SPEAKER_01 0:16

Hi, Kimmy.

SPEAKER_00 0:17

Hi Lu.

SPEAKER_01 0:18

How are you today?

SPEAKER_00 0:19

You know, uh thriving and surviving.

SPEAKER_01 0:22

I love that. So um I'm very excited for our next guest, Tom Myers, um, sound designer at Skywalker Sound.

SPEAKER_00 0:30

Which uh for those of you who don't know, is the Lucas Films Audio Facility, which is on Skywalker Ranch in Marin County. And basically makes some of the best movies ever.

SPEAKER_01 0:45

It does. They do, they have a like so you just wanted to get to the to your movie, right?

SPEAKER_00 0:52

This is this is how you got me interested in this whole conversation. You're like, and he worked on up, and I was like, okay, we can do this. We can do this one.

SPEAKER_01 1:01

This is great. Well, it's it's it was great. So Luke, uh Skywalker Sound, which is on Skywalker Ranch, this is down the street from our offices here in Northern California. Um, I got to go and see Tom on campus, which was phenomenal. And the entire campus is set up in a way that as you're driving down the sort of path that goes between all the buildings, you can only see one building at a time. So when I'm as I'm reading The Last Kings of Hollywood about um Lucas Spielberg and Coppola, the whole impetus for Skywalker Ranch was a place for uh people to create movies. Is it was completely designed for creativity and you can feel it, you can absolutely feel it. And Tom Myers is such a joy to talk to. He is he can really take the complexity of sound design starting from nothing to create a world of sound and put it in a way that you can actually get your head around it until you realize that it's way more complex than he's talking about because there's so many nuanced things about it. But he was such a delight to talk to.

SPEAKER_00 2:09

Cool. Well, I'm ready to hear this episode.

SPEAKER_01 2:12

All right, let's go.

SPEAKER_00 2:13

Let's go.

SPEAKER_01 2:18

So we were talking earlier before we got on tape about what it's like to not be formally trained and then learning it yourself. Right. And that's how you came into this, is that right?

SPEAKER_02 2:31

Yeah, yeah. That's I didn't have a kind of technical background and stumbled into this field which depends a lot on technology. And so I uh I'm much more interested in the sort of the creative uses of stuff rather than the technology and and all the equipment, all that stuff is just kind of a uh, you know, a tool to get to something else. But that that was my my entree into this really.

SPEAKER_01 2:57

But as I'm sitting here in your office, which is amazing because it's so quiet, like we didn't have any acoustic problems. Yeah. And um and you're surrounded by technology, I'm seeing a keyboard and and then um a soundboard and you've got your screen, so then you've got a big screen, and um so maintaining sort of your independence in in all of this, like is it just something that comes naturally to you? Is that what that works like?

SPEAKER_02 3:27

Yeah, I guess. I mean uh uh I you know maybe it's a conceit. I try not to get too hung up on it. And the other advantage of working here is if I get hung up on something or something to not working, I don't have to troubleshoot it all myself. I can call somebody in their team of engineers and people much smarter than I am. Yeah, I think that's true, right? Those guys are great. Yeah, it's just sort of, hey, this isn't working, and then somebody will come down and help me figure it out.

SPEAKER_01 3:55

So it's funny because then they'll come in and they'll take like a plug in reverse, like an RCA plug, and that was all it was. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You just kind of look at that in amazement, like, how did you do that?

SPEAKER_02 4:06

Yeah, yeah, exactly. But you do learn one of the things I I have learned is some logical troubleshooting stuff with audio where it's signal flow and it's okay, it's going to here, but it's not getting to there. Okay, somewhere in between it's getting hung up. But but the complete love of technology in and of it for itself, I never really uh I never really had.

SPEAKER_01 4:29

Never really embraced it. Yeah. Um so let's get to the creative part, because this is what fascinates me. Um since we have been going back and forth arranging this get together, I've been watching every single movie almost with my eyes closed. Oh, wow. Because it's this kind of I I knew the sound was there. I have an appreciation for sound. But as I watch these movies, I understand how you the movie cannot live without the sound. Right. It it the the amount of depth that it brings um is really a layering of subtleties. Yeah. Yeah. And I feel like some movies can go too heavy on the sound for shock value. And the movies where you don't notice the sound are the ones that are m the most fulfilling. So I want to talk to you a little bit about how do you get there, like how do you start that process as an artist?

SPEAKER_02 5:27

Uh the process in terms of like starting a film and thinking about how the sound that you add was or maybe we should start with because and th I'm coming from a very ignorant position, but it strikes me like if you you worked on up.

SPEAKER_01 5:44

Yeah. And up is an animation that there's nothing. Right. Right. You're you're creating the oral world completely from nothing. So how what does that look like?

SPEAKER_02 5:56

How does that overwhelming. So the thing that you have to do, like anything else, is is uh what I've found with sound is you have to break it down into its components and figure out, well, what like what's what are we trying to accomplish with each scene or each shot? What is the thematically or creatively or or story-wise, what's the most important thing? What's the thing that they're we're trying to get across? What do we want the audience to feel? And maybe a number of things, but it's sort of breaking it all down to what is it that you're trying to get across? What's the most important thing? Because you could have a million different sounds, but and oftentimes you can get distracted by it.

