Never Stop Candy Bang
Never Stop Candy Bang is frequent creative chat with family, friends and industry artists about Storytelling, Music, Sound and Vision by Pete Candeland and Sophie Sound.
Never Stop Candy Bang
Never Stop Candy Bang - Ep. 09 Sophie Sound goes INDEPTH with Mike James Gallagher
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In this episode, Sophie Sound meets Mike James Gallagher of InDepth Sound Design for a one-on-one conversation about how to approach conversations in the studio and how to get people to open up. InDepth Sound Design is a video series created by Mike that explores the often overlooked role of sound in filmmaking. Inspired by DVD bonus features, especially those from Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Gallagher started out by breaking down iconic film sounds and revealing how multiple layers of audio are combined to create powerful and realistic effects.
Sophie: “I just had to know more about it.”
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Hi everyone, it's me, Sophie Sound, and this is the first special Sophie Sound episode, solely on sound. I'm talking with sound content master Mike Gallagher, who creates and hosts his in-depth videos. In each episode, he breaks down the visionary techniques of the superstars of the sound world and interviews them in the studio as they work and how they go about their art. I wanted to get to know him, the man behind the in-depth creation, and how he goes about finding out about the secrets of the industry's best. Keep listening to the end as I talk with Mike about his first life and living art exhibition. Here we go. Drumroll, please. Introducing the one and only Mike Gallagher.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, I thank you for taking the time. I I I told you before that I know the stuff since I study sound. And everyone knows the in-depth videos.
SPEAKER_09Really? Yes. And oh wait, tell me and then tell me about yourself. So you you were studying sound. When you say you were studying sound three years ago, do you mean you've since graduated and now you're working? Or you've been studying sound since three years ago?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, so I've been studying, I went to a university in Germany during the pandemic. There, I mean, you cover sound design and it's just like, yeah, it's like you you scratch on the surface what sound design is and blah blah blah. Do you have to make presentations and stuff like that about sound and sound design and what is it and this and that? We used in like almost everyone used the in-depth um videos to this is in Germany. That's in Germany, yeah.
SPEAKER_09I love I love that. I love hearing that. That's so cool. It's huge. Do you remember what videos uh in particular?
SPEAKER_01Um, I think the saving private Ryan point of view is great for sound because it allows you to go inside somebody's head.
SPEAKER_05Remember the Venom one with the creature?
SPEAKER_07I am Venom and you are mine. I am Venom and you are mine.
SPEAKER_06So you can hear it's already got a lot of the character of Venom's voice. It just doesn't sound as big, it doesn't sound wet, it doesn't really sound that exotic.
SPEAKER_05So I wonder like, how does how is it to be surrounded by these people and what does it give you for your own profession?
SPEAKER_09Well, I think you'll find the the origin interesting to know because you mentioned three videos that are kind of funny. So those three videos are kind of how I got my start. Um, let's see. Straight so you mentioned Saving Private Ryan um Venna. So it's interesting. Lord of the Rings is one of my first videos that I created, and that is all that's all DVD commentaries. So I've never met Dave Farmer, I've never met Ethan Vander Ryan or anything anything like that. So I just was somebody in 2003, whenever those, whenever that uh that DVD set came out, you know, it was like Lord of the Rings, Fellowship of the Rings, six DVDs. That was like my film school. And my favorite, I mean, when I wasn't even quite sure that I I I always loved sound. Um, and actually those DVDs is what like really it's a very like specific memory of me watching a seven-minute featurette on sound design and then never wanting it to end. And out of all the featurettes on that DVD, that was the one where I was like, why isn't this two hours long? You know, I would watch this forever. And um so only a few years ago is when I decided to like start archiving that material so that people like you could see it because I think it's hard to find these this physical media with all these amazing featurettes. So I kind of kind of started, funny enough, with like Terminator 2, because that was one of my most influential films and like DVD sets with featurettes on it, had some really great sound design featurettes that I wanted to archive. So if you look up in-depth sound design in Terminator 2, you'll see a lot of material from that DVD set, and that sound designer was Gary Rydstrom, who also did Saving Private Ryan. And there's a talk that Gary Rydstrom did in 2014 that I've always loved. And he's just I I forget what the event was, but it was recorded funny enough with really terrible sound, but the information was really great, and that's what I based my saving private Ryan video on. So I've never met Gary and uh I just found this this talk, and it's so good, it just it needs to be presented in a different way to be more palatable for students and everything because a taught an hour-long talk is great, and also unfortunately, it doesn't have video associated with it. Yeah, so as a little aside, I painstakingly just listened to the tracks and I synced everything by eye watching the scenes. He doesn't in that talk, he does not talk about what's on screen. I'm just listening to like literally gunshot rhythms and going, okay, and then watching the scene and listening for those gunshot rhythms to sync it up. That's Tom Hanks doing ADR basically. That's so I'm like painstakingly recreating this talk and representing it in a different, more visual way with the chapters and everything, so that people can you know consume it easier. This is foley sound effects of equipment, footsteps, and sand.
