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189 – Gary Rydstrom

We are joined by Gary Rydstrom to talk about his recent Oscar nominated work on the latest Steven Spielberg film, West Side Story. He also tells us about his sound design philosophies, how slipping sound/picture sync can change everything and lots more.

Gary Rydstrom on IMDB

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The Following is a lightly edited and repaired, A.I. generated transcript of Tonebenders episode 189 – Gary RydstromPlease excuse any typos or translation mistakes made by the algorithm .

Tim Muirhead/Host

René Coronado/Host

Gary Rydstrom / West Side Story Supervising Sound Editor

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René Coronado 0:50
Welcome to Tonebenders. My name is René Coronado, and with me today, as always, is Tim Muirhead. Hey, Tim.

Timothy Muirhead 0:55
Hey, Rene, how you doing?

René Coronado 0:56
Doing well. We have a very special guest today. Why don’t you kick us off?

Timothy Muirhead 1:00
Yeah, if you’re a regular listener of Tonebendors, you’re the type of person that will already be very familiar with this man’s work. He’s a member of the Mount Rushmore of sound design. Today, we have Gary Rystrom. Welcome to the show, Gary.

Gary Rydstrom 1:12
Now I want to know if I’m Thomas Jefferson or Washington, I don’t know which. I guess Walter Merch is Washington. I don’t know where I am. I know, I’m probably Teddy Roosevelt.

René Coronado 1:21
You’re on the mountain for sure.

Timothy Muirhead 1:23
Yeah.

Gary Rydstrom 1:24
Thank you.

Timothy Muirhead 1:25
Gary, you’ve made the sounds for some of the most iconic films of the last few decades, redefining what dinosaurs sound like, reinventing the sonic chaos of war films, taking sci-fi and robots to previously unheard places. But your latest project has a very different set of challenges. What were your thoughts when you first were made aware that you were going to start working on the new West Side Story?

Gary Rydstrom 1:45
Well, to be honest, my first thought was “this is going to be a piece of cake for me”. Cuz, you know, cuz, you know, explosions, no guns, no, you know, action scenes. It was harder, I’ll just jump ahead. It was harder than you know, more work than I initially thought. Because, you know, there’s plenty to do in a musical. But I was looking forward to it, I’d never done the mix for a musical before. So as you say, it’s I like going into a genre or type of film that I haven’t done before. And, and sort of seeing how that that works. There’s there’s all sorts of things about musicals that are specific to them. I thought my job was to, you know, set a time and a place because this is a very much a 1957 New York story. So my job was to set a set the tone for a real place, that this took place in. I’m very proud. And I can say that I’m proud because I’m actually from the midwest of bragging is against the law in the Midwest, but I am proud of how the music works in this it is a musical. So the music is so spectacularly presented. And I’m a very small part of that, my job is to kind of frame the world that the singers are singing in. Without being too braggy I just think the music in this movie is spectacular. So playing my small part of it was thrilling. Okay. Yeah, it was, it was great to listen to something so beautiful.

Timothy Muirhead 3:10
I saw the film in the theater. I’m not necessarily a humongous musical fan. I’m not against musicals. But that’s not the genre I see the most often. And when they started singing on the fire escapes, I actually got chills up my spine. I don’t know when the last time that happened to me in a movie theater was the music is really, it’s affecting in a way that I was not expecting.

Unknown Speaker 3:32
Well, it’s beautiful music to begin with. And the song is beautiful. That’s a beautiful romantic song. I remember, here’s a little tidbit of a memory. Obviously, those moments work because the actors Ansel Elgort, who does amazing job in this film, sometimes people don’t realize, but he sings beautifully in that scene. And of course, Rachel Ziegler and the duet is gorgeous. I remember when we did Ready Player One to the mix for that very, very different film. Behind us Spielberg was doing his own storyboards for that scene. Because I remember him on a piece of paper, he would draw up the angles about how to do the fire escape and how to shoot through it and how to bring them together and how to separate them and all that fun film stuff. And he would draw his own storyboards than take a picture with his iPhone. And you know, then when I saw West Side Story, it was so exciting to see. He built that scene. You know, while we were doing the explosion, gunfire VR movie he was storyboarding this romantic scene. So yeah, everything comes together. And that also just for for sound people, a good part of that not all of that scene is sung on set. So Ancel Elgort in particular, sing some of it live. This is an issue with musicals these days. Sometimes it’s possible to sing live on the set as opposed to pre record. And parts of that are one of the moments in the movie that it’s sung live. And when you do that, no matter what acting I think comes through a little bit better. And that’s a scene where they’re falling in love there, you know. So I’m hoping that’s what you reacted to.

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