Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: Hello everyone. The Cautionary crew were on our summer vacation
Speaker 2: at the moment, but rest assured. We're still busy cooking
Speaker 2: up plenty more Cautionary tales for the rest of the year.
Speaker 2: Usually we'd play some of our favorite classics from the archives,
Speaker 2: but this year I've got a treat from behind the
Speaker 2: curtain of the Cautionary Club. Once a month, we release
Speaker 2: a bonus conversation to Cautionary Club members in which I
Speaker 2: discussed the podcast with another member of the team, exploring
Speaker 2: tangents and behind the scenes details from a recent episode.
Speaker 2: I thought it might be nice for everyone else to
Speaker 2: hear one of these chats too. The conversation I'm about
Speaker 2: to play is with Pascal Wise, our beloved composer and
Speaker 2: sound designer. It was released just after the episode about
Speaker 2: Incompetent Nazis, Dumb and Dummer. Pascal showed me his workspace
Speaker 2: for that episode, explained how he builds up a sonic atmosphere,
Speaker 2: how he decides what type of instruments to use, and
Speaker 2: also talks about his most hated sounds with which to work.
Speaker 2: These interviews are all released in video and audio on
Speaker 2: our Patreon, and there are plenty to listen to. If
Speaker 2: you'd like to hear more, head to patreon dot com
Speaker 2: slash Cautionary Club enjoy. In the new year, we have
Speaker 2: a special treat view. I am joined by Cautionary Tales Maestro,
Speaker 2: audio Wizard, sonic scholar, our multi award winning sound designer
Speaker 2: and composer, the one and only Pascal Wise. Pascal has
Speaker 2: been on Cautionary Tale since the beginning and we are never,
Speaker 2: ever ever going to let him go because what he
Speaker 2: does in his studio is what brings our stories to life.
Speaker 2: And Pascal has kindly agreed to take me through how
Speaker 2: he does what he does to show me what an
Speaker 2: episode looks like when he's building it. Hello Pascal, Welcome
Speaker 2: to proceed.
Speaker 3: With caution Hello Tim, I mean, what a glorious introduction.
Speaker 3: I mean we could just stop now, can't we?
Speaker 1: You?
Speaker 3: You deserve more.
Speaker 2: You deserve more, But I'm not going to let you
Speaker 2: go until you'll answer some questions. So broadly speaking, what
Speaker 2: is the job of a sound designer? What is it
Speaker 2: that you do.
Speaker 3: In the podcast world? Sound designer really can mean, you know,
Speaker 3: practically anything from sort of making tea to cleaning up
Speaker 3: arms and ours to writing bits of orchestral music. It's
Speaker 3: a really big umbrella, I think in the origins of
Speaker 3: it in film, and the most one of the most
Speaker 3: plausible stories I've heard of where the term comes from
Speaker 3: is Walter Merch having a high speed to fill in
Speaker 3: a visa application when filming Apocalypse Now, for which he
Speaker 3: was editor and sound design, and he literally just needed
Speaker 3: to put something on phone. Why you here? What are
Speaker 3: you doing? Oh? Sound designer? So I think the term stuck.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: A sound designer, I think is someone who is often
Speaker 3: involved with creating worlds of sound, and maybe even creating
Speaker 3: sound for things that you know don't really exist yet,
Speaker 3: or perhaps particularly in things like science fiction.
Speaker 2: The Star Wars, lasers but which or whatever they are,
Speaker 2: phases or blasters or whatever.
Speaker 3: Hammers on telegraph wires. You know, it's a great sound effect.
Speaker 3: But in terms of you know what happens on cautionary tales,
Speaker 3: I'm taking the words that you've beautifully recorded and have
Speaker 3: them been beautifully edited down by Marilyn, and I'm putting
Speaker 3: everything else in everything else you hear.
Speaker 2: So Marilyn Marilyn Ross, one of our producers. She's there
Speaker 2: in the studio with me while I am sitting in
Speaker 2: front of a microphone and I'm reading my script and
Speaker 2: she's saying, you know, do it properly this time to
Speaker 2: him that kind of thing. You will have delivered to
Speaker 2: you an audio file which has a fairly clean take
Speaker 2: of me reading the script without arms and without errors.
Speaker 2: But so then what good question?
Speaker 3: What I would do next is what I think traditionally
Speaker 3: would be called spotting. What that involves is just sitting
Speaker 3: listening to the story. And at this point I don't
Speaker 3: tend to read a script at the same time. I
Speaker 3: just listened to it and I will start putting. I
Speaker 3: don't know if my screen is already shared, is it?
Speaker 2: I see these green bars kind of like, yeah, expanding
Speaker 2: and contracting like a concertina what.
Speaker 3: I'm showing you there? And this is interesting because you know,
Speaker 3: the idea of spotting a show is it's very simple.