SPEAKER_05How long did that take?
SPEAKER_09Well, I mean, that's the thing you may have noticed that those videos, I haven't uploaded a video like that in a long time because they take weeks.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_09Um, and at some point I just then we'll probably transition into this other part of internet, nice, uh, which is the shorter videos. But um, but uh yeah, so literal weeks and some of the saving privy ryan one probably took a month.
SPEAKER_11Okay.
SPEAKER_09Um, but these were like dream videos of mine, and they were highly influential films of mine as well, for especially for sound.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_09So I really, really wanted to archive as much of that kind of material from the 90s and early 2000s that I could.
SPEAKER_05I yeah, but that's what I like about it so much because that's what I try to do with Sophie Sound as well. That's what I try to do with my tiny platforms, but still it's it's just always trying to find different ways to talk about sound because I I I'm I would consider myself as a geek and I can go through an hour of um very geeky, how do I do every plugin setting? But it takes me when someone records 45 minutes of how they do it, it's gonna take me at least four hours to do it. So you need a lot of things and you need a lot of time to really follow and do it yourself. So yeah. But I've so what's what's your unique way of preparing then? Let's say you walk into the studio of Mark Mangini or Richard King, and what we like we see the end product, but what don't we see? Like, how do we like how do we start until you sit down and ask those questions and then choose the clips?
SPEAKER_09I like to talk to people about what they like to talk about. So, of course, I have my own selfish questions and things like that, and I and I will, you know, because I am already familiar with Mark's work, I am already familiar with Richard's work. Um so I'll have my own questions going in, just kind of from my own experience. But really, I talk to them about what they like to talk about. And the other cool thing is, is we can just bring the film in. And instead of me asking questions, which which I have done with Mark and I have done with Richard, where it's just a talking head interview format. Um, funny enough, it's just it's not my preferred way of watching sound design content or making it, is just getting them into a chair and shining a light on them and going, hey, what you know, like what how did you make this sound? I I actually enjoy more this format of like, let's get the movie in front of them. Let's just kind of like I love how they'll they'll just kind of like start scrolling through it and it'll start, they'll go like, oh yeah, oh yeah. It starts getting them out of their head of like what they prepped for their publicity tour or what they used to talk about, you know, whenever somebody asks them a question about inception.
SPEAKER_08This is such a specific act visually to be like, okay, the city needs to sound like it's folding over.
SPEAKER_07You know, it's yeah, and actually, this is the first bit of the film that I worked on. I was in Australia mixing a peer rear film, the film that I did before uh inception. And Chris was working on the trailer here, and I put this shot in the trailer. So he has to come with some sound, and over the course of a week and evenings on my laptop, I made most of this sound for the rear. I actually did I had no idea how that what that should sound like, obviously. You know, it it could it could easily have been 10 other things and been really cool. Um did you at least have speakers or were you working on headphones?
SPEAKER_08Headphones, yeah. Oh my god.
SPEAKER_09I love how they just start getting these memories. I just love these random little stories that they've never told. And um, you know, I yeah, I do my prep work. I mean, look, it's kind of easy with those guys because it's like, well, what did they win Oscars for?
SPEAKER_10Yeah.
