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The following is a lightly edited and repaired, A.I. generated transcript of Tonebenders episode 195 – The Sound Design of Stranger Things Season 4. Please excuse any typos or translation mistakes made by the algorithm. It is not meant to be read like a polished blog post.
Tim Muirhead/Host
Mark Kilborn/Host
Craig Henighan/Supervising Sound Editor
Lee Gilmore/Sound Editor,
Angelo Palazzo/Lead Sound Editor
Katie Halliday/Sound Editor
_____________________
Mark Kilborn 9:35
You may have answered my question and what you just said, but one of the things I was curious about was having watched all the seasons, each season, it gets more and more intense, but this season felt like maybe two or three steps up in terms of the sound and like you said, even things like door closes. Everything was so detailed and so intense. And I was curious, was that something that naturally happened among you? Is that a direction you received?
Craig Henighan 9:56
Yeah, it’s a bit of both, honestly. I mean, it’s been a natural tendency every every season to sort of amp it up a little bit. And then honestly, Matt and Ross and Dean Zimmerman are picture editor and Casey, you know, his first assistant and editor as well and Kat, the whole picture team, they really get into it, you know, and now they have three seasons, well, then they had three seasons of our stems. So they could go back in and cherry pick, you know, a sting from season one, and then something from season two, but then they will get into stacking them, right. So then when it would show up over to us, it was like something where we really needed to sort of it was a really great roadmap. And the fact is, a lot of it’s our sound. So it’s already Stranger-ized, it’s already our world, you know, so and then it was like the challenge of, you know, maybe using a little bit of that sound, or going back and finding out what elements I might have made in season one that made up the sound that Casey chose. And then extrapolating on that, so it really came from them, it came from Matt and Ross, and it’s just turned into sort of the overall feel of the show, I think, and it’s an energy thing, you know, it’s, it’s, yeah, we use a lot of whooshes, a lot of stings, a lot of impacts, a lot of hits a lot of bass on things. You know, it’s all about an aesthetic that they kind of, you know, when I do spotting sessions with the guys, we sort of talk in sound effects, and we sort of talk about sort of language, they’re big fans of all sorts of different types of genres and everything out there, as you know, so all that comes to play. And this season, I was a little less concerned with making it authentic “80s” I think, you know, like, the first two seasons, I tried to be a little bit more like, Okay, what would the sound effect really be like, in you know, 1984 83 or something, you know, and sort of like, wanted it bigger, but didn’t want to sort of like, go full blown. And I think this season, the storytelling really demanded that the sound sort of follow that sort of aspect. And definitely the music sort of fell in line with that as well. So it all it all sort of like turn it up, still up, and then you got you know, you’ve got Mark, and Will, second season for them mixing so they’re a little bit more comfortable, they’re a little bit more into like maybe opening up a little bit more, we worked a lot from a technical aspect, we worked a lot on the dynamics, how to get the Netflix number, but still make it feel large, and how how loud you’re monitoring in a room versus how loud you know, we’re actually hitting tape, for lack of a better way to describe it. So all those so all of those sort of things come into play a lot of frequencies, a lot of frequencies that we all know that work and don’t work and a lot of layering and a lot of there’s a lot of premix work and a lot of editorial work that go into the tracks before they get to a stage so that Will can kind of be focused creatively versus being mired up in tracks that don’t work, he doesn’t have to go through and sort of mine all this stuff, you can kind of light up the faders and be like, Okay, I see what the guys want. I see what I see the direction, and then they can further refine it. Katie’s there to add stuff if Will is looking for a sound effect, or The Brothers asked for something she’s like, right there, all the way through the backside of the process during the mix. So we have from a sound design aspect, we have a pretty full coverage of from the beginning to the end of of having our finger on all the different aspects of what they want.
