Week of January 23 - 29, 2005

Tuesday, January 25, 2005

I hope you guys had a wonderful holiday season and I sincerely hope you have a healthy and prosperous 2005. Thank you all for contributing to what was a very special 2004 for me. I feel as if I met a lot of really good people through this web log and I look forward to our future online conversations. You guys are the best! Thanks for everything.

Now, without further ado, the winner of the original Alex Ross painting featured in the opening credits of "Spider-Man 2" is....Grace Fong. Congratulations Grace! I know you are going to love this piece of artwork. Kudos on winning a truly unique memento from the production of "Spider-Man 2."

But wait... there's more. The response we got from this contest was so overwhelming that I couldn't let Grace be the only one to walk away with something special. Therefore, I went to Sam and asked if he'd sign 10 of the DVD release posters for us to give away and of course he obliged. Therefore, if you receive an e-mail from the good people here at Sony asking for your home address, do yourself a favor, respond to their inquiry. You've won one of the signed posters. Enjoy!

And last, but not least, below please find the conclusion to the insightful interview I conducted with "Spider-Man 2" sound designer Paul Ottosson. Additionally, I'm trying something new with this web log - I'm incorporating video. So, if you'd like to see a video tour of Paul's room, conducted by Paul, where he created the rockin' sounds of "Spider-Man 2," please click here. I have to take a quick moment and say a sincere thank you for helping make this video a reality to visual effects editor Jody Fedele and production assistant Chris Deale. Thanks guys.

You mentioned pro-tools earlier. What kind of software do you work with on a day-to-day basis? Pro-tools is the main editing equipment we use and it's a program that you can get very, very specific with. It allows you place sound effects in the time line that matches the film. So I can look at the picture in this program, frame by frame, and stop the movie and place in a sound effect that the computer will then insert each time the film is played. It gives me the freedom to lock in a specific sound on a specific frame. I can then alter the sound effects to do what I need to do and layer them, like in the train sequence. At the end of the day there were close to 500 tracks in the train. We can't play all that in one computer so we have to go to the stage and pre-dub these into groups that make sense for us. For instance, since 500 tracks are too many to manage effectively, we combine like elements into groups - all glass sounds will go onto 8 tracks, all metal crashes will go onto 8 tracks, all train sounds onto another 8 tracks and so forth. You use 8 tracks because we have 8 separate speakers to play sounds on. As a result of all this pre-dubbing, when Sam steps onto the stage and hears the train sequence, if he likes all the sounds but feels as if the glass shattering is too loud, we can go right into that pre-dub group and lower it's volume, rather than going trough 500 tracks to achieve this. Pro-tools also gives you the opportunity to do a lot of treatment with the sounds you record called plug-ins which are essentially effects - things like reverbs or EQing, enhancing or taking out certain frequencies. Let's say you have a sound you want to be brighter - you will enhance the frequencies that are higher in the register or, if you want a more low end, then you would enhance the lower frequencies or compression.

What is your favorite sound in "Spider-Man 2?" Probably the fusion. It took a lot of work to make that happen and I'm really pleased as to how it came out. I think everyone thought it was going to be really whacky, and then for it to turn out as cool as it is, and to be as well-received as it was, was really rewarding. To tell you the truth, I don't believe anyone really expected it to sound as good as it did. I had spoken with Sam and (editor) Bob (Murawski) about it, about doing something special, more on the electronic side, and it worked. In fact, we ended up changing some of the visuals to match to sound.

What was your most difficult sequence to design the sound for? Doc Ock's tentacles were definitely the most difficult. We were going for something more organic, more real. I didn't want them to have a motor. From the beginning of the movie, I always saw Doc Ock as being this man, and these tentacles his tools. Later on they become more like characters and I thought they would feel more like characters if they didn't have a motor in them. When I used some motor sounds, he became more like a machine to me, but I saw him more as a man with these henchmen around him. So I spoke with Sam about not having any servos and he was like, "OK, cool. Show me what you are talking about." It took a lot of time though, and we didn't have the tentacle sounds in the first temps because I wasn't done. I didn't want to play it until it was finished because it was such a stretch - to buy into this thing not having any motors. It was funny. As I was struggling to come up with the tentacle sounds, I'd walk into work and there was this huge poster of Doc Ock in the lobby reminding me of what I was up against. Every day I had to come in and face my demon. I would record stuff, and the first recording of it was good, but then I would realize - this isn't it. It wasn't as if this trial and error was a waste of time though. I would listen to it, and I knew it would work, I knew I was getting closer, but I knew I just didn't have the right material recorded yet. So I'd get bigger chains, and bigger wires, and it just got to the point where everything came together and it sounded really cool.

