The Practical Art of Motion Picture Sound, 3rd Edition

Chapter 12

Sound Design

Myths and Realities

As my partner Ken Sweet and I seriously immersed ourselves into sound effects development chores for John Carpenter's The Thing, we decided to try using a sound designer for the first time. The term had hardly been born, and few pictures presented the sound crew with the time and budget to allow experimentation. We called some colleagues to get recommendations for sound design talent.

The first place we contracted used a 24-track machine, something we did not use much in feature film sound work. The concept of layering sounds over themselves for design purposes appeared promising. The film-based Moviola assembly at sound editorial facilities like ours just could not layer and combine prior to the predub ...