Full Transcript for Godzilla Minus Zero - Sound Team Recs The Pod

fantastical when you put those two things together. So I'm curious, in a story filled with giant kaiju monsters and gravity beams and atomic blasts, what was the most difficult sound to find in order to bring those to life? 00:06:08 Speaker 6: I would say King Ghidorah's roar, King Ghidorah's voice. Finding its voice was one of the hardest challenges that I had in Minus Zero. And initially, director Yamazaki and I had talked a lot about, well, what is the sound design going to feel like for King Ghidorah? And because King Ghidorah is just so massive, the scale is just hard to fathom as a human looking up. meters and meters up in the sky. I couldn't think of what that would translate to in terms of how it would sound. So first I went to past movies, past King Ghidorahs, what they sound like. And after my research, what I thought was most important wasn't necessarily to invent or create that sound, but capture the spirit of what King Ghidorah is and represents. So once I kind of had that light bulb moment, I think it really kind of accelerated the process. And until then, I spent a lot of time trying to think about what that would look like. But once I had that idea, I discussed it with Yamazaki. I think we were on the same page. And that really kind of put me on the right course to finding Ghidorah's voice. 00:07:17 Speaker 3: Okay, we should talk about King Ghidorah's voice because... uh when the trailer dropped i want to say it was a craig you do me a favor can you look up the first trailer for godzilla minus zero we could pull that up but when the trailer first came out i did a reaction to it online and it was it blew me away and i was so enthralled with everything that was happening that i missed king gador's scream i missed the roar and my comment section was saying you missed the best part you missed the best part you missed the roar And I already had put out the reaction, so I had to watch it again. And then I had a separate reaction of me going, oh, my God, that's King Ghidorah's roar. And so I really find, like, that to be, like, really great. We can, like, pull it up right here. We're going to pull up the trailer. 00:08:02 Speaker 5: Oh, he looks so good. 00:08:03 Speaker 3: Oh. We're going to. 00:08:21 Speaker 5: Talk about the gravity beams too. We're going to talk about that. 00:08:24 Speaker 6: I knew. 00:08:31 Speaker 5: This would happen. 00:08:45 Speaker 3: Drama. 00:08:46 Speaker 5: Drama, drama. 00:08:46 Speaker 4: Incredible. 00:09:16 Speaker 3: So talk to me about kind of like that first, that very first teaser trailer that came out and like using the iconic sound of Ghidorah to kind of like get fans into what was going to happen next. What were you guys' feelings about kind of like putting in a little Easter egg for those fans? 00:09:34 Speaker 6: I mean, we were nervous. It was kind of a scary moment to see how the fans would react. 00:09:40 Speaker 3: Well, I mean, the fans loved it. I'm just letting you know that right now. Like, that was the number one thing in my comment section was, Ghidorah is here! And like, you know, it's honestly the best kind of like evolution of Minus One, where, you know, Godzilla, you know, he's a source for terror, but then he's also seen as like a protector of nature and those type of things. And so Ghidorah being like the ultimate foil for that I think dropping his voice in that trailer was the best decision that could have been done um and I didn't even like when I heard it I watched the movie still being like oh is Ghidorah gonna show up and when he does show up does not disappoint like at all so I think that trailer is one of the best reveals without revealing anything that you. 00:10:23 Speaker 5: Could possibly have. Before we get into more. 00:10:29 Speaker 3: Because I could talk about Ghidorah's roar and the wings and the atomic breath all day, but something that I really want to get into right now is the sound mixing. 00:10:38 Speaker 5: Of it all. 00:10:40 Speaker 3: One of my favorite movies, we talked about this just a little bit. I don't know if you two have seen the movie Sinners from Ryan Coogler. But incredible movie. We're going to get a poster in that empty spot over there for it. But there's this moment in that movie that truly made me really appreciate the sound mixing and the audio levels and whatnot. And there's a moment where Michael B. Jordan and Hailee Steinfeld are in the middle of the juke joint in the club. And you hear all this music going on. And they're having this big argument. But then there's a moment where things get a little bit more intimate. And it's just a moment between those two. And you slowly hear the crowd and the party fade away. And you can only hear... those two in that moment. So you can really put yourself in the shoes of those characters. And so I feel like with Godzilla Minus Zero, there are moments like that where even though there's destruction and pain and all these things going, we still reserve time to actually hear the characters in these confined spaces like. 00:11:32 Speaker 5: Ships and airplanes. 