Sound Design at Edinburgh Napier University

Category: Film

  • How Does a Crowd Find Its Voice? David Monteath on Crowd ADR, Performance, and Creating Believable Worlds

    David Monteath

    How does a crowd find its voice?

    When audiences watch a film or television programme, their attention naturally settles upon the principal actors. Far less notice is taken of the countless background voices that transform a collection of images into a believable social world. Conversations drifting through a restaurant, murmured discussions in an office, distant arguments in a crowded street or the indistinct atmosphere of a busy marketplace all contribute to the impression that life continues beyond the central characters. Remove those voices, and even the most carefully photographed scene can feel strangely artificial. During his online guest lecture for Edinburgh Napier University, David Monteath returned to the University as a Sound Design alumnus to explore the specialised craft of crowd ADR. Drawing upon more than three decades working as an actor and voice artist, he demonstrated that believable crowd performances depend upon observation, improvisation and an understanding of dramatic context rather than simply recording large numbers of voices. One principle underpinned the discussion. Context is king.

    Rather than replacing the dialogue of principal actors, crowd ADR creates the sense that an entire world exists beyond them. A small group of performers may become the customers in a restaurant, the spectators at a football match, the passengers waiting on a railway platform or the crowd gathered in a courtroom. Individual conversations overlap, reactions ripple through the group and emotional responses emerge at precisely the right moments, creating the impression that every person visible on screen possesses a life extending beyond the immediate story. Audiences rarely notice these performances consciously, yet they immediately recognise when they are missing. Scenes that lack convincing crowd performances often feel unexpectedly empty, regardless of how carefully they have been photographed or edited.

    Monteath repeatedly challenged the assumption that this work consists simply of creating background noise. Crowd ADR is first and foremost a form of acting. Every performance responds to the circumstances of the scene, the relationships between characters and the emotional atmosphere established by the director. People waiting quietly in a hospital corridor behave differently from supporters leaving a football stadium. Conversations in an expensive restaurant differ from those heard in a busy café, while voices surrounding a royal procession carry a very different energy from those accompanying a political protest. Every reaction, interruption and fragment of conversation exists to support the dramatic reality of the scene rather than to attract attention in its own right. Authenticity emerges from understanding how people genuinely behave in different situations, not from making scenes louder or busier.

    This emphasis upon dramatic context shaped every practical discussion throughout the lecture. Monteath encouraged students to think beyond individual words and instead consider the circumstances in which those words are spoken. Before deciding how loudly to speak, how quickly to react or even what might be said, performers first need to understand where they are, who surrounds them and what is happening within the story. The same phrase may require entirely different delivery depending upon whether it takes place in a library, an airport, a football ground or the middle of a battlefield. Successful crowd performers therefore begin by observing people. Everyday behaviour, casual conversations, shared laughter, hesitation, disagreement and excitement all provide material that can later be adapted naturally within the recording studio. The objective is not to invent behaviour, but to recognise and recreate it convincingly.

    Perhaps the most revealing insight from this opening part of the lecture concerned the relationship between realism and audibility. Many beginning sound designers instinctively assume that important sounds should always be heard clearly. Monteath argued for almost the opposite approach. Successful crowd ADR often succeeds precisely when audiences remain largely unaware of it. Background voices should usually be felt rather than heard, contributing movement, texture and emotional energy without competing with the principal dialogue. Monteath returned repeatedly to the idea that audiences should sense the presence of a living world long before they consciously identify individual voices. Crowd ADR achieves its greatest success not when listeners admire the performance, but when they accept the world on screen without ever questioning how it came to life.

    One of the most valuable themes running through the lecture concerned the difference between sounding natural and sounding believable. These ideas are not always identical. Performers working in crowd ADR rarely speak at the same level they would use in everyday conversation, yet exaggeration can become equally unconvincing. Monteath described the continual process of judging how voices should sit within the perspective of the scene. A performer passing close to the camera requires a different vocal presence from someone crossing the background several metres away, while conversations taking place outdoors demand a different energy from those occurring in confined interior spaces. Every decision depends upon dramatic perspective rather than fixed performance rules. Context, once again, determines everything. For sound designers, these distinctions become equally important during editing and mixing. A crowd recording that sounds entirely convincing in isolation may feel unexpectedly prominent once placed alongside production dialogue, Foley and ambience. Perspective therefore emerges through the relationship between every element of the soundtrack rather than through any individual recording considered on its own.

    This attention to perspective extends beyond volume alone. Monteath discussed the subtle adjustments people make instinctively when speaking in different environments. Outside, voices naturally rise in level before settling into an appropriate projection as people unconsciously judge the surrounding space. He compared this process to a form of echolocation. Speakers continually test their surroundings, modifying projection almost instantly until their voice feels appropriate for the environment. Recording inside a studio removes many of the environmental cues that normally guide these unconscious adjustments, requiring performers to recreate them deliberately. The challenge is not simply to speak more loudly for an exterior scene, but to reproduce the natural behaviour that accompanies speaking outdoors. Audiences rarely analyse these details consciously, though they recognise immediately when they feel unconvincing. Successful crowd ADR therefore depends upon recreating patterns of human behaviour rather than merely increasing vocal intensity.

    The physical demands of crowd ADR also proved far greater than many students had expected. Scenes involving panic, conflict or large-scale action often require sustained shouting over many hours, placing considerable strain on performers’ voices. Monteath reflected upon sessions in which actors had pushed themselves to the point of temporary vocal exhaustion, particularly when recording intense battle scenes. Curiously, he observed that shouting repeatedly inside a recording studio often proves more tiring than raising the voice naturally outdoors. In everyday life, people instinctively project according to their surroundings. Within the artificial environment of a studio, performers can find themselves holding unnecessary tension in the throat in ways that feel surprisingly unnatural. Maintaining vocal health therefore becomes an important professional skill alongside acting itself. It also reflects another aspect of professional sound design that audiences rarely consider. Recordings capable of conveying fear, excitement or urgency often depend upon performers sustaining physically demanding work throughout lengthy recording sessions while preserving consistency from one take to the next.

    The discussion of large battle sequences illustrated another revealing aspect of the profession. Crowd performers may spend an entire day creating layers of screams, reactions and movement for scenes involving hundreds or even thousands of people, fully aware that much of their work will eventually disappear beneath music, sound effects and the principal action. Monteath recalled recording material for a major battle sequence in Game of Thrones, where hours of physically demanding vocal performances ultimately became almost imperceptible within the finished soundtrack. Rather than expressing disappointment, he presented this as an inevitable consequence of professional sound design. The objective was never for individual performances to stand out. Their purpose was to contribute energy, scale and credibility to the scene, even if audiences remained almost entirely unaware of their presence. The irony is that some of the hardest work in post-production often becomes the least conspicuous in the finished mix.

    Monteath’s recurring phrase, “Context is king,” captures this philosophy particularly well. Every vocal decision derives from the dramatic situation rather than from the performer. Voices rise or fall according to the surrounding environment, emotional reactions emerge in response to the unfolding action and every fragment of conversation exists to reinforce the illusion that life extends beyond the principal characters. Successful crowd ADR is therefore measured not by how clearly individual voices are heard, but by how convincingly they allow audiences to believe in the world unfolding around them. Like many aspects of professional sound design, its greatest achievement lies in remaining almost invisible while making the fictional world feel entirely real.

    The lecture concluded with a discussion that moved beyond recording techniques and towards the broader decisions that shape professional sound design. One student described the challenge of creating the atmosphere for a bank robbery scene. Adding more and more voices had seemed the obvious solution, yet the result quickly became cluttered and distracted from the drama. Monteath’s response illustrated once again why crowd ADR depends upon judgement rather than quantity. Real crowds rarely behave as a single, unified group. Even in moments of fear, surprise or excitement, different people react at different times and in different ways. Some remain silent, others whisper, a few call out, while many simply watch events unfold. Attempting to represent every visible person with an equally prominent vocal performance often produces a soundtrack that feels less realistic rather than more so. Believability emerges through carefully judged variation, allowing individual reactions to appear and disappear naturally instead of competing continuously for the listener’s attention.

    This observation extends well beyond crowd ADR. Throughout post-production, sound designers continually decide what deserves the audience’s attention and what should remain part of the wider acoustic environment. A convincing soundtrack is not created through the accumulation of detail, but through the careful organisation of that detail into a coherent dramatic experience. Crowd performances occupy a role similar to ambience, Foley and environmental sound. They establish context, scale and emotional texture without constantly demanding attention. Their purpose is not to demonstrate how much work has been carried out, but to convince audiences that the world extending beyond the principal characters already exists. Like every other element of a soundtrack, their success depends upon supporting the story rather than competing with it.

    Towards the end of the lecture, discussion turned to the growing influence of artificial intelligence within the voice industry. Monteath acknowledged that AI is already beginning to affect areas such as commercial voice-over, where some clients have started experimenting with synthetic voices. He regarded crowd ADR rather differently. While aspects of the work may eventually become automated, authentic crowd performance depends upon subtle variations that emerge naturally whenever people work together. Voices change over the course of a recording session as performers become tired. Emotional intensity shifts between takes. Individual personalities influence rhythm, timing and vocal colour in ways that are difficult to predict or reproduce consistently. These variations might appear inconvenient from a purely technical perspective, yet they contribute directly to the richness, unpredictability and authenticity that audiences instinctively recognise as human. Technology will continue to evolve, though observation, collaboration and performance remain at the heart of believable sound design.

    For sound design students, perhaps the most valuable lesson lay in the way Monteath described his profession. Crowd ADR may appear to occupy the margins of post-production, hidden beneath dialogue, music and sound effects, yet it influences how audiences perceive almost every scene they watch. Every murmur in the background of a restaurant, every distant conversation in a station concourse and every carefully judged reaction during a moment of crisis contributes to the illusion that life continues beyond the frame. These performances do not simply fill silence. They create social spaces that feel inhabited, allowing viewers to concentrate on the story without questioning the reality of the world surrounding it.

    Throughout the lecture, Monteath returned repeatedly to one deceptively simple principle: “Context is king.” Crowd ADR succeeds not through memorable performances or individually recognisable voices, but through creating the impression that every environment extends beyond the limits of the frame. Every carefully judged laugh, argument, whispered conversation and fleeting reaction reinforces a believable social world without distracting from the principal narrative. For sound designers, this represents a broader lesson that reaches far beyond dialogue replacement. Successful audio is rarely measured by how noticeable it becomes. More often, it is measured by how completely it allows audiences to believe in the world they are experiencing. Crowd ADR exemplifies that philosophy. It remains one of the least visible aspects of professional sound design, yet it is also one of the crafts that most quietly transforms moving images into convincing places inhabited by believable people.

  • How Does a Film Speak Every Language? George Mikrogiannakis on Film Localisation, Dubbing, and International Sound Production

    George Mikrogiannakis

    How does a film speak every language?

    Most audiences rarely stop to consider the question. A film appears in a cinema or on a streaming service, characters speak naturally in the local language, performances feel convincing, and the soundtrack appears entirely coherent. Nothing suggests that thousands of individual decisions, spread across months of work and involving specialists in numerous countries, have contributed to what appears to be a seamless experience. During his online guest lecture for Edinburgh Napier University, George Mikrogiannakis drew back the curtain on that process. Drawing upon many years supervising international localisation for Walt Disney Studios, DreamWorks Animation, and other major productions, he revealed that dubbing represents only one small part of a much larger undertaking. Localisation combines translation, performance, dialogue editing, sound design, recording, mixing, quality control, and project management into a production process whose success depends upon remaining almost completely invisible.

