Dolby Creator Talks – Details, episodes & analysis

Multiple Emmy® Award-winning A1 audio mixer Glenn Stilwell joins us for an in-depth discussion on mixing live sports in Dolby Atmos®. As one of the first to adopt this immersive audio technology for sports, Glenn shares his journey into the high-pressure world of live sports audio, where he has worked on everything from the Olympics to Apple’s Friday Night Baseball. From setting up microphones for the iconic “bat crack” in baseball to leveraging the immersive capabilities of Atmos for crowd sounds and announcer placement, this conversation offers a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the artistry and challenges of live sports audio production.

“When you go from stereo… now the room that you're listening in has opened up. The room, it feels bigger. Now imagine when you add four more speakers above you, now the room really opens up… If you can spread things out and get them away from the center channel, which is — the money. If the money's in the middle and the room becomes bigger, it becomes more distinct.”

—Glenn Stilwell, A1 Audio Mixer and Engineer

Special thanks to Major League Baseball and Apple for this week’s episode. You can find MLB’s Friday Night Baseball, now exclusively on Apple TV+.

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The art of pitching is a high-stakes, nerve-wracking aspect of filmmaking, where ideas transform from concepts into potential projects. Joining us to help demystify the pitching process is Dolby Institute Fellowship winner Carlos López Estrada, hosting another insightful Satellite Session from April 2024. Carlos gathers an exceptional panel featuring film and television creators, each sharing personal insights and practical tips on crafting pitches, to offer invaluable wisdom on what it takes to pitch a project and navigate the journey from idea to production.

Joining today’s discussion are:

- Marvin Lemus – Director, Co-creator, and Co-showrunner of Netflix's Gentefied

- Sadé Clacken Joseph – Director of Rap Sh!t on HBO Max, CEO of Out of Many Media

- Francisco Cabrera-Feo – Writer for Acapulco on Apple TV+ and Gordita Chronicles

- Matt Braly – Creator and Showrunner of Disney’s Amphibia

- Jessica Virtue – SVP of Production at Walt Disney Pictures

This is another installment of our ongoing “Satellite Sessions” series, which we’re bringing to you in partnership with Antigravity Academy and the Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment. 

Follow @antigravityacademy and @capeusa for more information on even more upcoming panels.

Antigravity Academy

CAPE (Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment)

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Mix engineer Ryan Ulyate joins us to dive deep into his work with the late, great Tom Petty, including his Dolby Atmos® mixes of Petty's “Highway Companion” solo album, “Wildflowers & All The Rest” Deluxe Edition, “Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers Greatest Hits,” and the iconic “Live at the Fillmore 1997.”

Ryan has been a recording engineer and producer for over 40 years, with credits on over 120 albums, and has been at the forefront of immersive audio for over 20. In this conversation with guest host Ben Givarz, Ryan shares his journey of sifting through hours of multi-track tapes to create those incredible new immersive mixes, as well as his theories, best practices, and the creative process behind bringing a fully immersive experience to life in Dolby Atmos.

This interview is part of our new series, "Reimagining the Classics."

“What I realized about Dolby Atmos was that it's not something you do to overwhelm people. It's just something that allows you to put [the listener] in the space of where the music was being made… You can create more drama and get people really inside the music and create these little moments. I think that I've always looked at music visually. I just always see a picture when I'm mixing. And this just broadens the scope so much more. And it gives you such an emotional connection when it works. And that's all that the musicians that I've respected, and I've worked with, ever wanted. Just to find a great way - the best way - for people to connect with their music.”

—Ryan Ulyate, Record Producer and Mix Engineer

You can listen to these and many other classic and contemporary albums in Dolby Atmos, on enabled streaming services.

Be sure to also check out Ryan Ulyate’s Grammy Award®-nominated album “Act 3,” in Dolby Atmos:

- Apple Music

- Amazon Music

- TIDAL

- Immersive Audio Album

You can learn more about Ryan and his incredible mix studio here.

Interested in creating content in Dolby Atmos? Check out our free resources to give you a jump start!

- Dolby Atmos Music Accelerator: https://www.dolby.com/institute/music-accelerator/

- Dolby Atmos Essentials Course: https://learning.dolby.com/

- Dolby Atmos Music Support: https://professional.dolby.com/music/Professional-resources/

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Director Matt Reeves joins us this week to discuss The Batman. This is part 1 of our special 2-part episode on this film, since there is so much to discuss with Matt and his team. So be sure to check out part 2, where we discuss the cinematography of The Batman, which will debut this Thursday!

