Randy Thom - sound as music in Once Upon a Time in The West
In a video call at the Sound Summit of Dutch Media Week, Randy Thom talks about the possibilities sound ideas can offer during the script phase as they can influence all kinds of creative and visual decisions. Usually these possibilities are not recognized and used though there’s one famous exception in history: the coming about of the soundtrack for the film Once Upon a Time in The West (director Sergio Leone, composer Ennio Morricone).
Both Leone and Morricone weren’t satisfied with the original music for the first ten minutes of the film. Morricone visited at that time a concert where the squeeking sounds of a step ladder were used in a musical way. This experience raised the idea to use specific sounds in a specific way for the beginning of the film: creating music using sounds. Morricone about these first ten minutes : “I think this is the best music I have ever composed”.
Randy Thom
Sound Designer and Director of Sound Design at Skywalker Sound
Randy Thom is Director of Sound Design at Skywalker Sound, but still spends most of his time working on films. His credits include a.o. Apocalypse Now, Return of the Jedi, Wild at Heart, Forrest Gump, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, The Thin Blue Line, War of the Worlds, How To Train Your Dragon, Ghost in the Shell, and Ratatouille. He has worked with a diverse list of directors, including Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Robert Zemeckis, David Lynch, Guillermo del Toro, John Waters, Errol Morris, Henry Selick, Peter Jackson, Brad Bird, and Chris Wedge. His essay “Designing A Movie For Sound” is used in many universities.
Randy Thom has been nominated for fifteen Oscars, an Emmy and a Grammy. He has received two Oscars: one for The Right Stuff, and one for The Incredibles. Randy was honored with the C.A.S. Career Achievement Award in 2010 and the MPSE Career Achievement Award in 2014.