    Before discussing localisation itself, Mikrogiannakis addressed a question that many sound design students might reasonably ask. Why should someone interested in sound effects, Foley, ambience, or mixing concern themselves with dubbing? His answer challenged the assumption that localisation belongs solely to translators or dialogue editors. Film sound does not end when the final mix has been approved. Modern productions are expected to travel internationally, and that expectation influences decisions made throughout post-production. Deliverables, session organisation, music and effects mixes, dialogue editing, documentation, and recording practice all determine whether a soundtrack can later be adapted successfully into dozens of different languages. Understanding localisation therefore provides a wider understanding of professional sound production itself.

    The distinction between dubbing and localisation formed the starting point for the discussion. Dubbing describes the replacement of spoken dialogue with performances recorded in another language. Localisation encompasses everything required to ensure that a film functions naturally within another culture while preserving the creative intentions of the original production. Dialogue must communicate the same dramatic ideas, fit the visible movements of actors’ mouths, respect timing, preserve emotional performances, and integrate seamlessly into the original soundtrack. A successful localisation should never feel like a compromise. Audiences should simply experience the film as though it had always belonged in their own language.

    Commercial realities make this work indispensable. For many major studio productions, international audiences account for the majority of ticket sales. A film that performs well domestically may still depend upon worldwide distribution for its overall commercial success. Localisation therefore becomes an essential stage of production rather than an optional addition. Mikrogiannakis illustrated the scale of this work with one striking example. Pirates of the Caribbean eventually required more than six hundred separate versions to satisfy different languages, territories, exhibition formats, airlines, and distribution requirements. Once work reaches this scale, localisation no longer resembles a straightforward translation exercise. It becomes an international production pipeline operating alongside the creation of the original film.

    Maintaining consistency across so many versions requires careful coordination between numerous creative and technical disciplines. Scripts pass from translators to dialogue adaptors, from recording directors to voice actors, from editors to mixers, and through repeated rounds of quality control before final approval. Every participant contributes something different while working towards the same objective. The audience should experience the same characters, the same emotional performances, and the same dramatic pacing regardless of which language they hear.

    Translation itself proved far more creative than many students had expected. Mikrogiannakis explained that translators receive extensive supporting documentation describing characters, situations, cultural references, jokes, and dramatic context. Their task is not to reproduce individual words as literally as possible. Instead, they seek to preserve the intention behind the dialogue. Humour frequently illustrates this challenge. A joke that depends upon an English idiom or a cultural reference may simply fail when translated directly. Rather than forcing audiences to decode unfamiliar expressions, adaptors reconstruct the underlying comic idea so that viewers in another country experience a similar moment of humour, even if the dialogue itself changes substantially.

    Lip synchronisation introduces further complications. Different languages occupy different amounts of time. A short English sentence may require considerably more syllables elsewhere, while other languages express the same meaning much more concisely. Dialogue therefore undergoes continual adjustment until it satisfies several competing requirements simultaneously. It must sound natural, preserve the original dramatic meaning, fit within the available time, and remain synchronised with the visible movements of the actor’s mouth. Accuracy alone is never enough. Rhythm, emphasis, breathing, pacing, and performance all contribute to whether audiences believe what they are watching.

    The recording process reflects the same attention to detail. Unlike dramatic productions in which actors frequently perform together, dubbing sessions normally record performers individually, allowing every voice to remain completely controllable throughout the final mix. Consistency becomes one of the engineer’s principal responsibilities. Mikrogiannakis emphasised the importance of using the same recording environment, microphone, and acoustic conditions throughout an entire production. Local studios are generally expected to deliver clean recordings with minimal processing. Equalisation, dynamics processing, reverberation, and other creative treatments remain the responsibility of the originating production rather than the individual dubbing facility. Every language version therefore begins from comparable source material before being shaped into the finished soundtrack.

    One particularly memorable example demonstrated just how carefully these productions preserve even the smallest creative details. During the localisation of How to Train Your Dragon, one character briefly speaks while wearing a leather mask. Rather than leaving each territory to interpret the scene independently, the production required two separate recordings of every affected line. One version was performed normally. The second was recorded with an obstruction placed in front of the actor’s mouth to recreate the acoustic effect of speaking through the mask. Such requests may appear unusually specific, though they illustrate a broader principle running throughout the lecture. Localisation seeks to reproduce the experience of the original production as faithfully as possible, even when that requires remarkably detailed technical preparation.

    For sound design students, the most revealing discussion centred upon the music and effects mix, more commonly known as the M&E. At first glance, creating an international version might appear straightforward. Remove the original dialogue, record new voices, and place them into the existing soundtrack. Mikrogiannakis demonstrated why this assumption quickly breaks down. Production dialogue rarely contains voices alone. Clothing movement, footsteps, room reflections, environmental ambience, prop handling, breathing, incidental vocalisations, and countless other sounds often exist within the same recordings. Removing dialogue therefore removes far more than speech.

    Producing a convincing M&E requires many of these elements to be rebuilt separately before localisation can even begin. Foley artists recreate physical actions. Ambience editors restore the acoustic character of locations. Sound editors recover or redesign details that disappear when production dialogue is removed. Every reconstructed element must integrate naturally with the remaining soundtrack so that audiences remain unaware that significant parts of the scene have effectively been recreated. Localisation therefore exposes something that audiences rarely notice. Successful dialogue replacement depends upon the invisible work of many other sound professionals whose contributions make the reconstructed world feel complete.

    The same attention to detail extends into the organisation of production sessions. Mikrogiannakis explained that major studios prescribe how dialogue sessions should be structured long before recording begins. Lead characters, supporting roles, incidental dialogue, and background voices occupy predetermined locations within Pro Tools sessions so that material arriving from different countries can be assembled without confusion. Track layouts, naming conventions, file structures, and version numbers follow equally strict standards. These systems may appear administrative rather than creative, though they exist for a practical reason. Hundreds of dialogue files may pass between translators, recording studios, editors, mixers, and quality-control teams before a film reaches cinemas. Small inconsistencies introduced at the beginning of the process can rapidly become expensive problems once productions begin moving between countries.

    For students accustomed to working alone, this offers an interesting perspective on professional practice. Large productions depend upon predictability as much as originality. Other members of the production team must be able to identify recordings immediately, locate the correct version of every file, and understand how sessions have been organised without needing lengthy explanations. Good organisation does not restrict creativity. It allows creativity to survive within projects involving hundreds of contributors working across multiple continents.

    The recording sessions themselves reflect similar priorities. Actors rarely record together, even when their characters share a conversation. Instead, every performance is captured independently under carefully controlled acoustic conditions. Recording engineers seek consistency above all else, maintaining the same microphones, recording chains, and studio environments wherever possible. Performances can then be balanced, edited, and integrated into the soundtrack with considerably greater precision than would otherwise be possible. The objective is not simply to record dialogue. It is to provide material that remains flexible throughout every subsequent stage of post-production.

    Security introduces another layer of complexity. Long before a film reaches cinemas, localisation teams may already be working on dialogue in numerous languages. Scripts, images, and recordings therefore become highly confidential. Mikrogiannakis described productions protected through extensive non-disclosure agreements, secure online workflows, watermarked media, and carefully controlled distribution systems. In particularly sensitive cases, even the picture supplied to dubbing studios may reveal only a small area surrounding a character’s mouth while the remainder of the image remains concealed. The performers receive enough visual information to synchronise their dialogue without exposing details of the story before release.

    These precautions reveal another aspect of contemporary sound production that audiences rarely encounter. Localisation frequently begins while visual effects continue to evolve, editorial changes remain possible, and marketing campaigns have yet to reveal significant elements of the film. Sound departments therefore work within productions that remain in constant development. Flexibility becomes as valuable as technical expertise. Dialogue may require revision, scenes may be shortened, and editorial decisions may continue long after recording has begun. Every change must then be reflected consistently across every language version.

    Once recording has finished, another phase begins. Every performance is reviewed against the original production to evaluate synchronisation, pronunciation, dramatic intention, technical quality, and consistency with previously approved material. Recordings that satisfy one requirement may still require revision for another. A technically perfect recording may not match the emotional intensity of the original actor. A convincing performance may reveal a slight synchronisation problem. A translation may preserve meaning while sounding unnatural when spoken aloud. Each stage of review narrows these differences until the finished soundtrack supports the same dramatic experience as the original production.

    The process depends upon specialists whose expertise overlaps rather than duplicates. Translators evaluate language. Dialogue directors shape performances. Recording engineers concentrate on technical quality. Editors refine timing and synchronisation. Mixers integrate new dialogue into the existing soundtrack. Supervisors compare each completed version with the original production before granting approval. None of these roles can replace another. The finished film emerges through collaboration between people whose responsibilities remain distinct while contributing towards a shared creative objective.

    One aspect of the discussion resonated particularly strongly for sound design students. Many university projects naturally emphasise creating interesting sounds. Professional productions require that creativity to coexist with organisation, documentation, planning, and consistency. A beautifully designed soundtrack that cannot be delivered reliably to another department quickly becomes difficult to maintain. Localisation demonstrates this reality with unusual clarity. Every recording created during production may later support dozens of additional versions distributed across the world. Decisions made while organising sessions, preparing stems, documenting edits, or recording apparently insignificant details may continue influencing the production years after the original mix has been completed.

    The relationship between creativity and organisation also changes the way professional sound departments approach collaboration. Rather than treating editing, Foley, dialogue, sound effects, ambience, and mixing as isolated activities, localisation reveals how closely each depends upon the others. Replacing dialogue successfully requires carefully prepared music and effects mixes. Those mixes depend upon dialogue editors separating production material accurately. Dialogue editors depend upon clean recordings, consistent session management, and comprehensive documentation. Every department inherits decisions made by the departments before it. Strong workflows therefore support creative outcomes rather than competing with them.

    Audiences rarely recognise any of this work, and perhaps they should not. Successful localisation draws attention towards the story rather than the production process. Viewers become absorbed in performances, relationships, humour, and dramatic tension without considering how many different versions of the soundtrack exist or how many specialists contributed to the one they happen to hear. The technical achievement lies precisely in making reconstruction disappear.

    For sound design students, localisation offers an unusually clear picture of contemporary professional practice. It demonstrates that sound production extends well beyond recording and mixing. Projects continue to evolve after the original soundtrack has been completed, passing through new languages, cultures, technologies, and distribution platforms while preserving a coherent creative identity. Every carefully organised session, every clean recording, every reconstructed ambience, and every accurately prepared deliverable helps make that possible.

    A film may begin life in a single language, though its soundtrack is often expected to communicate with audiences across much of the world. Making that transition successfully depends upon considerably more than translation. It depends upon planning, technical precision, collaboration, and a shared commitment to preserving the creative intentions embedded within the original production. The better those foundations have been established, the more naturally the film speaks to audiences, regardless of which language they hear.

  • Why Record Everything? Ric Viers on Sound Effects Libraries, Creative Possibility, and Listening for Opportunity

    Ric Viers

    Why record everything?

    Many sound designers spend years learning how to remove unwanted sounds from recordings. They search for quieter locations, better microphones, cleaner signal paths, and more controlled recording environments. During his online guest lecture for Edinburgh Napier University, sound designer, recordist, publisher, and author Ric Viers approached the problem from a rather different direction. Again and again, he encouraged students to record more, not less. More locations. More variations. More experiments. More sounds that might initially appear useless.

    The advice runs against much conventional recording practice. Storage fills quickly. Editing becomes more demanding. Organisation becomes more complicated. Yet Viers argued that one of the greatest mistakes a sound designer can make is deciding too early what will or will not be useful. Throughout the lecture, he repeatedly returned to a simple idea: many of the most valuable sounds reveal their potential only later.

