Tom Holman's musings on Walter Murch, Ben Burtt, and Skywalker Sound.

In an old article in Surround Professional magazine entitled "Something in the Water" Tom Holman writes about the pedigree of Skywalker Sound and its Sound Designers.  Some highlights:

On Walter Murch isms:

"Sound is like a three-ring circus; you don't find any five-ring circuses because the mind can't follow five things at once"; "Sound comes in the back door, while picture comes in the front; so sound has a subtle storytelling character about it that can be used to move an audience in certain ways without their conscious knowledge, and the corollary to that 'sound people will never get the recognition they deserve'"; and "We can think about sound as having a sharp foreground and an out-of-focus background, just like a camera does" (Side note: this shallow depth of field effect is achieved by opening up the iris, but lenses aren't always set up this way.  Citizen Kane is well-known for being shot with a deep depth of field).  These are paraphrases of classic Murch concepts, except the recognition issue corollary, which is added.

And then came Ben Burtt.  Hired out of USC by George [Lucas] about a year before Star Wars came out, it was certainly unusual to start on sound a year ahead of release.

Why Movie Mixes Don't Translate Into The Home

In an old article in Surround Professional magazine (I believe it's in the April 2002 edition) titled "Scaling the Experience: Considerations for Bringing Movie Sound Into Homes," Tom Holman explains why mixes in the theatrical dub stage don't translate into typical home theaters.

Theater mixes played at the same physical sound pressure level at home are perceived as much louder.  "This is due to a psychoacoustic scaling function: we come to 'expect' certain sound levels in certain spaces."

Best movie theater listening seats are between 50 and 70 percent of the critical distance (the distance from a source along its axis where the level of the direct sound and reverberant sound from the source are equal).  He's saying dub stage listening positions are dryer because "cinemas are much deader for their room volume than other spaces" and "use directional screen loudspeakers," counter to what we typically think of for large reverberant spaces like churches and halls.  For a typical 3000 cu. ft. living room (approximately 20'x20'x8'), the combination of reverberation time and lack of speaker directionality (he mentions the fronts are "direct radiators"), the listening position is the equivalent of 1.8 times the critical distance, so much wetter compared to the 0.5 to 0.7 times the critical distance of theaters.  Much of the translation problem is therefore attributed to the theater listening position being direct field dominated and the home being reverberant field dominated.

Another issue is that in the home, speakers are more directional at higher frequencies, where reverberation times fall, causing the soundfield to "reach out and touch you."  Material mixed on the mixing stage will thus sound brighter in the living room.

Good stuff!