SPEAKER_01 6:44

So and how how do you afford that distraction? Because it we live in a world of distractions. Literally so many distractions. How how do you become selective?

SPEAKER_02 6:56

You kind of have to put blinders on or whatever the audio equivalent of it is. And it's you think about what's the what's the creative intent of any given shot of a you know a story or whatever. So what are the what are the things that uh are most important? What are the emotions you wanna you wanna draw out, what are the story points that you want people to uh to feel? And I'm trying to think in you know, in up, a lot of it is sort of the weightlessness of once the the um uh the house is up on the balloons and is traveling and it's sort of this different transitional thing of sort of thinking about that and but the house and up almost has a personality into itself.

SPEAKER_01 7:42

Yeah. You know, because it it is almost a character in the story. Aaron Ross Powell Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 7:46

It's it's sort of the the it's the creaks and the wind and the balloons and all this sort of kind of almost lyrical stuff that sort of moves together and and trying to figure out how uh how that all works and and the whole mixing process is sort of you have sometimes thousands of sounds, music and dialogue and sound effects and folding and all this stuff, and then it's trying to figure out what is the most important thing to hear at any given time and trying to strip away everything else. When you when you're first starting, you kind of want to play everything and show off and stuff, but it's I think it's like anything, any other creative process, the more you do it, the more it kind of comes down to finding the simplicity in each thing.

SPEAKER_01 8:35

The most difficult thing in the world is simplicity, right? I mean, honestly.

SPEAKER_02 8:38

It's just really kind of like so you basically start with a cacophony and then and you just go, I can't, I don't know where to focus, I'm I'm not sure what I'm you know. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 8:47

But how much of that is is uh is is f feeling, you know what I'm saying? Like I'm sure like any creative process, you're sitting here, you're doing it, and there's a certain technical sort of winnowing away to get to a certain point. Right. And then when you start getting into the weeds of the subtlety, especially with something like Star Wars or something like that, you are now getting into a sense of feel how is this making me feel, right? And is that like how does is that like a good cup of coffee and you know you're gonna come in one day, it's like, okay, now we're getting into the feeling of it. Is that sort of that how it works?

SPEAKER_02 9:24

It's I I wish it were that simple. It sort of appears and doesn't appear. You know, it's sort of like that feeling of when something's working, you know, and and you kind of you kind of know it when it's working, um, but it's hard to get to and hard to describe. So you get to a point and then once you start adding more stuff and then you lose that feeling, then you have to kind of pull back on the other stuff. So it's it's it it's hard to articulate what it is, but you have this internal sense like, oh, that's the spot. You you find a spot where you put all these pieces together. Like I I remember working on a uh um car chase thing where the guy's driving very fast and it's uh very kind of frenetically cut and trying to find the thing, put it all together so it has a progression to it, and then you just uh you kind of it simplifies in your mind and then you get a sense of the oh that's working. It's it's really it's kind of hard to describe, but you you're looking for that feeling where everything kind of comes together and you kind of relax and are not going, oh, it's something's something's missing, something else is not working. Right. So it's trying to get to the point where you go, Oh, uh anything else I add to this detracts from it. Aaron Ross Powell, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 10:50

I see. And and and how do you Because obviously it's a collaborative process, you know, the ultimate collaborative process or movies. How do you communicate? You know, you're talking to a director, like, how do you communicate? This this is what I I felt here, and then you have to find some sort of agreement almost related.

SPEAKER_02 11:06

Yeah. Each one is different. Uh some directors want a lot of communication, some of them don't, and just want to be surprised or something. But you talk in uh the same way you'd be a composer would talk to somebody. You talk in terms of feelings and colors and you know, what is the idea, what's the emotion. Right here. So it's not you try not to get caught up in any kind of technical stuff because you don't want to burden them with that stuff. You it's up to you to sort of figure out how to deliver it, but if you can get from them what the feeling is, what the emotion is, what the what the uh what it is that they're trying to get the audience to to understand or feel. If you get those ideas and then it's up to us to to figure out a way to deliver that, you know, to find the right combination of sounds and and uh you know.

SPEAKER_01 12:04

Yeah, and and so no we don't do names here, but have you ever run into a situation where a director wasn't getting it and you've had to dig deeper to try to communicate? Like what does that look like?

SPEAKER_02 12:14

Yeah, there's some times you'll get people that can't articulate what they want. They can only articulate what they don't want. And that that can be more frustrating because you're you're trying to you're they're you're you're stumbling around in the dark going, how about this? Does this work? Does this work?

SPEAKER_01 12:36

Does it feel like strawberries?

SPEAKER_02 12:37

Yeah, it is exactly and then it the worst part of that is sometimes you don't know if you go down that road long enough, you're just doing it to appease them, to get them to say, yes, that's it, and not doing it because you feel it or you think it's right or you think that's it sounds almost like a father-son relationship, really. Yes, yes, exactly. I'm looking for validation, man. Sometimes you just want the noise to stop or just to say, you know, yes, that's it. And and you get into this thing where you're just kind of throwing shit at the wall, hoping something sticks. Did their eyes light up? Yeah, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 13:17

I I remember the first commercial I directed, and I I mean, there are rookies and there are rookies, and it's definitely the latter. And we were down in Los Angeles and and it was a public service announcement for breast cancer awareness, and we were looking for original music. Right. And I could not articulate what I wanted. Right. And we were there for hours, and I'm like, what about the this? What about the sting song? What about remember when like Chris Cornell did that thing? Right, right. He was looking at me like, oh my God, you're crazy. And I remember at one point I just said something, and I think in the aggregate of all the things that I said, oh, you want this, and he plays it, and I literally fell on the ground and was so happy.