00:11:33 Speaker 3: So can you talk to me about mixing the audio levels in order to get the best character moments in the film? 00:11:39 Speaker 1: First of all, the audio. 00:11:47 Speaker 6: So in terms of sound design, obviously you want to feel the presence and the impact of these kaiju and I know that that's very important, but to make the human drama stand out among all of what's happening in Godzilla, We first decide on what the maximum volume is we want to achieve in any scene. And then for the emotional moments, it's a matter of subtraction. So it's that subtraction that allows when Godzilla and King Ghidorah make their appearance. You push the maximum really hard and it gives you that contrast so then you have the impact. 00:12:33 Speaker 5: Okay. 00:12:34 Speaker 3: Listen, your job is really hard because I try to mess with the sound of my videos on my Adobe Premiere

Pro and I can never. 00:12:42 Speaker 5: Get it right. Like, I never can get it right. It's very difficult, right? 00:12:48 Speaker 3: I don't want you to look at my TikToks because the sound levels are all over the place. 00:12:56 Speaker 6: What I always try to keep in mind is what's the most important, what's the most essential bit of information that the audience needs right now for this movie? And I kind of reverse engineer what gets mixed at what level from that. 00:13:08 Speaker 5: Got it. Okay. 00:13:11 Speaker 3: I'm gonna have you teach me more about this when i make my tiktok videos for sure we're gonna make it happen don't worry uh now can you talk to me about kind of like you know the collaborations between you two of like when it comes to the mixing of like like all these elements how often are you two in conversation with each other when we have scenes like for instance the gravity beam sequence where we have The real sounds of the plane and the fictional sounds of the gravity beams and those type of things. 00:13:41 Speaker 5: And how do you two collaborate to get. 00:13:42 Speaker 3: The best possible sounding moment that heightens the drama in this situation? 00:13:46 Speaker 2: Well, since the sound effect is something that doesn't exist in reality, when it. 00:13:53 Speaker 6: Appears, the gravity beam against something that doesn't exist in real life. But it can't feel fake because then you take the audience out of this state of suspension of disbelief. So one thing that the two of us pay very close attention to when mixing is after we listen to a pass on a mix, does it excite us or not? And that is the ultimate litmus test for whether something is good. So I know it sounds very kind of instinct and kind of fuzzy. But if we don't feel excited when watching a scene, both of us pause and say, hey, let's take a step back and talk about this because it's not exciting. 00:14:35 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:14:35 Speaker 5: I think that's like the important thing when it comes to movies, right? 00:14:38 Speaker 3: I think we call it the rule of cool where, yeah, it may not make all the way amount of sense, but it sounds great and it looks great. And I think that's the feeling that, you know, we chase is like storytellers. is to make sure the audience, first and foremost, are entertained with what they're seeing or what they're hearing. So it's good to know that that kind of went into it. But now, some of my favorite things when it comes to sound design in film, you want to talk about the T-Rex in Jurassic Park, where they said they made a mix of elephant sounds and a bunch of different elephants to. 00:15:10 Speaker 5: Get the roar of the T-Rex. 00:15:13 Speaker 3: And one of my favorite instances, this is like a music-related thing, but Daniel Pemberton, who was the composer for the Spider-Verse movies, He uses a goose at one point in his music. So I want to know, like, when it comes to creating, like, either the roar, Ghidorah's roar, Godzilla's roar, was there any combination of real world sounds that you did to kind of, like, achieve that? And also, like, in addition to just wanting something that sounds cool. 00:15:40 Speaker 6: Godzilla's roar, we based it off of the original 1954 Godzilla. And we made some modifications and kind of updated it. But we actually didn't use any real-life living creature recordings or samples in Godzilla's roar because when we tried it, it just didn't match. And I think that says a lot about Godzilla and what Godzilla represents, that no living creature can be part of that roar. And that was the first time I encountered something that a sound in real life doesn't exist that could help me get closer to the sound I'm imagining. And opposite Godzilla, we have King Ghidorah. King Ghidorah actually was heavily inspired and sampled from real life creatures. So we recorded birds, snakes, insects, even some human voices, and it matched Ghidorah's image very well. So I think that we have two kaiju that are very opposed, literally and figuratively here, and the voice, the roar element of it is also representative of that. So I think that's a very unique positioning that Godzilla has, just because no living creature will really represent its voice. 00:16:57 Speaker 5: Can't get bigger than Godzilla. 