Tonebenders Podcast

Supervising Sound Editors Ethan Van der Ryn and Erik Aadahl have been working together for 19 years and have built a reputation for working on films that are highly sound dependant. The two sit down to discuss their work on the new blockbuster film, Project Hail Mary, which is another movie that relies on it's sound design in order for the entire film to work. The two describe how they created the "Eridian" alien language for Rocky, the sonic design of the space ship, their field recording trips to NASA facilities and lots more. ______SPONSORS: The NAB Show is one of the biggest gatherings for professionals working in media, post-production, and broadcast, and it’s happening this Month in Las Vegas. If you’re attending the show, stop by the Sound Ideas at Booth N1413 at the Las Vegas Convention Center, with exhibits open April 19th through the 22nd. Sound Ideas has been creating and distributing professional sound effects libraries for decades and NAB is a great chance to meet the team and see what they’ve

Tonebenders' host, Tim Muirhead, went to LA last month to host the 4th Annual Los Angeles Tonebenders Sound Design Meet-up and attend the C.A.S. Awards and MPSE The Golden Reels. He shares some stories of his adventures in Los Angeles as well as a bunch of backstage interviews he did with the winners at The Golden Reels. As a bonus this episode also includes a short interview with all-time legendary sound person Ben Burtt!!!! ______SPONSOR: The NAB Show is one of the biggest gatherings for professionals working in media, post-production, and broadcast, and it’s happening this Month in Las Vegas. If you’re attending the show, stop by the Sound Ideas at Booth N1413 at the Las Vegas Convention Center, with exhibits open April 19th through the 22nd. Sound Ideas has been creating and distributing professional sound effects libraries for decades and NAB is a great chance to meet the team and see what they’ve been working on. Reach out to Sound Ideas to get a free pass to the NAB Show by emailing contact@sound-

Get an educated head start on your Oscar Pool this year! Go on a deep dive into each nominated film in the Best Sound Category at this year's Academy Awards. Featuring interviews with the sound teams behind One Battle After Another, F1: The Movie, Sinners, Sīrat, and Frankenstein. ______SPONSORS: Great sound leads to great storytelling. With Sound Ideas Memberships, you get full online access to the largest professional sound library in the world. Choose the tier that fits your needs, including up to unlimited downloads on the royalty-free use of hundreds of thousands of sounds. From cinematic impacts and detailed ambiences to everyday essentials and specialty effects, it’s all ready to preview and download on demand. Just head to https://sound-ideas.com/pages/memberships to find the Membership that’s right for you. ________ MORPHOSIS is a powerful neural timbre-matching tool designed for audio professionals. It works by applying the tonal qualities of one sound source, onto a second sound in surprisingly eff

Supervising Sound Editor Laia Casanovas flew in from Spain to join Tonebenders in front of a packed theatre in Toronto. Laia shows real enthusiasm while talking about her Oscar nominated sound work on Sirāt. She discusses "worldizing" the music featured in the film to match the homemade sound systems depicted on screen, as well as the role wind sounds plays to ramp up tension and how the vehicle's engines presented unexpected audio problems for Laia and her team to solve. Listeners in LA, don't forget to come out to the 4th Annual Tonebenders' Los Angeles Sound Design Meet-up, Presented by The Motion Picture Sound Editors. This Thursday, March 5th 2026, 7pm. We will be at All Season Brewery (800 S La Brea Ave) in Hollywood. I hope to see you there. ______SPONSORS: Great sound leads to great storytelling. With Sound Ideas Memberships, you get full online access to the largest professional sound library in the world. Choose the tier that fits your needs, including up to unlimited downloads on the royalty

One Battle After Another is the latest film by director Paul Thomas Anderson and it is his first time finishing a project with a full ATMOS Mix. Embracing the idea of "widening the screen with sound" Supervising Sound Editor Christopher Scarabosio, Re-recording Mixer Tony Villaflor and Production Sound Mixer José Antonio García set out to create an energetic and engulfing soundscape for One Battle After Another. In this talk they discuss building the riot scene, the truly unique car chase, the obstacles that the VistaVision camera brought to them and lots more. ______SPONSORS: If you work in sound design, post, or game audio, you already know how much time the right library can save you. For the month of February, get 50% off any Sound Ideas Membership Tier, no matter which level of access you need. That’s half off the entire professionally recorded sound effects catalog, from cinematic and broadcast to hard-to-find specialty sounds. Just head to http://sound-ideas.com/ and use the promo code TONEBENDERS50 at

