While Inception isn’t graced with the sound services of Skywalker Sound, the staff includes a handful of amazing Skywalker regulars. This includes Lora Hirschberg and Gary Rizzo.
Inception is the latest film by Christopher Nolan (director of Memento and The Dark Knight, among other great films), which deals with the world of dreams.
And here is also Mix’s article, which gives you a more detailed tour of the sound for Inception.
Hello there! I had this blog terribly abandoned, I know. I’ve noticed we’ve have many more readers, so welcome to all of you!
Ok, let’s try to catch up on the doings of Skywalker Sound.
Here it is Chris Boyes talking about sound design for Avatar:
and also this quite interesting sound panel featuring Mr. Boyes, James Cameron, Gary Summers, Andy Nelson and producer Jon Landau.
Finally, you can read even more about the film’s sound on this Mix Magazine article.
It’s been so long since I last blogged that the film has come out already on BluRay/DVD. It has no extra features or anything really, just the same film you saw on the theater. A longer cut with additional features will be released later this year (and next year, probably a 3D version and 10 years later an anniversary edition).
What did you thought of the sound for Avatar?
Hello there skywalkers. Again, I apologize for the long absence of new posts, more on that in a bit.
My last post was a very well received tour of Skywalker Ranch. Recently, professional photographer and filmmaker Philip Bloom did an awesome video of the ranch. It’s not much of a tour as it is more of a beautiful display of breathtaking imagery in superb quality.
You can read all about it’s making and Philip’s visit to the ranch over here.
And as a sounding present for our readership I bring you “Alma”, an excellent animated short by Pixar animator Rodrigo Blaas. 
Sound services provided by Skywalker Sound. With sound design by Tom Myers (my personal favorite) and David Hughes.
By the way, “alma” is not only the girl’s name but also a spanish word that means “soul”.
Finally, I wanted to talk a bit about the blog. Since I’m clearly not getting any extra spare time, I would like to see if any of our readers would like to jump in and help me keep this blog updated. You wouldn’t have to search for information or material, as for the most part I have accumulated information for a year worth of blogging. As for news, they also come my way. So, basically I would need someone who would like to write and put a blog post together. The only requirements would be an interest in Skywalker Sound affairs and a minimum knowledge of professional audio, since some blog posts might require a little bit of tech-talk. For anyone interested, be so kind to contact me.
Oh, I almost forgot. Be sure to check out James Cameron’s Avatar (as if you needed to be told), which also features Skywalker Sound’ services and Chris Boyes sound design.
Happy holidays!
Since there isn’t many news lately (and I was getting bored of only posting news anyway) I decided to take a look at some previous films.
Today it is Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of The Crystal Skull, the latest installment on the Indy series.
Ben Burtt, who did sound design for all the previous movies, tells about the process he followed to revisit that world of Indiana Jones once again.
Enjoy it!
Hi there!
If you love Skywalker Sound then you possibly also love Pixar, or if you love Pixar then you should know that they are smart people sound-wise.
Today is the opening day for UP, Pixar’s tenth movie. I certainly and absolutely love Pixar and most of their movies, the last two (Ratatouille and Wall-E) had set the bar really high (in terms of making a blast at the box office and having an incredibly wide acceptance among critics) and UP seems to be no exception to that line of awesomeness.
The first thing of the day is the UP soundtrack, which was composed by the great Michael Giacchino. 
The music wasn’t recorded at Skywalker Sound, but the curious thing is that this (digital only) album comes with three tracks of nothing but sound design (no music and no voices), which is a great opportunity to take close listen to some of the wonders Skywalker guys did. The downside to it is that you can’t buy these tracks separately, you have to buy the whole album to get them.
Last but not least, I bring you this terrific sound featurette on UP, in which you get to see Michael Semanick and Tom Myers (Tom is one of my favorite sound designers) among others…
So what are you waiting for? go see UP!
Hello there audiophiles!
