I always made notes that I could distribute on paper to the whole crew, including specific issues about new FX, or spots that would inevitably raise questions. We talked about the space stuff, the weaponry, the “Pred-a-vison” POV shots, and of course the jungle itself, which we always thought could play as an active character. According to my notes, we would have spotted the first 6 reels and followed up another day with the second half of the show. Stuart was Chair of the Visual Effects department here at SCAD.Īnyway, as to sound conversations, I have notes from an initial spotting session at the end of March, 1987. Those wonderful opticals took a long time to make and Silver, smartly, would only promise that we would get to see them in the very latest days of our final dub.) Incidentally, there are two guys from that viz FX crew, neither of whom I knew at the time, who are now my colleague professors at Savannah College of Art and Design: Stuart Robertson and Robert Mrozowski. (That was to make a hold-back matte against the green of the forest, kind of an opposite of green screen. They ran some footage for us, and explained how the Predator would appear wrapped up in a red bodysuit on our work picture. Baird was about to move on to another job, and was handing over the editorial to Johnnie Link. Rich and I met first with the producers, John McTiernan, and the original film editor, Stuart Baird. Steve, as was the custom, would have given the film editors a handful of FX to liven up their work-track before he moved on to another picture.

I was fortunate enough to find one of the sound supervisors David Stone, teaching at Savannah College of Art and Design and willing to answer some questions about the time he spent on “Predator”.ĭesigning Sound: When did you start on Predator and what were initial sound design conversations with the filmmakers like?ĭavid Stone: Steve Flick and Richard Anderson probably would have met first with Joel Silver to finalize contracts and then they hired me to work as Co-Supervisor with Richard. That said, it was easy enough to follow up the “Predators” interview with one of my childhood favs, 1987’s “Predator”. I haven’t figured out a formula yet of what films or years to feature so It may be a little hurky jerky time period wise as I settle into this.

Once a month we’l try to interview a sound person from a past film. This is the start of something new here at Designing Sound.

Predator sound effects