The Iconic Sounds of the Marvel Cinematic Universe

[@tested]

Watch more from our trip to Skywalker Sound here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/jXbTeXxjfpKqiMk

[@TwstedTV]

That intern guy they assigned to the visitor Adam, is most likely pretty new. definitely sound like an intern or assistant. all you hear is blanket answers with "Yaa, you know, ya ya you know." I have been in the industry for 4 decades and I could have explained it a bit better. Several times Adam requested to be shown how its done, but the guy never really shows how its done but rather went on rambling & just toss up some random sound with his rant. Equipment being used in main studio is the AVID S6 console that is custom configured for that particular studio. With JL-Cooper surround controllers. AVID Pro Tools Digital Audio Work Station. Adams question "How does the session gets transferred from one studio to the other: Ansdwer: via shared network / EUCON Ethernet protocol. It gets saved in the small studio within Pro Tools Digital Audio Work Station. And since ALL the studios there are on a shared network, you can go to the main studio, and open the session in pro tools there and it will grab the session that was saved in the small studio and open it in the main studio, files and all. The sounds then have to be patched and lined with the console AVID S6 console, then leveled. Effects then gets placed on each channel that needs it for the particular sound that calls for it. By the way, both studios the small and large studio can be run at the same time (if need be) since its on the same shared network. You can control the small studio from the large studio if you wanted to, if that studio had certain outboard gear that the large studio didn't have in the room. There are some studios that have 4 main large separate rooms run at the same time for a session. This is usually done for extremely large orchestral sessions that may have more than 200 or 500 channels just for orchestra music not counting other instruments like guitars, pianos, bongos, tiakos etc etc thats not part of the actual orchestra. The AVID S6 can handle between 64 to 192 channels max just on 1 console but needs up to 3 audio engineers if it gets in the high levels like 192 channels. The AVID S6 can do ATMOS and Dolby surround sound. The music alone for movies can run anywhere between 100 to several hundreds & even thousands or more channels. Thats not counting all the special sound effects used for the movie. Then you have all the actors voices and voice overs for the dialog. Sessions can get extremely enormous. AVID lost 50% of its users due to AVIDs shady tactics & subscription model it imposed on its musicians in the music industry that those 50% of the people who left Pro Tools went on and moved to Presonus Studio One Digital Audio Workstation. Most of the most famous musicians stayed with Pro Tools because its been a industry standard for many decades, and movie film industry companies & studios also stayed with Pro Tools, again because its industry standard and it would be costly to move to another workstation software. not to mention studios infrastructure is in too deep to change. unlike musicians themselves, many musicians themselves have moved to Presonus Studio One. Also many film industry studios usually have used analogue style consoles. Such as the SSL and Neve Consoles like the Neve-5088 and Neve-R/S console or the SSL9000 / SSL4000 but now since everything is getting digital, companies & film industry have been using Digital consoles/controllers like the AVID S6 with large amounts of channels. Its much better and faster for recalling studio sessions. Unlike its analogue counterparts that would take several hours to recall. Digital consoles would take minutes.

[@fasterdetail]

mobile suit gundam sound fx on vinyl recommendation .. THX!

[@vocalpro]

As someone who does audio professionally, that protools session is truly frightening

[@gregh99]

I've got 900 tracks up of dialog, sfx, and music. The key is organization! 🙂

[@vocalpro]

@@gregh99 hi mate. all mixed itb? So all bussing and inserts are also being crunched?

[@gregh99]

@@vocalpro A two hour movie, split into two projects which are open at the same time: music composition, with 400 tracks of MIDI, VSTs, and soundfiles, then I copy the mixdowns over to the 500 track dialog and SFX project where I can stretch the mixdowns for better timing if needed. Both projects include video tracks for sync reference (transcoded to MJPEG for faster seeking). I've set up shortcuts to export stems and sub-mixes for director approval, but I can link in the original hi-rez video files and render a finished video suitable for upload. Using REAPER on a refurbished 8-year-old 16GB Dell Latitude E6540 laptop, with 4 external monitors. Maybe I could combine the projects into one, but there is benefit in having mental separation of roles - "composer" vs "dialog" and "sfx" and "mixer". For that matter, I could do video editing in these project files, but I guess there had to be something left for someone else to do. 🙂

[@vocalpro]

@@gregh99 hold on, you do over 400 tracks on a laptop on reaper?