SPEAKER_03 14:04

Right.

SPEAKER_01 14:04

And at that point, I decided that I I'm going to have to increase my vocabulary. I need I need a better vernacular. So for for up-and-coming directors, where do you find that vernacular? And I'm not saying that they should go read a dictionary of like stuff, but like how best do you describe to a person like you what I'm looking for for this scene? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:29

It kind of depends on the person, you know, and and w it's up to us as creative, you know, collaborators with them to try and help them figure it out. So you don't want to put it all on all on them, and part of it is is suggestions and and uh you know, how about this idea or how about this feeling, and then, you know, you wanna part of it is helping give them the vocabulary and not depending on them to to just do it, because their director is often thinking of, you know, uh, you know, a million different things. But uh they may be describing the same thing to a number of people. I always try and get them to use musical terms or think in terms of music, what do they say to the composer? Because that's they're they're keyed into that and oftentimes it's not they're not, you know, musically savvy enough to say, oh, it should be in this key or do whatever. They are talking about feelings and emotions and colors and and things that they they can do. So if if at all possible I try and be there when they're talking to the composer because I find that that's they sometimes with sound effects they get a little more don't talk they talk about specifics and not about emotions. And I'm much more interested in the emotions they're trying to get across because a uh you know, as say a phone can ring a hundred different ways in a scene. It's not just w we're not just trying to paint by numbers. We're trying to find every element that is serving the story or the emotion of the thing.

SPEAKER_01 16:17

Yeah, so to to use that example, um, is the phone shocking? Is the phone something the distant that is annoying that we should be paying attention to, but then the reveal comes after we pick up the phone, that sort of thing. That's interesting. Um one of the things that um I found by accident was watching the um ASL um subtitles on a movie. Right. Because they're very good at saying a horse nays or something like that. And those little bits of of vocabulary are really helpful in sort of describing sound. But um back to like s like sound effects and mixing and and I remember seeing Star Wars. I was the third line on opening day. Really? It was like random. We saw the we saw the trailer like in in uh grammar school, we were on our Easter break, and then we and we were had our Easter break and we were all in line, my friends. And I just remember that the sound that the blaster made for whatever reason to my seventh grade year old ears made sense. Yeah, yeah. I had seen lasers in movies and being a sci-fi fan, and somehow that made sense. I heard a rumor, I'm not sure if it's even remotely true, but it was like a bow being twanged and then manipulated or something.

SPEAKER_02 17:36

I think it was the the story. This is Ben Bird, who's the godfather of, you know, Mount Rushmore guy of sound design. And one of the great things about Star Wars was it was all sort of practical stuff that he used. Right. It wasn't all synthesized effects. So it was a guide wire f to a a giant power um tower that he struck with a hammer. And the sound would go up and down. So that's the so and Ben was amazing about all that stuff. I was one of the things that blew my mind, there was I forget which spaceship it was or what it w was, but he it's such a simple idea, but it it was so great. He took a uh an electrical razor and just put it in a giant mixing bowl, a metal mixing bowl, and just modulated it around. And I just that thing of having that imagination to take two things and sort of put them together and and sort of make this sort of changing resonant tone into it was a one of the spaceships or I I can't remember which one it was, but it was that that was a big light bulb moment for me, was that you can you don't have to be uh super technically savvy. You just have to think creatively of like, let's take these two things and see what happens when we put them together.

SPEAKER_01 19:05

Aaron Ross Powell It's it's it's solving problems in the abstract. Yeah. And so the problem doesn't actually exist, but you have this problem that lives in the abstract, and you have to solve it. That's that's amazing. And so that brings me to sort of my next question for you is what what is inspiration look like?

SPEAKER_02 19:23

It is that thing. It's sort of problem solving and finding uh something and what it is is sort of breaking it down. I was this project I was working on, I was sort of going through and spotting the foley, you know, which is to the people who are going to go through and do all the footsteps and and body grabs and hand pats and all that stuff, and you you look at the film in a different way and break it down shot by shot, and then you see how the film starts, there's a relief. The film starts to you start to see it in a different way, and all the cuts start to make sense. And oh, okay, that's what they're trying to do here. These this montage is time-changing. Here's the scene where they're in a club and you see this couple talking over time, and e every cut needs to there's a time change in each one. So each thing should sound different. Each um uh you start to see where the where the intent is that the editor and the director have, and then you start to think, oh, how can I help that sound wise? Well, I'll make each cut sound drastically different or different enough so it implies something different, and uh you uh you sort of see something in the background and you go, okay, well, th this one should be wild and crazy, and people are yelling in the background, this one is a little bit quieter, this one's halfway in between. So it's that i it's sort of looking at the film over and over again and starting to see the language that the film is telling, you know, uh uh is using, and then figuring out a way to to um to support that, you know.

