http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/02/22/DDGSHBDIAV1.DTL&type=movies
“If a movie is any good — and ‘The Incredibles’ is very good — it sucks you into this dream world,” says Randy Thom, sonic sorcerer, seated behind the control panels of his Skywalker Ranch studio. “And in that state, you’re willing to accept almost anything you’re presented. You don’t suddenly stop and become analytical and think, ‘that space ship sounds like a Formula One race car!’ “
He grins, adding, “Unless you’re really bored. And then we’ve lost you as an audience member anyway.”
It’s hard to imagine being bored with any of the slew of recent blockbusters that has dazzled audiences thanks in part to Thom’s artistry: “The Polar Express,” “The Incredibles,” “Shrek 2,” “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider,” “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.” The list goes backward for 25 years, stopping with the first movie he ever worked on for Lucasfilm: “Apocalypse Now.” Not a bad start for a Louisiana lad who’d never been to film school and was still shy of his 30th birthday.
“I was living in Berkeley, working as a producer at KPFA, and going to around five movies a week,” says Thom, a gentle bear of a man with a basso profundo voice. “I made a call to Walter Murch, who was editor of many great films, and he said ‘come in and we’ll talk about your interest.’ I watched him all day, and at the end, he told me to go home and write an essay about what I’d learned. After that he hired me to work on ‘Apocalypse Now.’ It was like being in film school; we were all full of crackpot ideas and fully energized.”
Murch and his team went on to win the 1979 Oscar for sound mixing — Thom’s first brush with the man of gold. This year, it’s quite possible the two will become more personally acquainted: the 54-year-old Sonoma resident is nominated for no fewer than four Academy Awards. He is nominated for two awards apiece — in sound editing and sound mixing — for the films “The Polar Express” and “The Incredibles,” which was made by Emeryville’s Pixar Studios.
(For the record, here’s the difference: The best sound mixing award recognizes excellence in overall sound design; the best sound editing award recognizes excellence in combining sound effects with dialogue and music.)
In the sound editing category, Thom’s chances of winning are two-out-of- three; the only other film in the group is “Spider-Man 2.”
“Right, I’m competing against myself!” he chuckles. Then, perhaps not wishing to appear immodest, quickly points out that “Spiderman 2” is a “great film.”
Either way, he is primed and ready for a trip to L.A. on Sunday night, which must seem light years away from the bucolic splendor and serene isolation of Skywalker Ranch, which was built by director George Lucas.
Thom works in the Skywalker Sound building, which, despite resembling a Tuscan winery on the outside, inside is 145,000 feet of dazzling displays of technology. Thom’s soundproof office is comfortably outfitted with couches, a flat-screen TV, landscape paintings by Thom himself (“I find painting is quite similar to sound design”), and, of course, computers and knobs and gizmos to make any techno-geek salivate.
A scene from “The Incredibles” is paused on the flat screen, and a visitor is itching for an audio-visual demonstration of Thom’s sonic sorcery. But first, he wants to make sure his job is well-explained.
“In the most general terms, the sound designer’s job is to work with the director — and ideally, even the writer, to figure out what the movie should sound like. Most people, when they think about movies, think of the music soundtrack. But it’s enormously more complicated than that.”
He pauses, takes a breath and speaks deliberately, gesturing professorially with his hands. “Our job is to suggest how sound can be used in storytelling. Sometimes in powerful ways, sometimes in subtle ways. The first thing I tell writers these days is think about what your characters are hearing, from moment to moment. Most characters don’t really hear background noises, they hear each other talking, maybe some music playing. But they don’t really hear very much of the world around them. And my job is to find opportunities within the story to reflect what’s going on with the characters by the sounds that they hear.”
A pretty lofty mission, achieved through not-always-so-lofty means. Thom logs onto his computer and goes to a hard drive called RT Effects. There are hundreds and hundreds of different sounds, each derived from a different source.
“Electricity sounds, thunder sounds …” Thom scrolls down his list of files, then looks up. “Todd Staples is this guy who lives in Florida, and he’s blind, and obsessed with thunder sounds! He spends his time recording thunderstorms and calls us every few months to tell us what he’s got. The holy grail of thunder sounds is thunder without rain. So he calls and says, ‘OK, Randy, I have five close hits with no rain!’ Because he knows we can use that for all kinds of things — explosions, crashes.”
The field of sound design is becoming hot enough to spark its own Web community (filmsound.org), in which Thom gladly shares his knowledge and expertise. “It’s getting bigger all the time. I am on there a lot, giving advice, but sometimes I use it to ask for things. ‘Hey, has anyone got a recording of so-and-so?’ And Skywalker is able to secure the rights to them.”
In terms of numbers of sounds required to make a film, Thom says “The Incredibles” was by far the most demanding project he’d ever worked on. “The movie called for gadgets and devices and weapons and vehicles and locations —
it was a lot of work.”
Still, he says, animated films are especially rewarding as well. “We have enormous latitude in an animated film to create this sonic world from zero. And we have a whole palette of sounds we can use to create a mood. We can make it seem sinister, or light.”
He eagerly gives a demonstration, turning to his sonic computer files.
“This is a sinister sound — something that the character Dash hears. He’s being chased by these flying saucer-like things called velocipods. When I began to do the sound for this, I thought about what things in the world are fast, and sound fast. There are jets, rockets, race cars. And I thought, race cars might work — they sound high tech, and they make a revving sound when they prepare to go fast; you can’t do that with a jet engine. I started listening to all the samples we have in our library of race car sounds and chose one. Then the trick is to fiddle with it, so that when the audience is sitting in the theater they’re not thinking, where’s the race car? I’m hearing a race car!”
He points and clicks with his mouse, and through state-of-the-art speakers roars this ungodly sound — howling and grinding, yet somehow musical. Thom smiles, satisfied. “I hardly had to fiddle with the race car noise at all in order to disguise it as a velocipod.”
And then he plays the scene in question on the flat-screen TV. Dash, the son of the superhero family, is pursued through the jungle by space ships howling their threatening noise. There are other noises: snapping branches, rustling leaves, little feet running across water, birds singing. As he watches, Thom can’t help but smile. A dream world is unfolding before his eyes, and he had everything to do with it.
Last modified: February 23, 2005