Timothy Muirhead 13:12
Okay, well, let’s talk about some of the sounds in the show then. There is one particular sound design element that is known in my house as “the goddamn clock of nightmares”. So the grandfather clock, when your pitch the idea that you have to make this clock sound like the clock of nightmares, and the first couple of times we see it, it’s just a clock sitting there, like it’s all on you. I’m not sure who worked on that element who ever wants to talk about
Craig Henighan 13:36
Yeah, I think it was, it was it was me, I had to come up with something early on. And then the idea specifically of the idea of the pitch envelope that lowers in pitch actually, I did in season two, when hoppers why I can’t remember which episode but Hopper jumps down, it’s at the end of the episode, he jumps down into the tunnels in season two. And it there’s a chime in there that has a pitch envelope that sort of slows down. So that idea had been swimming around in my brain for a little while. And then when the clock sort of showed up and episode one, I wanted to make it crazy, like I wanted I wanted, you know, and I did a version and The Brothers. And I think I think the brothers like well, can it just sound more like a normal clock, you know, because I kind of went really distorted and I really kind of went I really went for it. And I kind of went for because a lot of times I can’t I can kind of one hand and the amount of times that Matt and Ross has said to me, You know what, that’s a little too much. Like they never say that right? You know, so it became like, can you just dial it back a little bit. So it was a question of like, I found a grandfather clock. It’s a Westminster grandfather clock is the core sound of it. And then I layered three different types of tics. One sort of sat in the center and to sort of sat on the left and the right and then the actual chime or the gong, for instance was the gong from the Westminster clock. And then I pitched down maybe six semitones. And then I pitched another version down that had the pitch envelope so it would slow. So every time it would Gong, it would slow down until it hit the next Gong. And then the big thing for me was how to make it feel older, how to make it feel more “Stranger Things”, how to just make you feel creepier. And I hit upon using cello, like a bow with a cello. And if you mute the strings, I have this library of these great sort of cello. I’m a really big fan of like, samples, and samplers that are out there that are instrument oriented sound effects. And so I found this cello library, and it’s just scrapes it’s just bows scraping across the strings, but they’re in a muted fashion. And I honestly just I sort of thought, Okay, well, that could maybe work for the pendulum. And that to me was sort of the the sort of base layers of everything. And then The Duffers sent me a chime that they really liked where they I don’t know where they found it, they found a chime someplace that they enjoyed. So they gave me that and I sort of added a little bit distortion. So when you listen to it, the higher pitched version that has a little bit more bite to it is something that they found in gave to me, and then I certainly just built it. And then you know, when it goes to Will, he has the ability to sort of like have the regular sort of clock version, and then it kind of goes into like, you can lean into the pendulum swing of the cello. You can lean into the pitch envelope of the lower one slowing down. And then I have “the riff” sound, this sort of undulating riff sound is underneath it in a bunch of different scenes as well, which is sort of a callback to the riff, like the red when you see the riffs, or what we refer to as “the rift” when it’s like when the wall was split in half, you know, when you see the red pumping, sort of thing that’s a riff sounded I sort of had to do in season one. So that’s sort of underneath a bunch of different scenes, specifically with Max in the hallway, think of Episode Three. And that’s an idea that Ross threw to me, he was like, can you just somehow put the rift underneath? Again, it’s all about reinforcing the Stranger Things universe and the Stranger Things world.
That was kind of the elements. And I kind of went back a little bit, but it wasn’t, it wasn’t like we had to try 15 different versions, it was something that was, you know, I think we hit upon pretty simply, pretty easily. On some levels. I think there was a little bit of a moment. And I know that Katie and I were sort of like, how are we going to figure this out because she was on the stage saying, you know, the distorted stuff is not really working. But it needs to maybe be a little bit more simpler. So I just reworked up another one quickly. And by the time we get to Fred, in episode two, it sort of settles into like, the elements that you’re sort of used to hearing, you know,
Angelo Palazzo 17:47
well, now it’s become a tick tock, go ahead. No, I was just saying it’s become like a meme and tick tock now, it’s like, taking on all life of its own. I was still telling Craig I was like, this thing is the things become part of the culture now. It’s like, it’s embedded in social media. It’s pretty funny.