    The immediate context for the discussion was the creation of commercial sound effects libraries. Viers guided students through the process he uses when developing libraries for Blastwave FX, beginning with the choice of a topic, category, or theme. Some libraries focus on a specific class of sounds, such as footsteps. Others are organised around broader concepts, such as a zombie apocalypse, requiring everything from impacts and gunfire to environmental ambiences, destruction effects, creatures, weather, machinery, and countless other elements. Yet selecting a theme was only the beginning.

    Considerably more time, he suggested, is often spent researching than recording. Before microphones are unpacked, he studies films, television programmes, games, applications, and existing libraries to understand what has already been recorded, what is missing, and where opportunities may exist. Commercial sound libraries do not emerge from recording sessions alone. They emerge from identifying gaps. A successful library must offer something that people cannot already obtain elsewhere. Recording therefore begins with investigation. What sounds are difficult to find? Which sounds have become overused? Which categories remain poorly represented? Questions such as these help determine where effort should be directed.

    Planning extends far beyond selecting a subject. Viers described the creation of extensive scavenger lists containing every conceivable sound that might belong in a library. The exercise draws heavily upon what he called blue-sky thinking, an approach in which ideas are generated before they are evaluated. Impractical suggestions are welcomed. Expensive suggestions are welcomed. Unlikely suggestions are welcomed. The purpose is not to determine whether an idea is immediately achievable. The purpose is to widen the range of possibilities. Viers argued that ideas often develop through association. A suggestion that cannot be pursued directly may still help identify a different route towards the same goal.

    A recurring theme in the lecture was the cultivation of listening as a habit. Ideas for sounds are often collected long before any recording session begins. A strange resonance in a pipe. The texture of metal scraping against metal. An unusual mechanical vibration. A sound designer’s work, in his view, begins long before the recorder is switched on. Listening becomes a form of continuous observation. Ideas are captured in notebooks, mobile apps, or voice memos. Some notes describe specific sounds. Others record textures, qualities, or possibilities.

    One example illustrated this way of thinking particularly clearly. While dealing with a blocked drain, Viers became fascinated by the sound produced as liquid moved through the pipework. Most people would simply hear a drain. Viers heard something else. The sound possessed qualities that might later become useful in an entirely different context. He immediately made a note to revisit the sound in the future. What interested him was not the object itself. It was the texture. The eventual application remained unknown. The possibility was enough.

    This distinction between objects and textures appeared repeatedly throughout the lecture. Sound designers are often asked where particular sounds come from. Audiences frequently imagine a straightforward relationship between source and result. A door sound comes from a door. An engine sound comes from an engine. Viers described a different way of thinking. A useful recording is not necessarily valuable for what it is. It may be valuable for characteristics that become apparent only after editing, processing, layering, or transformation. Recording therefore involves collecting materials whose eventual use remains unknown rather than merely documenting objects.

    Many lectures on sound design focus heavily on equipment. Microphones, recorders, plug-ins, and software frequently dominate discussions. Viers spent surprisingly little time discussing technology in isolation. When he addressed recording practice, attention remained focused on listening. Before recording in any location, he advocated standing still and listening carefully to the environment. Air conditioning systems, insect activity, traffic patterns, aircraft, electrical noise, and countless other factors become relevant once attention shifts from simply hearing a location to actively analysing it.

    This process of scouting locations received considerable attention. Viers argued that many people move through environments without noticing their acoustic details. Recording requires a different form of awareness. Insects become important. Distant roads become important. Wind direction becomes important. Time of day becomes important. A location that appears perfect at one moment may become unusable an hour later. Successful field recording often depends less upon equipment than upon patience, observation, and preparation.

    This concern with awareness also explains his insistence on monitoring continuously through headphones. Microphones do not hear the world in quite the same way people do. Wearing headphones while moving through an environment reveals details that might otherwise remain unnoticed. Interesting sounds are often discovered rather than sought. What appears unremarkable at first may become compelling when heard through a microphone. Recording therefore becomes an ongoing process of discovery rather than simply the execution of a predetermined plan.

    A similar principle shaped his approach to recording itself. Whenever possible, he records multiple takes. Fast versions. Slow versions. Loud versions. Quiet versions. Different perspectives. Different performances. On one level, this provides insurance against technical problems. On another, it reflects a deeper belief about sound design. Sounds rarely remain confined to their original purpose. A recording made for one project may later become useful in another. A variation that seems unnecessary today may become exactly what a future project requires.

    Experience had also taught him how easily apparently successful recording sessions can fail. During one project involving emergency vehicles, extensive access was arranged at a fire station. Recordings were captured, equipment functioned correctly, and everything appeared successful. Only later did the team discover that powerful sirens had physically affected the recording medium itself. Material that seemed secure had effectively been lost. The story was not presented as a technological curiosity. It explained why professional recordists often develop habits that appear excessive to newcomers. Additional takes, backups, and redundancy emerge from experience rather than paranoia.

    A bee entered the Foley studio while Viers was working on an unrelated project. The original plan was simply to remove it and continue working. An intern suggested recording it instead. That decision eventually led to an entire library of insect sounds, combining recordings of flies, bees, crickets, and other insects with carefully performed Foley designed to represent insect movement. The significance of the story lies less in the insect itself than in the response. The opportunity was not planned. It appeared unexpectedly. Remaining open to such moments allowed a chance event to become the basis of a completely new collection.

    Questions of organisation formed another important part of the lecture. Recording more sounds creates a practical problem. How can those sounds be found again months or years later? Viers discussed the importance of cataloguing, naming conventions, metadata, and library management. Collecting large quantities of material is only useful if that material remains accessible. A sound hidden inside thousands of poorly organised files may effectively disappear. The ability to locate recordings quickly becomes part of the creative process itself.

    The same concern with organisation appeared in his discussion of large-scale sound design projects. One example involved the construction of a tornado sequence containing roughly 180 individual tracks. Projects of this scale quickly expose weaknesses in workflow. Tiny editing errors become difficult to locate. Artefacts become buried within hundreds of layers. Seemingly minor organisational decisions accumulate into major practical consequences. Preparation therefore serves creative goals. Time spent organising material makes experimentation easier later.

    Recording occupied only part of the process. Viers repeatedly returned to what happens afterwards. Sounds are collected, edited, organised, and transformed. Recordings function as materials that can be combined, layered, stretched, pitched, and manipulated into entirely new forms.

    One example involved the creation of a failing fluorescent light. Unable to find exactly the sound he wanted, Viers began experimenting with alternative sources. The eventual solution came from an unexpectedly small fragment of fruit being crushed. Through editing and transformation, the recording acquired the qualities required for the scene. The finished sound bore little resemblance to its source. Yet this was precisely the point. The identity of the source mattered less than the acoustic properties it contained.

    The same logic appeared in Viers’ discussion of so-called bad recordings. Students often expect professional sound design to involve strict distinctions between useful and useless material. Viers challenged that assumption directly. During the discussion, he argued that there is rarely such a thing as a completely bad sound. Recordings that fail in one context may become valuable in another. Noise, distortion, clipping, and other imperfections can sometimes serve as raw material for later experimentation.

    One example involved a recording that initially appeared unusable. Hidden within the material was the sound of a cat. Rather than discarding the recording, Viers began manipulating fragments of it through processing, layering, and transformation. Elements that seemed worthless in their original form became the basis of drones, textures, and entirely different production sounds. The value of the recording emerged through later use rather than immediate judgement.

    Discussion of careers and commercial practice returned to the same issue. Students often assume that success depends upon following established models. Viers argued almost the opposite. He encouraged students to develop their own interests, methods, and creative identities. Distinctive approaches create opportunities. If everyone records the same sounds in the same way, there is little reason for anyone to choose one library over another.

    Recording, editing, organisation, publishing, and marketing occupied much of the lecture.

    Running through all of them was the same underlying concern: how to recognise useful material before its eventual value becomes obvious. Throughout the discussion, Viers repeatedly challenged the assumption that the usefulness of a sound can be determined immediately. A recording that appears unremarkable today may become the foundation of a future project. A failed recording may later prove valuable once new tools become available. A sound collected for one purpose may eventually find a completely different use.

    Many people encounter the world as a collection of familiar objects and events. Viers encouraged students to listen differently. A drain becomes a source of textures. A mechanical vibration becomes source material for a creature or machine. A crushed piece of fruit becomes a fluorescent light. An unexpected insect in a Foley studio becomes the starting point for an entirely new library. A sound’s future use is often difficult to predict when it is first recorded.

    Sound effects libraries occupy an unusual position within creative practice. They are archives of past recordings, though they are also collections of future possibilities. Every recording preserves an opportunity whose eventual use remains unknown. Viers’ argument was not simply that sound designers should record more sounds. It was that they should remain open to possibilities that have not yet revealed themselves. A recorder captures a sound at a particular moment. What that sound eventually becomes often remains an open question.

  • How Do You Make an Orchestra Fit Inside a Television Show? Phil McGowan on Recording, Mixing, and the Sound of Star Trek: Picard

    Phil McGowan

    How do you make an orchestra fit inside a television show?

    At first glance, the answer appears straightforward. Musicians gather in a studio, microphones are placed around the room, a conductor raises a baton, and the music is recorded. Yet during his online guest lecture for Edinburgh Napier University, recording and mixing engineer Phil McGowan revealed a process that is considerably more complex. Drawing upon his work on Star Trek: Picard, McGowan described a world of orchestral recording that combines musical performance, engineering, editing, production management, and problem-solving. By the end of the lecture, it became clear that recording an orchestra is only one small part of a much larger process. Throughout the lecture, McGowan repeatedly returned to the importance of preparation, organisation, and communication. Although microphones, software, and recording techniques played important roles, many of the challenges he described ultimately concerned coordinating people, decisions, and workflows across an unusually complex production process.

    McGowan began by introducing the recording sessions for the third season of Star Trek: Picard. Across ten episodes, the score was recorded using large orchestral forces, with most episodes featuring a sixty-five-piece ensemble recorded at Warner Brothers Studios in Burbank. For the majority of the season, the orchestra was divided across separate recording sessions. Strings and woodwinds were recorded together, while brass was recorded later. Only the final episode brought the entire eighty-piece orchestra into the room simultaneously. Although audiences often imagine a film score as a single orchestra performing together, McGowan explained that modern production frequently relies upon these layered recording approaches. Recording sections separately provides greater flexibility during mixing while allowing music editors and dubbing mixers more control later in the production process.

    Yet even before a note is recorded, a surprising number of decisions have already been made. The placement of every section within the room affects both the recording and the eventual mix. Strings, woodwinds, brass, piano, harp, and other instruments each occupy carefully chosen positions. Microphone placement becomes equally important. Looking at the recording diagrams shown during the lecture, it was difficult not to be struck by the sheer number of microphones involved. Individual sections receive dedicated spot microphones, larger groups receive overhead microphones, and the entire orchestra is captured by an array of room microphones positioned high above the ensemble.

    What was particularly interesting, however, was McGowan’s repeated emphasis that the most important microphones are often not the closest ones. In a well-designed scoring stage, much of the orchestra’s character emerges from a relatively small number of carefully positioned room microphones. Spot microphones provide detail, definition, and control, though the overall impression of the orchestra often comes from the way the ensemble interacts with the acoustic space itself. Rather than constructing an orchestral sound entirely from individual instruments, the recording process begins with capturing the orchestra as a unified musical body.