SPEAKER_01 21:07

Aaron Ross Powell And and at what point do you typically get films in the in the in the post-production process?

SPEAKER_02 21:12

Aaron Powell If you're lucky you get a preliminary if you're really lucky you get a script at the before they start shooting it, and then you talk about it, and then you get an early cut. Um but more traditionally you get it after they've done a first cut and something's already done, and maybe if you're lucky they've started to think about sound beforehand. But oftentimes the editors are uh which is actually a good thing because the first things that they the first cut that you get, the sounds that they've put in are the most important for them to tell the story. So that's why they call it guide track. So you can use that and go, well, this is these are the most important things to them. So the first thing you want to do is not screw that up, not obscure all that stuff. You wanna because I've seen it happen where it's like, well, you've lost the thread completely. You've added all this other stuff and it's this amazing crowd scene or or gunfight or something, and you've you've distracted from what the thing was, what the intent was to begin with. So you get that first cut and you realize they've it's very bare bones. That's the the kind of structure or the the foundation that that you're gonna build on. And the important thing is don't screw it up first and foremost.

SPEAKER_01 22:38

Aaron Ross Powell I love that for anybody getting into sound design, first step, don't screw it up.

SPEAKER_02 22:44

Well that's a uh you know anything uh uh any other thing. Because sometimes you get you know, creative people we all want to put a footprint on something. We all want to make a think about that. Yeah. And sometimes you get too fancy, sometimes you get too you're throwing too much stuff at it that you think is cool, but you're you're moving away from the original.

SPEAKER_01 23:08

Aaron Powell You're starting to watch your own movie version. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um but in the same vein, do you have like have you ever had uh an opportunity to And if it's gonna get you in trouble, don't answer. Yeah. But have you ever had the opportunity to put like a little Easter egg in or something like that where a little bit of a sound is something like Yeah, there have been things like that.

SPEAKER_02 23:30

I'm trying to think of what uh things that I've put in. I've tried to sneak my son's voice in in a couple of couple of spots. There were some uh things early on. Uh the the other thing that you learned over time is the thing that you love the most is always the thing that somebody's gonna take out at the last minute. It's happened time and time again.

SPEAKER_01 23:50

100%.

SPEAKER_02 23:51

But uh, you know, there are stuff the audience has got much more sophisticated. Now, you know the Wilhelm Scream? Do you know that thing? This is Ben Burt. It's in Star Wars, it's been in hundreds of movies. Okay. Ben Burt was the sort of the first one. It's a famous scream that's from a movie in the 30s where a guy falls to his death and is eaten by alligators. Wow. And he took this scream, and I think it's in it's in New Hope. It's in, you know, and it's in almost everything he'd done. And it now it's gotten so kind of played out. It's one of those things that was an Easter egg and now has gotten so popular. You can find it on YouTube. If you look up Wilhelm's scream on YouTube, you'll see a eight-minute clip with 50 movies that this one scream is. And and it now it's gotten so popular, so now if you hear it, it kind of takes you out of it a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 24:45

There's um I remember the um uh Mrs. Havisham in David Lean's version of Create Expectations. That scream made the rounds quite a lot. Exactly. And I remember like, wait a second, I know that's okay. Come on.

SPEAKER_02 24:57

There's another ricochet too, which is famous from the it's from uh Lives of the Bengal Lancers, a Gary Cooper movie from the 30s or something like that. But it's a pee-oh, you know, it's one ricochet, and it was like if you heard it, you would go, Oh, I've heard that in a hundred movies. Right. So uh it's trying not to rely on that too much. But it's fun to put in a little something that you know or your friends know, or or something there's uh uh there's uh another one um that we have tried to sneak in here. There's a guy that used to work here, Scott Gateau, old hippie, you know, he did his share of of uh you know chemicals and stuff, and there's a one from the movie where it's uh there's a you put it in a in like a hospital scene or something like that. Dr. Gateau to the pharmacy, and you can sneak it way back there. So I put that in a couple of ones because it's one that makes us laugh, where if you hear it, you go a small group of people, Dr. Gateau to the pharmacy. So if you hear that, that's uh that's a Skywalker reference.

SPEAKER_01 26:02

So I I love that. That's so good. So speaking of Skywalker sound, where we are, that I haven't even said yet, um it's uh I've seen um a couple of movies at the screen review. This the the sound system here is insane. Yeah. I mean it it really is good as a do you just have like one person who that's all they do all day is just keep refining that thing? Yeah. I mean, it is insane.

SPEAKER_02 26:24

There's a guy here who's uh I mean that he's about 75. I don't know what we're gonna do when he retires, but that's his thing. He's got golden ears and is constantly fine-tuning stuff and if you ever need somebody to sit here and listen and give it a I'm your guy.

SPEAKER_01 26:39

I just all I need is a cappuccino and I'm a good I'm good. There you go. So you and I have been around these industries a long, long time. And it was about the movie theater, and then things sort of got shoved in and funneled into television. And now television, you know, I've just set up um a very, very moderate sound system, but my wife was kind of like, this really changes the experience for me. You know, with that little subwoofer not heavy and all that sort of thing. But now we're also competing with people watching stuff on their iPads and headphones and stuff like that. How do you reconcile all that? That's a lot.