Katie Halliday 18:02
Yeah.
Mark Kilborn: Well, yeah, it’s been a meme. And I’ve also seen articles about fan theories that Vecna was there all along. Yeah, they’ve heard chime like sounds and past episodes.
Craig Henighan 18:10
So there Yeah. So that that actually is somewhat true ish. But I certainly didn’t have a timeline of like, okay, and starting in season one. But Craig, you got to think about this clock that’s gonna show up in season four. Nobody. Nobody talked to me about that. But there was definitely things in the music that had I think there’s one in episode one when when Will falls off his bike, you hear a chime, you hear another chime in Billy and season three, you definitely hear the chime Gong with Hopper in the cave. I think that’s kind of cool that people pick up on those sorts of things. It’s kind of like that, you know, if you play Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven backwards or something, right, you’re gonna hear other sounds or something. So yeah, I mean, did they hear it? Or didn’t they hear it will never sort of know?
Timothy Muirhead 18:54
Well, it’s a testament to the popularity of the show that people are watching it so much that they are catching on to these things. So another moment in the show that I thought was a really cool sound moment, is I believe it’s in the last episode of season four, Yuri, the Russian pilot has sabotaged his helicopter, and he’s trying to start it and it’s making these ignition sounds that actually sound a bit like the Millennium Falcon in some ways. But he then stopped they tell him to stop. And he says that it sounds good and vocalizes what it’s sounding like
Clip 19:27
On contrary, those noises. You hear that? It’s very good sign
Timothy Muirhead 19:33
That locked you into kind of the direction you had to go?
Craig Henighan 19:37
That’s all Angelo:
Angelo Palazzo
Yeah, the Yuri airplane stuff witht that helicopter thing I had to kind of go and go by what he was vocalizing and then that whole that whole scene as far as well as the first plane was really just some old school hard, hardcore sound effects. Editing really was it was not a lot of processing with us. I was listening to lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of lots of sounds in going through like World War Two planes and then biplanes, all these different types of find the right elements. And with that one, I did find a, I think it was a P 51 plane from the 1930s or 40s. And it had it had this sort of, and I was always trying to keep it airplane based, nothing like I wasn’t trying to, I didn’t want to, I didn’t want to like dig into like, other type of vehicles. So I was trying to base it in that world. And yeah, so you know, I found some some stuff that was working really nice and the whole thing with with Yuri’s…. my whole idea was to keep make his planes sort of an extension of his character, you know, cause, they’re unpredictable, they’re they’re not trustworthy, they’re like a malfunction they’re kind of quirky they’re kind of fun so it was to me it was everything about his vehicles was kind of a part of him that’s what I was thinking how I was thinking about it. So I was trying to make it fun trying to make it funny and and you know, this these vehicles are his one opportunity to control the environment, you know, so we can kind of set the tone so I was it’s kind of fun to kind of make the thing backfire and find you know, get the inertia starters and all that
Angelo Palazzo 21:17
but yeah, to answer your question, I initially went to get as close to his vocal pitch and his rhythm too and it was a lot of cutting to get the right rhythm and then I would kind of find ways to motivate the other characters because when they’re if you if you remember when they were looking over at the helicopter, something makes them like jump into action. So it was kind of finding ways to make the engine sound like it was either about to completely come undone so they start running over
Yeah, it was a lot of fun. And with the airplane was a similar thing. I remember Craig and I were talking about it. When we first got the scene. It was really just Yuri cranking the the ranch and then bang finding a spot on the hall to bang. And when we first saw it, it was just nothing. It was just him hitting the hull. And Craig was like, Good luck, man. You got to somehow you got to sound like he hit the right thing. And it knows exactly where to hit it up and then boom, it backfires. Everything starts spitting out and then the thing revs up
I actually had a so much fun doing that, because for me, it was also a moment during the show where there’s so much design and creatures and upside down and jumpscares and let’s just cut this and make it like really fun and all that so that was a fun too. And then Lee also helped out on the airplane because Lee got the whole back end of that it was so it was really fun to sort of get it started and then hand it off to Lee and he took it from when the plane nosedives and just begins its descent to crashing. And you could probably talk about that Lee but Lee really does such a great job of that it was it was also some fun humor and all the sounds that we put in there. It was a good time.
