Read best of Interviews with Professional Sound Designers and Composers in the Industry

Go to http://www.matthewtoffolo.com and read many interviews with professional in film and TV. 

CLICK the links and best the best of interviews from the world of sound and music in film:

Interview with Composer David Buckley (The Good Wife, The Town)

With the demands of modern film-making, it’s not always easy to physically sit in the room with a director as he/she will have many things to deal with other than music. When there is a moment, I think it’s important to try and absorb as much information one can from the director or any other film maker. Not just specific things but bigger picture issues too. Learning what they know and what they have experienced (be it on the movie, or life in general), will presumably help deliver a score that is to their liking.

Interview with Sound Editor Piero Mura (The Accountant, 500 Days of Summer)

Everything in post-production changed in the last twenty years. I believe that they were positive changes. Today the line between mixing and editing is not as well defined as it used to be. Quite a few sound editors now seat behind the faders and a number of mixers do not hesitate to do sound design or supervise.

Interview with Composer Henry Jackman (Birth of a Nation, Captain America 2 & 3)

The future is always a guess. If you go back 30 years in music in film, the tolerance then is different than it is today. There is more variety in music in film today. Film scores are now a broad church. Producers are less freaked out by a wide score of music composed in a film. People now listen to a wider range of music so in relation there is more freedom for the composer to add a wider range. So the future is probably going to simply go wider as access to all kinds of music that people listen to become less judgemental.

Interview with Composer/Vocalist Dominic Lewis (Money Monster, Batman v Superman)

We are already hugely reliant on technology in film scoring. There aren’t many left who have a VHS watch and some manuscript. Everything is done on computers and the way things are going I think we are only going to rely on them more. Samples are getting better, computers faster it’s a natural progression in my book.

Interview with Sound Effects Editor Matt Snedecor (Revolutionary Road, The Jinx)

Effects editors are responsible for building the entire sonic environment for a film, everything from backgrounds to the sync effects we see on screen. The majority (90% and up) of the sounds heard in film are added by editors. But it’s more than just see car, hear car. We also need to come up with sounds that identify with characters or moods or that tell stories without the audience having to see something on screen to know what’s happening. There’s also sound design moments we need to build, tonal ideas that aren’t so much real world effects, but act more like music for setting up emotions that need to be conveyed.

Interview with Emmy Winning Sound Designer Andy Kennedy (Band of Brothers, Generation Kill)

There is a spotting session – normally with the editor and director somewhere near the final cut which involves understanding the intentions of the material. Any narrative information that the sound can bring to the final process and the setting. There is generally a lot of discussion about dialogue – quality and intelligibility and whether to ADR or not. Some directors prefer original performance. So, capturing the dialogue places a lot of pressure on the production sound mixer. For me, what we do in sound is generally a collaborative process and as technicians we all try to get the best from the material.

Interview with Music Editor/Composer John M. Davis (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies)

Working on a musical is the best.  “Black Nativity” was a film that almost no one saw, but I was on the set every day during the shoot, and I was involved in the entire post-production.  Nothing is better than having Jennifer Hudson in a church singing her heart out, capturing her live performance and using that in the final mix.  There were a lot of technical challenges involving playback, using earwigs (tiny radio controlled ear pieces), microphones hidden in her hair.  Then there was the tap dancing, the modern dance, choirs, the works! “The Producers” was also fun, especially when we could use the singing recorded on set and not the pre-records.

Interview with Foley Artist Marko Costanzo (Silence of the Lambs, The Departed, Life of Pi)

There are many great foley artist out there. I have worked with truly talented individuals that have amazed me with their abilities. To be a great foley artist I believe one must have relatively good reflexes. Eye-hand coordination is key to making a sound believable. Many times a sound can be perceived as correct if the sync is perfect.

Interview with Kami Asgar, Oscar Nominated Sound Editor

You spend so much time with every film that they are so much a part of you. There is moments in every film that challenge you, and you have to creatively find a way to overcome them. So there is moments that make you proud to have worked on. But as an entire package my personal favorite sound job is The Passion of the Christ. We spent almost nine months working on creating that world through sound.