SPEAKER_09Um, what are the iconic scenes from those films? I'm gonna watch those. And then I actually prep Pro Tool sessions. Well, funny enough. Okay, those that that's a bad example. Uh for Richard King, he actually pulled up the original sessions from Dunkirk and Inception. And I had to, luckily, Richard has an assistant that can do it for us, but we he pulled up the entire sessions with all the units. We were, you know, you can see in our videos, we're going through specific sounds. Um, with Mark, he pulls up the stems. He doesn't have the edit sessions. Um, or he does, but it's like takes a lot of work to prep that stuff. So we actually can pull out the stems and watch uh, you know, watch it with sound effects only and things like that. I love that stuff. Um so yeah, I mean, look, I just remember what the what the iconic scenes are, what what they want Oscars for, but then I really kind of like try to figure out what their favorite parts of the film are.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_09And like, what do you remember? What are your core memories on this film? And it's just so easy because they can pull it up and they can hear the sound and then they can walk me through how they were created, things like that.
SPEAKER_05So yeah, it's for them probably also intuitive when it's when it's something they get from their memory, and then it kind of re-ignites that memory or that funny moment, and it becomes just natural and flawless in a way.
SPEAKER_09Yeah. Yeah, and it's more visceral than like if if I like I said, shine a light on them and ask them, how did you do the sound? And there's no visual reference, there's no oral reference. Um you know, then it just doesn't come naturally, but but as you can see on those videos, it comes way more naturally, as you mentioned.
SPEAKER_05I yeah, it looks all just really fun. Like you just want to sit there.
SPEAKER_09Yeah, it's super fun. Uh I feel like super blessed to like have come into the situation where Pro Sound Effects was really interested in my videos and they sell libraries for Mark and Richard. And uh what's so cool is that they were able to tie a budget, a marketing budget to making these geeky videos that are also really fun and sexy. Um, so it it's some stars aligned there. I feel like that's like a reason more of these videos don't exist. Um another thing I should tell you is that my inspiration comes from like there's a lot of really good music content out there, and it's just so more, so much more ubiquitous, and people are so much more interested in music that you can watch music's content and be like, how do I transpose that for sound design content? So, and I'm in the middle of doing that right now, but I will say that sitting at the desk with Richard and Mark and Johnny Byrne and Peter Alriksen, that comes from watching music content where a producer will sit with another engineer or producer at the mix desk and listen to the stems of like a Nirvana song or a Foo Fighter song. And then you start seeing the engineer or the producer of those songs light up because they're like, oh man, because they they haven't heard the guitar stem in a while by itself or the bass by itself. And as soon as they hear it, they they're transported right back to recording that bass sound, recording that guitar sound, mixing that drum sound. Yeah, and it just triggers memories that they'd never they haven't thought of in like two or three decades.
SPEAKER_11Yeah.
SPEAKER_09So when I saw that magic happen, I was like, I need to do this with films. Like, this is almost even more interesting because you can break down a single sound into 15 other sounds, yeah. And I don't think people even know that this one moment in a film is actually so many different recordings layered together. Yeah, and kind of revealing that is like really, it's almost like you know, there's that video with me and Richard King, and he's there's chalkboard nails on a chalkboard for jets flying by or these planes flying by. And just people would have never known that.
SPEAKER_05No. Never. I think also it's I think also because these are the tentpole moments of movies, you also often don't need to explain too much outside of that moment because that already gives you enough information as someone that doesn't work with sound.
SPEAKER_09Yeah, we're exploiting people's like nostalgia and memories, and that that's another thing about kind of like figuring out what those iconic moments are because you're gonna get the most bang for your buck. Um, with you know, you know, I started my talk with Mark, you know, we go right into Raiders of the Lost Ark.
SPEAKER_00The funniest story is the time my partner Richard Anderson lit himself on fire, and we affectionately refer to that recording as the incredible burning man. We were recording sound effects for Raiders of the Lost Ark, and there's a sequence when someone lights the whiskey on fire and it travels down the bar, and Richard and I wanted fire sounds for that. So, like two complete rubes, we created a fire inside a recording studio, a patently bad idea. I'm stirring a can of Sterno, Richard is shooting benzene into it, and the fire, just like in the movie, actually, the fire travels up the stream of benzene, the can Richard is holding in his hand ignites, it explodes, and benzene goes all over Richard, and he's a man on fire. But in true field recordist fashion, he didn't say a word while he was on fire because he knew we were rolling tape the whole time, and uh ran about the room like a chicken with its head cut off until our partner Steve put him out with a fire extinguisher.