Lee Gilmore 23:16
Yeah, the plane crash bottom line is just tried to make it fun. You know, I try to make sure that like every sound that’s in there is intentional, not trying to have too much filler and everything’s trying to tell a story point. And then I do like a lot of pitch ramping on stuff just to try to you know, make it fun basically to have a lot of beats and just not have it be a wall of sound and have it just kind of be as much musical as you can for crashing a plane into the tundra.
Timothy Muirhead 24:37
Plane crash scene is so amazing because it’s like 50 seconds long, and there’s no music in it. It’s all sound effects. And yet, I guess the visuals would help with this but the sound effects make it funny as much as terrifying and scary. There are a lot of really funny moments within this long plane crash sequence. How do you make a plane crash sound funny?
Lee Gilmore 24:57
Well, I don’t know a lot of that stuff. You know, you’ve got like Take your you’ve got to have the you know, the engine cuts out and stuff like that just putting in different types of backfires. But then also finding things that aren’t traditional backfires, like, I think Craig will probably kill me for this. But like, in that example, I had my son making fart sounds with his hands, you know, and it sounds, you know, that kind of thing. But it worked for the engine sputtering out, you know, and it was, it was like, P51 Adjacent, so to speak. And then even with the crashing, you know, you can do a lot of fun things with with different you know, ronks and just timing and just finding like cool rhythms and just having a Bing Bing, boom, boom, boom, boom, you know, bouncing all over the place. And so instead of just boom, crash,
Angelo Palazzo 25:44
yeah, you did a great job with the sub, there was some metal pitching rocking thing, when the plane was going over the trees that I was cracking up, when I first saw it, I was like, I just thought it was so great. It was like just a great opportunity that you found, you’ve just found the right moment to kind of like, bring in some metal bending. And as the plane was going down,
Lee Gilmore 26:03
it’s fun, just to kind of also, you know, pay attention to what the camera moves are doing. And to help you know, if the camera starts panning down, you know, just bring in some big groans that are diving down with it and just pick up on anything that you can to help get into little fun stuff in there without being corny.
Timothy Muirhead 26:20
Now you have to make that your thing. Every project you work on, you have to find a way to put your son’s mouth farts in.
Lee Gilmore 26:27
I’m working on it dude. Dony worry about it…..
Timothy Muirhead 26:30
New parlor game. What’s his next project? Find the mouth fart.
Katie. So you were on the stage for most of this? What was the schedule, like on the stage? Because these are huge. And I’m assuming it was a quick, like quick mix isn’t the right thing. But compared to other 2.5 hour mixes?