Is there a "core" sound you used to make the sound of the Ock tentacles? There are basically three sounds that make up Ock's tentacles. The skeleton part of it is the thickest grade motorcycle chain I could find. It is a huge chain. I thought this type would be good because all of the chains have the same length, so when I'd move them around they'd be like a snake unfolding and they'd all be in the same rhythm - there weren't any inconsistencies in the movements. I pictured Ock's tentacles working perfectly, like snakes striking in a steady rhythm. The problem when I started though was brand new chains don't really make any sound. So I had to find a place that would wash them in acid for me. I used to have a bike and I knew that when the chains got rusty they would start to make sound. So we washed them in acid and cleaned out all the oil that was on them and then I put them in a little bit of water and they got totally messed up right away - that's when I got the sounds I wanted. This was the base for the tentacle sound. Then I would find these frequencies and make it thicker and play it at lower pitches. Then to get it to play faster I didn't pitch it up, but I layered it with another sound of the chains - the peaks. Then I need something that was kind of like a servo, but not being a motor, so I found these wires that I pulled over surfaces. They were the wires they used for the puppets as well as some wire they use in prosthetics for people, but these were both too thin - I couldn't pitch them low enough. The sound would start breaking up. In a digital world you can only process it so much and then it starts screwing up. So, I tried my bass strings and this was okay - it was getting better - but is still wasn't thick enough. And then I got old piano strings, really thick. I don't know what kind of piano it was, but it was thick - the biggest strings ever, and I ended up using that. I layered a couple different tones and versions from pulling them over a piece of metal so I could get the pitch up. As for the "vocalizations" of them, the sounds coming out of the tentacles - I didn't want them to sound like animals. A lot of people tend to go with pig or monkey squeals, stuff like that, but I just didn't want it to be like a monkey screaming at Spider-Man, so I took metal, with a little rust and dirt and I scrapped it against blades and different objects and then I tweaked that so it's basically like metal being tortured.

Similarly, is there a core sound that makes up the flight of the web? I went to the biggest stage here at Sony one weekend, the one just beneath the water tower, and I set up a series of microphones. I also got this super-powerful slingshot that you strap on your wrist and I took different pipings and fittings of odd shapes that would make friction in the air and produce weird sounds - the ones that sounded really great were the brass and copper pipings. They would spin so fast in the air and they had holes that gave them odd whistles. So I'd shoot these across the stage and attach various metal wires to get different sounds out of them. I spent the whole day shooting stuff and recorded it through the array of microphones. Then, I brought those recordings into my studio and made them sound good for the movie. I'd take out the background noise, but I'd also have to lengthen them because when I shot them they were really, really fast, but for the movie we needed something that would travel for 4 or 5 seconds which we could pan. So, we layered the sounds to achieve this. It was a lot of work, but it came out really good.

You just described two sounds of the entire movie, how long were you on "Spider-Man 2?" September 2003 to June of 2004. There was so much stuff to record. You want to make it special - you never want to cheat it. This isn't the longest movie I've been on, but it was a long time - a long schedule - a lot of 7 day weeks.

Is there such a thing as a typical day for you when you are in prep and then when we are in production and then when we are in post? When I first start a movie, when I read the script, I just try to think about the movie as a whole. Being a supervising sound editor is the totality of it. With sound design, it's usually specific sounds and you have to look at the overall movie. What is the vibe of the film? Just like when you do the score. The music has some sort of a beginning and end and an arc. It's the same with sound effects. We have to make sure we are in the right place in the world of the movie. There are things we should hear throughout the movie - the type of sound - the organic approach. To help make sure that I'm inhabiting the same "world" sound effects-wise that Sam is capturing with the camera, I do speak with Sam about the movie, and what he wants. It's his movie so I have to be in tune with the direction he wants to achieve. But of course, you want to achieve your own touches as well - so it's not just paint by numbers. You hope you've been hired because you bring something extra to the table. I then do a breakdown of the script and figure out which things I need to record and plan for. These are the very important sounds to the movie and I try to record these before my full crew comes on because it is easier for me to focus on the stuff I need to do and then bank them away so when other people come on they can take what I've created and start working toward the final goal. I also go through a library of sounds that I already have and pull ones I think will add to the film. This is the preparation work before the crew comes on, because once the crew comes on, you have to have your plan as to what you have and what needs to be done each week to finish the movie. You have to be flexible though - very little can be set in stone because in post-production dates change and priorities have to be adjusted.

