Avoiding Spectral Logjams

March 31, 2024 - Randy Thom

Avoiding Spectral Logjams Having designed, edited, and mixed the sound for hundreds of action sequences, I can testify that the biggest problem to overcome is usually having too much so...

Sound Design and AI

April 30, 2024 - Randy Thom

Sound Design and Artificial Intelligence As I write this in late April of 2024, artificial intelligence has not had a significant impact on sound effects design for film, video, or game...

Making It Real

March 28, 2024 - Randy Thom

Making It Real and Making It Feel When I was working on the Bob Zemeckis film Cast Away it was very difficult coming up with sounds for the waves on the beach when the Tom Hanks charact...

Storytelling Functions of Sound

February 29, 2024 - Randy Thom

When someone asks “What does sound do in a movie” most of us are at least a little confused about how to answer that question. Obviously both music and sound effects can make you feel a c...

Exploding Bridges and Bowling Pins

January 31, 2024 - Randy Thom

In Sam Wasson’s fantastic new book about Francis Coppola and American Zoetrope, he quotes Walter Murch ruminating on the sound of colliding bowling pins. I remember those pins well. When ...

The Connoisseur of Mistakes

January 03, 2024 - Randy Thom

Great art depends on accidents and mistakes.Most non artists think that a work of art begins with an imaginary, grand design, which is then made real by using the techniques the artist ha...

On a Roll

November 30, 2023 - Randy Thom

It’s a little-known fact that the sound of a rolling object is caused by impacts with the surface it is rolling on. The more frequent the impacts, the smoother the sound. This is even the...

Why Microphone Placement Trumps Microphone Type

October 30, 2023 - Randy Thom

Placement vs Type In the world of audio recording, the debate over microphone type and brand has raged a hundred years, largely fueled by individual mic manufacturers’ and retailers’ de...

Artistic versus Technical Creativity

September 29, 2023 - Randy Thom

Differences between Artistic Creativity and Technical Creativity I recently posted a piece on social media in which I talked about how little respect is given to sound teams on movie an...

The Coolest Audio Tools

August 31, 2023 - Randy Thom

In the early years of work, most of us are obsessed with tools, so obsessed that they become the focus of our attention, rather than sound itself. The desire to acquire the best tools, to...

Designing Creature Vocals Part 3

July 31, 2023 - Randy Thom

Part 3 Making creature vocals using recordings of animals and birds often requires multiplesources, sometimes multiple species, in order to cover the range of emotions needed. For examp...

Designing Creature Voices Part 2

June 29, 2023 - Randy Thom

Part 2 Picking up where I left off in Part One, the emotional content of a creature vocal is almost always its most important characteristic… more important than how technically good th...