In this episode we are joined by Matt and his incredible team of sound and music artists:

Michael Giacchino - Composer

Will Files - Supervising Sound Editor

Douglas Murray - Supervising Sound Editor

Andy Nelson - Re-Recording Mixer

Somehow, despite their very busy schedules, we managed to spend over an hour together (in-person!) discussing the amazing work this team did. And as you'll soon discover, this is a group that works incredibly well together, each bringing their exceptional creativity and craft to the process. But we also spend a lot of time discussing how Matt manages to bring everything together so seamlessly as the director:

"You have to become an emotional compass. To me, that is the job of the director. Because you have so many incredibly creative people who you're working with. Here: I make a movie in my head and a piece of paper — that's one version of the movie. And it's a very narrow band of what that movie could be. And then you work with these artists and you want everyone to bring something... And I have to be an emotional compass to say, 'that idea is great! That idea really works!' Somebody has to do that. And the way you do that is by immersing yourself into that thing."

— Matt Reeves, Director, Co-Writer, and Producer, "The Batman"

This episode is a master class in filmmaking and collaboration, with a ton of insights into the process of crafting this latest superhero epic.

Be sure to check out The Batman at a Dolby Cinema near you.

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Welcome to our continuing coverage of this year's Academy Awards. Like last year, we have compiled interviews from each of the nominees in the Best Sound category. So, if you are an Oscar voter — either as an Academy member or as a fan participating in your annual office pool — you'll have a much better idea of what to watch for and (more importantly) what to listen for as you get to the Best Sound category on your ballot! Here are the nominees, in alphabetical order:

BELFAST: Denise Yarde, Simon Chase, James Mather and Niv Adiri

DUNE: Mac Ruth, Mark Mangini, Theo Green, Doug Hemphill and Ron Bartlett

NO TIME TO DIE: Simon Hayes, Oliver Tarney, James Harrison, Paul Massey and Mark Taylor

THE POWER OF THE DOG: Richard Flynn, Robert Mackenzie and Tara Webb

WEST SIDE STORY: Tod A. Maitland, Gary Rydstrom, Brian Chumney, Andy Nelson and Shawn Murphy

Each of these interview excerpts is taken from our full episodes dedicated to the sound design of each of these incredible films. Here's a table of contents, in case you'd like to jump around, as well as links to the full episodes from our back catalogue:

0:01:33 - BELFAST - from episode 104, December 9, 2021

• Sir Kenneth Branagh — Director, Writer, and Producer 
• Simon Chase — Sound Supervisor and Re-recording Mixer
• Niv Adiri — Academy Award-Winning Re-recording Mixer
• James Mather — Sound Supervisor

0:16:56 - DUNE - from episode 99, October 26, 2021

• Denis Villeneuve — Director, Writer, and Producer
• Mark Mangini — Supervising Sound Editor
• Theo Green — Sound Designer / Supervising Sound Editor
• Ron Bartlett — Re-recording Mixer

0:33:02 - NO TIME TO DIE - from episode 101, November 10, 2021

• Oliver Tarney — Supervising Sound Editor
• Paul Massey — Re-recording Mixer
• Mark Taylor — Re-recording Mixer

0:46:04 - THE POWER OF THE DOG - from episode 105, December 13, 2021

• Jane Campion — Director, Writer, and Producer
• Robert Mackenzie — Supervising Sound Editor
• Dave Whitehead — Sound Designer
• Tara Webb — Re-recording Mixer (1st nom)

0:57:39 - WEST SIDE STORY - from episode 114, February 22, 2022

• Gary Rydstrom - Re-recording Mixer, Supervising Sound Editor, Sound Designer
• Shawn Murphy - Scoring Mixer
• Brian Chumney - Supervising Sound Editor
• Tod A. Maitland - Sound Mixer
• Andy Nelson - Re-recording Mixer

Many thanks to all the studios for helping us pull these interviews together! Be sure to check out BELFAST, DUNE, NO TIME TO DIE, THE POWER OF THE DOG, and WEST SIDE STORY before Oscars voting ends!

We have two more episodes just like this one — for the Best Cinematography and Best Animated Feature categories —  coming up. So if you haven't already, please subscribe to Sound + Image Lab: The Dolby...

If it seems like the Hollywood musical is making a comeback, that's because, in many ways, it is. And after decades of promising to one day direct one, legendary filmmaker Steven Spielberg finally decided to tackle a new interpretation of "West Side Story." The film is now nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Cinematography, Best Director, Best Picture, and Best Sound.

Joining us today is the sound team behind this film, who collectively took great pains to use as many modern recording techniques available to them to create this impressive, cutting-edge soundtrack.