How much did you consult with Sam or editor Bob Murawski about the dynamic you wished to achieve with your sound design before you started the show? A lot of the initial exchanges actually took place with Bob because Sam was in New York shooting. This was helpful in the early stages because Sam and Bob have a lot of the same tastes. When they got back to Los Angeles, there were times while we were shooting and I would need to talk to Sam about specific sounds and I'd go down and while they were setting up for the next shot I'd get 10 minutes here or 5 minutes there and we'd just talk theoretically about the sounds of the tentacles - the sound of the movements, things like that. Then, after the movie was done filming, I sat down with Sam and Bob and we spotted the movie, or at least as much as we could. We'd talk about scenes and their needs and we got very specific about off screen sounds that were necessary to tell the story that you wouldn't know about by just looking at the footage. We would talk about these intricacies and do this for every scene in the film. I'd talk with Sam about what different scenes meant to him, what they were about, so we'd be clear about what we were trying to achieve. It's a process of asking, "What is this scene doing in the movie," and then making sure the sounds are appropriate in helping answer that question. You have to collaborate and make sure sonically the picture is doing exactly what you need it to do even if you don't see it. You figure out the vibe of each scene. For instance, if someone is sitting in a room having a serious discussion, you don't want to hear happy birds chirping in the background and kids playing, but if you are in a house and trying to create a happier mood, then maybe you do put in the birds and the kids playing outside - non-threatening sounds.

What is the biggest misconception you believe the movie-going public has about your job? I don't think people realize how much work we do. I believe they think it's a pretty simple job to do. In a movie like this, as far as the sound effects and foley are concerned, we probably replace something around 99% of it. There is so little of what is shot on set that we can use because it's on a set - it's a hollow floor but it's supposed to represent walking on a marble floor. All these sounds that don't match, you have to take out, or if you take it out you have to fill it in with another sound. Additionally, there is so much of the movie made in the computer that we have to build the sounds for from scratch.

Along these same lines of what we are talking about, I always found it interesting that, and I'll explain this poorly, different sounds record on top of each other. Therefore, if someone is talking and a dog barks in the background, you can't take the dog bark out because it lives with the dialogue. You're correct, but it does depend on what type of sound you are talking about. For instance, if I'm saying, "How are you doing," and on the "you," there is a dog barking, what we would do is grab a "you" from a different take, because a lot of times the same scene is shot multiple times, and take a "you" that matches the initial "you" and cut it out and stick in the new clean one to replace the old one. This is definitely something we do that most people don't know about - replacing vowels, consonants, words, half of words - because when you do it well, the audience is not supposed to be able to tell.

Do you even have a guess of how many sounds you created for "Spider-Man 2?" You said there were 500 different sounds on the train alone. I said there were 500 tracks. Each track might have anywhere from 10 to 100 sounds on it, so we are talking about way more than 500 different sounds for the train - we're talking thousands upon thousands. There is stuff, like when a glass shatters, that you may get lucky and get one sound that works for it, but a lot of times you're not that fortunate. You want one sound for the lower end of it, then you need the glass exploding, then you need some sounds of the glass falling. So maybe one glass crash by the time it's done the way you think it should be done, could be 6, 7, 8 sounds that make that one event out of numerous events in that scene. It takes an enormous amount of sounds.

You've said "team" and used the word "we" a lot. Who did you work with to make this incredible sound job a reality? My first assistant on the show was Tricia Linklater AKA "the mother." She literally keeps track of the entire show, and each of us, and makes sure we hit all of our deadlines and deliver the show on time. Additionally, Susan Dudeck and her crew did a phenomenal job cutting all the dialogue and recording the ADR & loop group, and Chris Flick and Gary Hecker and their crews recorded and edited the foley. In additional to all this we had 5 or 6 sound effects editors who worked tirelessly on the film.

*For any of you who have specific questions for Paul, he has graciously offered to answer them on this site. So, similarly to how you ask me questions, just address any inquiries you may have for Paul to him.