00:16:59 Speaker 3: Can't get bigger than Godzilla. The Ghidorah thing is very, very fascinating to me. Like, you know, I would assume there's kind of like animals and like the snakes and everything. Also birds, because birds are very close to dinosaurs, which, you know, Ghidorah and Godzilla are both close to a dinosaur as you can get. But the human thing was very shocking to me. Like that he said, like, can you elaborate on that a little bit? Was it human screams that you were sampling or was it human voices? Like what goes into sampling human speech into Ghidorah? 00:17:31 Speaker 5: Was it words? Like, I'm very curious to know that. 00:17:34 Speaker 6: My image of Ghidorah for the purpose of this movie is a key word I go back to is that it sings fear. And I sampled human voices for that melodic singing element that we hear in Ghidorah's voice. 00:17:51 Speaker 5: Oh, my God. See, we got Jonah back here, and he's like, yeah, that's a bar. Oh, I was going to say that's going up on the wall. That's going up on the wall. That's exactly what we were speaking about. We were just talking about this before you walked in. 00:18:01 Speaker 3: We were saying that we want a spot on our wall that when our guests come in, every now and then they come in and they just drop just a gem of a phrase, and we just want to put it up on our wall for everyone to see so we can always look back. 00:18:13 Speaker 5: I think that's going on the wall. 00:18:15 Speaker 1: Norimasu. 00:18:18 Speaker 3: It's like the idea of singing fear because it reminds me of this. I have it in my brain right now. It was a movie, Captain America, The Winter Soldier. And The Winter Soldier has a very

specific theme when it comes to his music. And it's a very kind of like grating theme. It has like a screeched. 00:18:39 Speaker 5: Little sound to it. 00:18:40 Speaker 3: And come to find out that they used the sounds of Sebastian and Stan screaming while he's being tortured, and they layered that into the score. So whenever you hear the brainwashed Winter Soldier show up, you're literally hearing the tortured screams of Sebastian and Stan as Bucky. And it's absolutely insane to hear that. 00:18:59 Speaker 5: Yeah. 00:19:00 Speaker 3: I think when people hear that Ghidorah's voice is essentially just fear and the screams of people, I think that's going to really mess a lot of people up when they realize what that is. So I have one final question. You two can elaborate on this a little bit further, but I heard that you used the sounds of a dam to achieve a very specific sound. Can you elaborate on that a little bit? 00:19:26 Speaker 6: On the wall of the dam, So we, first we went to a dam and we had a hypothesis that if we bring these giant PA speakers, this whole system that you would see at music. 00:19:39 Speaker 5: Festivals and hit. 00:19:41 Speaker 6: The dam's wall with it, we would get this amazing reflection of sound. 00:19:47 Speaker 5: And what was that to achieve exactly? 00:19:48 Speaker 3: Like it was just to get the sound of rushing water, and I'm curious to know what that achieved. 00:19:54 Speaker 6: Of course, when we hit the dam with the sound and it reflects, it bounces all throughout this environment, and what I was trying to achieve with that is to make Ghidorah's cry exist in reality once, Because if it's all in the sound stage, you're not going to get it in an environment that Ghidorah would actually exist. So once it exists and is released into reality, we record that sound. So we get the reflection off of the environment, the trees, the dam. And in a way, we kind of make this fantastical creature, King Ghidorah, exist in real life, literally. And we're capturing the atmosphere, the air that the sound reflects. 00:20:34 Speaker 3: So... So you went to a dam, you took a PA speaker, if I'm saying this correctly, and you threw it at the dam in order to achieve how King Ghidorah was sound in real life. Am I getting that right? 00:20:46 Speaker 1: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. 00:20:49 Speaker 5: Forgive the pun. Dam. 00:20:51 Speaker 6: So the dam itself is about 200 meters high, like 600 feet or something like that. And we had to take this whole PA system down 200 meters to the base of the dam to hit the dam with the sound. 00:21:09 Speaker 5: Oh my gosh. That is insane. 00:21:12 Speaker 3: This is the beauty of making movies, doing the most unconventional things to get the sound that works just right. I think when people hear Ghidorah in this, I'm really excited to put these clips out to show them exactly all the work that goes into achieving this terrifying, guttural sound of an iconic character. You're basically creating a new, iconic... um, way from something that's already just a classic thing that's part of pop culture. And it's because of the work that you do. And I just want to say thank you for putting in the work. 00:21:43 Speaker 6: Oh, thank you. 00:21:46 Speaker 5: You're very welcome. All right. 00:21:47 Speaker 3: So we have a question that we'd like to ask all our guests when they come on the show and it's what's a. 00:21:51 Speaker 5: Movie that changed your brain chemistry? 00:21:54 Speaker 3: It's going to be a movie that inspired you to do what you do or gave you like a lesson that you carry on in life or just that became a part of your DNA. But I'm very curious to know what is a movie that changed both of your brain chemistries. 