    This relationship between detail and cohesion appeared repeatedly throughout the lecture. Modern recording technology allows engineers to place microphones extremely close to instruments. Individual players can be isolated with remarkable precision. Yet McGowan’s approach demonstrates considerable restraint. Spot microphones are available when needed, though many remain relatively low in the final mix. The objective is not to maximise separation. Instead, it is to preserve the sense that listeners are hearing a single orchestra performing together within a shared acoustic environment.

    Recording the orchestra is only the beginning. Once the sessions finish, the material enters a complex process of editing and mixing. Here, McGowan’s role becomes particularly interesting. The raw recordings arrive alongside extensive collections of programmed material supplied by the composer. Modern television scores often combine live orchestral recordings with sampled instruments, synthesizers, percussion libraries, pads, textures, and electronic elements. One of the mixer’s responsibilities is deciding how these different layers should coexist.

    What emerged from the lecture was a strong preference for using the live recordings whenever possible. Sampled instruments often provide useful support, additional weight, or subtle reinforcement, though McGowan repeatedly emphasised that the live orchestra remains the foundation of the sound. The samples are rarely intended to replace the musicians. Instead, they are carefully blended into the mix where appropriate.

    Organisation becomes essential at this stage. Large orchestral sessions generate enormous numbers of tracks. Strings, brass, woodwinds, percussion, piano, harp, synthesizers, effects, and auxiliary elements all require separate management. McGowan demonstrated how sessions are organised into stems, allowing different components of the score to be adjusted independently later in the production process. These stems become particularly important when the music eventually reaches the dubbing stage, where it must coexist with dialogue, sound effects, Foley, ambience, and every other element of the soundtrack.

    This relationship between music and the rest of the soundtrack formed one of the most revealing parts of the discussion. Audiences often imagine that a score reaches the screen in essentially the same form in which it leaves the recording studio. McGowan demonstrated that the reality is considerably more complicated. The music mixer occupies a position between composition and final dubbing, shaping material that must eventually coexist with dialogue, Foley, ambience, sound effects, and every other component of the soundtrack.

    This creates an unusual challenge. During the mixing process, the final soundtrack often does not yet exist. Dialogue may still be evolving. Effects tracks may be incomplete. Editorial changes may continue arriving. The mixer therefore works partly with the present version of the programme and partly with an anticipated future version. Decisions must account not only for what is currently on screen but also for what will eventually happen when the material reaches the dubbing stage.

    In this sense, music mixing becomes an act of translation. The composer’s intentions need to remain intact, though they must also survive the practical realities of television production. A passage that sounds spectacular in isolation may compete with dialogue once the final soundtrack is assembled. A delicate orchestral texture may disappear beneath effects. A dramatic crescendo may need flexibility if the editorial structure changes. The mixer therefore balances musical priorities with narrative requirements, ensuring that the score remains expressive while still serving the larger needs of the programme.

    McGowan described the importance of communication throughout this process. Conversations with composers, music editors, producers, and re-recording mixers help establish how the material will ultimately be used. Stem structures become especially valuable here. By separating different orchestral and electronic elements into organised groups, later stages of production retain the flexibility needed to support storytelling decisions. What appears to be a purely technical workflow is therefore deeply connected to narrative concerns.

    Seen in this light, the music mixer occupies a remarkably important position within the production chain. The role involves much more than balancing levels or applying plug-ins. It requires understanding composition, orchestration, recording, editing, post-production, and storytelling simultaneously. The objective is not simply to make the music sound good. The objective is to ensure that the music can fulfil its dramatic function once every other element of the soundtrack is finally assembled.

    Questions of storytelling therefore remain central throughout the process. Although the lecture contained detailed discussions of microphones, reverbs, routing structures, and plug-ins, these technical topics were rarely presented as ends in themselves. Instead, they were framed as tools supporting dramatic communication. Reverb is not merely an acoustic effect. It helps create scale, atmosphere, and emotional character. Stem structures are not simply organisational devices. They provide flexibility for storytelling. Even microphone choices ultimately serve narrative goals.

    A particularly striking example emerged in McGowan’s discussion of reverberation. For Star Trek: Picard, the production deliberately embraced a more expansive orchestral sound inspired by earlier generations of science-fiction scoring. Rather than pursuing absolute clarity or dryness, the score was allowed to inhabit larger acoustic spaces. The resulting sound connects contemporary production practices with earlier traditions of science-fiction scoring associated with composers such as Jerry Goldsmith and James Horner. Listening to McGowan describe these decisions, it became clear that technical choices often carry historical and aesthetic significance as well.

    The lecture also offered a fascinating glimpse into the practical realities of large-scale media production. Television schedules are rarely generous. Recording sessions must fit within union regulations, musicians’ availability, studio bookings, editorial deadlines, and dubbing schedules. Scores are often recorded while other parts of the production remain unfinished. Picture edits may continue evolving. Visual effects may still be in development. Deadlines continue approaching regardless.

    Under such conditions, consistency becomes invaluable. McGowan described how recording setups, templates, routing structures, and mixing approaches are designed to remain stable across multiple episodes. Establishing reliable systems allows creative decisions to happen more efficiently. Rather than reinventing workflows repeatedly, engineers can focus their attention on the musical and dramatic needs of each project.

    Another recurring theme throughout the lecture was collaboration. Large orchestral productions depend upon extensive networks of expertise. Composers, orchestrators, contractors, recording engineers, Pro Tools operators, music editors, re-recording mixers, musicians, producers, and showrunners all contribute to the final result. No individual controls every aspect of the process. Instead, successful productions emerge through coordination between specialists whose work overlaps at crucial moments.

    Listening to McGowan describe recording sessions, one gains a strong sense of the trust involved. Musicians are trusted to perform complex scores with remarkable efficiency. Engineers are trusted to capture those performances accurately. Music editors are trusted to manage revisions and conforming. Dubbing mixers are trusted to integrate the score into the larger soundtrack. The finished music reflects not only technical skill but also a highly collaborative production culture.

    Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the lecture was the way it challenged romantic ideas about orchestral recording. Popular accounts often focus on dramatic moments: the orchestra enters the room, the conductor raises a baton, and the music comes to life. Those moments certainly exist. Yet McGowan’s account suggests that the real craft often lies elsewhere. It lies in preparation, organisation, consistency, communication, editing, and the countless small decisions that allow large productions to function successfully.

    Looking back across the lecture, what emerges most clearly is not simply a story about recording orchestras. It is a story about connecting different stages of a creative process. Recording sessions, editing workflows, stem preparation, music mixing, and final dubbing all form part of a chain in which every decision influences what follows. Managing that chain requires technical expertise, though it also requires communication, anticipation, and an understanding of how music functions within narrative storytelling. Every stage of the process involves balancing competing demands. Technical precision must coexist with musical expression. Flexibility must coexist with consistency. Individual details must support larger dramatic goals. The orchestra must sound impressive in its own right while still serving the needs of the programme.

    For students interested in recording, mixing, or film music production, this may be the lecture’s most valuable lesson. Technology remains important. Microphones matter. Software matters. Recording techniques matter. Yet none of these elements exist in isolation. They are part of a larger system whose purpose is ultimately narrative. The audience does not hear microphone placements, stem structures, or routing templates. They hear music supporting a story.

    For Phil McGowan, the challenge is not simply recording an orchestra. The challenge is shaping hundreds of performances, thousands of audio tracks, and countless technical decisions into something that helps bring a fictional world to life. By the time audiences sit down to watch Star Trek: Picard, most of that work has become invisible. The orchestra feels as though it simply belongs there. Achieving that illusion, however, requires an extraordinary amount of craft.

  • What Did They Say? Gary Bourgeois on Dialogue, Attention, and the Art of Film Mixing

    Gary Bourgeois

    What happens when an audience misses a line of dialogue?

    At first glance, the consequences seem relatively minor. A viewer leans towards a friend. Someone quietly asks for clarification. A sentence is repeated. Yet during his online guest lecture for Edinburgh Napier University, veteran re-recording mixer Gary Bourgeois suggested that this moment reveals something important about the relationship between sound and storytelling. The audience has stopped following the narrative and started thinking about the soundtrack. For Bourgeois, whose career spans more than five decades across film, television, music, and streaming media, preventing that moment has remained one of the central responsibilities of a mixer.

    This might appear surprising. Popular discussions of film sound often focus on spectacle. We talk about explosive action sequences, immersive surround sound systems, powerful musical scores, and increasingly sophisticated technologies. Yet Bourgeois repeatedly returned to a much simpler idea. Sound exists to support communication. Every creative and technical decision ultimately serves the story. If audiences cannot understand what matters at the moment it matters, even the most technically impressive soundtrack has failed in its primary task.

    Throughout the lecture, Bourgeois described film mixing as a process of guiding attention. A finished soundtrack may contain dialogue, Foley, ambience, music, effects, backgrounds, transitions, and countless other elements. These sounds do not all demand equal attention simultaneously. Their relationships are constantly shifting. During a conversation, dialogue may occupy the foreground while music retreats slightly into the background. During a dramatic reveal, music may briefly become the dominant element. An action sequence may allow effects to take centre stage before returning attention to character and narrative. Mixing therefore involves much more than balancing levels. It involves shaping the audience’s experience of a story.

    This perspective helps explain why Bourgeois places such importance on dialogue. Writers spend months or years developing scripts. Actors devote enormous effort to performance. Directors construct scenes around the communication of information, emotion, and character. If a crucial line becomes unintelligible, the audience loses access to part of that work. More importantly, they momentarily leave the fictional world. Instead of thinking about the characters, they begin thinking about the soundtrack. The illusion is interrupted.

    One of the most interesting aspects of the lecture concerned the relationship between film mixing and human perception. During the discussion, we explored the idea that many mixing decisions effectively replicate forms of selective attention that listeners perform naturally. In everyday life, people can focus on a particular voice within a crowded room, follow a conversation in a noisy taxi, or attend to one sound source while ignoring dozens of others. The auditory system constantly prioritises information. Bourgeois agreed that much of professional mixing involves recreating these perceptual priorities for audiences. The mixer helps listeners focus on what matters without drawing attention to the process itself.

    Seen in this light, many familiar audio tools acquire a different significance. Equalisation is not simply a way of adjusting frequencies. Compression is not merely a method of controlling dynamics. Reverb is not only about creating a sense of space. These processes become valuable insofar as they help establish relationships between sounds. A dialogue track may require subtle equalisation to distinguish it from surrounding ambience. A sound effect may need certain frequencies reduced so that speech remains intelligible. A reverberant environment may need careful shaping to preserve clarity. The technical operations matter, though their ultimate purpose remains perceptual. Ultimately, they help prevent the audience from asking the question that opened the lecture. What did they say?

    Several examples from Bourgeois’ career illustrated this philosophy particularly well. Large-scale productions such as Transformers are often associated with spectacle, scale, and sonic intensity. Audiences remember giant robots, enormous impacts, and dense layers of sound. Yet Bourgeois described how even the most elaborate action sequences depend upon careful control of attention. One memorable example involved introducing a single frame of silence immediately before an explosion. The audience never consciously notices this interruption. Nevertheless, the brief absence of sound creates a perceptual contrast that makes the subsequent impact feel considerably larger. The effect depends not on additional volume but on the way listeners perceive change.

    Examples such as this reveal a recurring principle running throughout the lecture. Effective sound design often depends less upon adding material than upon managing relationships between existing elements. A soundtrack filled continuously with dramatic gestures eventually loses its ability to surprise. Contrast becomes difficult. Emphasis becomes impossible. Restraint therefore plays an important role within the mixer’s craft. Sometimes the most effective decision is deciding what not to hear.

