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www.postmagazine.com Post • May 2014 31 Todd Toon and Formosa Group recently worked on Disney's The Pirate Fairy. for Animation currently working on the Disney Planes: Fire and Res- cue film, recently completed work on The Pirate Fairy, the fifth installment in the Disney Fairies film series. It was released in April on Blu-ray (and other home media). The Pirate Fairy follows the story of dust- keeper fairy Zarina, who goes rogue and joins forces with Captain Hook and his crew. Zarina steals the precious blue pixie dust that's vital to the fairies' way of life. Tinker Bell and her fairy friends pursue Zarina and fight to win back the blue pixie dust. This is Toon's second Disney Fairies film. He was the supervising sound editor on the previous release, Secret of the Wings. Having worked with director Peggy Holmes and editor Mark Rosenbaum before, he was familiar with their sound style. "They both have really amazing ears and understand the impor- tance of sound and music in telling their story. That's always a benefit to a sound designer," says Toon. Because the fairies are physically small, Toon has creative license in regards to the scale of the sounds. For example, in The Pirate Fairy, a vine grows out of control and over-takes the pixie dust-making opera- tion. Toon can exaggerate the vine growing sound because, from the fairies' point of view, the vine really appears to be that big. Another interesting aspect of the fairy community, Pixie Hollow, is the use of household objects that are repurposed into mechani- cal devices. An eggbeater is used as part of the pixie dust processing machinery. When the vine knocks over the eggbeater, there is a massive metal impact. "You can play with the audio in terms of scale," says Toon. "It can sound much larger because it's from the fairies' point of view and no one can really prove you wrong." One of the most important and prevalent sounds in The Pirate Fairy is the actual sound of the pixie dust. The threat of its extinction is a key point to the main story. Director Holmes wanted the pixie dust sound to have a physical presence as well as a mystical one. The pixie dust sound had been established in previous