron Man came out. It kind of changed the entire industry. Superhero movies took over everything for a decade. But you worked on Blade (1998) well before that. I think Blade was much more of a proof of concept for the Marvel Universe than Iron Man even was. Do you want to talk about working on comic book movies? GH: Sure. My hat's got to go o• to Harry Cohen, one of the world's deepest, best sound designers, but more importantly, just a wonderful human being who did the sound design on that. I did some design too, and the ambiences and ADR. I kind of managed the mix, putting it all together. What I didn't know for a number of years is that that's the movie that saved Marvel Studios. They were going under, but then we really brought them back, and it's the reason why there's so many other superhero movies. The sound of that movie is di•erent because we weren't on film. We were on digital multitrack. Harry and I were both trying to make everything just be big and in your face. You'll notice if you listen to a lot of the blade whips, you hear the shing and when he throws it, you hear the whoosh. A lot of the stu• is in your face because we did a lot of compression. Normally, I'm not for compression because it tends to pull things back into the speaker and everything's kind of flat. But we did it in such a way so that it did have di•erent levels, even if something was compressed, so that it's just big and visceral and in your face. When you're in the vampire club and the water is coming down and people are screaming, it's mayhem because everything's just right in your face. And that's what we wanted. We wanted to make Blade aggressive. His car, his Dodge Charger, it was just awesome! It was a sound e•ect from the library at EFX, and I think they only had like three files, but we used them up and cut them di•erent "Oh my gosh, I gotta do this." I didn't want to do this. I had to do it. Greg and Mark Mangini honoring Bob Rosenthal at the Formosa Group Christmas party. – Greg, on his desire to work in sound.