“When you get the sound right … it enters the lower brainstem, below the level of intelligence. It’s primal and subliminal.”
- Fred Newman
In a recent interview, sound effects man Fred Newman credits Mel Blanc as a major influence:
The first movie I worked on was “Gremlins,” directed by Joe Dante. And it also was the first time anyone had access to the Warner Bros. cartoon library of sound effects.
Joe wanted a specific classic sound, the sound of a duck being caught by the throat (making the noise perfectly), but we didn’t know what it was called so we couldn’t look it up on the file cards they had. I had to recreate it.
Later an old sound effects guy heard it and told us it was called “trombone garble,” and sure enough, we looked it up and there it was. Mel Blanc did it himself into a trombone!
The energy of those sounds is incredible. If seeing is believing, hearing is feeling. I tell people that, in a movie, the information is on the screen but all the emotion is on the soundtrack.
When you get the sound right, the emotion is there, and that is the beauty of radio sound too. It enters the lower brainstem, below the level of intelligence. It’s primal and subliminal.
- Fred Newman, interviewed by Ken Deutsch @ rwonline: 5.07.2008: Link.
Mel Blanc @ Wikipedia
Fred Newman @ Wikipedia
Newman is best known for his work with A Prairie Home Companion.
~ Karl Jones
1 Comments So Far»
Karl, that was a very, very cool article.
Rudy
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