TECHNOLOGY
Why I Love Sound
I suppose you are wondering what I was doing out there on that lonesome dirt
road in central Illinois last Saturday; and if you are not, let me tell you,
I was.
I was headed to Sheridan, Illinois, just a little north of Ottawa and a little south of Plano, to find a man with a jeep. And not just any jeep, but one of World War II vintage. I didn’t know what this jeep would look like, where it came from, how well it worked or who owned it. Nor did I care. I only knew how I imagined it sounded. And it better sound like I imagined it, or this trip is worthless.
I'm a sound guy, you see. I have been a sound guy for nearly a dozen years now, working in the audio suites of a Chicago post production house called Post Effects, and every day I discover another reason why I chose this life in sound.
It began in the studios of Zenith d/b, a legendary Chicago audio facility run by Ric Coken, now chairman of the Columbia College Sound Department. Although Chicago is not known for producing many movies, it was a rare one in those days that did not go through Ric’s ears before getting into the theaters; and I spent the better part of a summer hanging out at Zenith watching Ric work his magic on one of them.
Ric has a process he calls “painting the sound” of a film. It begins when a “locked” picture comes in with all the action and dialogue in place. There will be a scene -- a simple scene like two people talking in a room -- and Ric will notice one of them is shuffling papers on the desk. I would be sent into the other room to shuffle papers in front of a microphone.
If the scene was meant to be on a hot day, Ric would bring the sounds of a hot and steamy city in through the window; If it called for dramatic silence, he would drain the ambience out so you could hear the proverbial pin drop. I watched once as two protagonists paced back and forth fighting with each other; and Ric, sitting at the sound controls, trailed their voices along across the stereo spectrum, left to right, back to front, rising and falling with their movements against the flat image on the screen.
Because of the time I spent watching Ric do sound design, I can no longer watch a movie without listening to it. That scary part in Jaws? Who thinks that’s because of that silly mechanical shark? Apocalypse Now? Imagine the helicopter attack at dawn without the audio track.
I’m not sure I would enjoy the movies as much as I do if I hadn’t had the experience of making movie soundtracks. In our work, we not only find and place sound effects from library CD’s, we make them through a process some call Foley and others call making a damned fool of yourself.
I have worked in three different studios and carted around with me to each boxes of sand, gravel, mud and packing beads I use to make the sound of footsteps. I have an array of kitchen utensils I can pitch up or down to recreate various collisions. I have tap-danced in high heels to Hava Nagila, turned garbage cans into jail cell doors and put enough crickets into movies I feel like I should get credit as an insect casting director.
But the reason I was out there on the road to Sheridan last weekend was that there’s nothing in my library of sound effects that replicates the sound of an old World War II Jeep -- and nowhere I won’t go to find it.
This Jeep – a 1943 Willy, to be exact – was one of three I found in pristine condition, sitting in an old barn behind a Pontiac GTO up on blocks, just waiting to be driven. It belongs to Dave Fornell, a suburban newspaper reporter, and some old Army buddies who like to get together on weekends to play with their “toys.”
When I arrived, Dave drove the Willy out onto the gravel path, and I set up my microphone and tape deck. I got him starting the motor then killing it. Reving the engine up and letting it die down. Honking the horn and pulling away; then turning around and braking to a sudden stop.
Dave offered to give me a ride around the back 40 acres, so I jumped in the back seat with no doors or seat belts, hung my microphone out over the side near the exhaust pipe and held on for dear life. Ten minutes later, I was back at the barn, older and wiser – with a tape full of very cool jeep sound!
I shook hands with everyone who had helped and began packing up to leave.
“Is that it?” Dave asked.
“It’s perfect,” I said.
“Do you need anything else? Like machine guns. I have machine guns,
a troop carrier, a tank—“ he asked.
“A tank?” My eyes lit up.
“Yeah, ” Dave said.
“You don’t have any room to drive it around,” I said.
“The guy who owns it has this track around his pond. We can drive it
around over there.”
“And can we fire it off?” I asked.
“I think we can probably make that happen,” he said.
I’ve been working this week on my Jeep sounds. Eventually, you’re going to find them in a video game next year where the player gets to travel around in a 1943 Jeep Willy. But don’t be surprised if you hear in the background the sound of a tank cannon exploding. I feel another trip to Sheridan coming on . . . because a good sound is hard to find.