Zootopia 2 had the second biggest box office in 2025. People all over the world flocked to see it and that is not lost on the sound team behind it. In this episode Jeremy Bowker (sound designer & supervising sound editor) and David Fluhr (supervising re-recording mixer) discuss how they tackle a film with this much anticipation behind it, mixing dialog for animation, designing sounds to work with the massive score, their approach to international versions and lots more. ______SPONSORS: If you work in sound design, post, or game audio, you already know how much time the right library can save you. For the month of February, get 50% off any Sound Ideas Membership Tier, no matter which level of access you need. That’s half off the entire professionally recorded sound effects catalog, from cinematic and broadcast to hard-to-find specialty sounds. Just head to http://sound-ideas.com/ and use the promo code TONEBENDERS50 at checkout. ______ If you are interested in field recording, you should know about the O-Mi

To celebrate Mark Mangini's upcoming Lifetime Achievement Award from the Motion Picture Sound Editors, I sat down with him to stroll down memory lane. We dig into all the films that he has been nominated for Golden Reels on over the years. That is a lot of films! 23 nominations in total. In this part 2 of the conversation we go from the late 80s up to modern day, covering films like Aladdin, The Green Mile, Mad Max: Fury Road, Dune and many more. We also talk a bit about some of the upcoming films Mark has been working on recently. Make sure you check out part one as well, just go back one episode in the feed. You can purchase tickets to attend the Golden Reels by going to https://mpse.org/event-6300024. ______SPONSORS: If you work in sound design, post, or game audio, you already know how much time the right library can save you. For the month of February, get 50% off any Sound Ideas Membership Tier, no matter which level of access you need. That’s half off the entire professionally recorded sound effects c

Mark Mangini will be receiving the Motion Picture Sound Editors Lifetime Achievement Award at this years's Golden Reel ceremonies. To celebrate this honour, Mark and I sat down in Formosa's Stage 6 for a fascinating talk about all the projects for which he has been nominated at the Golden Reels over the years. In this part 1, Mark discusses his early work starting with all time classics like Raiders Of The Lost Ark, Poltergeist, Gremlins and Star Trek: The Voyage Home. Part 2 will be coming out in a few days where we cover the rest of his career to present day. You can purchase tickets to attend the Golden Reels by going to https://mpse.org/event-6300024 ______SPONSORS: If you work in sound design, post, or game audio, you already know how much time the right library can save you. For the month of February, get 50% off any Sound Ideas Membership Tier, no matter which level of access you need. That’s half off the entire professionally recorded sound effects catalog, from cinematic and broadcast to hard-to-

This episode features an interview with Supervising Sound Editor and Re-Recording Mixer Skip Lievsay, from the recent film Marty Supreme. Skip discusses his team's approach to the ping pong sound effects and how to use use background sounds to ground a film in a certain time and place. Skip has worked with both Safdie brothers together on Uncut Gems and then with Benny on his own for Smashing Machine and Josh solo on Marty Supreme. Skip tells me what each experience was like. After I finish talking with Skip Lievsay, this episode concludes with backstage interviews featuring all the winners from the sound categories at the recent Director's Guild of Canada Awards. ______SPONSORS: As the New Year begins, Sound Ideas is offering its largest sale to date. For a limited time, receive 55% off professionally recorded sound effects and music libraries. This New Year promotion applies across their esteemed catalog, making it an ideal moment to expand or update your professional collection with authentic audio and a

Wicked For Good pushed the Oscar nominated sound team from last years blockbuster, Wicked, to go further into the sonic world of Oz. Continuing the idea that every sound making it into the film had to have an Ozian twist to it. Nancy Nugent Title (Supervising Sound Editor), John Marquis (Supervising Sound Editor/Sound Designer/Re-Recording Mixer), Jack Coleman (Supervising Music Editor) and Simon Hayes (Production Sound Mixer) tell us about all the obstacles and challenges they met to complete this massive project. The music and sound effects departments worked really closely together in post, while production sound was constantly thinking about what would be needed by the audio post team. Wicked For Good is the culmination of a massive project where sound was an integral part of the the entire production. ______SPONSORS: As the New Year begins, Sound Ideas is offering its largest sale to date. For a limited time, receive 55% off professionally recorded sound effects and music libraries. This New Year promot