• Gary Rydstrom - Re-recording Mixer / Sound Designer / Supervising Sound Editor - this is his 20th  Academy Award nomination (seven wins)
• Shawn Murphy - Scoring Mixer - fourth nomination (one win)
• Brian Chumney - Supervising Sound Editor - first nomination
• Tod A. Maitland - Sound Mixer - fifth nomination
• Andy Nelson - Re-recording Mixer - 22nd nomination (two wins)

"I think the most remarkable thing in this movie is you never, for one second, don't believe that the singing you're hearing, or the acting you're hearing, is not happening on that set. It feels completely believable at every time. And seamlessly goes in and out of the music. I've never heard a musical be that seamless before. I think that's one of the great achievements of this particular movie."

— Gary Rydstrom, Re-recording Mixer / Sound Designer / Supervising Sound Editor, "West Side Story"

"West Side Story" is now playing in cinemas and will be streaming on HBO Max and Disney+ as of March 2, 2022. 

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With yesterday's announcement of the 94th Academy Award nominations, this year's award season is now in full swing! We decided it would be fun to bring in some experts to discuss the nominees, especially those in some of our favorite categories — Best Sound and Best Cinematography — as well as others (and the show itself) for a very spirited conversation on this year's top contenders.

Our guests:

Lon Harris — Pop Culture Writer for Screen Junkies — https://twitter.com/Lons

Will Mavity — Awards Correspondent at NextBestPicture.com — https://twitter.com/mavericksmovies

Jazz Tangcay — Senior Artisans Editor at Variety — https://twitter.com/jazzt

For all of our upcoming Academy Awards coverage, please subscribe to Sound + Image Lab: The Dolby Institute Podcast wherever you get your podcasts.

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We conclude our special coverage of sound design for video games by interviewing the sound team at Gearbox Software, which famously created "over one billion guns" for its latest first-person shooter, Borderlands 3. So how exactly does a team design the sound for so many different guns? Turns out, it's actually kinda fun.

"The godsend was the fact that we have a good set of field recording gear internally anyway and... we live in Texas. So, there's lots of people with lots of guns and lots of places, lots of space. So outside of the formal gun shoots that we did, which was really only one — formal gun shoot — we did a whole lot of side shoots here, locally, just us. And some of that was experimentation. Some of that was filling holes. We were learning as we were going. Where we needed more content, where we needed different types of content, different perspectives, different tales. Those kinds of things. And we would go out and do those shoots."

— Mark Petty, Audio Director, Gearbox Software

Thanks again to Gearbox Software for joining us this week!

Borderlands 3 is currently available on your favorite video game platforms.

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As we continue to delve into the world of sound design for gaming, we have a special conversation to share with you today with one of the heavy hitters in this space — Rob Bridgett. 

Rob is something of a visionary in their field and has a new book called, "Leading with Sound: Proactive Sound Practices in Video Game Development," where they share some of their fascinating insights and philosophy on crafting soundtracks for video games.

"I talk about the topic of leading with sound through each one of those subject areas [music, sound, dialogue, and mix]. What are the opportunities for sound designers or composers or dialogue designers? What are the opportunities that they may be missing early in pre-production or production and try to deemphasize this idea of post-production. I know it's something that I've spent a lot of my time trying to create and defend in video games. And I still maintain that we 100% have to have post-production time and we have to be the last part of the baton race. I'm not arguing for that to go away. That's still critical, it feels like those are the gates of Valhalla for us, in audio. It's like once we arrive at post-production, we should already have all this other stuff figured out."

— Rob Bridgett, Audio Director, "Shadow of the Tomb Raider"

Our colleague Andy Vaughan discusses the book, as well as Rob's work on "Shadow of the Tomb Raider," their overall career, and some of the exciting new experimentation they're doing in partnership with McGill University.

You can learn more about Rob and check out their book here.

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Academy Award-winning sound artist Skip Lievsay has worked with some of the greatest filmmakers for the past several decades, including Martin Scorsese, Darren Aronofsky, Michael Moore, Alfonso Cuarón, and his most frequent collaborators, the Coen Brothers. In this in-depth interview, Skip tells us some of his greatest tricks of the trade, whether working with first-time filmmakers or directors of the highest calibre. Specifically, being brave enough to experiment and even get things "wrong," even if that leads to some awkward moments on the mix stage.

"That's a valid, valuable experiment. We do that all the time. You don't know how far is too far until you go there. And you don't know if too far is not good until you find out, one way or the other."

— Skip Lievsay

Skip's latest film, "The Tragedy of Macbeth," directed by Joel Coen is available on AppleTV+ as of January 14.

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