Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/607566
THE PEANUTS MOVIE www.postmagazine.com 31 POST NOVEMBER 2015 or Skywalker Sound's Randy Thom, 2015 has been busy. In ad- dition to work on Crimson Peak and The Walk, Thom also handled sound design and co-mixing duties for 20th Century Fox's The Peanuts Movie, which opened on November 6th. "I really like jumping back and forth between genres and styles," says Thom. "I feel it really helps keep me fresh. To ap- proach a project coming from something completely different, it allows me to think in ways I would not think if I had done something similar to the project I am working on now." Post had a chance to talk with Thom just as The Peanuts Movie was com- pleting its final mix. Here, he reflects on the challenge of creating a 'simple' soundtrack, drawing inspiration from the familiar "Peanuts" holiday specials, and using his own voice to create elements for Snoopy and Woodstock. Did you reference the cel-animated holiday specials? "Certainly. Those holiday specials were a point of reference. And you are right that we wanted to keep it 'simple,' but sometimes, in every craft, and certainly in sound, it's the simple things that are the most difficult because if it's not complex, it means that you really pay attention to fine details. We want the feel of Peanuts to be basically the same as it has been. But at the same time, we do want to up- date it in terms of 3D and put a bit of a modern twist on it. My challenge in terms of doing the sound effects is to find ways to emulate the sound in those specials, but put a more modern twist on it." Could you use any elements from the holiday specials? "The vast majority of the vocalizations for Snoopy and Woodstock — which were done by Bill Melendez in the origi- nal — we actually used. He created quite a large library of vocalizations for those two characters, and we've been able to use those. But there were some mo- ments where we needed a vocalization for a piece of action that we just didn't have in that Melendez library, so I — and a couple of people that I work with — had to come as close to sounding like Snoopy and Woodstock. It was a bit of a challenge for me, because I have a pretty deep voice. But with the magic of digital processing, we were able to get it up in the register that Woodstock and Snoopy live in." The film is CG and presented in stereo 3D. Did that afford creative opportunities for the soundtrack? "We're doing our mix in Atmos, and there are elements that move around the the- ater as you are watching and listening to the movie. We are trying very hard not to use it in a gimmicky way. We only want to use it when it's justified by the action that you see on the screen." Are there highlights that you would call attention to? "Absolutely! The Red Baron sequences for instance. They are wonderful little dogfight sequences, where the planes are zooming into the screen, out of the screen, above your head, flying all around T h e s o u n d o f P e a n u t s F BY MARC LOFTUS