Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1546154
www.postmagazine.com 21 POST JULY/AUG 2026 U niversal Pictures' Disclosure Day was directed by three-time Academy Award- winner Steven Spielberg and stars Emily Blunt, Josh O'Connor, Colin Firth, Eve Hewson and Colman Domingo. The thriller is based on the idea that information about aliens and UFOs the government has been hiding for decades will be revealed simultaneously across the globe, answer- ing long-time questions from Earth's residents on whether or not we are alone in the universe. Skywalker Sound provided a range of audio services for the film under the direction of veteran sound editor/re-recording mixer Gary Rydstrom. Gary has received numerous accolades over the course of his career, including Academy Awards for his work on Titanic, Saving Private Ryan, Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Jurassic Park. Here, he shares insight into his work on Disclosure Day, his collabo- ration with director Steven Spielberg, and some of the film's sonic highlights. You wore many hats on Disclosure Day: sound editor, supervising sound editor, co-re- recording mixer. Do you get to be creative, or are you overseeing a larger team? "I'm definitely overseeing a team, so I do the sound-editing part. And I co-supervised with Brian Chumney this time — the last few Spielberg films with him — and then I mix with Andy Nelson, so I do both of those things. I'm hands-on for the stuff that I want to do. In this movie, there are a couple scenes that I cut myself because I thought [they'd be] fun!" How far back does this begin for Skywalker Sound? "I read the script almost exactly two years ago. Being Amblin and Spielberg, I had to fly to LA and read it in a locked room so that no one could see me. It was two years ago. That was not overly early for it, especially a Spielberg film, which has always been good at getting us involved early. But there were things we had to create that had to be played back on the set. So the main reason I started so early was essentially to come up with an alien lan- guage that Emily Blunt could pantomime to when it came time to shooting that scene on the set." Talk about some of the elements that were created specifically for this film? "Well, the alien language was the first thing to do. In the script, Emily Blunt's character has to speak this unearthly language giving a weather report, so we knew we had to come up with that. It didn't indicate what that would be. The way that worked was that Emily Blunt and Steven Spielberg and I were there in a sound studio and we kind of (tried) to come up with (it). It turns out Emily Blunt is very gifted at making interesting sounds, and she ended up making a click-based language, which is a Spielberg idea because he thought that click sounded mathematical and getting across infor- mation, but in a mathematical way. And then my job was to cut that in and sweeten it — make it into what is in the movie." What are the elements that make up that sound? "Well the clicking, the Emily Blunt part, is her. I found different animals. Kyrsten Mate, one of our editors, did a great job recording her cat that turned out to make some interesting clicking and other weird sounds. But the way this works is you find a variety of animal sounds and other things, some mechanical things. But for the breathing, that doesn't sound human. I have a sound editor trick. I got a canister that made a vacuum to keep my cof- fee beans fresh. And then if you pull that back and forth — it makes this great mechanical breathing sound…But mostly animals, a variety of animals. Even our own pets." Are you working on this at Skywalker all the time? "Working remotely has become more common lately because of COVID and all that. This one, there was an edict — partly for security reasons, partly for creative reasons — that everyone came to the ranch. So the sound-editing crew worked at Skywalker Ranch. The only one who didn't, for the most part, was me, because I recently moved up to Washington State. I have a little studio up here. But when it came time to work with the editors and premix sound effects and Foley, all that happened at Skywalker Ranch." What is the complexity of a home studio these days? "Pro Tools is the heart of it. I do a lot of the stuff on Pro Tools. I've got a room at home that has a 5.1 audio system. But Sony has a system that I use now. It's a virtual mixing environment. So, I sat in our main mix stage at Skywalker Ranch and they put headphones on and me play tones in the room. They put microphones in my ear and read how I'm listening to the room, and how that works for me. Now I'm able to take even an Atmos mix, play it over headphones, and it sounds pretty much like I'm in a big room listening to an Atmos mix." Skywalker Sound handled the premix before the film went to Fox for the final mix. Gary Rydstrom, left, got involved early on, helping to create sounds that would be played on-set.