Katie Halliday 26:49
Yeah, no, it was I mean, it was pretty quick. I mean, you know, we had a little bit more time than I’d say you’d have for like a typical TV show. But it was still like we felt it for sure. And there’s just, you know, it’s not two and a half hours of people chit chatting, it’s two and a half hours of crazy stuff happening. And at least for that episode, we knew nothing else was coming after it. But for earlier episodes, like seven where it’s like this is an hour and a half. And then we have four more hours coming down the pipe. That was pretty daunting. But yeah, some somehow, somehow we got through it, I think, you know, just getting to work closely with with Mark and Will and The Duffers on the stage, it was really awesome. Because I think it kept us energized to have that sort of excitement and sort of determination to make every thing a moment, make everything and will will kind of send me on my way to do things like that as well. During the mix, it’s like, you know, I’m going to tackle this make this little spot a moment, try to find me something to like, try, I’m trying to think of a moment you know, things like that, especially like when you’re on the stage, like Craig said, the visual effects are updating the music’s coming in, like final music, and we’re putting it all together and it starts to take on its own shape in a different way. Where we start, you know, Will and Mark will both start sort of sifting through everything and like fine tuning it. And then sometimes either the duffers will suddenly have an idea, or Mark and Will will be like, oh, you know, I think this moment needs a little bit more texture for this or I think that we need to pull everything back for this and sort of give it some air and things like that. So it was really cool to sort of sit with them and go through that and also sort of have The Duffers there to give their notes and constantly be like horrified by what I would bring back. Because they would always the big thing with them is always they want to grow more gross stuff or more disturbing stuff. I think the big one this year, Craig knows I think all you guys know but the the scene in episode four, where Victor Creel is talking about World War Two and how he showed this house and sees visions of this baby screaming in a burning cradle. And Matt was like, you know, it’s kind of just sounds not disturbing enough. Like I really want that baby to be distressed. And it’s not, it’s not enough. I’m like, Okay, well let me look and see what I can do. And so I found a bunch of different things, but I landed on baby gorilla that was nursing. And you know, just like regular babies, human babies, they sort of scream and cry and vocalize a lot. And if for some reason just sounds horrific. I don’t know why? So I put that in.
Matt just turned around and looked at me like what was that sound? Like, Oh, it was a baby gorilla. He’s like, what’s wrong with you? what you wanted disturbing?
Angelo Palazzo 30:07
I think our collective respect for Katie notched up another level. I remember hearing that because a few of us took a shot, we use babies, you know, like, and then I remember hearing that. And I was like, what is that? And I called Katie, I was like, did you put this gorilla in? It was so good. It was so perfect. I was like, Man, that’s amazing.
Katie Halliday 30:30
But there’s like a lot of little moments like that, where things just sort of flesh out on the stage in a way that you can’t predict in editorial. And so I was sort of there to help field, anything like that, where it just it’s like, you know, hey, can you grab something for this moment? And that’s a perfect example.
Timothy Muirhead 30:48
Mark, you got something?
Mark Kilborn 30:49
Well, I was gonna pivot a little bit if everybody’s up for it. I’m curious about creature sounds, but not necessarily the most obvious ones. Like when we put up the Twitter question, everybody was like, how do they make recognize voice? Really curious about the voice? I guess I put it in air quotes, “the voice” of the tentacles, the movements, the chittering, some of the stuff they were doing. And I’m curious about the voice of the bats that wouldn’t for whatever reason really stuck out to meas I watch the show.
Craig Henighan 31:16
Who goes first? Because that’s a kind of collective fo sure.
Angelo Palazzo 31:19
Yeah. I mean, I can touch on the vines a bit. Yeah, you know, a lot of it. There’s definitely a lot of a lot of gore, kind of, like vegetable crunching kind of stuff with that. But I did come on to a sound when the whole crew is in the house where they when they get pinned against the wall, that whole scene. Yeah, a lot of it’s sort of really like a lot of heavy wood, manipulating wood creeks that I had had recorded and pitched them down. And then I just would like do these different pitch ramping getting them to chitter and stutter just a bunch of different ways to do that with samplers and just, you know, processing them, so they kind of have a vocal element.
It ended up working out really great, because I would just sort of like I would sort of map it with the moves, you know, as it would like, just as it flew by, it would get these kind of deep wood tones, and blend it with the gore, the way it kind of ended up with, I was going for like a vocal element in there. And one thing with this season, there was a lot of opportunity to bring pitch, and tone into all the design, which you know, as sound designers, we kind of have what we have to kind of avoid that a bit because it conflicts with music. But there were these long stretches all season, where it was just like 10 minutes, almost, it felt like just sound design, like I mean, that’s from the clock to the creature stuff to the to the horror tones. And I mean, I remember Craig and I were talking I was like, man, there’s like, there was like this one scene, he was like eight minutes, no music, and it was like just all all the designed with the tones and stuff. So when it came to creatures, I, I knew I could kind of I could kind of go into that territory. And we’d be alright with that.
