A COLLABORATIVE POST
WRITTEN BY BOOM BOX POST
We are honored to have been nominated for two Motion Picture Sound Editors 2023 Golden Reel awards!
“Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie”
Outstanding Achievement in Sound Editing – Non-theatrical Animation
“Transformers: Earthspark”
Outstanding Achievement in Sound Editing – Broadcast Animation
Such challenging projects always have a fun backstory. We thought this would be a great opportunity to share a look “inside the sound” of these two fantastic projects via interviews with the Supervising Sound Editors.
Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie
A conversation with Supervising Sound Editor Jeff Shiffman
Coming off a long run on the “Rise” TV series, how did things differ with this movie?
The series was a beast and really ramped things up as it progressed. That being said, the team behind “Rise” found a way to level up with the movie. The opening scene alone is a post-apocalyptic battle with beasts, robots and armies, serving as a backdrop for a time-travel setup. It drops you into the film and basically says “hold on, it’s going to be a wild ride!” We take a breath for a bit as we get some plot exposition but things quickly ramp up to about 45 minutes of non-stop action. I made sure we had a ton of time on the design and editorial side to really do it justice.
Were there any new sound design challenges or were you able to utilize some of the series work that came before?
All of the turtles have their mystic powers, which have long been established. Beyond that however, most of the film is brand new design. Bringing in an alien race along with all their technology (mech suits, spaceships, etc) was a huge challenge. There’s also a strong military presence to some of the battle scenes, giving us opportunities to design new weapons and battle vehicles.
From a sound editorial standpoint, what’s your favorite sequence of the film?
As much as I love the opening, the final climactic battle between Kraang and Leonardo has some really wonderful design work. Literal planets are crashing into our characters at times, but there are also smaller, more intimate moments when we can hear Leo sweat. The sound editorial draws you in and demands you pay attention. It’s really something.
How did you approach the foley work on the film?
The movie takes a decent-sized cast and really expands it out to a sprawling epic. With so many characters, many of whom wear gear or armor of some kind, we approached the foley digitally, first recording our own sounds and then sequencing/editing them in the box. This allowed us to great really creative with multi-layered, textural sound choices, in perfect sync, while still being able to split out each element for the mix. It’s a nuanced foley editorial technique where in the end something like splatty tentacle footsteps or mech suits really sell.
Tell us about the dialogue editorial process. Were there any challenges along the way?
I love controlling the dialogue edit in post. It allows us to organize things exactly how we like them and to make sure we get the quality up to our standards for the mix. In the case of this movie, we had a lot of home records from the pandemic to deal with. We cleaned up many recordings, working some magic with Izotope RX and ultimately avoiding a lot of ADR. I’m really proud of the work we were able to pull off in the dialogue edit.
Transformers: Earthspark
A conversation with Supervising Sound Editor Brad Meyer
Transformers is such a huge and iconic franchise. How did you go about putting your own spin on this iteration with sound editorial?
It seems silly to admit, but I wasn't an avid fan of the Transformers franchise prior to working on this show. So I didn't really have a personal reference as to the sound of past iterations of the franchise, which I think ended up being a really positive thing when it came to creating a signature sound palette for the series. EarthSpark is steeped in Transformers history and lore, so we do our best to include references to older versions of the franchise in our editorial, like the classic sound of the bots transforming, while also creating fresh custom designs for things like vehicles, foley, fight moves, and even subtle transactional foley-type sounds like hand grabs and bot movements. We were fortunate enough to obtain some of the original SFX from Hasbro, used in the first generation Transformers series, and we do our best to either include some of those sounds in our sound design, or design fresh SFX inspired by the originals. The end result is is a soundtrack that is new, custom, and has a sense weight and action, while maintaining a familiarity and staying true to the Transformers universe at large.
What kind of prep work did you put in to set up the series?
Unlike a lot of shows, we had a good chunk of time for prep work and pre-design on this series, and we spent most of that time designing custom Foley, vehicles, movements, weapons, and the new generation of bots called Terrans. We only had the first episode to go off of at the time, so we focused our time and energy on signature elements we knew would recur and appear in multiple future episodes. A huge part of our prep work included making the bots and characters feel real, especially the sounds for the bots themselves. You won't hear any classic robot cliches in this series. No on-the-nose robotic servo movements, no overly robotic vocal processing, none of that. Instead, we took a more realistic approach; movements are comprised of real-life car and vehicle components and shifting metal plates, bot vocals are processed using a light metallic IR reverb, etc. To further the realism, we hardly designed any vehicles from scratch using plugins or design software. Instead, we Frankenstein-ed together real-life vehicles to create the vehicle design for each bot. For example, Bumblebee is a luxury sports car in this show, so his vehicle mode is comprised of real recordings of Ferraris, Lamborghinis, and Porches.
Were there any particularly challenging sequences in the nominated episode or the season as a whole? Tell us about your approach.
The final battle sequence between the Autobots/Terrans and Mandroid and his huge laboratory bot (literally the size of an industrial building) was definitely the most challenging sequence in this episode, and probably the season as a whole. The sheer size and amount of action proved to be a fun challenge. Choosing our moments and creating a sense of focus during the relentless action, and balancing all of our editorial with an incredibly driving score took multiple days of prep work on the mix stage.
What are some of your favorite individual sounds that have come out of this series?
I'm a huge fan of some of the more magical/fantastical elements to come out of the show, such as the Emberstone, but if I had to pick one specific sound we've created to be my favorite, it would be the sound of Mandroid's Arachnobots. A little bit spidery, a tad robotic, and 100% creepy crawly.
With a show about giant robots, tell us about your approach to Foley.
When planning the design for the show, it was really important to us that the bots feel organic, and not robotic in a cliche sort of way. The source material for the bot Foley is almost strictly scrap metal, purposely avoiding anything too thin and flimsy. In addition to metallic elements, we needed to create several different surfaces for the bots to walk on, including dirt, grass, and wood. It was also really important that each bot's Foley have a true sense of weight. For the surface elements, rather than using the sound of a real footfall on the surface we needed, we used human bodyfalls for that heft. In addition to weighty source material recordings, every single footstep in the show has an LFE sweetener that accompanies it. Lastly, each bot has leg servos for each leg movement. In an effort to avoid cheesy servos, most of the leg servos we designed are hydraulic and metal based. Each and every bot footstep has elements of scrap metal, a human bodyfall (depending on the surface), an LFE sweetener, and a leg servo.
How about dialogue editorial? Were there any particular challenges with this series?
A lot of the main characters in the series record a good chunk of their lines as ADR, so we aren't always working with final dialogue until the predub or mix. This also means we usually can't demo vocal processing until later in the process, especially for new characters that need new processing chains built.