The sound world of Cars 2

Pixar's Cars 2 was released today and as usual in all Pixar films the sound was handled by Skywalker Sound.
This movie brought again the collaboration between director John Lasseter and sound designer Tom Myers (just like in Cars). Hear from Myers, sound effects editor Al Nelson and score composer Michael Giacchino about the making of the soundtrack for this new adventure of Lightening McQueen and Mater.

The Sound of Toy Story 3

Toy Story 3 has just opened and this is the first installation in the series in which Gary Rydstrom wasn’t involved. This time sound designing duties have been taken by the always magnificent Tom Myers (who also has a long relationship with Pixar, having done a few of the post-Rydstrom Pixar shorts), he was an assistant sound designer on Toy Story and sound designer on Toy Story 2. Joining Tom on supervision and re-recording mixing is Michael Semanick (wonderful mixer), with whom they also did Wall-E and Up.



Update 7/9/2010:
A neat interview to the sound team, conducted by the guys at Designing Sound. Read it here.

What do you think of it being mixed in 7.1?

Sound Department (credits provided by SoundWorks Collection)
Sound Designer -Tom Myers
Supervising Sound Editors – Tom Myers & Michael Silvers
Re-recording Mixers – Michael Semanick & Tom Myers
Sound Effects Editors – Dustin Cawood, Teresa Eckton, Al Nelson, Tim Nielsen
Foley Editors – Pascal Garneau & Dee Selby
ADR Editors -Steve Slanec & Gwendolyn Yates Whittle
Assistant Supervising Sound Editor – Mac Smith
Assistant Sound Effects Editor – Frank Clary
Assistant Sound Editor – Benny Burtt
Foley Artists – Jana Vance & Dennie Thorpe
Foley Mixer – Frank Rinella
Foley Recordist – Sean England
Mix Technicians -Tony Sereno & Jurgen Scharpf
Digital Transfer – Marco Alicea & John Countryman
Recordist – Ron Roumas
Video Services – John “J.T.” Torrijos
Engineering Services – Steve Morris & James Austin
Digital Editorial Services – Tim Burby, Dave Hunter, Danny Caccavo

Happy Holidays!

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!

Sound That Takes You UP

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!

More Ben Burtt and awards

  There is a wonderful series of videos of a talk Ben Burtt did at Pixar. Collider was there and managed to get video footage of that amazing event. You DON'T wanna miss it. He seems like a rockstar in there, and he really rocked the house with a cool show, sharing a little bit of what he did for Wall-E and other films.
I'd love to be his friend, not only does he knows tons about sound design and sound for movies in general, but he also seems to be a very nice and funny man.
Go watch it NOW. (I don't really like the videoplayer they used, when I played sometimes it simply stopped).

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You can have a bit more of Ben over here:


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On November 6, the winners of the Hollywood Post Alliance awards were announced. This are awards given in categories all related to post-production. The one that interest us is the category for Outstanding Audio Post in Feature Film, as the award went to Ben Burtt (from Pixar. He seems to be a Pixar employee now, therefor not really working for Skywalker Sound for the time being. But since both companies always work toghether, I bet he'll never be far away from Skysound) and to Tom Myers, Michael Semanick and Matthew Wood (from Skywalker Sound).
The Skywalker Sound Blog (that's us) wishes to congratulate them for this achievement. Well done gentlemen!
You can check the rest of the categories over here.

That's all for now,
May the sound be with you.