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32 Post • May 2014 www.postmagazine.com films in the series, but since it happens more frequently, and for longer durations in The Pirate Fairy, Toon had to expand on that previously-established sound. To the original sound he added different recordings of bell trees. He recorded pouring sand, and pouring metallic BBs and pellets onto various surfaces to give the pixie dust a physical presence. He blended those sounds with recordings of rain sticks and other musi- cal shakers, and then processed them. In The Pirate Fairy, there are several different colors of pixie dust, the two most commonly used were yellow and blue. "There had to be the distinction between the blue and the yellow dust; it's subtle but we tried to establish a tonal distinction between the two. Sometimes that was prob- lematic with the music, so we had to keep everything separate," says Toon. Luckily, they were virtual through the entire mix. That enabled any pitch shifting to happen once the final music was put to picture. Toon has extensive experience in Foley, most recently as super vising Foley editor on Disney's Oscar-winning film, Frozen. Toon loves Foley, he says, and feels it has a huge impact on the sound design, espe- cially for animation. "Cueing Foley allows me to dissect the action within each frame and become inti- mate with the film," he explains. "Whenever possible, I like to program the Foley and supervise the stage during recording." He notes that The Pirate Fairy was final mixed on Stage C at The Disney Digital Stu- dios in Burbank, CA, which was originally the Foley stage that legendary Foley artist Jimmy Macdonald called home. "He was really a pioneer on all those early Disney movies. There are photographs in the lobby of Jimmy on the Foley stage," Toon says. As part of an ongoing library restoration project happen- ing at Disney feature animation, Toon was able to get several of the sound effects Mac- donald recorded for the original Disney ani- mated Peter Pan. Those sound effects include the temple blocks used for Tick-Tock the Crocodile, after he swallowed the clock. "There is that tie-in to the original Peter Pan. I love stuff like that. There are several cases in this movie where we are actually using Macdonald's sound effects from Peter Pan. Maybe we're not using them in the same way, but they're in the movie," adds Toon. To keep to the tight post schedule, Toon relied on a Pro Tools 10 setup on his laptop. Being able to edit and create anywhere, whether he was supervising the Foley stage or on the dub stage, helped him keep pro- ductivity at a maximum level. "I was editing right in the back of the room and I could monitor where they were at. I could be there for any questions or problem-solving while still being able to keep my workflow in motion," says Toon. The advantage of working on an animated project starts with the lack of a production track. Since all the dialogue, from scratch to final, happens on an ADR stage, it's pristine. With live-action, the quality of the location sound impacts the sound design. "How much you can play against it is really dictated by the quality of the production track," he explains. "If The Pirate Fairy was live action, I would spend a lot of time trying to fix the production track, make it smooth, and at a high enough quality where you can put sound effects against it." With a focus on the technical aspects, Toon feels there's less time to focus on per- formance and storytelling, particularly on fast post schedules. Fortunately, The Pirate Fairy was an animated feature so Toon was able to focus his attention on more creative aspects of the film. In particular, he recalls a scene when the fairies' talents are switched, slowing their pursuit of Zarina. "I like the interplay between the charac- ters after their talents are switched. There's a scene behind the waterfall, and also on the beach where they meet baby Crocky (Tick- Tock the Crocodile). The way those scenes are staged is just classic broad comedy that would be really hard to replicate outside the boundaries of animation," says Toon. RICK AND MORTY Supervising sound editor Hunter Curra and re-recording mixer Konrad Piñon are no strangers to challenging animated series. They've worked on Robot Chicken, Motorcity, and are currently working on Turbo FAST, an animated series for Netflix. Recently, they completed the first season of Rick and Morty, an animated series on Car toon Net- work's Adult Swim. Curra and Piñon crafted the show's audio at Margarita Mix Holly- wood (www.lastudios.com). Margarita Mix Hollywood offers audio and video post services for the film, television, and interac- tive industries. Those services include 5.1/6.1 mixing, sound design, sound supervision, ADR, Foley, VO recording, HD/4K online and color grading. Rick and Morty is created by Dan Harmon (creator of Community on NBC) and Justin Roiland. It tells the story of genius (mad) scientist Rick Sanchez and his low-IQ grand- son Morty Smith, as they go on bizarre and dangerous adventures throughout space and alternate universes. Since the series isn't bound to any linear reality, each episode is limitless in where it can go, what can happen, and how it sounds. "We love that every episode exists in alternate 'Rick-realities,'" Piñon notes. "Theo- retically, for every episode, we're creating new palettes of sound. Often times within an episode, we have to create multiple sound palettes as Rick and Morty travel through different realities." The series has a unique comedic voice, and the sci-fi aspects remind Piñon of the TV series Mystery Science Theater 3000. Curra explains, "Some of the lines in Rick and Morty are things you and your buddies might shout out while watching an old sci-fi movie, but the critiquing and the character analysis comes back from inside the story, exactly like the things you would want to say." There is The sound for Rick and Morty is limitless, as the duo often explores alternate worlds. 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