Tonebenders Podcast

While in Los Angeles I was able to get 3 of the city's busiest sound effects recordists together, in the same room. We had a talk about their careers and some of their adventures in capturing the sounds for Hollywood's biggest films. John Paul Fasal, Charlie Campagna & Eric Potter have recorded jets, race cars, and many more iconic sounds! They discuss how they approach different projects, what th...

House Of The Dragon is one of the biggest shows on TV and the sound of the show is one of the big reasons for that success. Al Sirkett (Re-Recording Mixer/Supervising Sound Editor), Barnaby Smyth (Foley Artist /Foley Supervisor), Ruth Knight (Sound Editor) and Doug Cooper (Re-Recording Mixer) joined me for an in-person interview to talk about the immense challenge of building the world of Westeros...

Arcane is a ground breaking animated series, especially when it comes to how the show used music and sound design, working together, all the way through the process. In this special conversation from the Riot Games Campus, in California, Supervising Sound Editors (Eliot Connors & Brad Beaumont) sat down with the series composers (Alex Seaver and Alex Temple) to talk about how each of their contrib...

Hospitals are really hard to create sound design for. The walla and general soundscape of a hospital is very different than any other location, because they are dense but not necessarily loud. Plus there are lots of medical machines that need to be accounted for. In the new HBO emergency room drama, The Pitt, this challenge is amplified as the show takes place entirely inside an especially intense...

With "From the World of John Wick: Ballerina" hitting theatres, it is a good time to talk to the sound team that, for some, have been working on the John Wick films for over a decade. Supervising Sound Editor Mark Stoeckinger, Re-Recording Mixers Andy Koyama & Casey Genton and Sound Designer Luke Gibleon discuss designing massive gun sfx, the challenge of each film getting bigger that the last, th...

I was able to get 4 busy dialog editors all in a room together, to discuss the highs and lows of working on dialog for films, series and games. They talk about the tools they use, the road blocks they regularly encounter and the ways they use problem solving and creativity to get clean dialog tracks for each project they work on. Sophie Mapplebeck, Louise Burton, Robbie Mann & Michael Maroussas sh...

Penny Harold and Andy Lange tell us about their work as the re-recording mixers, on Season 2 of the hit Netflix animated series, Arcane. This is a show with intense dialog, massive sound design, soaring songs, and a bombastic score. Wranglng all of these elements into a cohesive whole, was a fun challenge. Arcane's groundbreaking artwork and visual style, made it a tall order to match that level w...

While in London, Tonebenders was invited to Wave Studios in Soho, to talk to Johnnie Burn and Paul Davies. I brought them together, to talk about their varied approaches to finding the "sonic voice" of each project they work on. They discuss the importance of a good relationship with a director, spotting sessions, pouring over a script well in advance, identifying the ambitions of a film and lots...

I love a good book about sound design or other aspects of the audio post industry. Think of this episode as a summer reading guide for the audio nerd. The authors of 3 recent publications about sound, get together to talk about their books, how they decided to write them and how to best use them as resources. Emi Paternostro talks about his book "The Pro Tools Post-Audio Cookbook", Gina Zdanowicz...

After over 300 episodes talking mostly to sound editors and re-recording mixers, let's get to know what the people we work in parallel with, are going through in their gigs. Tim talks to two successful music supervisors, Jody Colero and Michael Perlmutter, about the trials and road blocks that they encounter overseeing the music in high end series & films. They discuss how important a good music e...

For the film Becoming Led Zeppelin, a documentary about the formative years of the group, the sound of the band was one of the most important elements. Supervising Sound Editor Nick Bergh had to figure out how to get the best possible audio quality from source material that was over half a century old. From tracking down quarter inch tapes in Australia, to finding the perfect pressings of albums,...

The Listeners is a BBC series, that is not an easy project for any sound team to take on. The plot revolves around a mysterious sound that only a very small number of characters can hear, but it is intense and intrusive for those that can experience it. Over the coarse of the 4, hour long episodes, the ones that are being effected by the mysterious hum search each other out and try to band togethe...

A few weeks ago Tonebenders' host, Tim Muirhead, flew to Los Angeles for a bunch of adventures with the sound design community in LA. From hosting interviews on the red carpet, at the Cinema Audio Society Awards, to attending the MPSE Golden Reels, to doing a bunch of interviews for future episodes of the show, Tim was busy while he was in town. By far the best night of the trip was The Tonebender...

