Will Vinton, Mark Twain, and My First Sound Design Job
Beginnings
I had graduated from USC film school, edited a documentary on a Venereal Disease, and decided that the independent film world was where I wanted to be. So I returned home to Portland.
When I moved back to Portland the film business was not as large as it is today. There were only a few companies that were making commercials, corporate, and educational films. I interviewed at a couple places but that went nowhere. People asked why I moved to Portland if I was from LA? Over and over I kept saying I am not from LA, I am from here. I lived in LA for five years but was now returning home.
There were a lot of reasons I left LA, one of them was medical. I became an asthmatic on account of the smog and oddly enough the doctors I saw told me I needed a damp, moist climate. Not dry.
The Adventures of Mark Twain
Through a chance meeting with Susan Shadburne, she said Will Vinton was looking for an assistant editor. I went over there and he hired me for 2 weeks to sync dailies on The Adventures of Mark Twain. At the end of 2 weeks he asked me if I could stay for another two weeks… This happened every 2 weeks for about 3 months until he walked into the editing room one day and asked if I just wanted to work there?
By this time I was also editing the film with Mike Gall. Eventually I started doing all of the Sound Fx design and creation. I was given a blank slate to work with.
I watched the Jim Henson film, Dark Crystal, to get inspiration. It worked really well as I hated the sound on Dark Crystal. It was sparse and pedestrian and I never once believed I was in a different world. I vowed that I would do better on Mark Twain.
Record Everything
For the next couple weeks I went all over town with an old reel to reel tape machine (a Tandberg) and a cheap mic, recording everything I could think of. An old stern wheeler that was docked on the waterfront. They took me out on a short hop so I could record everything for the ship in Mark Twain. I went to OMSI before they opened and recorded all of their bizarre and interesting machines and exhibits. I recorded all of my household appliances, squeaky boards in the floor, a gas furnace, literally everywhere I could to record different sounds.
Then I went to Bill Scream’s studio and started manipulating them, playing them forwards, backwards, half speed, experimenting. Plus Bill had this amazing drawer at his studio filled with old weird toys and things that made noise. Mixing sounds from the real world with this other stuff, I would transfer these sounds to 35mm magnetic film stock and cut them into the film to see how they worked.
I built tons of background tracks from real locations to create a universe that sounded authentic but for the specific FX I used all of these weird combinations I created with Bill.
I learned sound basics in film school but I didn’t have any mentor or anyone who I could talk to about what I was trying to do.
There were times I would show things to Will and he would say “Great”, or “No, I don’t like this you should do it this way.” I was young and sure of myself and I would argue with him believing I was absolutely right. Some battles I won, some I lost. It was his film after all.
That’s a Lot of Audio
I was building out an insane amount of audio tracks in mag film and doing it all on a Kem Flatbed so I was never able to hear more than 2 tracks at any one time. My cue sheets were laid out on the floor and they could run 7 or 8 feet in width and be 15 pages long because I had some many tracks. It was insane.
On a couple of the larger reels of the film there were sixty and seventy tracks, which is no big deal with a computer but doing it all analog and building everything by hand was pretty monumental for a little independent film. We had some scenes that we would literally spend a full day or two premixing FX, until we could finally listen to all of the tracks at once.
In my head I knew the sound I wanted, but I never knew what a scene would sound like until we were actually in San Francisco on the mix stage putting everything together.
By the end of it all I was beyond fried. Will and I weren’t getting a long all that well (probably my ego), although he offered me job to stay on staff after I took time off to rest. I left and plunged into the freelance world, made my own films, and never looked back.
I know Will respected me and my work enough to bring me back on multiple occasions as a freelance to work on some of their larger films and at one point they even offered me another full time position. Will and I always got along fine and I have a lot of respect for him and what he accomplished. I have never been a staff person. It’s not in my nature.
My Own Private Idaho
Funny enough, I believe it was the Mark Twain film that caught Gus Van Sant’s attention and he offered me the sound design job on My Own Private Idaho, which is probably still my favorite of his films because we were young and I wanted to keep breaking rules and doing things differently. (I can’t imagine 2 more different films.)
My whole career has been like this. After Good Will Hunting a lot of people thought I should move to LA and really get into the whole sound design thing there or the Bay Area. I stayed in Portland and kept doing my own stuff and taking larger films when they were offered. I rarely seek out work on other people’s films but I have been lucky enough to work on some great films with amazing people. And still do my own work.
I still enjoy working on a cool independent feature film for friends, working on films with people I believe in. I don’t miss the studio bullshit at all.
It’s hard to believe I’ve been doing this shit for 40 years and I still love it. And I know that my best work is yet to come.
One day I’ll write more about how I approached the Mark Twain film as far as sound effects and things that I combined to get the sounds I wanted. Until then, thanks for reading.
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Posted on August 20, 2021