Sound Designers

Sound Designers (previously known as Sound Effects Editors or Special Effects (SFX) Editors) are responsible for providing any required sounds to accompany screen action. Most Sound Designers are experienced Supervising Sound Editors who carry out a managerial role, steering the work of the entire sound post production process, combined with the specialist role of creating the sound concept for films. As well as creating the sounds for giant explosions or car crashes, Sound design is also the art of creating subtle sounds that enrich the language and feeling of a film.

Sound effects are added after filming, during the editing process, to give the film its sonic identity, e.g., location, period, or a particular mood. Creating, manipulating and positioning these sound effects are the responsibilities of Sound Designers. They may be employed by Audio Post Production Houses, or work on a freelance basis and dry-hire a room close to the picture Editor providing their own Digital Audio Workstations. They are also likely to own their own recording equipment, e.g., DAT recorders or direct to hard-disc recorders and various microphones. Sound Designers work long hours to meet a demanding schedule of deadlines.

Benjamin "Ben" Burtt, Jr.

Ben Burtt is an American sound designer who has worked on various films including: the Star Wars and Indiana Jones film series, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), and WALL-E (2008). He is also a film editor and director, screenwriter, and voice actor.

He is most notable for creating many of the iconic sound effects heard in the Star Wars film franchise, including the "voice" of R2-D2, the lightsaber hum, the sound of the blaster guns, and the heavy-breathing sound of Darth Vader.

Burtt pioneered modern sound design, especially in the science fiction and fantasy film genres. Before his work in the first Star Wars (now known as Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope) in 1977, science fiction films tended to use electronic sounding effects for futuristic devices. Burtt sought a more natural sound, blending in "found sounds" to create the effects. The lightsaber hum, for instance, was derived from a film projector idling combined with feedback from a broken television set, and the blaster effect started with the sound acquired from hitting a guy wire on a radio tower with a hammer.

Walter Scott Murch

Water Murch is an American film editor and sound designer. Murch started editing and mixing sound with Francis Ford Coppola's The Rain People in 1969. Subsequently, he worked on George Lucas's THX 1138 and American Graffiti and Coppola's The Godfather before editing picture and mixing sound on Coppola's The Conversation, for which he received an Academy Award nomination in sound in 1974. Murch also mixed the sound for Coppola's The Godfather Part II which was released in 1974, the same year as The Conversation. He is most famous for his sound designing work on Apocalypse Now, for which he won his first Academy Award in 1979.

Notice the sound of the rotor blades from the helicopters panning from left to right as they fly past (especially effective on headphones), and the combination of the sound from the blades combined with the image of the ceiling fan.

In 1979, he won an Oscar for the sound mix of Apocalypse Now as well as a nomination for picture editing. Murch is widely acknowledged as the person who coined the term Sound Designer, and along with colleagues developed the current standard film sound format, the 5.1 channel array, helping to elevate the art and impact of film sound to a new level. Apocalypse Now was the first multi-channel film to be mixed using a computerized mixing board.

Unlike most film editors today, Murch works standing up, comparing the process of film editing to "conducting, brain surgery and short-order cooking", since all conductors, cooks and surgeons stand when they work. In contrast, when writing, he does so lying down. His reason for this is that where editing film is an editorial process, the creation process of writing is opposite that, and so he lies down rather than sit or stand up, to separate his editing mind from his creating mind.

Bernard Herrmann

Bernard Herrmann born was an American composer noted for his work in motion pictures.

An Academy Award-winner for The Devil and Daniel Webster in 1941, Herrmann is particularly known for his collaborations with director Alfred Hitchcock, most famously Psycho, North by Northwest, The Man Who Knew Too Much, and Vertigo. He also composed notable scores for many other movies, including Citizen Kane, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, Cape Fear, and Taxi Driver. He worked extensively in radio drama (most notably for Orson Welles), composed the scores for several fantasy films by Ray Harryhausen, and many TV programs including most notably Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone and Have Gun Will Travel.

Verbal Vigilante

Jode Steele and David Wainwright, A.K.A. "Verbal Vigilante" are two sound designers who specialise in huge percussion and orchestral scores for film and TV. They have a section on their website outlining their projects on movies such as "Skyline", "Shark Knight 3D", "In Time", "Dream House" and "Tremors".

Richard King

Richard King is an American sound designer and editor who has worked on over 70 films. A native of Tampa, Florida, he graduated from Plant High School (1972) and the University of South Florida. He won the Academy Award for Best Sound Editing for the films Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003), The Dark Knight (2008) and Inception (2010) and was also nominated for War of the Worlds (2005).

Since his early days editing sound at Cannon Films (known for the Death Wish sequels and Chuck Norris action pictures), sound designer Richard King has progressed to audio intensive and award-winning mega-budget films such as Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, War of the Worlds and, most recently, Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, his second collaboration with the director.

“The sheer sonic density of The Dark Knight was challenging,” says King. “There were always two or three things going on that had to aurally work in tandem with each other and work with the music. There were a couple of big set-pieces that required a lot of effort, a lot of sound-effects recording, and a lot of trial and error.”

Because Nolan regards the temp dub to be a “charcoal sketch of the oil painting that will be the final,” King says he had to have all his ducks in a row by the temp dub, including temp versions of the final score. There was constant mixing and remixing of the sound as well as constant re-editing and redesigning of the sound effects. “Luckily I had enough time on the show, I could design and mix down large sections of the film and send them to picture editor, Lee Smith to cut into the Avid,” he recalls. “Chris would hear it and give me feedback so the track was able to evolve alongside the picture editing. By the time we got to the temp dub, there were no huge surprises.” The temp was like a finished mix with additional refining for the final.

The sound designer’s favourite sequence in the film is a truck chase where the Joker, played by the late Heath Ledger, tries to capture Harvey Dent, played by Aaron Eckhart. The long non-stop action sequence was designed to play without score. “We needed to be as musical as we could with the sound effects and try to create a rhythm that accentuated Lee’s picture editing or worked as a counterpoint to it,” says King. So he put in as many interesting sounds and frequencies as he could to keep the track alive. He tried to find high-end elements, not just the low-end roar of the truck engines, and had fun adding abstract sounds, such as animal roars, to accentuate accelerations. “Weapons were oversized sounding for what they actually are,” he says, “but worked within the context of the scene, a scene that pulls out all the stops and gets more and more crazy.”