[@gregh99]

@@vocalpro Lol yes. 500+400 with both open in one instance of REAPER. Main timeline is about 4 hours wide (there are 4 reels), CPU at about 70% while playing main mix project, RAM 10GB of 16GB used. Internal 500GB SSD, external 700GB. 8 yo laptop.

[@camrynhamme]

It’s so interesting because you only ever hear these sounds in context, be it with a backing track, ambient sounds, etc. but once you hear the raw sound it’s so easy to hear what it’s made from, and how “real” they are. Vs in the scene you would never guess that spider man’s web sound are made from plastic stretching.

[@cleverusername9369]

Yeah when they were playing the Spiderman sounds I was surprised by how much more forceful and impactful they sound in isolation

[@MFKitten]

The volume they are played at makes a huge difference too. I've been making sound effects for games, and hearing the sounds actually in the game, blended together nicely, is transformative in such a crazy way.

[@MrHamit64]

Yeah and sometimes the music drouns the sudddle layors. Man I'm totally nurding out. I'm all into this. I love nitpicking the audio to movies. But then again I'm blind so the audio has to really tell a good story to put me into the world.

[@collinsstudios7098]

What I love about these interviews is Adam is so genuinely interested in what the person has to say!

[@edwardfletcher7790]

He's a very well educated fan because of his pre-Mythbusters movie effects work 😆

[@collinsstudios7098]

@@edwardfletcher7790 absolutely. It’s more that everyone he talks to, he throws himself into their world with amazing enthusiasm!

[@lamenamethefirst]

As a sound designer early in his career, it's so cool to see Adam geek out about this craft. It's often overlooked and disregarded, even though it plays such an integral role in the cinematic experience. So seeing the man who entertained me so much when I was a kid be so interested in it makes me really happy.

[@THEODSTKING117]

DId you go to school for sound design? Just curious as I hope to enter the field

[@TheLargeBard]

This was a fantastic look behind the scenes! Thanks, Adam and crew!

[@jamiethomas18]

Samson seems like an incredibly level, patient guy. I would love to spend a day watching his working process of bringing a soundscape to a Marvel film. Thank you for both this video and the previous one on sound design, truly fascinating to get a peek behind the curtain on a very under appreciated aspect of film making.

[@pedersenist]

I think you have to be like that to do this kind of work.

[@Spidouz]

When the audience doesn’t notice the sound FX, it means they did their job very well… so they’re very under appreciated; I’ve done it on a small scale and the process is just about the same. I can tell you, it would be VERY boring for you to spend your day watching us work. Because it’s often a long process to find THE good sound that will be heard maybe just 1 or 2s in a scene… so we can spend a whole day just for a 30 to 60s scene. So it’s good when you can quickly hear the final result, but it’s boring while you’re making it… mainly if you’re not a sound designer and you’re not used to audio montage. I think, the best thing for the audience would be to see a final scene and then deconstruct it to listen FX groups in an isolated situation. That’s generally the best way to appreciate the work, and also to see that a movie without any sound FX or soundtrack is actually really boring and not realistic at all. Soundtracks and Sound FX are easily 50% of the movie experience… sometimes just as important as Visual FX.

[@niganools1501]

@@Spidouz yeah, I never actually took the time to appreciate the sound fx, but I’m soon to purchase Logic Pro to get into it

[@discflame]

I once applied for a job at a much smaller studio than marvel but they still had a position for "The Person That Manages The Sound Library." I forget the actual phrasing of the job listing but there's a career in just categorizing and tagging these sound clips

[@edwardfletcher7790]

Sound Library Manager

[@DaRadicalCavy]

The most impressive part of this to me is how this list can even be usable. By usable I mean has enough storage and is well designed to be able to find the result need/want. The making a list part is great but it's more just time consuming. Making useable/having the framework for this to operate is amazing especially given the importance of keywords and how varied that can be from each person.

[@MjStrwy]

Totally. Any database like this needs careful curation and metadata to be useful and avoid duplication of the same or similar sound. I'd love to see if they have a particular typology or controlled vocabulary for their sounds.