SPEAKER_02 27:16

It is uh yeah, it's hard to not sort of slice your wrists sometimes. Somebody's why you work on something and then people watch it on a phone. But then I catch myself watching something on a phone. But are the thing that we've done here is you always mix and create for the best environment, and then it sort of gets down mixed from there. So you you do something big on a big screen in Atmos for a big theater, and then you listen to it on smaller speakers, and you listen to it on smaller speakers, and then you listen to it on your laptop, and and uh so again it's that thing, are you losing you're gonna lose some of the stuff, but are you still hitting the story points?

SPEAKER_01 27:56

So I guess that asked me wants me to or I want to ask you about um if in the process of your sound design, do you have sort of a background sense of wow if this if this gets you know too small and too small of a screen, this is gonna go away. And is this absolutely critical? Do you do you have that sort of prior prioritization that you have going on in your head at all? Is that a thought process?

SPEAKER_02 28:23

Yeah, I mean a lot of it is the thing that goes away, is all the low end, all the low frequency. And so subwoofers and and low frequencies can have an emotional impact on you that audiences feel, they don't really hear them. That stuff is the first stuff that sort of goes away. It's like listening to something way back on a car radio or something. You lose all the bass and all the so you have to figure out other ways to support those emotions with different frequencies. But you know, that uh uh You can only do so much. Yeah, you can only do so much, and then you know, it's you kind of just have to live with it. But if it's mixed properly, if you hear the dialogue and you hear the music and you hear the important sound effects and the stories being told, you just that's what you live with. But it's not what you want people to uh to fully experience.

SPEAKER_01 29:17

Um interesting, you talk about dialogue uh on some of the you know, now they're all watching through streaming like Apple TV or something like that. Dialogue is increasingly difficult to hear. Yeah. I find myself using subtitles for the other.

SPEAKER_02 29:30

Yeah, a lot of people do that, yeah. And that's another thing which is is sort of uh you know a bitter pill to swallow. But it's the nature of it's the Is it the compression because it's being compressed down before it travels through the internet type of thing. Yeah. And sometimes it's the mix, it's not always our um creative decision. We provide options and then, you know, uh a lot of times people want things, sound effects big or music big because that's providing the emotion, and then, you know, but every time you add something you lose something else. So um uh I get the subtitles thing, but if w I I wish we could come up with a way to not do that. Every every platform, Netflix, Amazon, they all have their own specs, yes and dialogue normalization that they, you know, it's something a lot of people think about and try and get across because dialogue tells the story. The the whole thing uh learned early on is you create a pocket, the dialogue is sort of in the pocket and you you have to build everything else sort of around that to protect it.

SPEAKER_01 30:40

Right.

SPEAKER_02 30:40

Um but still I think a lot of it is just is uh you know, TV watching and frequencies, and then when you're in a different environment, you can't control that. There's cars going by, there's you know, kids in the other room, there's somebody watching something else in the other room. So the subtitle thing is is easy, but it just uh I wish we could uh find a workaround for that.

SPEAKER_01 31:03

Agreed. The um speaking of dialogue, somebody was asking me how I I just written a play and was interviewed after the play. Cool. And it was they they said, you know, how did you get the dialogue like that? And I said, like what? And I said, Well, it sounded so real, but I said, but dialogue is hyper-real, it's not really real, you know what I mean? And so um when I think about sound design and I think about, you know, we're looking at the screensaver on your apple and we're in the forest in the somewhere, and if you're gonna look at the scene and you're gonna put sound to it, it's it's hyper real at that point, right? Even even the wind or the or the breeze coming through the trees is gonna be hyper-real. So how do you distill that down into a a a sense of real that people can feel? Does that make sense? I think it's a good idea. Yeah, it seems to me.

SPEAKER_02 31:52

There's a big difference between dramatic reality and and uh and you know, literal reality. That was something early on. It was on uh got to be a fly on the wall in uh Terminator 2 when they were mixing that here and and Cameron talked about that. Everything had to be a step above what it was. So a gun, a pistol had to be a rifle, a rifle had to be a bazooka, I mean a cannon. Everything had to be one level up because it the the the dramatic reality is more important than the literal reality. So it's it's making everything a little bit, like you say, hyper-real. So everything is more exaggerated um than it is. They're also sort of um standards that people get used to in movies that that here it's like the the audio equivalent of the binoculars thing. You see a sort of two hoops when somebody looks through a binocular, it's really only one. So sounds you exaggerate sounds in in ways that that uh help serve the story and that people have a expectation for. So the hardest some of the hardest stuff to do is very quiet, um simple movies because there's nothing to hide behind. So everything every little thing you do sort of draws too much attention to itself.

SPEAKER_01 33:19

So it's it's um So if if we're in a if we're in a dry late bed with a with a you know high desert breeze coming through, anything that contrasts with that expectation is really going to be right there.

SPEAKER_02 33:33

Trevor Burrus Yeah. If you put in insects too much or you know one cricket or something like that, it's drawing too much attention, it's distracting from the you know from the emotion of the of the scene or the the uh uh the feeling of the scene, so to speak.