    This concern with attention also shapes Bourgeois’ attitude towards immersive audio formats such as Dolby Atmos. The technology provides extraordinary creative possibilities. Sounds can move through three-dimensional space with remarkable precision. Environments can become more detailed and immersive than ever before. Yet Bourgeois consistently framed these capabilities in relation to storytelling rather than technology. An Atmos mix succeeds when it helps audiences engage more deeply with a scene. It fails when the technology becomes the focus of attention itself. More speakers do not automatically produce better storytelling. The same principles still apply. Audiences need to understand what matters and why it matters.

    A particularly revealing section of the lecture explored Bourgeois’ lifelong curiosity about listening. Long before spatial audio became a major industry topic, he was conducting informal experiments with binaural recording, environmental acoustics, and perceptual phenomena. Rather than treating recording purely as a professional necessity, he approached it as an opportunity to investigate how sound behaves.

    One story involved recording a stream in rural Canada. Expecting to capture clear differences between close, medium, and distant perspectives, he recorded the same source from multiple locations. When he returned to the studio, however, the recordings sounded remarkably similar. What initially appeared disappointing became an important lesson. Distance is often communicated less by direct sound than by reflections, environmental interactions, and contextual cues. The stream itself had changed very little. The surrounding environment had provided most of the information listeners normally use to judge distance. Stories such as this reveal another dimension of Bourgeois’ approach. Technical expertise emerges not only from formal training but also from observation. Throughout the lecture, he repeatedly emphasised the importance of listening carefully to the world. Many of the insights that shaped his professional practice originated in moments of curiosity rather than commercial necessity. A recording experiment, an unusual acoustic environment, or an unexpected perceptual effect could become the foundation for future creative decisions.

    His reflections on Canada extended this theme further. Bourgeois noted that a surprisingly large number of Hollywood film mixers originate from Canada. While partly humorous, the observation led into a broader discussion about listening environments. Growing up in quieter surroundings encouraged attention to subtle acoustic details, spatial relationships, and environmental sounds. Whether or not this fully explains the phenomenon, the anecdote reinforced a larger point. Listening is not a passive activity. It is a skill developed through experience, practice, and sustained attention.

    The conversation eventually turned towards emerging technologies, particularly artificial intelligence. Here again, Bourgeois adopted a perspective shaped by decades of professional experience. Throughout his career he has witnessed repeated technological transformations. Analogue workflows gave way to digital systems. New recording formats emerged. Distribution platforms changed. Entire production processes evolved. Each transition created uncertainty alongside opportunity.

    Rather than treating AI as fundamentally different from earlier technological developments, Bourgeois viewed it as another stage within a continuing process of change. New tools will inevitably alter professional practice. Some tasks may become easier. Others may disappear entirely. Yet the underlying challenge remains remarkably consistent. Practitioners must learn how new technologies work, understand their limitations, and identify meaningful ways of applying them. Avoiding change rarely proves productive. Understanding it usually does.

    Looking back across the lecture, what emerges most clearly is a conception of mixing rooted in attention. Compressors, equalisers, reverbs, Atmos systems, loudness standards, recording technologies, and AI tools all matter. Yet they matter only insofar as they help audiences remain connected to a story. Bourgeois repeatedly returned to the same fundamental question. Can the audience understand what matters at the moment it matters?

    Many discussions of sound focus primarily on technology. Gary Bourgeois offered a useful reminder that technology is ultimately a means rather than an end. The purpose of a soundtrack is not to demonstrate technical sophistication. Its purpose is to support communication, emotion, and narrative understanding. The most successful mixes often pass unnoticed precisely because they allow audiences to remain fully absorbed in the world unfolding before them.

    Perhaps that is why the simple question that opened the lecture remains so revealing. What happens when an audience misses a line of dialogue? For Bourgeois, the answer extends far beyond a few misunderstood words. It represents a brief fracture in the relationship between story and listener. Much of the mixer’s craft is devoted to preventing that fracture from occurring. Every adjustment, every balance decision, every technical process ultimately serves the same goal: helping audiences hear not merely the sounds of a film, but the story those sounds are trying to tell.

  • How Do You Create a Sound That Does Not Exist? Charles Maynes on Problem-Solving, Experimentation, and Film Sound Design

    Charles Maynes

    What does a tornado sound like?

    At first glance, the answer appears simple. Tornadoes exist in the real world. Surely the task is simply to record one. Yet as supervising sound editor and sound designer Charles Maynes explained during his guest lecture for Edinburgh Napier University, film sound rarely works that way. A real tornado may produce a particular collection of sounds, though a cinematic tornado must also communicate scale, danger, movement, drama, and narrative significance. Audiences do not simply need to hear it. They need to believe in it.

    Across a career spanning films including Twister, U-571, Spider-Man, Constantine, Flags of Our Fathers, Letters from Iwo Jima, After Earth, and Total Recall, Maynes has repeatedly confronted variations of the same challenge. Many of the most important sounds in cinema either cannot be recorded directly, no longer exist, or have never existed at all. Sound design therefore becomes an exercise in invention. The sound designer is not merely documenting reality. The sound designer is building believable realities from fragments of observation, experimentation, technology, and imagination.

    What emerged most clearly from the lecture was the extent to which sound design resembles problem-solving. Every project arrives with its own collection of constraints. A tornado needs to feel enormous. A submarine needs to feel claustrophobic. A superhero requires a sonic identity unlike anything in everyday life. An alien creature must feel both unfamiliar and emotionally expressive. None of these challenges possesses an obvious solution. Instead, the work begins with questions.

    Twister provided one of the lecture’s most revealing examples. The production arrived at a moment when visual effects technology was evolving rapidly, creating situations in which sound teams often found themselves designing for imagery that did not yet exist. Early visual effects sequences were frequently little more than rough placeholders. Yet audiences would eventually expect the tornadoes to feel immense, terrifying, and believable. Sound therefore had to help establish qualities that the unfinished visuals could not yet communicate.

    Meeting this challenge required considerably more than recording wind. Field recording sessions captured useful source material, though the team quickly discovered that realism alone was insufficient. Various devices were constructed to generate unusual airflow sounds. Large materials were stretched across frames mounted to moving vehicles. Traditional wind machines inspired by classic Hollywood techniques were revisited. Recordings were distorted, layered, filtered, and manipulated. The objective was not documentary accuracy. The objective was creating an experience capable of convincing audiences that they were witnessing forces of extraordinary scale.

    One particularly interesting aspect of Maynes’ discussion concerned distortion. Students are often taught to avoid it. Distortion is typically framed as a technical problem, something introduced by poor recording practice or overloaded equipment. Maynes described how sound designers frequently use distortion deliberately. When applied carefully, it can create the impression that a sound exceeds the limits of the playback system itself. Explosions become larger. Engines become more aggressive. Tornadoes become more violent. Distortion therefore functions not simply as an acoustic phenomenon but as a perceptual tool.

    This concern with perception rather than literal accuracy appeared repeatedly throughout the lecture. Again and again, Maynes returned to situations in which audience expectations mattered more than objective realism. A real submarine may sound relatively quiet. A realistic recording of a futuristic vehicle may not exist. A supernatural creature offers no authentic reference point whatsoever. In each case, sound design becomes less about reproducing reality and more about creating experiences that feel believable within a particular cinematic world.

    His discussion of U-571 illustrated this particularly well. Submarines present a curious challenge. The audience needs to understand pressure, confinement, machinery, vulnerability, and danger. Simply recording mechanical systems would not necessarily communicate these ideas effectively. Instead, designers searched for sounds capable of conveying psychological experience. One memorable example involved the Waterphone, an unusual instrument whose unstable resonances proved remarkably effective when combined with more conventional recordings. The resulting sounds were not literally part of a submarine environment, yet they contributed powerfully to the emotional reality of the space.

    A similar philosophy guided work on Spider-Man. The web shooters presented a problem that sounds almost absurd when stated directly. What does it sound like when organic webbing launches from a superhero’s wrist, travels rapidly through the air, and attaches itself to a distant object? No real-world recording could provide an answer. The design process therefore began by breaking the action into components. The sound needed propulsion, movement, texture, speed, and impact. Recordings of water, stretched materials, vegetation, animal vocalisations, and numerous other sources were manipulated extensively before being combined into a coherent whole. By the time audiences encountered the finished film, the sound felt completely natural. Yet its construction depended upon materials that had little obvious connection to spiders.

    Throughout the lecture, Maynes repeatedly emphasised the value of field recording. Recording is not merely a method of collecting sounds. It is a way of discovering them. Unexpected opportunities arise constantly. A recording gathered for one project may become essential years later in an entirely different context. Environmental sounds, machinery, wildlife, crowds, and accidents all contribute to an expanding library of possibilities.

    One particularly memorable story involved recording outdoors when an unexpected gathering of crows appeared. Their wing sounds were captured largely out of curiosity. Years later, those recordings helped shape supernatural creatures in Constantine. The connection was impossible to predict at the time. Yet examples such as this appeared repeatedly throughout the lecture. Sounds gathered for one reason often acquire entirely different purposes later. Creative practice depends upon recognising possibilities that may not become useful until years afterwards.

    Perhaps the most striking aspect of Maynes’ career is the way these experiences accumulate. Techniques developed during one project often resurface elsewhere. A solution discovered while designing underwater sounds may later contribute to science fiction. An approach developed for machinery may prove useful for creatures. A distortion technique explored for a tornado may influence a futuristic vehicle. Sound designers gradually build libraries of methods, habits, and ways of thinking alongside their libraries of recordings.

    This process becomes particularly important when working on projects involving entirely fictional technologies or environments. Films such as After Earth and Total Recall required audiences to accept worlds that had never existed. Every sound contributed to that act of persuasion. Vehicles, interfaces, weapons, machinery, and environments all required sonic identities capable of supporting the visual design. Sound therefore becomes part of world-building itself. The audience may never consciously analyse these details, though they contribute significantly to whether a fictional world feels convincing.

    Collaboration occupied an equally important place throughout the lecture. Modern film sound emerges from the combined efforts of editors, designers, Foley artists, mixers, composers, directors, and numerous other specialists. Some of the films discussed involved enormous teams working across extended production schedules. Success depended not only upon technical skill but also upon communication. Sound design remains a creative discipline, though it is also a collaborative one.

    Different directors engage with sound in different ways. Some respond primarily to emotional impact. Others focus on specific details. Some use music as the primary storytelling tool. Others give sound effects greater prominence. Sound designers therefore spend much of their careers adapting not only to technical challenges but also to different creative personalities. Building a soundtrack involves understanding people as well as understanding sound.

    Looking back across the lecture, what emerges most clearly is a conception of sound design rooted in curiosity. Technology matters. Recording equipment matters. Software matters. Yet none of these things generates solutions independently. Every project introduces new questions. Every creative challenge requires experimentation. Every soundtrack becomes an exercise in balancing realism, perception, narrative, and imagination.

    For students entering the field, this may be the lecture’s most valuable lesson. Sound design is often imagined as a search for the perfect sound. Charles Maynes’ career suggests something rather different. More often, the task is finding a convincing solution to a problem that nobody has solved before. Tornadoes, submarines, superheroes, alien worlds, supernatural creatures, and futuristic technologies may appear unrelated, though each ultimately presents the same creative challenge. The audience must be persuaded to believe in something beyond everyday experience.

