Jurassic Park (Mix Analysis)

Sound Designer – Gary Rydstrom
Supervising Sound Editor – Richard Hymns
Dialogue Editor – Sara Bolder
Sound Effects Editor – Teresa Eckton, Ken Fischer
Re-recording Mixer – Gary Rydstrom
Re-recording Studio – Skywalker Sound

I chose the 1993 film Jurassic Park. The head sound designer for the film was Gary Rydstrom, who has an impressive catalog of work. Over his career he has won a total 7 Academy Awards for films like Saving Private Ryan, Titanic, and Terminator 2: Judgment Day. The sound effects crew was overseen by George Lucas, though, as all the sound was done at Skywalker Ranch.

Jurassic Park was actually the first film released in DTS format. DTS is a multichannel audio developed as a competitor to Dolby Digital. For mixing the film, Rydstrom used an SSL analog console. He created various premixes of foley, background effects, crashes, and crash “sweeteners.” These could then all be worked with to create the final mix.

Since there are no records of what dinosaurs sounded like, Rydstrom had some creative liberties. Instead of getting sounds from a library, he had his team go out and record sounds. For the dinosaurs, they collected a bunch of sounds from different animals. For example, the T-Rex was achieved by mixing a baby elephant, a tiger, an alligator, and a whale. He put all the samples onto his keyboard, so that he could “play” the T-Rex. Rydstrom also says, “The shaking sound of the T Rex shaking the lawyer back and forth and killing him, is really just my little Jack Russell Terrier Buster playing with a rope toy.”

Another interesting mixing technique was done with the foley. In one scene where the T-Rex is attacking at night, there is a ton of echo on the foley. Rydstrom says that by itself it doesn’t sound that good, but when you play it with the ambience effects that are also in the scene, it fits in.

With the gear we have at Towson, we could take some of the handheld recorders to capture some animal sounds to mix for the dinosaur noises.

Map:
1:34:30 – Galloping in the distance, reverb
1:34:51 – Footsteps from characters
1:34:52 – Noise from dinosaur, sounds like a hawk
1:34:59 – Dinosaur passes in front of screen, noise pans from right to left
1:35:02 – Dinosaurs stepping on tree branch, thumping when they hit the ground
1:35:18 – T-Rex makes noise as it appears from the left side of screen, crushing foliage
1:35:20 – T-Rex bites other dinosaur and it squeals
1:35:27 – T-Rex shaking the dinosaur back and forth (Rydstrom’s dog)

http://www.mpse.org/education/bigmovierydstrom.html

Internship Update (March 1st)

My internship is going well so far; currently I have 56 hours logged. I was originally concerned that I might be short on hours since I'm not on a set schedule. Though fortunately, in this case, they usually stay in the studio until the early hours of the morning.

The main thing, I've been working on is a mixtape that was just released. I engineered most of the tracks and mixed a few. The next project we're going to work on is an album that is going to be released in late March.

"In the Air Tonight" - Phil Collins (Mix Analysis)

Engineer – Hugh Padgham
Producer – Hugh Padgham, Phil Collins
Mixing Engineer(s) – Hugh Padgham
Mastering Engineer(s) ?
Studio Recorded – Townhouse Studios
Studio Mastered ?

The track that I chose for this mix analysis was Phil Collins “In the Air Tonight.” It was produced by Hugh Padgham who has also worked with artists like Yes, Paul McCartney, and Elton John. Phil Collins met Hugh Padgham while working on a Genesis album.

Overall, I like the mix. There is a lot of reverb, which was typical for the time period. Phil Collins had originally recorded a demo of the song in his home studio. The drums were programmed from a Roland CR78 drum machine, which is ironic since Phil Collins was known primarily as a drummer. Instead of redoing the songs completely, the album version was based off of the demo tracks that Phil Collins recorded in his home studio.

The signature “big drum” sound wasn’t necessarily achieved by how you would think. The Townhouse studio where he recorded didn’t have a huge live room. There was, however, a talk back mic in the live room so that the engineer could hear the musician. It was heavily compressed so you could easily hear the performer. Somewhat randomly, Phil Collins was talking then started playing the drums. Hugh Padgham heard the drums, heavily compressed, through the talk back mic and thought they sounded cool. They took that signal and ran it through a noise gate, and mixed it back with the original signal. The sound became a signature for Collins and pop songs of the 80s.

The vocals were actually mixed with a limiter on Collins voice. He set the attack very slow and the release really fast, so only part of the word could get through before it got cut off. This gives more emphasis to the front of the words.

In order to get the signature drum sound at Towson, we could put a room mic as far away from the drum kit as possible. We could then take that signal and run it through some of the plugins on Pro Tools – a reverb, then a noise gate with the cut off time set really short.

Mix Analysis:
:00 – Drums start, sounds like two kicks panned hard left, right
:06 – Guitar Chord rings out
:17 – Low Synth
:17 – Guitar Lead, lots of reverb
:26 – Keyboard Synth (Prophet 5)
:37 – Vocals, Reverb, Delay
1:08 – Guitar Chord rings out

Source: http://mixonline.com/mag/audio_phil_collins_air/index.html