Craig Henighan 33:22
The great thing about Lee and I have been talking about getting him on Stranger Things since season one, probably. And finally schedules we’re able to work and one of his first things that we jumped on was sort of a, you know, taking a swing at the demo bats. So if you want to talk a bit about sort of your process with Don, and I can kind of follow up with sort of my thoughts.
Lee Gilmore 33:41
Yeah, day one, Craig said, make all the bat vocals and so welcome. Yeah, he’s like, take a stab at the vines and take a stab at the bats. And it was no pressure just because he set the bar so high with all the creature vocals on the first three seasons. So it was a challenge and the fact that you wanted to, you know, like, Oh, here’s my chance to bring something new. But you’re also in a universe where it all has to play off each other. It has to feel like it’s from you know, connective tissue, that they’re all upside down related. As far as and then we, you know, I did a pass, Craig a pass, Angelo did a pass and then it just kind of all got Frankensteined into what you ended up hearing. So these guys definitely, you know, contributed a ton to that. As far as the bats go, it was a lot of we’ve got like these crazy parrots in Burbank that show up every now and then. So as a recording of some of those, gray parrots, some of the stuff that Craig had already made from previous seasons just to kind of give it that connective tissue that we’re talking about the real money sound with the demo bats besides the grey parrot, barn owls, that kind of thing. They found a some recordings of a duck call being blown through mud, and it just added that kind of flem-y back of the throat, you know sound and just trying to make sure that it didn’t sound like sound effects of the sound like this was all these sounds are coming from like one mouth source. And as far as the vines go, Craig and I did the last Terminator movie A couple years ago. So we really did a lot of kind of liquid metal body horror type stuff through that, that we kind of use as a jumping off point. And really try to make things slimy and gross, but without sounding too wet, if that makes sense, a wet without being wet, because just by itself just doesn’t feel that powerful. And that tentacley and viney and stuff, so just try to make things more slimy than wet. You know, like a lot of mud. We did a lot of recordings that I use of just like refried beans coming out of cans, and that kind of stuff. And then a lot of the bat vocals that you know, I sent off my first batch to Craig and he’s like, ah, you know, it’s not hitting the pocket yet. But we were able to use the rejected bat sounds as kind of vocal sweeteners for the tentacles when they’re retracting. And that really brought him to life just to kind of give him a little vocal element. Like Angelo was saying with the chittering that he did on his passive stuff just starts to make them pop instead of just being like slimy arms.
Mark Kilborn 36:12
Yeah, they felt very alive. They, I mean, I know they are but they felt like they were creatures in their own right. And I remember watching the scenes of the kids exploring the house, my wife and I were sitting on the couch just terrified that we’re going to step on one of these things because they felt like these living things that were everywhere and ready to grab you at any moment. It was really cool stuff.
Angelo Palazzo 36:29
Yeah, it’s at hive mind thing where everything’s alive. And it responds right
Craig Henighan 36:34
Lee forgot to mention how much he is in love with pumpkins and the inside of pumpkin sounds because speaking of like, slimy creepy without too much wet, you know is those pumpkins at the right time of year are sort of perfect for that sort of like ripping sort of sound without it rightly right.
Lee Gilmore 36:55
To get my son’s mouth farts and I gotta get my daughter’s pumpkin sounds like Yeah, we went out to like,
Angelo Palazzo 37:04
those were great.
Timothy Muirhead 37:05
You are just being a good father!
Craig Henighan 37:07
yeah your a good father.