Tonebenders was able to do an episode with every sound team, that has been nominated in the Best Sound category, at this years Oscars. So with the award show only a few days away, this week we are going to take listen to a selection of each interview, to try to get an idea of what was done on each film, to lead to it's nomination. First up we will hear from Paul Massey, Ted Caplan and Don Sylveste...

Guest host Mark Kilborn jumps in to talk with the sound team behind the amazing journey of survival through Viking time period Iceland, in the game Senua's Saga: Hellblade II. This adventure from publisher Ninja Theory, follows our main character as she unknowingly deals with psychosis, including many auditory hallucinations. The audio team had their hands full to translate these hallucinations fr...

Dune Part 2 had a lot to live up to after the success of Dune Part 1. The sequel has a bunch of new audio challenges to solve, as it is about as epic a film as there has ever been. Supervising Sound Editor Richard King and Re-Recording Mixers Doug Hemphill & Ron Bartlett, sit down to talk about how they prepared for the challenges this film presented them and what it is like to work with director...

Join the composer, sound editorial team and re-recording mixers of director Chris Sanders emotional animated feature, The Wild Robot. The film has been nominated in both the Best Sound and the Best Score categories at this years Oscars. So we brought together the whole team to talk about how they found the "sonic voice" of the movie. Through unique instrumentation, in parallel with a full orchestr...

The Lifetime Achievement recipient at the M.P.S.E. Golden Reels this year will be Greg Hedgepath. He and I got to sit down and go over his career from his start in Washington DC with NPR, through his time at Lucas Films/Skywalker Ranch to his current hometown in Los Angeles, as a busy sound editor on films like Straight Out of Compton, Speed, Twister, Higher Learning, Blade and many, many more. To...

Oscar winning production sound mixer Simon Hayes sits down with Tim, for an in-person, one on one talk. He describes his goal of a world where there is no distinction between the production sound team and the audio post team. Everyone is working as one big crew to get the best possible sound for each project, through collaboration and open communication. Simon spins wonderful stories, going all th...

Robert Egger's latest film, Nosferatu, is loaded with dread. That feeling of dread is largely delivered by the amazing sound design created by Damian Volpe (Sound Designer, Re-recording Mixer & Supervising Sound Editor), Steve Little (Supervising Sound Editor, Dialog Editor & Supervising ADR Editor) and the rest of the sound team. Egger's instructions were to base everything on organic sounds, so...

Director Steve McQueen's new film, Blitz, is full of stunning visuals. The audio team was tasked with coming up with sounds that could match, and often exceed, the beauty of the images they are accompanying. The war surrounding our main characters is often happening off screen, as the bombs are raining down as a catalyst for the human drama happening in underground shelters and tube stations. The...

Gladiator II is the massive sequel to director Ridley Scott's award winning original film, released in 2000. This time everything is raised up a few notches though. The sound team of Paul Massey (Dialog/Music Re-Recording Mixer) Danny Sheehan (Supervising Sound Editor), Matt Collinge (Supervising Sound Editor & SFX/Foley Re-Recording Mixer) and Stéphane Bucher (Production Sound Mixer) had to equal...

Wicked has music that swings from massive orchestral pieces, to delicate underscore. There is sound design adding comedy, tension and fear. On top of all that, there is the singing, recorded live on set, that really brings out the emotions of the story. Production sound mixer Simon Hayes tells us how they captured the vocals on a busy set and supervising sound editors Nancy Nugent Title & John Mar...

The 1st annual Bendie Awards featuring winners in categories like "Guest of The Year", "Sound Sequence of The Year", "Best Subtle Sound Detail", "Favourite Movie of the Year" and "Most Listened To Episode of the Year". Plus Tim gives a run down of all the amazing things that happened for Tonbenders in 2024. This episode is sponsored by Sound Ideas new Golf Sound Effects library: https://www.sound-...

Wind is hard to do sound design for.... really hard.  What can sound like a huge powerful gust, when you are out in the world with a microphone, is often a major let down when you get back to the studio to listen. So I jumped at the chance to talk with the Twisters sound team to learn how they tackled the winds in this tornado focused film. Supervising sound editors Bjorn Schroeder & Al Nelson are...