SPEAKER_01 33:51

What's your favorite part of the process? Like we we all have part of the process that we love, and we all have parts of the process that we serve is so we can get to the part of the process that we love. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 34:03

For me, it's the stu it's uh the worst part is the blank page. It's like having nothing there. And they say, oh my God, I've got to fill in all this stuff, and there's all these things that are. That's gonna be intimidating, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So the best part is for me is when it's the last 20% after you've got everything filled in, and then it's kind of the fine brush stuff, and then you go, oh, and and then you start to discover new ideas and new things. Oh, I if I did this here, that would uh you know underline that idea. So the the that's the best part is is once you have everything in, then it that's the part where it feels in some regards most creative because things are are starting to expose themselves, then the reveal themselves that you didn't see before. Once you have it all like the picture kind of fleshed out, then you can really start to see, you know, oh, here's the thing I really want, you know, people to focus on.

SPEAKER_01 35:00

Yeah, and do you find that your your sort of initial pass of like the group of I I'm not using the right vernacular, but the the group of sounds that has established the foundation of what you're working on starts to inform the subtlety and the additional layers that you start getting really refined on. Is that how that works a little bit?

SPEAKER_02 35:20

Yes. It starts that you build this stuff and then and then actually, you know, every layer you get new ideas. At first you're just trying to like, you know, primer the house, just kind of put stuff in so there's something there, you know, and then the more stuff you put in, then new ideas reveal themselves, and you say, oh I take that out and put this this other thing in, then that will that will, you know, point to this thing that happens in the scene or or something. But it's it's that uh that to me is the most discovery where you're you've got you know 70 or 80 percent of the stuff in there, and then you kind of go through and do the real fine brush stuff.

SPEAKER_01 36:02

It's uh it's almost like you're making it this is gonna sound ridiculous, but it sounds like you're making an audio version of the movie. I mean you're doing you're going through the same process of the shooting, the preproduction, all the other type of stuff. Yes. And I can see how that that gets complicated. So as you're going along and you hit the stuck, like, oh shit. Like, what do I do now? Is it like get up from the board, go for a walk? Like how do how do you unstick?

SPEAKER_02 36:29

Um you just you like all right, well, let's come up with five different things for this. Okay. And then so and then start combining them and and uh um but it is sometimes you have to step away and come back. The other thing with sound is your ear fatigue. You just get tired after a while.

SPEAKER_01 36:46

Oh, tell me a little bit more about that, actually.

SPEAKER_02 36:48

There's a classic thing where it's like you by the end of the day, your ears are tired, and you just go, I can't hear anything anymore, and you start focusing on the wrong things. So that's when you really need to step away, and and there the um there's an old story of of some mixers doing something where it was like they were working on some big bombastic movie, and they were just by the end of the day, it was just like it was a mess. It was the disaster. Right. Director was angry, everybody sort of walks out, and then they come in the next day and with fresh ears, and it's you're hearing it in a different way. You're you're all of a sudden all the problems go away. Sometimes your ears play tricks on you, and you start to compound things, and you're f you're you're one of the things when you put in all these details, you start to focus on one detail which isn't really important, and you're missing kind of the overall things.

SPEAKER_01 37:46

So next you're gonna tell me all creative people are crazy.

SPEAKER_02 37:50

You know. Voice of experience over there. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 37:55

So well, we met in insane asylum, so which is why this worked out. So we're both out there. Which is all very scary. You go down this road. So to to just to touch on getting unstuck, so you'll you'll take a break. Um is there um Do you list have you ever done anything as extreme as like listening to some white noise just to calm your ears down? Is that a thing?

SPEAKER_02 38:18

Uh not white noise, but sometimes you just have to turn everything off and just maybe close your eyes for a little bit. Yeah. And then just sort of uh let it all go away. Because it it it does the other thing you find the more you work on stuff over the course of a day, you start making things louder just because you can't hear them and they don't have the same impact that they did two hours ago. So you start pushing stuff up, and then you have this thing where the music and the dialogue and everything sort of you push up one thing and then that obscures another thing. So by the end of the day, you can be at a 12 when you should be at a at a seven.

SPEAKER_01 38:58

Right. It reminds me of um uh driving in a car, like you'll take a trip down at, you know, whatever, go drive for an hour, you got your music blaring, and then get out, go do something for an hour, go back into your car, turn the car on. The car it seems so loud. Yes. Right. Exactly. So it seems like that, but you're talking about you know obviously all these little niches and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_02 39:19

I think George Carlin had a bit about that, that a whole thing of like you can't believe how loud the radio was. But but yeah, that's that's it exactly. Aaron Ross Powell That's it.

SPEAKER_01 39:27

So and then um I guess the and I don't want to end on a negative note, but I just want to I'm I what I guess I'm wondering is um we were talking about how was it Brad that uh who did the the Ben Bert. Ben Burt, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:43

So um this building wouldn't be here if it wasn't for Ben. He was USC, plucked out of UC by George, came up here when they were uh working on the first Star Wars and he needed somebody who and it somehow this serendipity found the right just the right person to do that job.

SPEAKER_01 40:02

Trevor Burrus There's there's a lot of I'm I'm reading a book now called The Kings of Hollywood of the new that and it's it talks a little bit about how George and Francis and Stephen all met. But um the um what he did with this sort of practical problem solving for sound is there still room for that? Because it seems to I mean there are billions upon billions of sound bits around the world. Is there still room for you to do that?