Lee Gilmore 37:10
We went out to Underwood farms, like, gosh, a couple years ago, and you know, like the pumpkins start decaying. So I’m like, I’m going to try to record these. And the pumpkin stuffs great because it’s got this cavity feeling to it. You know, and it’s not just, you know, I’m gonna squish tomatoes in my hands or whatever it’s actually got like, Oh, that feels like it’s internal. To like, the sinewy rips when it starts pulling the husk, I don’t know what you call hull pumpkin Hull? So those kinds of things were like really great for like, when the tentacles were coming out of Vecna’s back or you know, injecting back into his back. That was a lot of my daughter’s pumpkin sounds
Craig Henighan 37:50
cool. Great. So Demobat, like Demobat vocal, sorry, the Demobat vocals and stuff. I mean, my path to that stuff was concentrating on some of the closer the close up ones, my go tos for those sorts of things are sort of cappuccino makers. And I have a really great, I’m in the middle of a renovation here at the house. So I have a lot of really 1960s style closet doors still, that the roller closets, and the things that they roll on, especially back then the plastics have hardened, the sound has just changed so much. So I kinda and I’ve been thinking about this sound for a couple seasons, I finally figured out a place to use them, which was the Demobats. I’m a big fan, as I think everyone here is a big fan. I like performing. If you’re going to record something, you want to get that performance, kind of like what Lee’s talking about the sound in the pumpkin gives you you don’t have to manipulate that much further than a good recording of it because it’s got it right. You know, it’s that whole philosophy of how to capture and record sounds that kind of emote something right away. And for me that this little closet, sort of I could perform these sort of chittery things without having to do too much work with, you know, within ProTools for them. And I think that and then I know that when Angelo heard a bit of that that sort of inspired him to sort of go record a few things around his house. I think all of us sort of like get inspired by how much you hear someone else do something in the world. Like for me, it’s like listening to what what everyone here does in Stranger Things makes me proud on some levels because I didn’t have anybody in season one, you know, that I was sort of bouncing a lot of ideas off of as much as much as you sort of look from then to now and it’s just like, I get inspired by what what everyone here does, you know and that turns me on to something or I hear Angelo does something or Katie does something or Lee. And it becomes like you sort of feed upon this sort of thing you know, and the Demobats was definitely something that was was that sort of world of like oh Lee did something really cool here and an Angelo did this little sound. I’m going to pull a cappuccino maker sound that I really like. We’re going to layer them together. Angelo does a whole pass of bat wings and stuff in sound particles. I think Lee did some stuff as well with the bat went like with all the wings flapping around. I know I did a lot of work in there as well and then panning it all before he even gets to Will, knowing that he’s going to take it to another level. It’s just the team is really firing on all cylinders when it comes to sort of scenes like that…..
Angelo Palazzo 40:37
yeah, it was fun to see everyone’s work get stitched together like that, actually, yeah, it was like, like, nothing got thrown away. You know, it was like, I mean, everything in some way made it in on all these really great ideas that everyone brought. And you know, you would see it all stitched in there and like in and it just became this just great collaboration, it was really fun to see that at the end.
Lee Gilmore 40:59
It was a hive mind of sound effects editors.
Angelo Palazzo 41:04
And I wish Will were always here. But then like hearing the mix, I remember we were talking about this, like, oh my god, like after all this, you know, we’re sitting with these episodes. And they were thinking that sounds great. And then we and then you hear the final mix and what Mark and Will did and it was like, Whoa, it’s like, how there’s like artists, how they’ll paint the stuff together. And it’s just it’s really fun to see that.
Katie Halliday 41:27
I wouldn’t want to speak on Will’s behalf. But But I do know just from watching him, it was really, it’s really cool to see how, you know, like, the Demobats is a great example where there’s all this wonderful work. And he just sort of taking that with all the elements together, finds a way to give it its moment and sort of make moments out of every single pass of like every every shot has its own little, you know or scene has a rhythm and a moment that he’s able to sort of carve it out and give it justice, which is such an exciting thing to see and effects makes you do.
