This interview was originally created to incorporate our “experiment” theme.
Mac Smith is a sound designer and sound director at Skywalker Sound and has been working on films since 1999. Transpecos” and other film production work.
DS: Can you tell us about your background and how you got started in audio and post-production?
Multiple sclerosis: Movies have been a huge part of my life since a very young age. I grew up in a family with older siblings than me, and many of the movies I was exposed to skewed toward an older audience compared to the movies my friends and classmates saw. This was the late 1970s, and not only did I frequent the local movie theater, but we were early adopters of the VHS and LaserDisc formats for watching movies at home. I was also exposed to many different types of music, and
Throughout my childhood, my father and siblings performed music with various groups.
Although I knew I wanted to work in the film industry, I didn’t discover audio production until I spent time working at KRUI, the University of Iowa’s college radio station. I was there when we transitioned from analog audio production to some early computer audio editing software. I dedicated myself to learning as much as I could
It occurred to me that maybe there was a way to blend these two things I loved. So that’s when I decided to pursue a career in film audio.
DS: On which projects did you do a lot of experimentation?
Multiple sclerosis: Most recently, I worked with Scott Baker and Brian Woods on their horror film The Haunting . Sound is the driving force of the genre, so I wanted to create different sound environments for the locations in the film. They incorporated sound ideas into the script, as most people know from the A Quiet Place script. There are also a lot of key moments in Ghost where sound drives the storytelling, so I spent some time experimenting with different textures to not only create realistic backgrounds, but to evoke specific emotions when the film required them. I sent the sound to their picture editor and they were able to experiment before the picture locked in, which ultimately benefited the film.
Last year, I filmed the documentary Game Changers, which chronicled the vegan lifestyle through the lens of extreme athletes. These are the strongest, fastest athletes you’ll ever see, and we had to make sure that was reflected in the soundtrack of the film. The film features Olympic cyclist Dotsie Bausch as she and her teammates ride fixed-wheel bikes in a velodrome, which is essentially an indoor, steeply banked, oval, wooden-surfaced track. road. I scoured the internet for footage of these races and came to the conclusion that there wasn’t much sound from the bike or the track. Even though this is a documentary and we tried to be realistic, we had to create speed and excitement through sound. I had to try a lot of different sounds to get the right combination of elements to market to the cyclists racing in front of the camera at incredible speeds.
DS: What factors are involved in deciding whether to conduct a large number of experiments? On a project?
Multiple sclerosis: Every project requires a certain level of experimentation, but it really comes down to time. I’m guilty of spending so much time trying to see what new ideas might benefit the story and the emotions the filmmakers are trying to convey, but at some point you need to put your head down and get all the audio material in the mix Edit and organize the film in a timely manner during the audio stage. If you don’t have a lot of time to experiment, there’s a tendency to play it safe with sounds because you just grab what you know will work. Normally this is fine and will get the job done, but you don’t want to get stuck making the same material over and over again. It’s much better to keep things fresh and interesting. Having the ability to experiment makes working more interesting, and ultimately some of the ideas discovered along the way will take the final product to another level.
DS: What are your experimental methods?
Multiple sclerosis: We have a ton of material in our sound library, and I often pull out interesting sounds, even if it’s not what I’m looking for at the time. I’ll collect these sounds downstream of my Pro Tools session, which may or may not be useful in my process. We use Soundminer to access the library and I find myself constantly playing around with the speed of the sound when auditioning elements. I used to check the preferences and the pitch/tempo slider would always reset when you selected a new sound, but in recent years I’ve found that sometimes I’ll find something interesting by setting it to a rather extreme setting (quick setting) Something or slow or I wouldn’t have noticed.
I also like to experiment with sounds using tools that allow me to actually engage with them. You can only do so much with your mouse and faders. The two devices I use most often are the Haken Continuum Fingerboard and the Serato Scratch Live with turntable. I know people are using newer equipment, but these are things I’m used to. With Scratch, I can map any sound to a sound on a vinyl record, and I used this method to create a bunch of sounds for smartphones in Zurich in Burning Sands. Some of the ride sounds I mentioned earlier were created using Continuum with Kontakt to get the vibration and rocking elements of the tires moving so fast along the wooden track.
DS: Was recording an important part of the experiment?
Multiple sclerosis: Recording new sonic elements is important for many reasons. It gives the project uniqueness, but you’ll also discover ideas that you would never have thought of if you hadn’t left the studio. We were recording the sound of garbage and metal being dumped onto the cement in the industrial area of Mare Island for the movie Juanita, and we had this magical moment when I dumped about a hundred empty aluminum cans on the ground, The wind has been carrying them along this street for much longer than we thought. It’s a very unique sound, a little sparkly, but a little unbalanced. While it wasn’t suitable for that particular film, a year later I needed to provide a vocal theme for the documentary Ghost Fleet about the brutality of the slave trade in Thailand, and with some processing the recording turned out really well.
DS: How much audio suite processing do you use in your sound design?
Multiple sclerosis: It depends on the needs of the project, but generally speaking I don’t work a ton on the sound/design side of things. That being said, I’ve been using reverb plugins for a lot of sounds in the last year; more than I’m used to. While most remaster mixers prefer to control things like reverb, on a tight mix schedule it can save time if I can get close to an effective reverb setting. I also don’t want to tie down the mixer, so I’ll have a muted version of the group’s sounds without the need for reverb processing.
DS: Do you often try new plug-ins?
Multiple sclerosis: When I have time, I like to try new plugins. There’s that word again, time. It’s totally related to the idea of experimentation. While it’s often easy to get a certain cool sound out of a new plug-in, that’s probably not what you’re after. You usually get the best results when you actually get a chance to spend some time with a new tool and discover what it’s good at, and vice versa, what it’s not good at. And then it turns out that that slight touch can enhance something that’s interesting in its own right. Typically, you have to start with quality source material.
DS: Do you combine all the elements in sound design and turn them into a single effect, or do you Do you keep them as separate elements?
Multiple sclerosis: It depends on the project and the mixer. Also, if the client has already heard it and is very familiar with it, I’m more likely to include it as a single element. If I do this I’ll try to get a breadcrumb trail in case I really need to go back to the original source session. Sometimes it’s because the mixer needs more control, but more often it’s because other variations of the sound are needed, and you need to be able to return to those elements.
DS: Do you leave room to try and re-record the mix?
Multiple sclerosis: I’m a firm believer that there should be time to try new things in editing and mixing. While I mix some projects myself, I think working with someone else, in this case a re-recording mixer, often helps projects in ways that I’m not always confident I can do on my own. They often have ideas that I haven’t thought of and do some really creative things with the tracks that I bring to the dubbing stage. They often come into the project much later than I do and see and hear it with a fresh perspective. But it all depends on time. One thing I’ve discovered over the years is that the better prepared a track is in every aspect (dialogue, ADR, foley, music, and sound effects), the more time is freed up to experiment with the mix. If a movie is plagued by terrible sound during production, almost the entire mixing process can feel like traumatic surgery. The entire time is spent fixing the dialogue, which makes the experimental time almost zero. So make every effort to get great audio on set!
Mike Smith on IMDb
Voice of Skywalker