[@lorenzo4708]

​@@MjStrwy Yes they have, it is called Universal Category System, created by Tim Nielsen himself at Skywalker Sound for that purpose. I think it is awesome and use it daily... You can search on youtube the videos where he goes in-depth about it. But the fact that they couldn't bother to properly explain the UCS when they're talking about metadata at the facility that uses it the most is just mind boggling to me...

[@stewie3128]

I work in film audio post. Adam's questions are amazingly perceptive!

[@deadaccount6135]

One good example i like is the pod racing scenes in the prequels. It just wouldn't have the same oomph without the awesome different engine sounds. Not only that but the music perfectly conveyed the different moods, as well as the other added sound effects.

[@A.F.Whitepigeon]

Too bad the play-by-play announcers ruined it.

[@BazingaIII]

This was the first example I thought of for excellent sound design. Also the pitch of Vader's lightsaber ignition in Rogue One... that has to be deliberate.

[@markzambelli]

Speaking of using animal sounds... I still remember having my mind blown finding out that the F5 tornado in the movie 'Twister' had lion/tiger growls and roars in it's sound fx and how wonderful that was... really brought life to a bit of weather and made it come alive as a character in it's own right. I will never not be awestruck at the sheer depth of knowledge and techniques (not to mention hard work) that all go towards the finished movie, no matter what that department is. Delightful.

[@86fifty]

I'm glad you were able to get multiple videos out of the visit to this studio! After the first one, I really wanted to see more.

[@blekkmark]

Came here for Sound FX, enjoyed all 8 seconds of them. Thanks for sharing.

[@7MOONS2023]

Contents of the day .. I’m loving this ❤️

[@nashsanadiki3104]

Thank the Corridor Crew for recommending your channel, love seeing BTS like this very insightful into what these sound artists do to bring the mcu to life

[@MandosCulture]

As someone who does music and uses this software. It is literally staggering to see how many sounds go into these projects. To see him scroll through his protools session seeing thousands of instruments potentially.... that computer must be BEEFY to handle that.... i am very much impressed by this... incredible content and incredible questions

[@amysarg]

It’s a Mac Pro

[@lamenamethefirst]

In big studios like this, there are separate processors that handle the DAW. Avid has HDX cards which are dedicated audio processors just like you have a GPU for graphics. So the load on the CPU is less.

[@mushin111]

Lol both comments above are completely wrong. The guy from the commented saying he uses an old Dell laptop.

[@thejumbo]

Having designed home theaters for a while now, it's fascinating to me to see how these sound items are created and placed in a mix. I'd love to be able to hear the Skywalker soundstage just once in my life, just to hear what they hear as they create it.

[@cryptonix02]

Having dabbled in sound design for my own personal projects, seeing that timeline with what looks like thousands of sound effects is MIND-BLOWING! The amount of labor that goes into something like that, you're talking probably dozens of people stacking sounds in there. It really is a lot of looking at what's happening on screen, every action, every movement, everything that makes sound and trying to add sound effects wherever it makes sense. For big crowd fight scenes, I'm sure the workspace can just turn into madness. A ton of time spent adjusting the gain on individual sounds... ugh. Mad respect to everyone involved. 👌

[@kyberpunkar]

This is one of the best KZbin videos I've seen in a long time. How much work goes into... Everything... I'm truly speechless... Just wow!!!

[@BennieBrunink]

This young man is very focused on his trade .. That is the vibe I am getting from him .. And that's good !! .. And Adam reliving trough him some of his best moments while working for Lucas .. Is why I started Loving Adam And this channel !! .. :)

[@zmarko]

As an audio/sound guy, I'm totally digging this.

[@jasonesty3880]

I was thinking the exact same thing.

[@AcesHighMedia]

as a regular guy, I'm also totally digging this.

[@wibblewobble1934]

Thank you for making this video. Sound is by far and away one of the most under-rated and under-valued aspects of any video film making. It's the thing everyone takes for granted but don't fully appreciate the massive impact it has on our end experience. Good stuff :)

[@VexylObby]

Glad we delved into SOUND on this channel. I wondered when we would!