SPEAKER_05One thing that I always try to figure out, no matter which sound supervisor or sound person in the industry I meet, or that's one of the things that I ask myself generally with sound. How can you make sound sexy? Because sound is such a hidden thing, and then it is very technical, and you don't really have those um like areas where you can make cool photos or you know, like any other profession when it comes to entertainment, everything is so Instagrammable and photographable and stuff like that. And I think that's also a reason why a lot of people, for example, want to become, I don't know, work in marketing, or you know, like it's a very easy entry point for a new generation because of its Instagrammability and stuff like that. And in-depth for me is the one and only source where I say it's it, you know, you make it look sexy in a way, you know, sexy, let's say. But you know what I mean. It looks just yeah, yeah, it looks appealing and it looks juicy, and it looks like the sound design sounds. It just is a really good perfect example of that sexiness that you kind of want.
SPEAKER_09Yeah, yeah. Thank you. Uh, because that's exactly what I was trying to do, and I'm still trying to do. Um yeah, I I I guess I noticed I would um first of all, I consumed just decades of of sound design featurettes and content, and all the blogs, and the blogs would link to other videos. And so I just watched, you know, hour days of sound design content, and I realized like, oh, this little section is the sexy part, and this little section is the sexy part. Why don't I pull all that stuff out and just compile it into one just stream of just pure the best possible stuff that's the easiest to consume? And so I did that early on. So I I did that, as I mentioned, with the Gary Rydstrom talk. You know, no one's gonna sit through uh a lot of people are gonna sit through an hour of Gary Rydstrom talking, but I want it to appeal to the people that wouldn't sit through an hour of Gary Rydstrom talking.
SPEAKER_11Exactly.
SPEAKER_09And same thing with the Soundworks Collection videos. Um, I don't know if are you familiar with Soundworks Collection?
SPEAKER_11Mm-hmm.
unknownYes.
SPEAKER_09There's so kind of in that transition of like DVD featurettes and then kind of the internet, YouTube, all that kind of stuff. In the middle was these Soundworks Collection kind of videos that were done for marketing the films. And they were just like nine minutes, whatever. But always in those nine minutes, there was like 30, 45 seconds of like, you know, Richard King sitting at his computer, and you see the stems of Inception, and he plays the soloed sound effects, and you're like, whoa, you know, so there's nine minutes of people talking, which is great, and I loved it. But then there was something that I was like, oh, I want to show this to my friend that doesn't do sound, or I want to show this to my mom, and she has no idea what the hell I do for a living. So, you know, that those were the things that like clicked with me that I was like, you know what? I need to figure out how to take just these things and be able to present it to people that don't really care about what I do. But then after I do show them, they're gonna be like, Whoa, you what you do for a living is really, really cool.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's so weird. Every time I talk to someone about I'm working in sound, the first thing people come up is that, oh, it's the Foley thing with like the footstep and like and it's with the with the smashing the pumpkin stuff.
SPEAKER_09It's yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. That's not no, so foley artists. So when you were talking about sound design like not being you know inherently sexy or obviously sexy, that's why foley artists are so popular, like on because it's easy social media, you know, because it's because it is, it looks crazy, and people have been kind of like parodying and glorifying foley for a long time, ever since somebody discovered that people were like you know, beating up couches in their in a in a in a recording studio, yeah. People are like, whoa, that's that's pretty crazy, you know? Yeah, that's um, but a lot of the other aspects of sound design sitting in front of a computer for you know hours on end, not sexy, but we do one cool thing about sound design over Foley is Foley is mainly like human movements and things like that. And you know, in sound design, it's spaceships and what worse, you know, in aircraft and things you cannot record as a human movement in a in a Foley studio, and there are still really, really cool objects and things that we do to record for sound design that we're gonna edit later that I don't think we've exploited enough. Like we we haven't talked about all these cool things that we do on a grand scale to do these massive things. I mean, Carrie Rydstrom playing dinosaur sounds on a keyboard. Uh, we need like more of that stuff, you know? Like, yeah, it's not enough.
