Music of Sound

Richard Taylor, Co-Founder of WETA Workshop and WETA Digital recently won the World Class NZ Award! He gave a rousing speech, which is worth a listen, as it puts into perspective how hard he works at developing & promoting the formidable talent at WETA. He also mentions the four specific character traits he believes are crucial for people to be successful & while his experience is primarily in the film industry I believe what he says is universal….
Congrats Richard!

This is crossing 2 themes for me: I’m a fan of The Wire. ‘Good TV’ is almost an oxymoron, but The Wire achieves it (as does Breaking Bad). For my $0.05 its also no coincidence both series have very good soundtracks; if the producers & directors care about story & casting & plot development & character arcs as much as they obviously do, then they should also care about the contribution music, dialogue, sound & the mix have to make. And they do. Respect to everyone involved in those series.
When I started working in sound post one of my mantras was ‘never work on anything with a laugh track’ – I never rationalised why but it was a base instinct. I don’t fear comedy, but I knew I never ever wanted to have to edit laugh tracks. And thankfully I never have… And this clips shows why… Is a laugh track EVER needed? I mean, if its a live comedic performance & the audience response is recorded & mixed in, then sure – thats like an applause track or maybe cheering etc for sports… but hell for me would be taking a lame comedy & being told to ‘laugh it up’ – god/jah/buddha forbid!!

I was first introduced to Max Richter’s music when I was working on 30 Days of Night & one of his compositions was used as temp score… & I have since bought all his albums.. this interview is a short excerpt from what looks to be a fascinating triple-DVD of interviews on ‘Contemporary Music Production’ – check the DVD out here

heres the trailer for the DVD:

I think this video could have been titled: ‘OCD & the law of diminishing returns’ but what’s really the biggest anomaly is that none of the rooms these guys have their super-fantastic stereo system set up in appear to have had any acoustic treatment! Hmmmmm…..