The Sound Ideas Blog
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January 2023

We are delighted to introduce Randy Thom, a prolific and well-respected Director of Sound Design, Supervising Sound Designer and Re-Recording Mixer as the guest blogger for Sound Ideas. Randy is one of the best in the field with Oscar, Emmy and Grammy nominations to his credit; as well as receiving C.A.S. Career Achievement and MPSE Career Achievement awards. You can learn more about Randy here: https://www.skysound.com/people/randy-thom/

Category: Giveaway

Storytelling and Sound Illusions

Randy Thom Giveaway

Storytelling and Sound Illusions

We humans are easily fooled by sound. It sneaks into the side door to the brain, and in almost all cases, outside of music theory classes, we tend to resist analyzing it. We just feel it, and this is the case with sound effects too, not just “music.”

This fact makes sound for film/video/games storytelling very powerful. Sad to say that power doesn’t translate into big budgets, partly because movie and game producers are no more analytical about the creative power of sound than they are about the sounds themselves. They feel it, but they can’t rationalize funding it, because they don’t understand it.
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One story involving a sound illusion that I like to tell happened during the mix of the second Star Wars film “The Empire Strikes Back.” The Director was sitting in the back of the mix room and noticed a moment where he thought there should be a change in the mix. He mentioned it to the mixers, who added it to their list of changes to be done. The Director got distracted by a phone call for maybe thirty minutes and wasn’t paying attention to what was going on at the mixing console. When he returned, the mixers happened to be playing through the area where he had asked for the change. He complimented them on having addressed his concern, and said that it sounded much better now. One problem … they had not gotten to that item on the list yet. We are highly suggestible when it comes to sound. If we have some reason to think a sound has changed, then it will sound to us like it has changed.

​... when you see a ceiling fan and hear a helicopter...


Situations like the one I just described can be interpersonally delicate. Should the mixers tell the Director that in fact no change was made, and thereby risk embarrassing him? Or perhaps let him think the change has happened, then surreptitiously actually make the change when he isn’t around? Or not make the change at all? In this case they were honest with him about what had happened. The best response is usually the one tailored to the personality of the Director. There are lots of those tricky decisions in mixing.

It would be wrong for me to end this piece without talking about the great storytelling advantages of sound’s ambiguity, especially in its relation to moving visual images. As audience members our tendency is to accept what is presented in terms of sound, sometimes having done quite a bit of unconscious rationalizing to justify the acceptance. A classic example is Captain Willard in “Apocalypse Now” seeing a ceiling fan spinning, but hearing a helicopter instead.
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The ambiguities of sound are actually what make it such a strong tool in my opinion. When a sound feels ambiguous or even slightly out of place in a given dramatic situation, it forces us in the audience to bring our own history and experience into the process of interpretation. That is the ideal response, because it means the listener/viewer is fully engaged and actually helping to tell the story themselves. Obviously, it’s possible to go completely off the rails with creative ambiguity, resulting in complete confusion in the audience. Best to avoid that!

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Sound Ideas Giveaway

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