Transformers Sound Design

http://soundworkscollection.com/videos/transformers2

In the above video Erik Aadahl and Greg russell discuss their work on the sound design for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallan. Transformers remains one of my biggest childhood obsessions, and Michael Bay's shallow storytelling did a reasonable job of ruining that for me, however from a technical standpoint these films are an incredible achievement. Aadahl explains how they 'want the picture and sound to evolve together, they shouldn't be these separate things that then at the end you stick together'. I wholeheartedly agree with this philosophy, but have never been able to put it into practice as every project I've done the sound on so far has always been given to me at the last minute.

They also detail a particular scene where a rare moment of silence is used (sandwiched in-between explosions and destruction) where the two humans are hiding in a hut with the decepticons hunting them out. Russel says 'to be able to scale everything back, to draw an audience in, to be able to feel that terror, and then to let it all hang out and explode, its pretty dramatic.' The basement scene in War of the Worlds involves a very similar scenario of cat-and-mouse with a tension building to a boiling point before it appears the worst is over, then suddenly the 'jump' moment comes when the girls foot slides out. Using a moment of silence before a big sound ramp is a very effective way controlling the audiences engagement with the dramatic tension of a scene, and I intend to adopt a similar approach with War of the Worlds.

The clip also has a section on their sound recording techniques and and interesting part about the sound design on one of the characters, Aadahl says that 'Science Fiction is the perfect opportunity to twist reality' and I plan on doing that when establishing the sounds of the alien probe. Some elements of the transformation sounds, printers and machinery, could be used to bring the probe to life, however I don't want to rely too much on a futuristic mechanism as it would be a little too similar to a Transformer.