This interview was recorded live, in front of a packed house, at the Glen Glenn Film Center in Hollywood California. F1: The Movie presented a multitude of complex challenges for it's sound team, as the race cars have to sound huge and immediate and the music had to be "driving" as well. Then you add in the dialog and crowds and you are dealing with a monstrous brew of editorial and mix obstacles. Joining Tim on stage from F1 are Gary Rizzo (re-recording mixer), Al Nelson (supervising sound editor), Gwen Yates Whittle (supervising sound editor) and Gareth John (production sound mixer). They discuss their experiments with recording the cars, the involvement of Lewis Hamilton, the many levels of futz on the voices during the races and lots more._______SPONSORS: As the New Year begins, Sound Ideas is offering its largest sale to date. For a limited time, receive 55% off professionally recorded sound effects and music libraries. This New Year promotion applies across their esteemed catalog, making it an ideal

Five members of the sound team from Director James Gunn's recent Superman film, join the show to talk about giving a new sonic identity to the Superman legacy. Supervising Sound Editors David Acord & Katy Wood are joined by re-recording mixers Chris Boyes & Tim Blanc as well as production sound mixer Lee Orloff, to do a deep dive into super hero sound. Challenges included capturing the dialog on set while surrounded by complicated visual effects and stunts and the sound design and editorial of creating entirely new sounds for super powers and pocket dimensions. The final mix had to find clarity within huge music, sound effects and important dialog. This film required a lot of skill and high end execution to create a soundscape that lived up to the Man of Steel himself. _____ SPONSORS: As the New Year begins, Sound Ideas is offering its largest sale to date. For a limited time, receive 55% off professionally recorded sound effects and music libraries. This New Year promotion applies across their esteemed catal

Listeners of Tonebenders sent in their favourite stories of recording sounds out in the world. This is part two, of two, featuring these amazing soundscapes from all over the world. Recordings were sent in of sounds from Kenya, Zimbabwe, Australia, England, Palau, Laos, Poland, Botswana, Germany, Albania, Switzerland, Canada and The USA. So get ready for a sonic trip around the world! This episode features contributions from listeners Ronald Schmidt, Dmitry Chernov, Richard Walters, Jonathon Pilon, Lucas Vitale, Udo Baumhögger, Ryan Granger, Leon Regula, Anita Yung and Jan Dzyr. If you missed part one go back and find eps 334. Congrats to Diego Lukumy and Lamar Samuels for winning the draw to receive a free pair of O-Mini high-sensitivity, miniature omnidirectional electret microphones, kindly donated by Chris Trevino._____ Los Angeles Listeners come out this Thursday, January 8th, to the very first Tonebenders Screening Series. We will be showing the film F1: The Movie followed by a live recording of a Tone

The new film Nuremberg is a surprisingly dense and complicated film for it's sound. What I assumed was going to be a standard courtroom drama ended up being a much larger film and it sounded fantastic.  The dialog was crisp and up front, the sound design was intense. Dialog/ADR supervisor Ulrika Akander & Re-Recording Mixer/Sound Designer/Supervising Sound Editor Michael Babcock joined me to talk about their unique approach to the audio post on this film. Using what they refer to as a "rolling premix" the film was tackled over a longer period of time with a small crew. They discuss their approach to dial cleaning, historic footage, ADR recording and using audio to focus the audiences attention.______ On Thursday January 8th, Tonebenders will be hosting a free screening of the film F1, at the Glen Glenn Film Center, that will be followed by a live interview with the sound team behind the film. Glen Glenn’s studio one is about the greatest place possible to hear a film with such dense and powerful sound design

The latest film in the Tron franchise, Tron: Ares, expands that world's sonic pallet in dramatic ways. The music by Nine Inch Nails is huge, the sound design is grittier and the dialog is being processed in creative and constantly changing ways. This film benefited from an international sound team, collaborating together. Re-Recording Mixer Ron Bartlett & Supervising Sound Editor Addison Teague, both based in California, shared duties with Supervising Sound Editor Baard Ingebretsen and Sound Designer/Re-Recording Mixer/Supervising Sound Editor Tormod Ringnes, who are working out of Oslo, Norway. Bringing these two teams together became a great strength for the sound of the film as a whole. They discuss merging the sounds of the real world with "The Grid", building light cycle sounds from scratch, the detailed process of finding exactly the right amount of dialog processing when digitizing the human voice and lots more.________ SPONSORS: Sound Ideas is closing out the year with a massive Year-End Sale, and y

