So, we had to invent the sound for every single wave we see in the movie, as well as the hundreds that we don’t see. The waves needed to be a character in the movie, an interesting and totally believable character. It turned out that both the interesting aspect and the believable aspect were harder to achieve than I thought they would be. The sound of the waves needed to mirror the Hanks character’s emotions. When he was calm, they needed to be calm, and when they were intense, he was intense. Each wave also needed to present its own little story with a beginning, middle, and end.

I started the wave work by gathering all kinds of water sounds, not just waves. That’s because I knew from the beginning that I would need to build each wave with elements, not just go out and record real ocean waves. Though I did that too. At least a month was spent going up and down the West Coast of the USA collecting wave sounds, from huge ones to tiny ones. The holy grail was always waves that were hitting the beach at ninety degrees, pretty close to shore. In that situation you get a nice pause between each wave break during which you can hear the fizz of all the bubbles settling into the sand. I made lots of recordings where I focused mainly on getting that fizzing. Though I also faked some fizz elements with things like Alka Seltzer tablets in a studio.

I wanted to make each wave dynamic, changing over time in volume and timbre. Each needed to sound unique, but still in the same family as its neighbors. That’s the “feel” part of the character I was looking for.

But the sound for each wave we see in the movie, and we see lots of them, needed to feel real too. You’d think that waves would be easy to edit. Nope. That’s because each wave is different: different amounts of bubbles, different amounts of impact, different amounts of curl, etc. That’s why we had to design the sound for each wave individually in order to make it believable and real.

​An average wave we see in the movie was made of at least three or four elements. Everything from actual ocean beach waves to water being poured into a swimming pool (to get the watery “curl and flow” sound), to Alka Seltzer, to cannons firing and explosions for the big wave impacts, and beyond. Myself and the sound effects editors would pass wave sequences back and forth, and each person would contribute something new in each iteration that would help sell the sound. It was difficult, fun, and wound up getting us an Oscar nomination that year the following spring. It’s still hard for me to look at a real wave and avoid thinking about how I could improve its sound.