[@ThisIsMyFullName]

It's funny that the final filter is our brain, meaning the job of a sound designer is really to trick the brain into believing that a sound belongs to a specific visual movement. The only way to succeed in that is to correlate sounds with those that are already familiar to us on a subconscious level. It's only when we hear sounds without any visuals that we start to make sense of the sound itself and create images in our own mind of the various origins of the sound. It's really fascinating stuff!

[@vallaindigital]

Thank you for showing that side of movie making. We all know that sound design, editing, etc, has to happen, but we often forget how involved it is, how complex it can be.

[@AlonAbraham1]

Adam, your questions and perspective make this video so engaging and curios. Love sound design and sound in general. Thank you adam and team.

[@DJHolte]

Having worked with, searched for, and created metadata for various things in my career, including audio, I can verify that it's super important that you not only use the proper search terms, but that the items are properly and fully catalogued. I think for many companies like Skywalker, having one person who oversees all of the metadata and how it's catalogued is pretty much a necessity, if you want to make best use of your various elements.

[@old-ej]

I have listened to this song dozens of times in the past few months: I LOVE IT.

[@DerekAnthonyBrown]

As a Sound Designer for games, I cant tell you how much it means to me that Adam is putting spotlight on my craft. I've learned so much and grown as a maker in no small part to Adam's content! Seeing him get excited and asking great questions makes me so incredibly happy. Makers Make Noise!

[@antwaynetube]

I love this. Great questions, Adam. Keep them coming!

[@jchou17]

Why does it feel like I'm watching industry secrets get spilled right now lol. Awesome stuff!!

[@skemsen]

This was fantastic and so interesting. I would have loved to be a fly on the wall back when they designed all the sound for the Start Wars pod race scenes.

[@evandrodorner]

I'm a sound designer from Brazil and I really liked this video

[@MrBassbump]

It’s fascinating to hear different sounds that we find iconic only to find the sound is multiple different ones strung together making a single piece. 🤘

[@Kitteh.B]

Videos like these are what got me into the Audio Production field. The main one that drove me was the Behind The Scenes video on Halo 3. Sadly I haven't had any luck getting into a place to utilize my degree, especially with my area having so few studio that do SFX. And moving to NY/CA/WA/Vancouver is cost prohibitive :[

[@THEODSTKING117]

Sorry to hear that man, I hope you find some work! I'm planning on going to school for sound design/production myself.

[@Eldude101]

Never thought I would see the day adam savage shows me around skywalker sound, but I could not be more satisfied. Very cool!

[@HolowatyVlogs]

I love seeing the MPK Mini in professional studios.

[@matthyson5546]

The poor guy seems a bit nervous. I feel like there's a room full of Marvel/Disney Execs behind the camera glaring at him so he doesn't give away trade secrets. 🤣 I love this though! This is where the magic happens.

[@justinoff1]

This is amazing. I've spent 20 years on the camera and lighting side and I literally just bought a Tascam Dr701d 4 hours ago on eBay because I want to record noises. I'll spend the next week reviewing microphones. Robert Dudzic has amazing videos on KZbin about capture and design. I know very little about audio software but then I new nothing about photoshop and Final Cut when I started that career. Exciting stuff

[@OaklynMediaLLC]

I really appreciate you making this because I always wondered how the web shooter sound was made. I've since figured out what I'm hearing, but it took a while before I learned that specific sound. It's very unique!

[@karelhoogendoorn]

Thnx for this guys. Fantastic to watch!

[@zo_mi_di]

Fantastic video!!! Asking so many great questions and giving us a peek behind the curtain. I’m studying film editing (picture and sound) so it’s so cool to see what I’m learning being so directly applied!!!!

[@EnamKunutsor]

Wow, this is truly fascinating! So many unsung heroes behind movies, it's unreal

[@morbidmanmusic]

Adams musical ear and perfect obsessions worked well here.

[@Lion_McLionhead]

Just stared at that vintage macbook & vintage Dell monitors, wishing they'd name the gear in that room. It must have last been renovated in the 2005-2010 era with the star wars prequel money. The furniture at least dates back to Phantom Menace.