00:22:05 Speaker 6: Back to the Future. 00:22:07 Speaker 5: Ah. 00:22:07 Speaker 3: Yes. 00:22:08 Speaker 5: Yes. Why is that? 00:22:13 Speaker 6: As a child seeing Back to the Future, I think there's this dreamy aspect of it, like this ride that you're on, and then there's the world setting that they have, and there's this admiration that I just can't quite describe. The fantastical elements, but also the reality, the human drama. And then how the story unfolds. It's just, you take any aspect of the music. I mean, take any aspect of Back to the Future. I think it was just perfectly executed. 00:22:40 Speaker 3: Damn near perfect movie, Back to the Future. It's a perfect movie almost. Like, I watched that movie so much. We actually had a musical adaptation that happened here that I think it was last year. 00:22:53 Speaker 5: So great. 00:22:55 Speaker 3: It makes a lot of sense because the music of Back to the Future, I love that style of music, the rock and roll, the Chuck Berry, all those things. And so I go back to that movie very, very often because it is probably one of the most unique movies that you can't really replicate. And a lot of times I'll find myself mimicking the voices of the characters. 00:23:15 Speaker 5: Like when he says, you mean to tell me you built a time machine? Out of a DeLorean? 00:23:21 Speaker 3: Like, I just love Michael J. Fox's delivery and everything. It's one of the best. I love your pick there. 00:23:26 Speaker 5: That's incredible. 00:23:27 Speaker 6: It was great. That's cool. I'm curious to hear yours. 00:23:30 Speaker 5: Speed for speed. 00:23:31 Speaker 6: I mean, best, best. best movie when you think they solve the bus issue then they get hit with the train so it's just like it just doesn't end i think that's what really set my career path and like got me into this industry. 00:24:01 Speaker 3: Yes like i listen it's so funny because we just had uh kital sakurai who was the director of street fighter uh and we were talking about how he's trying to bring back the 90s action movie aesthetic And I remember making a video to post online about that. And the first movie that I thought about when I thought of 90s action was Speed. I was like, yes, I got to show clips of this. But it's 9 by 16. It was really hard to catch it because the movie itself is so fast, you can't really catch it. But I still managed to grab a shot of Sandra Bullock driving it and doing that really hard right turn. 00:24:37 Speaker 5: But again, one of those movies that is so unique. 00:24:40 Speaker 3: And I think if you brought that premise to somebody today, they'll go, So it's a bus that can't stop or it blows up. 00:24:46 Speaker 5: What else happens? 00:24:48 Speaker 3: But it's one of those unique action movies that I feel like we need to make more of today. 00:24:53 Speaker 5: I love speed so much. 00:24:55 Speaker 4: Yeah. 00:24:55 Speaker 3: And before we get out of here, in case you're curious about movies that changed my brain chemistry, there's two of them right there, Spider-Man 2 and Her. Spider-Man 2, I saw that when I was 12 years old. And like Spider-Man has always been like my favorite comic book character, but that was like the first time where I saw him as a person, the human stakes. It was the first movie I saw where the human stakes were big, even bigger than the big danger of the movie, which is like the destruction of New York. But I cared most if Peter Parker was going to get the girl or not. 00:25:26 Speaker 6: Right. 00:25:26 Speaker 3: And the fact that I cared so much about a superhero getting the girl, like that just changed everything for me. Uh, her is my all time favorite movie. Like it's so relevant today. It's so beautiful. from the cinematography to the sound to the script. I think Scarlett Johansson's vocal performance is one of the best performances like ever. Plus, you know, in the conversation that we have with like AI and everything, like we talk about kind of like, it talked about AI in a way that was not necessarily scary, but it does talk about the dangers of the evolution of it and what. 00:25:58 Speaker 5: It does to us. So yeah, those two movies I like to like look at like during the podcast and it makes me like really happy. 00:26:05 Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, those are my favorite movies. I'm very happy to hear about your favorite movies, as well as getting to talk about Godzilla Minus Zero. I'm really excited for everyone to experience this in IMAX, hear your amazing work. Thank you so much for coming on the show and talking to me about this. 00:26:19 Speaker 5: Thank you so much. 00:26:21 Speaker 6: Thank you. 00:26:21 Speaker 1: Arigato. 00:26:22 Speaker 5: Arigato. And arigato to you too, everybody watching, everyone at home. 00:26:30 Speaker 3: Thank you so much for watching another episode of Get Wrecked with Straw Hat Goofy. Make sure you tap in. Leave a comment on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, iHeartRadio, wherever you get your podcasts at. And remember, I'm Straw Hat Goofy, and as always, can I be your movie guy?