SPEAKER_05But but again, I think that's why, but it needs platforms like or like the formats that you're creating, because I guess also you you don't just do this by yourself. You probably have other like you need a equipment, you need good stuff to make it look like what do you mean I don't do what by myself? Like, do you ever like when you go, for example, to Mark into the studio, do you have a like someone that does a camera or you set it up by yourself?
SPEAKER_09Or yeah, yeah. So some of those videos definitely I have a full crew, yeah, and there's the budget, and then some of the videos I walk I do walk in by myself.
SPEAKER_05Oh sick.
SPEAKER_09Um so it ranges, like what's that?
SPEAKER_05Which one, for example, did you just Walk in.
SPEAKER_09Well, I mean, you can tell, like it's the uh uh the Peter Albertson, the Evil Dead Rise. Um, I don't know if you've seen those videos.
SPEAKER_11Yeah.
SPEAKER_09Um, you can tell though, like if you look at it, it's the natural lighting. We all kind of don't, it's not very flattering, you know.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_09Um, but then yeah, with the Mark ones. And I actually do have a Mark uh series that I have yet to upload, um, which where it is, I did walk in with just one friend of mine.
SPEAKER_03Nice.
SPEAKER_09Again, you can tell, you know, it's we're lit up by the monitors, there's maybe one light over here kind of lighting us up. It doesn't look as polished as some of the videos that you've seen with like me and Richard King and things like that.
SPEAKER_05But still, I think like for having such a like either a small crew or just walking in, I think, yeah, I I think the format itself is what makes it so special and what is the like I think the only way, not the only way, but like to reveal those crazy sound design ideas and people, that format to me appeals the most because it is so snackable in a way, and it's so easy, like it's enough to understand, okay, there's a huge craft behind it.
SPEAKER_09Right, right. Yeah, and and what you would you say, you had mentioned those kind of longer form videos first, and then they yeah, so there was definitely a transition there where I'd been pitching so those long form videos is what got the attention for me, and specifically from the company Pro Sound Effects. So that they the they they sell sound libraries, um, they do a lot of cool, you know, shining a light on our craft and everything. And they saw my videos and they saw what you saw pretty much, and then they just immediately wanted to start working with me. But it was like very, a very vague connection. It was like, hey, I know you do these videos in your bedroom, but like let's just do let's do something together.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_09So I immediately like ended up on a call with uh Michael Coleman from Soundworks Collection and uh the marketing um marketing director Andrew Emge at uh Pro Sound Effects. And they were just like, hey, why don't you come in? We're shooting a video with Mark. This is 2018. Um they're like, well, we're shooting a video with Mark Mancini next week. Do you want to like come in and maybe ask him some questions or something? And I was like, yeah, of course. Um, because I was familiar with Mark Mancini from, you know, sadly enough, he he didn't he never did like DVD commentaries or DVD feature outs or anything like that. I discovered him from podcasts, also specifically an episode of Pensato's Place. Um, Pensato's Place was a is uh about music production and music mixing, but they had this super special guest, Mark Mancini, on one of a kind to only talk about film sound design. So that's where I like discovered Mark. And then when I was on this call and they were like, hey, why don't you come in and just ask him questions? Not something that I've ever done. I've only made these videos from DVD commentaries. So I found myself two weeks later in Mark's studio sitting on his couch, asking him these random questions. And you can seek out a there's a really cool video that we did that was kind of a little bite-sized thing where it's Mark Mangini talking about different door sounds, and that was specifically a question that I wanted to ask him. And uh so yeah, that was the kind of beginning of me starting to pitch this idea that you discovered of me sitting with him at the mix mixed desk talking about Dune, talking about Blade Runner, and talking about Mad Max. Yeah, so there was a there was definitely a long transition and a pandemic in the in the middle of that. Um I don't know if you want to talk about any any of like how that stuff came to be or let me go.
