Randy Thom, Oscar-winning Director of Sound Design at Skywalker Sound, on The Midnight Sky, Apocalypse Now, The Right Stuff, The Empire Strikes Back, and more

Randy Thom feels it's important for the sound elements of a film to
be present right from the start, at the script writing stage. Sound
is an important tool for a filmmaker because it “sneaks into the
side door to your brain” and enhances the emotional impact of the
film. As George Lucas once told Randy, sound is 50% of the movie
experience. After working in the sound department on over 150
projects and winning two Oscars, Randy has helped elevate motion
picture sound into an art form, and is often involved in the
creative process right from the beginning. He thinks it's important
for the sound production mixer to be as involved in preproduction
with the director as the DP and production designer are, in order
to think about the sound possibilities within the movie. Randy
stumbled into sound design later in life, starting out in college
radio, then moving to the Bay Area in the 1970's to work
professionally in public radio. Once he saw the movie Star Wars, it
changed his life, and Randy decided he really wanted to transition
from radio into film. Through a friend, he managed to get in touch
with Walter Murch, who worked as a sound designer at Francis Ford
Coppola's American Zoetrope Studios. He sat in on a remixing
session of American Graffiti, and Walter Murch next hired him to
work on Apocalypse Now as a field sound recordist, where he spent
his time recording sound for a year and a half. Randy began working
in sound at a time when Northern California filmmakers George
Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola and Phil Kaufman had a shared
philosophy that fresh sounds should be collected for each project.
Each movie should have its own sound style, which can be difficult
to articulate to a director, much as a cinematographer talks to the
director about the visual style. Sound styles are audio look books
for your ears. For example, when Randy created the auditory
experience for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, he had to think
about what elements would create the sounds of magic, which had to
be based in the natural world. Things disappear and reappear
through the transporter in a Star Trek movie as well, but the sound
style is distinctly electronic and digital. The sounds used for a
transporter would be jarring in a Harry Potter movie. After
Apocalypse Now, Randy was asked to record sound effects for Star
Wars Episode 5: The Empire Strikes Back with supervising sound
editor Ben Burtt. They needed to find the right sound elements for
the Imperial Walkers. Randy found metal factories through the phone
book, and was able to go record metal sheer noise from the factory
in person. The metal noises Randy recorded comprise about 90% of
the Imperial Walker sound effect. For the Robert Zemeckis movie
Contact, sound plays an important role. Jodie Foster's character, a
scientist listening for alien life in the universe, finally hears
an alien signal. Randy and Zemeckis had to decide what that
extraterrestrial signal would sound like. As the sound designer,
Randy had input in preproduction early on and gave Zemeckis his
take on how much sound to use in the visual sequences traveling
through space. There was little dialog in the film The Midnight
Sky, so Randy could collaborate closely with composer Alexandre
Desplat. Randy integrated radio signal sounds with the score, so
that it would sound interesting but not conflict harmonically with
the music. For the dramatic ice breaking sequence in the film, they
knew they needed an organic, natural sound, so he accessed the
sound library at Skywalker Sound, using several types of ice
breaking, even reaching out through contacts to find sound
recordists who could get the raw recordings of breaking ice that
were then layered and pitch manipulated to help them stand out and
not just become background noise. You can see The Midnight Sky
streaming on Netflix. Read Randy Thom's tips for sound design on
his blog: https://randythomblog.wpcomstaging.com/