[@SaMmYmYt]

Sound design is the most undervalued thing in movie making(based on me barely giving it any notice)... I've learned that today

[@linuskarlsson9449]

What is an anchor sound means that is referred to at 15:27? The concept sounds simple but can be interpreted in a 1000 ways.. 😅

[@Bad_Wolf_Media]

Around 19:15, when Mr. Neslund was talking about how it seems easy but it's hard to make things sound "real" to audiences is something that I think can't be overstated at all. Actual, real sounds would sound fake to movie audiences. A punch landing, for instance, sounds nothing like what you would hear in the movies. If a sound designer put in a REAL punch sound, they would get reamed for it sounding fake. It's very much like the uncanny valley of digital VFX. People may not be able to tell you WHY something is wrong, but they will absolutely notice and let everyone know about it.

[@JohnNRoach]

I graduated OIART in Canada years ago, which covered foley and sound design, but I never chased it as a career. That ProTools session gives me heart palpitations haha excellent video!

[@joefx69]

Christ this channel is amazing. Restores my faith in humanity

[@SarahKchannel]

I am production designer and 3D artist, but I have worked on sound design too in my life. All facets feed into each other. Sometimes an catchy sound, leads to visual ideas of how an object is supposed to look or function and vice versa. Sometimes seeing less but hearing more works best, then in another scene its way more visual then sound.

[@theberndog]

I'm fascinated by the speaker layout he has in that office. his speakers are above him and around the room.

[@edwardfletcher7790]

A lot of the sounds will be in Dolby Digital 7.1

[@wizwerv]

I'm really enjoying Adam as an interviewer!

[@edwardfletcher7790]

Adam being a fan boy is so wholesome 👍😆

[@foketesz]

"there's an inevitability to a sound in reverse". Absolutely!

[@David_in_Thailand]

When they place a sound into the timeline, they must also place it spatially in the scene to match where on the screen the sound emanates from. It's so complex.

[@kirkanos771]

When you have the chance to talk with the best sound designers and arrangers in the world but they give you an interview on squeaking seats.

[@JohnWellingtonWells]

I have done a bit of amateur sound design(for video games mainly), and man can it be tricky to design/find the right sound for a particular action. It's a pretty undervalued profession that doesn't get nearly as much credit as it should.

[@zjpeterson]

Sound design is something I don’t usually think about much when watching movies or TV. But, when the show gets it WRONG it can be incredibly distracting! The newer Star Trek shows Discovery and Picard were dropping in beeps and boops and other effects from earlier series that made no sense for their time and place. They had the full library of old sounds but didn’t know how to use it correctly. Hearing that carelessness made me realize and appreciate how careful and consistent the sound editing was on TNG, DS9, VOY, and ENT.

[@nicolasbannister2073]

Very cool and interesting. Loved it.

[@ALovelyLad]

One of the founders of that studio was the voice actor for General Grievous I believe

[@tfuniverse1651]

Idk if he founded it but your talking about Matthew Woods who is a sound editor and indeed voiced Grevious, Battle Droids and also played Bib Fortuna in Phantom Menace and in the post credits of Mando S3.

[@TomGrubbe]

This was really interresting. You should do another episode with the actual sound designers recording these sounds using unusual and exotic methods.

[@akoras3222]

Such a great video, thank you for the amazing insight into the sound design of movies :)

[@vegardyrnes1793]

This is soooo interesting! Thanks for a really great program!😄

[@Sfpmna]

You can that Samsun is one hell of a smart dude. A brain hardwired to manage sounds.

[@DheerajSukumaran]

props to the camera man who came to film a video exclusively on Marvel, and he wore a Star Wars T-shirt

[@vgaportauthority9932]

That dude pretty much has my dream job. Nice to see he loves it.

[@Tylru]

I was just looking into sound design yesterday, and wondered what software they use for the database/indexing so many sounds... To say this came at the most opportune time is an understatement. Definitely looking into SoundMiner and the other pieces I could find in the video. Thanks!

[@Green_Gold]

This was just a really cool video. Plain and simple. Really neat to see behind the scenes stuff like this. Awesome video concept 👌

[@gvstavofabian]

Man, this video is so amazing!

[@jezza_]

I can’t wrap my head around that pro tools session 😮

[@DefactoMusic]

That protool session just gave me shivers, me as a drill hip pop producer i feel like im only a dew drop and he's a ocean 😁

[@Darksagan]

My computer would blow up trying to play that session.

