Your browser is out-of-date!

Update your browser to view this website correctly. Update my browser now

×

Godzilla Gets On The Mic

Erik Aadahl and Ethan Van der Ryn of sound design team e2 recorded some of the key sounds—including a famous roar—featured in the new, big-budget remake of Godzilla, hitting theaters this Friday.

Ethan Van der Ryn, holding the Sanken CO-100K microphone, and Erik Aadahl. Photo by David Goggin.
Los Angeles, CA (May 7, 2014)—Erik Aadahl and Ethan Van der Ryn of sound design team e2 recorded some of the key sounds—including a famous roar—featured in the new, big-budget remake of Godzilla, hitting theaters this Friday.

Van der Ryn and Aadahl are responsible for the sound design and sound editing of the Transformers and Kung Fu Panda films. Other credits include the Lord of the Rings series and The Tree of Life. Together they have garnered seven Oscar nominations and two wins.

“Godzilla’s original roar from the 1954 Toho film was created using a double bass and a leather glove with pine tar rosin to create friction,” explained Aadahl. “Using a Sanken 100K mic, we recorded the friction of a glove going across the strings to reproduce that iconic Godzilla roar, probably the most famous sound effect in cinema history. The Sanken was one pretty incredible tool for being able to create sounds that one could never hear.”

Numerous everyday sounds were transformed by e2 for the film. “Dry ice was a big player for us,” explains Aadahl. “We used a big block of dry ice, resonating against a six foot cylinder of metal ventilation tubing.”

“The Sanken microphone is a window into a whole invisible world of frequencies that are beyond our human capacity of hearing,” explained Aadahl. “The mic captures an incredible world of sound that we can then bring into our software, slow it down, pulling all of those high frequencies into the audible realm.”

Aadahl and Van der Ryn also recorded sounds on the deck of the USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier. “That was an incredible experience,” recalls Aadahl. “Just living a few days on an aircraft carrier informs you so much about what life is like on a ship, what the real world sounds are.”

Sanken
www.sankenstudio.com

Close