    Throughout the lecture, Maynes repeatedly demonstrated that such persuasion rarely emerges from a single recording, a particular piece of software, or a clever technical trick. It emerges from observation, experimentation, collaboration, and an ongoing willingness to explore unexpected possibilities. A recording captured years earlier may suddenly solve a new problem. An accidental discovery may become the defining feature of a sequence. A sound that initially appears unusable may eventually find its place within an entirely different project. The work progresses through a continual process of asking questions, testing ideas, and remaining open to surprise.

    Perhaps this is why sound design remains such a distinctive creative discipline. Unlike many areas of production, it frequently begins where direct representation becomes impossible. No one can record the sound of Spider-Man’s web shooters. No one can capture the sound of a fictional technology that has never existed. No one can simply point a microphone at an imagined world. Instead, sound designers build these experiences from fragments of reality, shaping them into something audiences can recognise, understand, and believe. The challenge is not merely creating sounds. The challenge is creating possibilities for imagination.

    For Charles Maynes, that challenge appears not as a limitation but as the reason the work remains endlessly fascinating.

  • Designing Fear: Matt Yocum on Horror, Tension, and the Psychology of Sound

    Matt Yocum

    What is the fastest way to make a horror film stop being scary?

    Matt Yocum’s answer was immediate: mute it.

    At first, the response feels almost too simple. Horror cinema is often discussed in terms of monsters, visual effects, darkness, violence, or shock. Yet remove the soundtrack and something fundamental changes. The creature remains on screen. The corridor remains dark. The threat still exists. What disappears is much of the tension. Anticipation begins to weaken. The feeling that something terrible might be about to happen gradually fades away. For Yocum, whose career has included sound design work across film and television, this observation reveals something important about the role of sound in horror. Sound design is not simply about creating interesting sounds. It is about shaping emotion. Throughout his guest lecture at Edinburgh Napier University, whether discussing creature design, immersive audio, audience psychology, or jump scares, a remarkably consistent idea emerged. Horror is not primarily about making audiences hear frightening things. It is about making them feel uncertain about what might happen next.

    That distinction helps explain why some of the most effective moments in horror involve remarkably little happening at all. A character walks slowly down a hallway. A door stands slightly ajar. An empty room appears entirely ordinary. Nothing overtly threatening is visible, yet audiences become increasingly uncomfortable. According to Yocum, much of horror operates through tension and release. Viewers are encouraged to anticipate an event before that event actually arrives, and sound plays a central role in constructing that anticipation. Environmental detail begins to disappear. The soundtrack becomes quieter. Attention narrows. Audiences recognise the pattern immediately. Years of watching horror films have taught them that something is coming. A character approaches a door, the atmosphere tightens, and the audience braces itself for the inevitable scare. The door opens and nothing is there. Relief briefly returns, only for the real scare to arrive moments later when attention has already begun to relax. Horror repeatedly exploits this relationship between expectation and uncertainty. Audiences respond not only to what they hear, but also to what they believe they are about to hear.

    Silence therefore occupies a surprisingly important position within horror sound design. Although the genre is often associated with loud impacts and sudden shocks, Yocum argued that removing sound can be just as effective as adding it. As environmental information falls away, attention becomes focused on the sounds that remain. Breathing becomes more noticeable. Footsteps acquire greater significance. The creak of a floorboard suddenly feels loaded with meaning. None of these sounds are inherently frightening. Their significance emerges through context. A footstep heard in a crowded shopping centre communicates something very different from a footstep heard in an empty house late at night. Horror succeeds by manipulating those relationships, encouraging audiences to reinterpret ordinary sounds as signs of vulnerability, danger, or uncertainty. Rather than overwhelming viewers with information, effective sound design often achieves more through careful restraint. The audience begins searching for clues, assigning importance to small details, and constructing explanations from incomplete information. In many respects, horror is less concerned with frightening sounds than with the psychology of listening itself.

    Questions of interpretation also emerged throughout Yocum’s discussion of creature design. Audiences often imagine creature sound as a process of inventing something entirely new, though the reality is frequently more complicated. Effective creature design begins not with software, plug-ins, or signal processing, but with observation. How large is the creature? How does it move? Does it walk, crawl, slither, or fly? Does it possess lungs? How much does it weigh? What sort of anatomy produces its sounds? Such questions help ground fictional beings within believable worlds. Sound gives visual effects a sense of physical presence. A creature that appears enormous on screen can feel surprisingly weightless without appropriate sonic support. Movement, impacts, breathing, and vocalisation all contribute to the illusion that something genuinely occupies space. The task is not simply to create an unusual sound. It is to persuade audiences that a fictional entity belongs within the world they are experiencing.

    One of the most memorable moments in the lecture emerged when a student described creating a creature vocalisation from the sound of a restaurant toilet flush. Rather than dismissing the idea, Yocum praised the approach. Organic source material, he argued, often provides richer creative possibilities than excessive processing. A toilet flush already contains qualities that resemble breathing, resonance, and vocalisation. More importantly, it originates in the physical world. Throughout the lecture, Yocum repeatedly returned to the value of starting with interesting source material rather than attempting to manufacture complexity through endless layers of effects. This preference led naturally into a broader discussion about creative confidence. Early in his career, he admitted that he often attempted to solve design problems through increasingly complex layering and processing. Over time, he recognised a common trap. Designers frequently add more and more material when they become uncertain about their choices. One piece of advice from veteran sound designer Erik Aadahl remained particularly influential: the less confident you are, the more likely you are to throw the kitchen sink at a design. The observation is humorous, though it points towards a deeper truth about creative practice. Effective sound design is rarely an exercise in accumulation. It is an exercise in decision-making. Success depends less upon how many sounds can be added and more upon understanding which sounds genuinely belong.

    A story later in the lecture illustrated this principle perfectly. Working on a film involving a supernatural creature, Yocum spent weeks developing vocalisations based upon detailed descriptions provided by the filmmakers. Numerous versions were presented. None satisfied the directors. More versions followed. Still nothing. Eventually, after countless iterations and experiments, the sound that made it into the final film turned out to be a heavily processed recording of his French bulldog. The story generated laughter, though it also revealed something important about professional practice. Sound design is rarely a straightforward process of technical problem-solving. It often depends upon experimentation, intuition, collaboration, and a willingness to recognise successful ideas when they emerge from unexpected places. Behind the technology, the software, and the increasingly sophisticated production tools lies a creative discipline that remains deeply dependent upon listening, judgement, and imagination.

    Questions of attention remained central throughout the lecture, particularly when Yocum turned towards immersive audio formats such as Dolby Atmos. Discussions of Atmos often focus upon technology. Additional speakers create opportunities for sounds to move around an audience, above them, and through three-dimensional space. Yet one of the more interesting aspects of Yocum’s discussion was the extent to which he resisted treating the technology itself as the primary attraction. Additional channels do not automatically create better storytelling. A sound placed behind the audience is not effective simply because it appears behind them. It becomes effective when its position contributes to the emotional experience of the scene. This principle feels especially relevant to horror. Audiences are often more frightened by sounds they cannot see than by threats directly in front of them. A creak somewhere behind a listener immediately encourages questions. What caused it? How far away is it? Is it moving closer? A sound overhead may suggest a presence occupying unseen space. Rain surrounding a house can make isolation feel more tangible. In each case, the sound itself matters less than the uncertainty it creates. Atmos therefore becomes a storytelling tool rather than a technological showcase. The objective is not to demonstrate that sounds can move around a room. The objective is to shape how audiences imagine the world beyond the frame.

    Many of Yocum’s examples returned to this relationship between hearing and imagination. Horror repeatedly exploits the simple observation that listeners can hear far more than they can see. Sound extends perception beyond the limits of the image. A camera may reveal only a small portion of a location, though audio can suggest activity elsewhere. Something may be moving in another room. A distant voice may imply an unseen presence. A sound above a ceiling can transform an ordinary environment into a potentially threatening one. Once audiences begin constructing explanations for sounds that lack visible sources, imagination becomes an active participant in the storytelling process. Classic horror cinema frequently depends upon this principle. Yocum pointed to Alien as a particularly influential example. Although the creature has become one of the most recognisable monsters in film history, much of its effectiveness emerges from how rarely audiences see it clearly. Sound plays a crucial role in sustaining that uncertainty. The audience hears evidence of the creature’s presence long before receiving a complete visual understanding of what it is. Strange noises, movement within confined spaces, and subtle indications of activity allow imagination to fill gaps that images deliberately leave unresolved. The result is often more effective than direct revelation. Once a threat becomes fully visible, it also becomes more understandable. Horror frequently derives its strength from resisting that certainty.

    A similar logic appeared in Yocum’s discussion of possessed objects and haunted spaces. One example involved whispers gradually drawing a child towards a crack in a wall. Physically, very little is happening. The wall remains a wall. The room remains a room. Yet sound transforms the situation. The whispers encourage audiences to assign significance to something that would otherwise appear entirely ordinary. An inanimate object begins to feel charged with possibility. Attention becomes focused upon a location that images alone could never make equally compelling. Sound therefore contributes not only to atmosphere but also to narrative meaning. It guides audiences towards particular interpretations of what they are seeing.

    What emerged repeatedly throughout these examples was the importance of expectation. Horror does not simply frighten audiences through sudden surprises. It first teaches them how to anticipate those surprises. Once viewers recognise familiar patterns, filmmakers can begin manipulating them. Yocum highlighted Barbarian as a particularly interesting contemporary example. The film repeatedly establishes situations that appear to be moving towards conventional horror outcomes before abruptly changing direction. Audiences believe they understand what will happen next. The film then exploits that confidence. Sound design plays a central role in this process. Expectations must first be established before they can be disrupted. A soundtrack may encourage viewers to anticipate danger in one place while the real threat emerges somewhere else entirely.

    Taken together, these examples reveal a consistent philosophy running throughout Yocum’s lecture. Sound design is not simply concerned with what audiences hear. It is concerned with where they direct their attention, what they expect to happen next, and how they interpret incomplete information. Atmos, creature design, silence, environmental detail, and possessed objects may appear to involve very different techniques, though they frequently pursue the same objective. They encourage audiences to imagine worlds extending beyond what is immediately visible. Horror thrives within that gap between perception and certainty. The less certain audiences become about what lies beyond the frame, the more actively they participate in constructing the experience themselves.

    Looking back across the lecture, what emerges most clearly is a conception of sound design that extends far beyond the creation of individual sounds. Discussions of horror often focus upon monsters, jump scares, disturbing imagery, or technical effects, yet Yocum repeatedly returned to something more fundamental. Sound design is ultimately concerned with emotion. Every creative decision, from the selection of source material to the placement of a sound within an immersive environment, contributes to how audiences experience a story. This perspective helps explain why so many of the lecture’s examples appeared to revolve around expectation rather than spectacle. Silence becomes valuable not simply because it removes sound, but because it changes how listeners interpret what remains. Creature design succeeds not through complexity alone, but through an understanding of physiology, movement, and character. Atmos becomes meaningful when it directs attention towards spaces that audiences cannot see. Even the most effective jump scares depend less upon the scare itself than upon the tension that precedes it. Across each of these examples, sound functions as a way of shaping perception and guiding interpretation.

    Many of the stories shared throughout the lecture pointed towards the same conclusion. A restaurant toilet flush can become the foundation for a creature vocalisation. Weeks of carefully crafted designs may ultimately give way to a recording of a French bulldog. A whisper can transform an ordinary wall into something unsettling. None of these outcomes emerge from technology alone. They emerge from a creative process built upon listening, experimentation, and a willingness to follow ideas wherever they lead. The tools may continue to evolve, though the underlying challenge remains remarkably consistent: understanding how audiences will respond to what they hear. Perhaps this is why horror provides such a revealing lens through which to understand sound design more broadly. The genre exposes processes that are often present in other forms of storytelling but are easier to overlook. Audiences are constantly interpreting sounds, assigning meanings to them, and using them to make sense of the worlds unfolding around them. Horror simply makes those processes more visible. A creak in a floorboard, a distant movement, or a barely audible breath can suddenly become the focus of intense attention. The sounds themselves may be entirely ordinary. What changes is the emotional framework through which they are experienced.