[@bongosapien9474]

Love the message on your shirt @adam

[@CineSoar]

I wanted to know, what are the "rules" regarding the Wilhelm scream :D Once in every X movies? A sound designer who has just had twins (or other rare life event) gets a 'golden ticket' that only the director can veto? The team sees the ideal opportunity, and talks the director into using it? How does it work its way into a film?

[@fedorvoronovcomposer]

As someone who considers themselves a sound guy, I find it so charming how the interviewer (sorry, don't know his name) is fascinated with sound design in general

[@Emthe30something]

There's more to the interview? Yesssss!

[@Emthe30something]

Databases? Hell yeah

[@OaklynMediaLLC]

The guardian's ship has V8 sounds and I love that!

[@chrishurley8382]

"That's not entirely.. accurate" Independence Day reference right there :)

[@rajarajanmanoharan]

Thank you for this Mr.Savage.

[@ghostwaremusic1061]

not me sitting here with my Ableton session, overwhelmed by 40 tracks

[@darthprasad]

Is there no AI that can do a first pass of a sound stage. Similar to how you have that program that creates images based on description. Essentially that, but creating a sound stage based on the sound requirements per scene? The get the human curators and experts to come in after and tweak. And that sound searching program seems antiquated as well. Surely that could also use a refresh. A visual decomposition tree that auto creates multiple sub categories to help the user streamline what they're looking for. Correlate the sound with the various movies and scenes and run some ai to strip and create metadata from that.

[@PerryLevy]

I thought this about C5, that studio is the best!

[@troubleondemand7703]

Not one mention of the Wilhelm scream?

[@edwardfletcher7790]

It's not used as much any more, only in more classic films.

[@JimmyKlef]

Wow. I've been lost now for years. I am a musician and audio guy and I think I just found my dream job. I literally do basically exactly this for literally no reason already at home. I just love sound so much and I am also a tinge crazy and love organizing absurd messes of sounds.

[@Allenmarshall]

Just when I think Adam Savage couldn't gain any more favor in my clan he goes and does this. My favorite hobby. 🍻

[@OscarBlancoSketchToon_com]

Adam. Have you seen the series Arcane? (you must have, it's a prop builder's dream!). There is one prop in there that would be an amazing project: Vi's Gauntlets (Atlas Gauntlets). There is actually someone who already made a 3d version of the mechanical part, to move the fingers on the gauntlet. I won't link here so it doesn't look like an advertisement. Just find her video with "Creating Vi's Gauntlets (Redesign)". The actual foam part (or other material) of the shell would be up to you, as well as the painting and weathering, which I know you just hate. Anyway, thought it would be a really cool thing to do!

[@kadenwarrenslay4567]

That’s the most horrifying pro tools session I’ve ever seen

[@Real28]

700k recordings. That is wild.

[@natemcb6596]

This is so fascinating. Ive always wondered about these sounds and their process at skywalker

[@Whopcap]

This. Is. Amazing!

[@thoreberlin]

I feel like there should be less sample browsing and more synthesis of new sounds based on thinking of the physical properties of the virtual stuff. We are now able to build actual physical simulations for synthesising sounds. Only using samples is a little bit like only using canned stuff and no fresh ingredients to cook.

[@overwrite.studio]

Brilliant questions! and answers

[@TokyoSpeirs]

That PT session got me shook

[@scaredyfish]

When I was growing up, one of my dream jobs was foley artist. I don’t know if that even exists any more, I guess sound designer is the closest equivalent.

[@Kardall]

They mentioned the door a lot. And I always wondered, is it a director's decision to not put a door squeak in an off-camera door opening for 'silence' factor? But then the door is opened or closed again in a neighboring scene and the squeak is there? I have seen it a few times in movies and it always bothers me. Protagonist walks into a room by opening a door (squeak). Closes door behind (squeak). Looks around the room and then someone comes in off-camera and talks to them but the door has been opened (no squeak) and they both leave and the door squeaks again when they close the door. LOL

[@kong-ba-pao]

Samson hearing a sound is like Gordon Ramsay tasting a dish and telling you what's in it.

[@fernandomassanga7223]

It seems like Adam knows music production. It's amazing how he makes good questions. By the way, what software is he using to play the samples?

[@tommih597]

Adam tickling my neediness as an audio person haha