SPEAKER_05I mean, I would so just one thing that about this Mad Max, because so you you keep growing the platform by now doing more events and and live talks. I think also a cool idea would be if you can like if people can send you specific questions that that they could ask. Because for example, when I think about Mad Max, so sometimes I I I watch these uh films and I just go scene by scene and try to understand the sound. And there's for example one thing in the movie, and that's just it's just a reverb. And it's a reverb that I would never use, just out of like my technical understanding of using reverbs. So I was just thinking like it would be super cool if I could just ask him a question, you know, yeah related to sound.
SPEAKER_09But anyway, I want to No no no no I wanna I I do want to talk about that for a second. I so funny, okay. When I did another, I did another series of interviews with Mark, and I just brought my own camera in and everything in the light. And the one person I brought, um, because he said he would come for free, because there was zero budget for this, these other shoots that I did, um, he was he's a massive fan of Gremlins. And uh he's a massive fan of just like 80s horror movies and genre flicks and stuff like that. And I he's a director that I've done films with in the same stage Bowser. Um but I brought him in and it was very much like what you just mentioned. I was talking to Mark about sound design and stuff, but then I had this other guy who doesn't isn't a sound guy, he's a director, he's a filmmaker, so he understands the language there, but not everything about sound. And then he's just kind of throwing in some random gremlins questions, and it was so much fun. So I'm kind of we're having a technical, you know, creative conversation about sound design, and then just a random person throwing in specific questions about this, just like what you're mentioning about Mad Max. Hey, what what's up with this thing? Like I've always wondered what this was, and it was something like a question I would have never asked.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_09So it was a really great dynamic, and and you're right, I I do there there does need to be like some kind of more interactivity, or you know, sometimes I'm with Mark in his studio for other reasons, and you know, I'm I I have a meeting with Mark in 30 minutes. Like that's why I have to, you know, at 11 o'clock I have to go.
SPEAKER_10Yeah.
SPEAKER_09Uh it I it would almost be cool just to like go live on Instagram or something and just start taking, you know, more community stuff. I I think that's one aspect that I have yet to uncover with in-depth, yeah. Um, is more of a community aspect, which I have kind of looked at more with the live events, but I think there needs to be a more ongoing thing, yeah. Like more interactivity and uh things like that.
SPEAKER_05But what I still think is like from my perspective, is like to just the tone that in-depth has, because there are certain community events, and I find them pretty bad, like online becomes. And they're just again back in the niche of we're technicians and we're audio techies. And it's kind of like, no, let's keep the entertainment, the glowy, cool format that people that are sitting in their offices somewhere in London and are actually like maybe creative executives or whatever. That's how people know in depth, you know. That's that's why it was so interesting to watch. And I love that it finally gets a little bit like not just a little bit, that it goes beyond tech, techy techies, you know.
SPEAKER_09Yes, for sure. Yeah, it shows the pure creativity involved. Yes. Uh, which is funny because it's it's it's frustrating for the people that do like the technical side. Um, I I noticed that a lot just in the comments of you know, people really like the stories, they really like the creativity, but then some people are like, no, I want to know like really, really specific technical things that like for instance the Venom video that you mentioned earlier, I think Delts is a really good mix of technical um knowledge and ability mixed with like pure creativity. Um, people love to hear about plugins.
SPEAKER_11Yeah.
SPEAKER_09A lot of people don't like to talk about plugins or feel like that's secondary, you know. Um, but sometimes it's good to like, oh, those are the nine plugins you used. And also this was the creative thought behind you choosing every one of them. But that that information is very rare.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, but it's also, I think it's also sometimes it goes also beyond certain things that you can do as an expert in a way, because it's like it's a lot to ask, like how a whole breakdown, because a whole breakdown again would be another hour to explain you how I did this. Yeah, yeah. So the question is also do people really watch the one hour if you make an hour?
SPEAKER_09You know, because yeah, yeah, the geeks do, but that's not very many people, yeah. Exactly. That's what popularize it because the thing is, like, you know, someone like um sound designer Randy Tom, who did it who does a talk called uh designing a movie for sound.