SPEAKER_02 40:29

Uh I would say resoundingly, yes. I would say that you have to do that. I mean, I you know, you it one of the problems is budgets are getting smaller and is sort of easier to rely on on uh libraries and and uh AI databases and stuff like that. You can always find a sound, but the the best stuff, uh it's a matter of pride to go out and try and find new material. I mean, that's the thing. But it's it gets harder and harder because budgets are smaller and demands are more.

SPEAKER_01 41:04

It sounds like that speaks to the whole thing about where we started with just the emotionality of what you're trying to commit. It's just like okay, I can find twenty-five different versions of this in a library. Yeah. Yeah. But I'm gonna go make my own version of it because that's the one that's gonna work. Right, right, exactly. Which is amazing. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 41:20

And is it serving the story and the vision and stuff?

SPEAKER_01 41:24

Well, it strikes me that if you're here and you're the board, you're looking at the thing, and you want to go out and do this thing, is because you have an audio vision. Oh, wow, that sounds like so ridiculous. But I'm just gonna go with it, screw it. Um you have an audio vision of what fits there and then you go out and experiment until you find it. Yeah. Yeah. And that's gotta be gratifying as well. Yes, yes, it is.

SPEAKER_02 41:47

The hard part is sometimes you think it's gonna work and then it then it uh then it doesn't. Sometimes the other part, I maybe find this the creative process is like sometimes the things that you think are gonna be hard are easy, and the things that you think are gonna be easy are hard. You know, sometimes it's like the one little thing you kind of can't get right, and you don't know, am I hung up on this, or is it just like I can't get it? And sometimes the things that you think are gonna be most difficult, you find something and it's like, oh my god, it works. Yeah. So it's you you kind of never know which way it's gonna go.

SPEAKER_01 42:23

Yeah. Um, but uh that's what makes this uh whole space still very, very interesting and fun. And I'm glad there's still a lot a lot of room for that stuff. So that's the thing. Tom Myers, thank you very, very much.

SPEAKER_02 42:36

Thank you. I I really appreciate you you know coming to talk about this stuff. We we spent a lot of time thinking about it. And I think people have gotten much more audiences and stuff have got much more sophisticated and appreciative of sound, you know.

SPEAKER_01 42:53

I think so too. And I think that it's happening at a much younger level, which I'm thrilled to see. And um and I'll tell you now, kids who are teenagers now, if the sound's not right, it they will talk about it. Yeah, they will talk about it. So I think it's it's a good thing, and I'm very thankful for the technology, and um it feels like people are going back out to movie theaters now, which is wonderful.

SPEAKER_02 43:12

Trevor Burrus, Jr. Yeah. More people have a chance now because of the technology. I mean, there are there are ups and downs, but the it's more accessible to people and people can start earlier and do things before, you know, when I first started, it was like you needed a a giant facility to have all the equipment to have the opportunity to do it, and now you don't, you know. So now a lot of people can get started.

SPEAKER_01 43:35

Yeah, let me let me ask a little bit about that. If somebody wants to get wants to sit in your chair, um do how do they do they put together a portfolio? Like how do what does that look like? Do you know what I'm saying? How do you get how do you get attention?

SPEAKER_02 43:48

Trevor Burrus, Jr. It's tough. It's it's like a lot of things. It's luck and maybe getting a connection with somebody. It's uh first of all, you have to have the talent because if you don't have the talent, you're not gonna Last very long. But it's very competitive now. And so it's sort of like making the right connection and there's a lot of uh lot of luck involved. But the thing you want to do is just keep creating, just like have stuff to to show. Because now you can put stuff out on on, you know, YouTube or something and and share it with people and you can get found that way.

SPEAKER_01 44:27

There's um I was just up at uh Seattle Central uh Community College and they were talking about getting started and you know sort of all the normal questions. And one of the things I really advocate if you know somebody or you know somebody who knows somebody who's got the visual aspects of what needs to be done, throw yourself at them and say, I will do this for free. Yeah, yeah. And we will do it to get it right because A, you're gonna get the practice, and B, you're gonna have something to show for it. And especially if someone's got an original vision going on. So to be part of that is I think a good way to get started. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 45:00

Well you talk about the thing of articulating stuff. One of the things which is tough is that I mean the the one of the dirty secrets is to that you need to have an some interpersonal skills aside from creative skills, because you need to convince somebody to give you a a shot. Yes. And just so there, you know, and some people have more of one than they have the other, but but you can't dismiss the interpersonal skills that you kind of need to to to convince people that you have an idea that you can articulate, you know. It's like the art it's the art of the pitch. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:40

Every piece of uh of uh production, I think you need to have some level of the art of the pitch. Yeah, so exactly. Fantastic. Well, thank you very much.

SPEAKER_02 45:49

Thank you. That was great. You're wonderful.

SPEAKER_01 45:54

Thank you so much. What'd you think?

SPEAKER_00 46:03

Wow, what a cool guy. There were there were so many things. I actually like had to take some notes because I was like, this is so cool, and this is so cool, and this is so cool. First of all, I love that he is like not an engineer, that he's a creative, because I think as like a sound person myself, um, there's like always a lot of pressure on me, or I feel a lot of pressure to be able to do everything, right? To be able to do the engineering, the producing, the mixing. There's a weird pressure I have. Like, I feel like I should be able to repair all of my synthesizers myself, which is like I'm not a I'm not an electrician. Um, so I really love that he talked about how he's like, when something breaks, I call someone in to fix it. Right. I'm not trying to fix it myself. I'm like, and he's still doing amazing work. So I loved that.