In this episode Patrick Spence-Thomas does a reading of Dylan Thomas' classic "A Child's Christmas in Wales". Patrick sadly passed away in 2008 after an iconic career as a re-recording mixer and a location sound recordist. The first half of this episode is a quick run down on who Patrick was and some of the work he did, including being both the mixer and narrator for Death Bed: The Bed That Eats! The episode wraps up with Patrick's wonderful reading of one of his favourite poems/stories. ________ SPONSORS: Sound Ideas is closing out the year with a massive Year-End Sale, and you’re invited! Now through to the end of Decemeber, enjoy 50% off all proprietary items, including premium sound effects and production music trusted by creators worldwide. Don’t wait, these savings disappear on December 31st at midnight, as we move into 2026. Check out https://sound-ideas.com/ today and create something amazing.________ The Soundscape Fund - George Vlad, Andy Martin and Thomas Rex Beverly are three of the sound commu

In 2025 Johnnie Burn has been busy. As supervising sound editor and re-recording mixer on some of the most talked about films of the year, he has jumped between working on the emotional roller coaster Hamnet, the incredibly tense Bugonia and the terrifying 28 Years Later. Three very different films that are all lead by director's with very specific visions. Johnnie takes us on a spoiler free journey, to tell us how he was able to tackle these films and find the sonic voice of each one. _________ Sponsor: This Cyber Monday, Sound Ideas is offering an incredible opportunity for audio professionals. You can take 50% off all proprietary sound libraries, including some of the most trusted effects in post-production. And for creators looking to expand fast, the General HD Collection is on flash sale at $750, down from $2,995. This is your chance to grab pro-quality sounds for a fraction of the price. Visit https://www.sound-ideas.com/ and upgrade your sound library today.___________ Episode Notes: https://tonebend

It seems like Guillermo del Toro's whole career has been leading up to Frankenstein. Part of that progression has been building a great trust with the sound team he has been collaborating with for over a decade. Supervising sound editors Nathan Robitaille & Nelson Ferreira, Re-recording Mixer Brad Zoern and foley artist Goro Koyama join me for this episode to discuss working on their biggest del Toro film yet. From designing the voice of the creature, to making all the guns sound huge (but certain ones sound even bigger!?) to the difficulty of making chains sound heavy, they discuss how challenging this film was. Including creating the sounds for their version of the iconic scene where the creature comes to life.__________ SPONSORS: This Cyber Monday, Sound Ideas is offering an incredible opportunity for audio professionals. You can take 50% off all proprietary sound libraries, including some of the most trusted effects in post-production. And for creators looking to expand fast, the General HD Collecti

Gisle Tveito has been dreaming up the sounds in director Joachim Trier's films since 2006 and the two have collaborated again on the wonderful new film Sentimental Value. Gisle joins me to talk about the challenges of working on the sound for quiet, internal films. Including building an emotional map of the entire movie to determine where the sonic focus changes occur. He also discusses how he attacks a project where he is the dialog editor, sound effects editor, music editor, voice over director and re-recording mixer. Is wearing this many hats an an indie/punk rock approach or madness?!________ Sponsors: This Black Friday, Sound Ideas is offering its biggest savings of the year! Enjoy 50% off all proprietary sound libraries and memberships: our best deal yet on world-class audio collections. But that’s just the beginning. Each week, we’ll spotlight one of our most popular libraries with an exclusive, limited-time discount. Visit https://www.sound-ideas.com/ regularly to discover which library is feature

At this years Toronto International Film Festival I got to interview a bunch of sound people in town to support films screening at TIFF. This episode collects 3 of those interviews, covering some of the international films that I saw during the festival. First up I talk with Oscar winning sound supervisor, Sylvain Bellmare, about the Quebecois film Mille secrets mille dangers (Lovely Day). Then Therese Gylfe & Tove Lidman discuss their work on the Swedish/Spainish film Forestera, which won a major award at TIFF. The final interview of this episode is with María Alejandra Rojas & Arturo Salazar about the really cool Brazilian/Mexican film The Blue Trail. The is movie is a futuristic science fiction film covering the unique ways technology will affect third world countries. __________ Sponsors: This Black Friday, Sound Ideas is offering its biggest savings of the year! Enjoy 50% off all proprietary sound libraries and memberships: our best deal yet on world-class audio collections. But that’s just the beginning