SPEAKER_11Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_09Um, it's really that talk is made for again. This is like an hour-long talk, but this talk is made for non-sound designers, it's made for writers, producers, directors, it's made for people that need to get in on the sound process way before we usually do, which is where it's just kind of thrown in our laps at the last second. And it's like, hey, make the sound amazing. Yeah, but like Randy Tom's whole idea is like, well, why don't you deliver visuals that were made for sound? And then we can really get all the cinema and filmmaking just eked out of it, you know, all the storytelling. Um, so uh I I kind of don't know where that tantrum came from, but that is a really important aspect. Oh, sorry, because we're trying not only to appeal to the geeks, we're trying to appeal to all the people around it. And also, like I said, my friends, my mom, you know, like people like that too.
SPEAKER_05I yeah, it looks all just really fun. Like you just want to sit there. As in the last 10 minutes, I want to know more about the art exhibition because I think it's cool that people that understand sound do art exhibitions as well.
SPEAKER_09Yeah, I mean, this is uh and it was this was completely born out of sound as well. Yeah, um, there's a guy, David Cope, that uh pioneered like AI-generated music in the 1980s. He was already kind of trying to unlock the algorithm behind creativity, you know, musical creativity, causing a lot of controversy. He was also a um professor at UC Santa Cruz. And um one of his students it was Ren Kleis, who is David Fentur's sound designer who works at Skywalker Sound. So the reason I discovered David Cope is because I my collaborator Jay Shem was doing a documentary on David, and he wanted me to do this supervise the sound for it. So I, you know, I did all the sound design, sound editing, mixing, and then he released the documentary. But as I'm watching the documentary, working on the sound, just as an audience member, I noticed that David Cope's office that he calls the asylum has 200 wind chimes hanging from the ceiling. That's a lot of and it was just like you know, visually striking, and then a lot of the big theme oral theme in the film are wind chimes. You know, you hear a lot of wind chimes in the film. And um uh the film, by the way, is called uh Opus Cope, an algorithmic opera. Uh and Jay Shim is the director. But I immediately told Jay, you know, this was very low budget, and he kind of he approached me way after he had already filmed everything. But I told him, I was like, you know, if this had been bigger budget, we we should go to Santa Cruz and record all these wind chimes, and uh we could have like these beautiful recordings for to place throughout the film. Um, because we were really just using his production recordings. And uh he was like, okay, yeah, yeah, it's too bad, you know, whatever. But but I was like, look, if we're not gonna record these for the film, I need I want to go back and I want to record these, and I want to make this like a sound library or something, because this is just such an amazing story, it's such an amazing room, and I love wind chimes, you know. So I the pandemic happens, and I still just like I mentioned to Jay every every few months, I'd be like, dude, I still want to go back, I want to record these wind chimes. So finally, as the pandemic subsided, um, I brought it up again, and it was a huge push. Like, we had to convince David and his wife, Mary Jane, and even Jay, to a point, like wasn't quite sold on like so you want to go record these wind chimes? Okay, whatever. And uh I I told because Pro Sound Effects is such a good collaborator, I told them that I had this idea, and I it's not like I needed their permission, but they had such great interest in this sound library that they were like that I brought back to Jay and I said, Hey Jay, Pro Sound Effects really wants us to go record these things, even though we did not need their permission. It was just like a third party being interested was good enough. And then I told Jay, this is such like a beautiful room, like we should just document it anyway. You should bring a camera and we can record the you can record, you know, some beautiful close-ups, and we could also get the room walls. And uh it was a completely random thought that I had that like what why don't I, you know, maybe we can project the walls later and recreate the room. And I have no me and him have no uh experience in the art world and would have never thought like, you know. I don't know, it was such such a random thing. It just felt like this room needed to be preserved, I think was the idea. And so that that's what ended up happening. I I two years later, so that was in 2023 that we went and documented the room visually and orally. And last year I did release that library called Wind Chimes from the Asylum through Pro Sound Effects. And then uh we just happened to, I happened to get connected with an arts organization here in LA called Culture Hub. And they happen, I'm I'm in downtown Los Angeles, they happen to be right down the street. Uh and I walked into their organization. I I was mentoring a student for them, uh, a music student, and I was