SPEAKER_01 46:46

I was like, But I think it really speaks to um to stay in the lane of your strength. Do you know what I mean? It's like I think that, and what I also loved about him was even though with all this digital technology that we have, there are these vast, vast, vast, vast libraries of sounds available that he could pull from, but he's still looking to the real world for the practical solution to the problems because he is it the the passion is there, A, and also he wants to be original every single time. And I think that is it's it is so amazing to speak to somebody who cares about originality and and and the art that they're doing, and sound design is an art unto itself. Uh, I mean, the man has three Academy Award nominations. I mean, that that sort of speaks to it in a lot of ways. Yeah, really. I just kind of drop that casually, but um, yeah, I I do like the fact that he still looks to the real world for for solutions to sound sound design, and I think it was um he speaks in a way that um is very enjoyable to listen to, I think.

SPEAKER_00 47:55

100%. And just I think for me listening to it as somebody who works in music and works with audio, there was just so many great things also that I already knew, but you know, sometimes you listen to these conversations, you're like, oh yeah, this is a great reminder. Like just um that sometimes when you're kind of stuck with what to do, like the answer isn't like putting more in it, but taking away from it and making it simpler. And I really love that because I am currently writing an album and I feel like whenever I get stuck, I'm like, oh yeah, I'll just add another synthesizer. And sometimes it's like maybe something just needs to be stripped away or something needs to be replaced with something better, but we I don't need to add something else onto it. But it's a hard, it's a hard, um, that's like a hard thing because you always think like, well, if I just add one more thing, it'll be perfect. And I really hear that permission.

SPEAKER_01 48:43

Yeah, it's sort of a default thing. It's just like, oh, if I add, you know, more this, more that, then it it will be better when in fact we have to add so much that we hate it that we have to start pulling it back to find where the real true um product is, or not product, but the real true art is. Do you know what I mean? And I think that there's something to be said for you know, the Michelangelo where you said that the David existed in the chunk of marble and you just had to take away the stuff that wasn't necessary. Yeah. So I think that that I think that's true throughout all artistic disciplines. And I think that Tom speaking about that is is he has so much stuff available to him, and yet he's still trying to strip it down to the bare essence of what's gonna work.

SPEAKER_00 49:27

Totally. That's discipline.

SPEAKER_01 49:28

I mean, that's discipline, right?

SPEAKER_00 49:30

100%. I mean, that and I that is true just discipline. It is like that, that, and that restraint is discipline. I mean, yeah, he really like this was a really fascinating one to listen. All the sound ones have been really good. Great job, Lou. Great job.

SPEAKER_01 49:43

Thanks very much.

SPEAKER_00 49:44

Good job, guys. Um, something I also really liked, and I feel like this is like gonna be such a great segue into a future mini side with you and me, is when he I think you were asking him like what your his advice was for someone who wanted to get into this. Yes. And he said, Oh, just uh find a creative project and offer to the sound work for free repeatedly until you like get good at it, and then you you know, that way you get practice and you build a portfolio. But uh it's funny because we you and I were just talking about like how much free work we've done for everyone. Yes, exactly. Right. And I was like, wow, yeah, this is the reason you do free work. You don't do free work because you're doing your friend a favor, you're doing free work because, well, you can do f we we do love a good favor, but there is a there's a limit to favors. But I do think like I think we are in this strange place where people are like, never work for free. And I'm like, well, unless you don't know what you're doing and you want to learn, then it's a good time to work for free. As long as, you know, and this is the anyways, we're gonna get into that in another.

SPEAKER_01 50:40

We're gonna call it I think we're gonna call the episode the fair trade episode is we we landed on. So I think that's kind of coming soon.

SPEAKER_00 50:46

Uh coming soon, probably in the next couple of weeks, right? This is a good thing. Absolutely. So uh if you want to hear us ranting about working for free and all the fun things that we've done for free in our life, um, and also how to get out of that round.

SPEAKER_01 51:01

I think I think I'm gonna put up a couple of photos from my fashion days that I did for free of famous people.

SPEAKER_00 51:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 51:07

And on the website, the new website that's a little bit better than what.

SPEAKER_00 51:10

Guys, did you guys know that Lou used to be like a really big deal in Halloween? Oh my god.

SPEAKER_01 51:15

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 51:15

Um he used to be like a really Kimmy. It's time to go.

SPEAKER_01 51:18

Let's let's get to good to see you, Kimmy. Always good to see you. Bye you, Kimmy. This is our standard boilerplate. Chaos and Creativity is produced by Sherman Johnson.

SPEAKER_00 51:37

It's edited by Alexandra Covey.

SPEAKER_01 51:40

And we'd like to thank our sponsor, our only sponsor, and our fabulous sponsor, BlinkBid Software, bidding and producing software for creative people.

SPEAKER_00 51:50

And anyone who's cooler than anyone else.

SPEAKER_01 51:53

That's what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_00 51:54

Me too.