    Returning to Yocum’s opening observation, the fastest way to make a horror film less frightening may indeed be to mute it. Doing so removes far more than sound effects or atmospheric detail. It removes anticipation. It removes uncertainty. It removes many of the subtle cues that encourage audiences to imagine what might happen next. Horror depends upon those moments of expectation, and sound plays a central role in creating them.

    A hallway. A footstep. A whisper from another room. A door slowly opening.

    None of these things are especially frightening on their own.

    Yet in the hands of a skilled sound designer, they can make an entire audience hold its breath.

  • Creating the Sound of Bodies in Impossible Spaces: Nicolas Becker on Sci-Fi Foley and Embodied Listening

    Nicolas Becker

    Science fiction sound often risks becoming trapped inside its own history. Audiences become familiar with particular cinematic vocabularies so thoroughly that certain sounds gradually begin standing in for entire ideas. Futuristic interfaces shimmer with recognisable electronic textures, spacecraft doors release carefully sculpted hydraulic movements, while machines hum with tones inherited from decades of earlier films. Many of these sounds remain compelling, though repeated use can gradually create a strange effect. Instead of sounding like imagined futures, science fiction sometimes begins sounding primarily like other science fiction.

    Nicolas Becker’s guest lecture explored a rather different approach to sound design. Across discussions of Foley, experimentation, recording techniques, embodiment, resonance, acoustics, and material behaviour, a common principle gradually surfaced. Convincing futuristic sound may depend less upon inventing unfamiliar noises than reconnecting audiences with physical experiences they already understand through memory, vibration, pressure, texture, and the body itself. One of Becker’s central arguments was that audiences do not believe science fiction worlds merely through novelty. Completely unfamiliar sound can quickly become emotionally abstract. Futuristic environments instead become convincing once they remain anchored to recognisable sensory experience. Pressure, resonance, vibration, friction, breath, and spatial instability all carry meanings audiences already understand physically, even within worlds they have never encountered before.

    Becker described discovering Foley at the age of fifteen before immediately recognising that it brought together many different interests simultaneously. Cinema, movement, physical performance, listening, material experimentation, and interaction all converged within the practice. Yet one observation from early in the lecture became particularly revealing. He explained that he does not primarily create sound out of fascination with sound alone. What interests him more deeply involves the way sound transforms images.

    A sound placed against an image does not merely accompany what audiences already see. Something else emerges through the relationship between them. Becker described this as creating a kind of “third image”, neither entirely visual nor entirely sonic. Foley therefore ceases to become simple illustration. Sound does not simply confirm that a door closed or that footsteps occurred. Instead, sound reshapes how physical movement, material presence, scale, emotion, weight, fragility, and tension are perceived altogether. The image viewers believe they are watching is partly constructed through listening.

    This relationship becomes especially complicated within science fiction. Historical films already require reconstruction of worlds no longer accessible, though futuristic films involve constructing environments that have never existed at all. Such projects force sound designers into unusual territory. Audiences must believe experiences they have never directly encountered. A recurring theme throughout the lecture was that realism does not necessarily emerge through imitation of previous films. Instead, he suggested that audiences connect most strongly with sounds grounded in bodily memory and sensory experience. Sound becomes convincing once it resonates with sensations people already recognise, even if they cannot consciously identify why.

    Discussion of Gravity formed one of the clearest examples of this philosophy. Space immediately creates a problem for sound design. Vacuum prevents conventional sound transmission, meaning many familiar cinematic approaches become difficult to justify physically. Rather than treating this limitation as an obstacle, Becker approached it as an opportunity to rethink how listening itself might function.

    Traditional cinema frequently treats sound as external observation. Audiences hear worlds from an impossible perspective positioned outside events themselves. Becker’s approach repeatedly collapses this distance. Listening becomes embodied rather than observational. He began considering what astronauts would still perceive internally. A pressurised suit transmits vibration. Bodies conduct sound through tissue and bone. Contact with vibrating surfaces produces sensation physically before it becomes recognisable as hearing. Becker therefore started attaching hydrophones directly onto his own body while performing sounds physically through different materials and surfaces. His body effectively became an acoustic filter.

    The resulting sounds possess a striking quality precisely because they feel simultaneously internal and mechanical. Vibrations seem to emerge from within the listener rather than arriving externally from a distant cinematic environment. Becker connected this partly to experiences such as immersion underwater or entering an anechoic chamber, where external sound becomes reduced enough that internal bodily activity suddenly becomes perceptible. Heartbeats, blood movement, breathing, pressure, and friction begin dominating perception once surrounding acoustic information disappears.

    Much of Gravity therefore became less about designing conventional spacecraft sound and more about constructing a sensory relationship between bodies, pressure, vibration, and isolation. Rather than relying primarily upon inherited science fiction conventions, Becker searched for sounds grounded in experiences audiences already carry unconsciously within themselves. The objective was not reproducing what futuristic machines might literally sound like. Instead, the work repeatedly explored how bodies might experience impossible environments from within.

    This emphasis upon embodiment extended throughout the lecture. Becker frequently described recording less as a technical procedure than as a physical interaction with material. He spoke about “digging” into sound through microphones, surfaces, and objects almost like an animal searching for prey. Recording becomes exploratory rather than merely documentary. Instead of searching for predefined results, he experiments with materials, microphones, resonances, distortions, and spaces until unfamiliar possibilities begin emerging.

    Hydrophones, geophones, gyroscopes, seismic sensors, underwater acoustics, resonant structures, and sympathetic vibrations appeared throughout the lecture not as isolated technical curiosities but as expressions of a broader way of thinking about sound. Across these examples, Becker continually sought sound behaviours rooted in physical phenomena rather than cinematic shorthand.

    Microphones themselves therefore stop functioning merely as neutral capture devices. Different recording systems become ways of translating material behaviour into perception. Certain microphones approximate human hearing more naturally, while others emphasise transient aggression, resonance, spatial instability, or harmonic complexity differently. Technical systems therefore shape how audiences physically inhabit cinematic space.

    One particularly revealing example involved Becker’s rejection of familiar mechanical science fiction aesthetics built around gears, motors, and obvious physical contact. While developing robotic and futuristic sounds, he instead searched for systems involving minimal friction or direct interaction between moving parts. Gyroscopes, magnetic stabilisation systems, and no-contact mechanisms became especially attractive precisely because they produced movement without conventional mechanical aggression.

    This pursuit of unfamiliar material behaviour also led Becker towards geophones originally designed for oil exploration. Such devices normally detect vibrations travelling through the earth itself. After modifying them into recording devices for creative use, Becker discovered that they produced unusual forms of mechanical distortion unlike conventional electronic processing. Explosions, impacts, and vibrations acquired strange physical textures that felt simultaneously abstract and believable.

    What matters here is not novelty for its own sake. Throughout the lecture, he expressed dissatisfaction with science fiction sound becoming trapped inside references to earlier films. Once audiences unconsciously begin recognising cinematic conventions instead of connecting with physical sensation, realism weakens. He described this particularly clearly while discussing the enormous influence of Star Wars. Those films established an extraordinarily influential sonic vocabulary, though Becker noted that many later science fiction works gradually began imitating these established sounds rather than rediscovering material reality independently. Eventually futuristic worlds risk sounding less like futures than accumulated echoes of earlier cinema.

    Projects such as Gravity, Arrival, and Ex Machina interested him partly because they attempted moving away from these inherited vocabularies towards something more physically grounded. Becker argued that the real world already contains astonishing sonic material if designers remain willing to search for it. Lakes, seismic activity, industrial systems, underwater acoustics, resonant structures, pressure systems, wind, and vibration all contain textures far stranger than many artificially synthesised science fiction effects.

    Memory consequently became another major theme throughout the lecture. Becker repeatedly suggested that audiences respond most strongly once sound reconnects them with experiences they have already encountered physically, even if only indirectly. Rather than reminding viewers of earlier films, he aims to reconnect them with sensations stored within their own perceptual histories. Sound therefore stops functioning merely as representation. It begins activating remembered forms of bodily knowledge.

    These ideas shape even seemingly small technical decisions. Becker discussed reconstructing recording conditions with extreme precision, carefully considering acoustic environments, microphone placement, reflections, surfaces, and physical obstacles. A person walking behind furniture should sound physically constrained by that furniture. A room should behave according to its dimensions and materials. Exterior movement requires different transient behaviour than interior movement. Ribbon microphones become useful outdoors partly due to their softer transient response and spatial characteristics. These decisions emerge from a broader commitment to sensory plausibility rather than abstraction.

    Experimentation itself therefore occupies a central position within Becker’s practice. Constraints, unusual recording processes, collaborative exploration, and conceptual frameworks all become mechanisms for discovering unfamiliar sonic relationships. He repeatedly described projects less as standardised workflows than prototypes requiring entirely different approaches each time.

    Such an approach has increasingly pushed his work beyond conventional Foley stages altogether. Rather than always recording inside controlled studio environments, Becker often seeks real locations whose acoustics already contain the physical characteristics required by the film. Castles, industrial structures, resonant chambers, unusual landscapes, and environmental spaces become active collaborators within the recording process itself.

    Collaboration more generally emerged as another important dimension of his work. Becker repeatedly described involving musicians, engineers, scientists, architects, landscape designers, instrument builders, and conceptual artists within projects. Sound design becomes a form of interdisciplinary experimentation instead of isolated post-production labour. Conversations with geophysicists led towards seismic recording experiments. Underwater acoustic research informed approaches to resonance and transmission. Work with conceptual artists encouraged treating every project as a unique prototype requiring its own conceptual logic and constraints.

    One of the more compelling aspects of the lecture involved Becker’s refusal to separate technical experimentation from artistic thinking. Microphones, recording formats, resonances, distortions, acoustic physics, and bodily sensation never appeared merely as engineering problems. Technical systems instead became methods for reshaping perception itself.

    Curiosity emerged throughout the lecture as a driving force behind his practice. He described continual experimentation with new technologies, new collaborators, new recording situations, and unfamiliar physical systems. Yet beneath this openness sits a remarkably coherent underlying philosophy. Sound becomes meaningful once it reconnects audiences with material experience rather than cinematic habit.

    Perhaps this explains why Becker’s science fiction work often feels unusually tactile. Machines appear heavy, spaces feel pressurised, vibrations seem physically present, while futuristic environments retain connections to recognisable sensory reality. Audiences may never consciously identify the specific recording techniques involved, though they respond to the bodily logic underneath them.

    Science fiction frequently concerns imagined futures, impossible environments, and unfamiliar technologies. Becker’s lecture repeatedly suggested that convincing audiences of these worlds may depend less upon escaping physical reality than listening to it more carefully. The future begins feeling believable once sound reconnects viewers with the textures, pressures, resonances, and vibrations they already understand through lived experience.

    Rather than constructing futures entirely from abstraction, Becker instead builds impossible worlds from sensations audiences have carried within themselves all along.

  • Dubbed to Perfection: Graham Hartstone’s Guide to Enhancing Storytelling Through Sound

    Graham Hartstone, a highly respected dubbing mixer and former head of post-production at Pinewood Studios, shared his expertise in an online guest lecture. Drawing on his extensive career in film sound, which spans decades and includes work on major productions, he offered a wealth of insights into the art and technical precision of rerecording sound for film.