mentoring them for sound design. But I walked into their loft in their in this big building downtown, and it just happened to be like a 16 by nine wall, a 16 by nine wall, a 16 by nine wall. And I was like, oh my god, I can totally project the asylum here. So I think it was the first time I ever met those people at Culture Hub, is that I pitched them this asylum thing, and I was like, I can, you know, we I can do a whole soundscape for it and whatever. And then it was funny because that it was an idea that just clicked with them. They started hounding me and they would not stop bothering me. Hey, hey, what's up with this asylum thing? You need to come in. We we should do a test. We need to do a test with these projectors. I was like, oh, okay, okay, you know, I'm working on movies and working on commercials, doing sound and whatever. So it was this kind of symbiotic thing from this interesting origin because it was never like a grand plan. It was just kind of like, oh, why don't we do this? Why don't we do this? Why don't we do this? And then I walked into a room that where we could do it, and the people there were like, yeah, this sounds like an amazing idea. So within just a couple months, we were doing tests for this asylum idea, and then we did their open house, we did like a really low budget version of it, and then once the low budget version version was successful, they're like, hey, let's do let's do like a residency, and uh we'll get we'll upgrade the projectors, we'll upgrade everything. And so we actually were like the project that helped Culture Hub get their upgrades just so we could properly you know show the asylum. So again, it was this really symbiotic kind of thing, and and it kind of just happened really naturally. So um, but luckily uh also luckily do do I need to describe it or what the asylum is? Yeah, I mean so it it's a it's a project multi-screen projection of this room called the asylum with the 200 wind chimes represented. And they're all you all the wind chimes are unique and very colorful, and his office is very interesting. It's uh it's extremely detailed. Um it was his office for 40 years. So it just has like a collection of 40 years of his work, of books, of there's an exercise bike in the middle of it that's kind of a theme in the in the film. Um, we got an exercise bike and we put it in the exhibition right outside the asylum. So there's a lot of really fun details of David's life and his office. Um, we hung real wind chimes from the ceiling so people could come interact, and it kind of has the reality kind of bleeding in uh from the room. And also Cali Audio, who is an amazing speaker manufacturer, um sponsored the event and lent us a really nice system and I did an immersive uh soundscape of the chimes.
SPEAKER_05I was also reading that it's nonlinear. How like I'd be technically interested how that well, I guess it's nonlinear.
SPEAKER_09You know, funny enough, it is it is linear, linearly produced. So it's like a 20-minute loop.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_09But the idea of the asylum is that it's a it's an immersive experience, and that's what's nonlinear about it. Is if the experience doesn't feel like it's a loop, you just you come in and you and it's a room and it's and you're inside the asylum and you hear this immersive thing. So if you yeah, if you sat there for like 40 minutes, you would kind of start feeling the loop. Uh but when you walk in and you kind of just say, you know, whatever. I I did notice that people would this was a very uh interesting uh uh thing that I noticed was that, and I wasn't expecting is that people did want to sit in there for a long time and experience it. Um and at the very end of the 20-minute loop, there's this amazing deleted scene from the documentary that Jay shot of David Koch describing the asylum. He he actually walks in, you see the door, it says the asylum, David walks in and he just starts telling a story about why this run exists. It's the most perfect encompassing of this whole thing. Right, and it plays at the very end of the loop. So you're kind of experiencing it, you're kind of wondering why does this exist and what is this and everything. And then the man himself, who sadly passed away just a few months ago. Um, we have this documentation of him explaining the room and being within the room, and he even goes and touches some chimes, and then it goes back and loops back, so you're back in the room, yeah, and you kind of have a new appreciation for everything that you're seeing.
SPEAKER_05I'm looking at the watch. I think we could talk, we could keep talking. I could ask many more questions in case we're not gonna see each other again today or whatever. I love your work. Like you have to keep doing this, but in the format you're doing it because it is it is the perfect thing to get people into sound.
SPEAKER_09We'll we'll talk again for sure.
SPEAKER_05100%. Nice. I love it. Thank you so much. All right.
SPEAKER_09Thank you so much, Sophie. It's great talking to you.
SPEAKER_05Talk to you later.
SPEAKER_03Oh Jesus.
SPEAKER_01So that is a bit of steak wrapped around a hammer on a bit of stone. Perfect. And you kind of hear the flesh and you and you hear the hardness of the bar.