Timothy Muirhead 42:02
Well, we’ve used up your entire lunch hour now. So thank you very much for talking with us. Congratulations on the success of the show and the kind of universal acclaim your work has done. I loved the moment in the last episode where Max is in the prom room, and the balloons start exploding blood. I nearly crapped my pants first time that happened. There’s a million moments like that that I wanted to talk to you about. But I don’t want to take up any more your time. So thank you very much. It was great speaking with you, and I hope we can have you on again sometime soon.
Craig Henighan 42:35
Great. Thank you.
Timothy Muirhead 42:41
Well, that wraps up part two of our Stranger Things coverage. If you somehow missed part one with the dialogue team on the series, do yourself a favor and go to the episode before the one you are listening to number 194. And check it out. It’s a super fun talk. I’m a big fan of Stranger Things. And these episodes sounded so great, because one of the crew on the series actually edited and mixed these episodes for us. Korey Pereira, one of the guests on the dialogue focused episode kindly helped us out with these. Thank you, Korey. That was so great of you. Korey took me out for an epic Mexican food dinner when I was last in Austin. So in addition to helping out on these episodes, I will forever be in his debt for that great food. Stay tuned for next week when we have another great episode with the sound team from MoonKnight. It’s another can’t miss episode. Well, until then I’ve been your host Tim Muirhead. Thanks for listening to Tonebendors. One thing you can do to help us out is spread the word, tell anyone you know that works in sound or is interested in it. We’d really appreciate it. Okay, catch you next time.
Narrator 43:41
Tonebenders is produced by Timothy Muirhead, Rene Coronado and Teresa Morrow. Theme music is by Mark Straight. Send your emails to info at tonebenderspodcast.com. Follow us on Twitter via @thetonebenders and join Tonebenders Podcast on Facebook. Support this podcast. You can use our links when you shop at Amazon or b&h or leave us a tip. Just go to tonebenderspodcast.com and click the support button. Thanks for listening.
Timothy Muirhead 44:11
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Mark Kilborn 44:30
May I ask one I think really really fast question just because of a bunch of Twitter people we had five people on Twitter asked What Flanger plugin you guys were using. People really love the sound of that for some reason is that like can you give a five second answer to
Angelo Palazzo 44:44
that what Flanger
Mark Kilborn 44:47
is probably nothing special. I just I coming up. I’ll probably use different ones but
Craig Henighan 44:53
definitely on the front. Yeah, on the front side. I think you know I use everything from you know metal Flanger to some flangers within some of the waves, I like the GTR, wave stop box sort of stuff where you can stack a few. And then the standard avid flanger. But I think the one that most people are hearing is something that I think that Will and Martin Katy probably cooked up on the stage because they were trying to figure out how to make the vines on Vecna, his slimy, feel a little bit, a little bit more. You know, right. I think that’s the one that most people picked up on this season. The stuff that I do, and I think they enjoy the ice a little bit more subversive in terms of flanging. But I definitely think that it may be you know, If Katie, you want to give give away what what it was, you know, I know they were really into Valhalla this year with the delay.
Katie Halliday 45:41
Obviously, that’s not a flanger. But they used quite a bit marked as well for for dialogue and things like that. As far as the flanger, I mean, we’ll brought it up to me. And that’s one of the again, one of those things where it was like, he would give me something and I take it and run with it. And he’s like, here’s this moment with Vecna and everything’s on fire, and they’re throwing Molotov cocktails and all this and it sounds fantastic. But just give us a little bit of edge. Like, we threw a little more flanger and just to just, you know, feel like it’s moving a little more and having a little more fun. Unfortunately, I don’t know specifically which one he used. I’ve just been using Flanger from Pro Tools in in Pro Tools.
Mark Kilborn 46:23
That is the best answer anyway, “Hey it is just the one that you have!”
Katie Halliday 46:24
Anyway, because yeah, I would adjust it according to whatever sound I was using basically. So it wasn’t really a one size fits all, but I would just sort of cater it
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