    Graham Hartstone

    The Evolution of Sound and Its Role in Storytelling

    Hartstone’s career began in 1961 as a cable operator, progressing through various roles in sound before ultimately leading the dubbing team at Pinewood. His experience includes working on iconic films such as the James Bond series and collaborations with directors like Stanley Kubrick and Ridley Scott. He reflected on the shift from analogue mixing techniques to the expansive digital tools available today, discussing how technological advancements have changed the sound mixing process.

    Throughout his career, Hartstone emphasised that sound must serve the narrative, with careful attention to dialogue clarity, atmospheric cohesion, and the interplay between sound effects and music. He discussed the importance of premixing, highlighting how dialogue, effects, and Foley must be balanced to create a seamless final mix. Foley, he stressed, should blend naturally rather than draw attention to itself. Using Aliens as an example, he described how even background movements were carefully crafted to maintain immersion without overwhelming the primary action.

    Collaborations, Challenges, and International Versions

    Hartstone shared experiences working with directors who had strong opinions on sound, such as James Cameron and Stanley Kubrick. Kubrick was known for personally directing foreign language dubs to maintain creative control, often insisting that his own team handle translations to ensure consistency across different languages. Hartstone recalled how Kubrick’s meticulous nature extended to every aspect of post-production, with dialogue edits often requiring multiple iterations to match the director’s high standards. Kubrick even insisted on making foreign dubs sound as close to the original English version as possible, ensuring that voice tone and performance retained the same impact.

    James Cameron was similarly demanding, particularly about technical precision in sound. Hartstone shared an example from Aliens, where Cameron required the sound of motion trackers to be carefully crafted to enhance suspense. He recalled how Cameron would repeatedly review sound effects, adjusting subtle details to make sure they perfectly complemented the tension of each scene. This attention to detail extended to mixing explosions and gunfire, where Cameron wanted the audience to feel every impact without overwhelming the dialogue.

    The challenges of working on large-scale productions also included meeting tight deadlines and working with evolving edits. Hartstone noted that in films like Blade Runner, changes were often made up to the last minute. He shared how the iconic ambient soundscape of Los Angeles in Blade Runner was built from unused Alien sound elements, giving the city a layered, futuristic atmosphere. He also recounted how Ridley Scott requested late-stage changes to music and sound effects after test screenings, requiring the mixing team to make quick adjustments to balance the soundtrack effectively.

    For international versions, Hartstone explained that dialogue premixes had to be prepared well in advance of final mixes to allow time for translation and dubbing. On GoldenEye, special care was taken to ensure the foreign dubs matched the English version’s intensity, particularly during action sequences. His team provided detailed mixing notes, ensuring that foreign versions retained the same dynamic range and impact. He also explained the additional complexities of preparing mixes for different distribution formats, including airline and television edits, which required removing or replacing strong language while maintaining natural speech flow.

    Practical Techniques for Mixing

    Hartstone provided a wealth of practical advice for sound mixers, focusing on achieving clarity, balance, and impact.

    Dialogue Mixing and Clarity

    He advised using high-pass and low-pass filters to enhance dialogue clarity, suggesting a high-pass filter at around 80Hz to eliminate unwanted low-end rumble and a low-pass filter at around 9kHz to reduce sibilance. He explained that dialogue should be prioritised in the mix, ensuring that off-screen lines remain intelligible by adjusting levels and adding subtle reverb to match distance perception.

    Hartstone also discussed the importance of perspective in dialogue mixing. He emphasised that the audio should match the framing of the shot—voices should not shift unnaturally in relation to the camera’s viewpoint. For example, close-up dialogue should be crisp and intimate, while wide shots should have a more open sound, reflecting the environment. When working with ADR (Automated Dialogue Replacement), he recommended blending it with the original production sound by matching room acoustics and microphone placement to avoid inconsistencies.

    Balancing Sound Elements and Surround Mixing

    Hartstone stressed the importance of dynamic balance between different sound elements. He warned against overusing compression, explaining that while it can help smooth out levels, excessive compression can make a mix sound unnatural. Instead, he recommended using automation and manual level adjustments to retain natural dynamics, especially for dialogue-driven scenes.

    For surround mixing, Hartstone advised positioning ambient sounds carefully to avoid distracting the audience. Dialogue and primary sound effects should remain anchored in the front channels, while environmental sounds and subtle atmospheric elements should be spread across the surround channels. He suggested that surround effects should be used sparingly in dialogue-heavy scenes but can be more pronounced in action sequences to enhance immersion.

    Layering Explosions and Action Sequences

    Hartstone shared techniques for mixing action-heavy films, particularly regarding explosions and gunfire. He explained that layering sound elements helps create depth and realism. For an explosion, he suggested layering three key components: a bass-heavy thump for impact, a mid-range crack for texture, and high-end debris for detail. He recommended ensuring that these layers are carefully mixed so that the low end does not overpower dialogue and other important sounds.

    He also discussed the importance of spatial placement for action scenes. For instance, gunfire should have directional placement in the mix to match the on-screen perspective. He recalled how, on James Bond films, the team carefully panned gunfire and bullet ricochets to follow the action, adding realism and depth to chase and fight sequences.

    Checking Mixes Across Different Playback Systems

    To ensure consistency, Hartstone recommended testing mixes on multiple playback systems, from large cinema screens to nearfield monitors. He suggested switching between full surround and stereo playback to detect phase issues or missing elements. He also noted that checking the mix at lower volumes can help identify problems with clarity, as important dialogue or sound effects may get lost when played at lower levels.

    Additionally, he highlighted the importance of attending final screenings to verify the mix in the intended playback environment. He recalled how, during a Blade Runner premiere screening, last-minute mix adjustments were needed to correct sound balance issues, reinforcing the importance of checking the final product under real-world conditions.

    Final Thoughts

    Graham Hartstone’s lecture provided a detailed exploration of film sound design, offering valuable lessons for professionals and enthusiasts alike. His expertise underscored how vital a well-crafted soundtrack is in shaping the audience’s experience, blending technical precision with creative storytelling.

  • Sound Advice: John Rodda’s Insights into Production Mixing

    John Rodda’s online guest lecture offered an engaging and in-depth exploration of the world of production sound mixing, drawing from his extensive experience across film and television. With a career spanning 35 years and work in over 40 countries, John has established himself as a leading figure in the industry, contributing to productions ranging from documentaries and dramas to major feature films. His lecture provided a rare glimpse into the craft, techniques, and challenges of capturing high-quality audio on set.

    John Rodda

    A Journey Through Sound

    John began by sharing his journey into sound mixing, highlighting how his background in theatre and electronics laid the foundation for his work in film and television. His early experiences included building computers in the late 1970s and working on corporate films and news coverage before transitioning into drama and feature films. He detailed how he navigated the industry at a time when union regulations created significant barriers for newcomers, requiring perseverance and adaptability to succeed.

    Key Roles in Production Sound

    John emphasised the collaborative nature of sound production, highlighting the distinct but interdependent roles within the department:

    • Production Sound Mixer: Oversees all aspects of sound recording on set, ensuring high-quality dialogue capture. They operate the primary recording equipment, balance microphone levels, and collaborate with the director to maintain the intended audio aesthetic. Additionally, they liaise with post-production teams by providing properly labelled sound files and detailed reports.
    • Boom Operator: Responsible for positioning the boom microphone to capture dialogue while staying out of the frame. They must anticipate actor movements, adjust positioning accordingly, and minimise unwanted noise. Boom operators often work in challenging conditions, ensuring optimal sound capture in dynamic filming environments.
    • Sound Assistant: Supports both the mixer and boom operator by setting up equipment, managing cables, placing wireless microphones on actors, and troubleshooting technical issues. They also help maintain sound logs and ensure the smooth operation of the sound department throughout filming.

    Each of these roles contributes to delivering clear, high-quality audio, ultimately enhancing the storytelling experience.

    Adapting to Industry Changes

    John reflected on the evolution of sound recording technology, from mono Nagra tape recorders to sophisticated multi-track digital systems. He discussed how advancements such as wireless microphones and timecode synchronisation have improved sound recording flexibility while accommodating modern filmmaking techniques, including multi-camera setups and wide-and-tight shot combinations. Current industry hardware has significantly improved efficiency and reliability, with modern digital recorders offering multi-track recording, high-resolution audio, integrated timecode systems, and advanced metadata management, enabling seamless file transfers to post-production. Wireless microphone systems now feature extended range, improved RF stability, and digital encryption, enhancing dialogue capture even in challenging environments. Additionally, timecode synchronisation tools ensure frame-accurate alignment between cameras and audio recorders, streamlining workflows and making location sound recording more adaptable for complex setups.

    Challenges and Solutions in Sound Mixing

    John provided practical examples of overcoming sound challenges on set. While working on Downton Abbey, he had to radio mic every actor to meet the director’s preference for unrestricted camera movement. The historical costumes posed additional difficulties in concealing microphones without compromising sound quality. To mitigate these issues, he collaborated with the wardrobe team and developed discreet mic placements that preserved clarity while remaining hidden.

    Another notable example involved a dinner scene, where the clinking of silverware risked overpowering dialogue. John strategically positioned boom microphones and used lavalier mics hidden within costumes to isolate voices while maintaining natural ambiance.

    Similarly, while working on Shackleton, extreme cold conditions threatened equipment functionality. He employed insulated batteries and performed regular system checks to ensure uninterrupted recording.

    For Airport, John devised a wireless timecode system that allowed independent sound recording, enabling him to position himself optimally while the camera moved freely in a busy airport setting.

    Memorable Projects and Industry Recognition

    John shared stories from notable projects, including The Fifth Estate, Longitude, and Shackleton. Longitude, a historical drama, posed unique challenges in capturing the sound of intricate mechanical clockwork, which was integral to the story. In The Fifth Estate, which dealt with the WikiLeaks controversy, he had to navigate fast-paced newsroom settings and international locations, ensuring clear dialogue in constantly shifting environments. His ability to adapt to different genres and production styles has earned him industry recognition, including a BAFTA for Airport and a nomination for Paddington Green. John also spoke about his time on 24: Live Another Day, where he balanced complex action sequences with high-pressure recording environments, demonstrating how experience and quick thinking are essential for a sound mixer.

    Advice for Aspiring Sound Professionals

    John advised aspiring professionals to develop technical skills, gain hands-on experience, and build strong working relationships within the industry. He stressed that attention to detail is key, as minor sound issues can become major post-production problems. He recommended learning about different recording techniques, experimenting with mic placement, and understanding the physics of sound to become a well-rounded professional.

    He also highlighted the importance of being adaptable and proactive. On sets where unexpected technical issues arise, being able to think on one’s feet and offer quick solutions is invaluable. He recalled an instance on 24 when a hidden microphone placement failed during a take, requiring an immediate, seamless backup solution to avoid disrupting the shoot.

    Additionally, he encouraged those entering the field to shadow experienced professionals, seek mentorship opportunities, and remain up to date with industry advancements. Sound recording techniques and equipment continue to evolve, and staying informed about the latest innovations ensures ongoing career growth.

    Conclusion

    John Rodda’s lecture provided invaluable insights into the world of production sound mixing. His extensive experience and practical knowledge underscored the critical role of sound in storytelling. As technology continues to evolve, his insights serve as a testament to the enduring importance of high-quality sound in film and television. For those looking to enter the field, his expertise offered both inspiration and guidance, reinforcing the idea that persistence, adaptability, and a strong technical foundation are crucial to success.