I’m so sorry that I left this blog somewhat abandoned, life always manages to get in the way. But I decided to administer all the info and news in order to have more posts and less waiting time.
So let’s see, a few days ago the official Star Wars website released a very very interesting sound related feature. 
The Star Wars Soundboards. It’s an interactive interface in which you are provided with a lot of individual original sounds (without background music or ambience!) from the trilogy, to mix them as you want in a two channels mixer. In fact, I don’t really understand what’s the fun of doing that, because there is no music or other elements to play with. You have lots of voice snippets from all the main good characters (Luke, Han, Leia), R2-D2, Chewbacca, even the Tie Fighters and X-Wings, which is all awesome. But I don’t get what fun you can get playing with those sounds with the tools they provide you with. But I guess I don’t have to tell how much more fun you can have if you download/record those individual sounds into your personal library. I’m sure they are not in HD quality, but they sound pretty good anyway, and I bet most of the sounds (the voices mainly) haven’t been available before.
If you do anything interesting with them, let me know, so I can post it here. May the sound be with you!
Today the 81st Academy Awards (Oscars) nominations were announced.
The sound categories are as follow:
The nominated films which had it’s sound post production services provided by Skywalker Sound are:
Which means big congratulations are in order for Frank Eulner (Supervising sound editor on Iron Man), Christopher Boyes (Sound designer on Iron Man), Ben Burtt (Sound designer, re-recording mixer and supervising sound editor on Wall-E), Matthew Wood (Supervising sound editor on Wall-E), David Parker (Re-recording mixer on The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), Michael Semanick (Re-recording mixer on both Wall-E and Benjamin Button), Ren Klyce (Re-recording mixer and supervising sound editor on Benjamin Button), Mark Weingarten (Sound mixer on Benjamin Button) and Tom Myers (Re-recording mixer on Wall-E).
Also, while the film itself wasn’t post-produced at Skywalker Sound, The Dark Knight does have great mixing by two usual suspects from the Technical Building. So, congratulations as well to Lora Hirschberg (Re-recording mixer on The Dark Knight) and Gary Rizzo (Re-recording mixer on The Dark Knight).
I personally love this about the Oscars, that this sound awards are part of the main show. And if you are sound film lover as me, you get to see your sound heroes live and kicking (if they win, that is).
Let’s cross our fingers for the talented folks of (and from) Skywalker Sound which always manage to deliver great work on their films.
The Oscars will be on this February 22nd.
Randy Thom is the Director of Sound Design at Skywalker Sound (a position that was previously held by Gary Rydstrom under the title, Director of Creative Operations). He is most famous for having won 2 Oscars and doing sound design and mixing for such films as Ratatouille, Contact, Forrest Gump, Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom. This year will have his sound design work on the upcoming Coraline.
He is also very eloquent when it comes to talking about his craft, which makes it always a delight to read his words.
Following is an e-mail Randy recently sent to his colleagues, which I think is very interesting.
Ok, so I had no feedback but I think that's mainly due to the fact that I haven't promoted the blog in the slightest.
Let's just jump to the content of the blog right away.
Recently the Iron Man film was released, in a very successful fashion. I haven't seen it yet, but I'm looking forward to.
Not only because of all the nice things I've been hearing about it, but also because the nice people at Skywalker Sound handled the sound post-production of the movie.
Chris Boyes (of King Kong, The Lord of The Rings) was in charge of the sound design and mixing of Iron Man.
Mix Magazine sat with him and recorded a nice interview about his job on this film.
Unfortunately he was in a protools room, instead of a lovely mixing room in front a huge console. But I think that is due to the fact that since Episode 3, Skywalker Sound changed it's way of working to have a more Protools-driven and basic set-up all the way to the end (they mainly use the big consoles at the final mix stage).
I've heard they even have an Icon, although I haven't seen any picture of it at Skysound yet.
Anyway, despite this tiny detail of wanting to see their great equipment, it is a very nice interview. Chris Boyes is a very good sound designer, so check it out.