Speaker 3: It's sitting down and this will often take place, say
Speaker 3: with a director or something, and deciding when it needs
Speaker 3: music and where that music should be. And in this case,
Speaker 3: I'm also deciding when does it need sound, sound effects,
Speaker 3: sound design, and where that should begin and end it.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's an interesting question. Then when when does
Speaker 2: the music come in? When does the sound effects come in?
Speaker 2: Because I was I was listening to a recent episode
Speaker 2: when Hitler invaded Florida The dormund.
Speaker 3: Oh, yeah, I really enjoyed that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I enjoyed it too. But I was struggle. There
Speaker 2: was a moment where I've described a U boat stuck
Speaker 2: on a sand bank and it's revving its engines, and
Speaker 2: I don't think there was a sound of effect for
Speaker 2: revving engines at that particular thing. I think you decided,
Speaker 2: or if there was, it was a very subtle.
Speaker 3: Oh there is, yeah, but it's subtle.
Speaker 2: It's an interesting question as to when you really want
Speaker 2: to go hard and make the sound of put the
Speaker 2: sound effect right in the foreground, and when you want
Speaker 2: it to be very subtle or maybe nothing at all.
Speaker 3: While I'm completely in favor of the idea that all
Speaker 3: rules are there to be broken, there are one or
Speaker 3: two little things that we have tended to do in
Speaker 3: this show. One is that you will hear something before
Speaker 3: it is mentioned, rather than after it's mentioned. Now, that
Speaker 3: process I think of hearing something that has been said
Speaker 3: is sometimes referred to as mickey mousing, in reference to
Speaker 3: the extraordinary musicians who used to play against the cartoons
Speaker 3: such as Mickey Mouse, Tom and Jerry and all that,
Speaker 3: where literally what you see is what you hear and
Speaker 3: you get this kind of synesthesia, you know, and that's
Speaker 3: something that does happen very occasionally in cautionary tales. But
Speaker 3: I feel like it's something that should be reserved, should
Speaker 3: be in exception rather than a rule. And I think
Speaker 3: that you know, you are, in a sense the singer
Speaker 3: in the band. You know, it's I think it's a
Speaker 3: mistake when you're dealing with the spoken word to not
Speaker 3: appreciate that in terms of the overall band, all of
Speaker 3: the sound and the music, you're sort of like the
Speaker 3: central character. You're delivering the story. So what we've got
Speaker 3: to try and do is is kind of help you
Speaker 3: out and make the world for you, illustrate that world,
Speaker 3: but not not just dumbly replicate what you're already doing
Speaker 3: very well for us.
Speaker 2: Something one of one of Frank Sinatra's arrangers said, and
Speaker 2: I'm now I'm now comparing myself to Frank Sinatra and
Speaker 2: comparing you to Frank Sinatra's ranger. So it's enormously vain
Speaker 2: of me, but I need a different hat. Yeah, but
Speaker 2: what he said, is or when Frank's moving, get out
Speaker 2: of the way. And when he's not moving, you've got
Speaker 2: to get in there quick. And I wonder whether that
Speaker 2: resonated or not.
Speaker 3: I love that. I love that. Yeah, that's really interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, can we talk about DOM Yeah, I mean spoiler
Speaker 2: for those because it's fairly recent. Those who haven't heard it,
Speaker 2: you might want to pause and listen to it before
Speaker 2: we before we go through it, because there might be spoilers.
Speaker 2: But this is a story about eight idiot Nazis who
Speaker 2: try to sabotage the US and do not succeed. But
Speaker 2: there's a lot of potential sound effects the doors slamming
Speaker 2: and phones ringing and U boats and yeah, so talk
Speaker 2: us through that process.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Interesting, And I have that particular session in front
Speaker 3: of me. What a great start to twenty twenty six.
Speaker 3: You know, I opened up the computer rather rustily on
Speaker 3: January five or whatever it was, and was immediately presented
Speaker 3: with a scene involving a man injecting his penis with
Speaker 3: diluted by carmen of soda. H Yes, interesting, I thought,
Speaker 3: here we go, hits cautionary tales again, start helping how
Speaker 3: to deal with that, you know, what what to demonstrate
Speaker 3: or illustrate, and what not to So I decided on
Speaker 3: this that I liked the idea of starting the episode
Speaker 3: with this, you know, slightly ordinary fumbling around in the
Speaker 3: kitchen or whatever. Let's just hear that first bit.
Speaker 1: Joseph Schmidt drops a spoonful of baking soda into a
Speaker 1: glass of water and stirs until the powder dissolves. He
Speaker 1: takes a swinge and draws up some of the solution.
Speaker 1: Then he pulls down his pants and carefully injects the
Speaker 1: baking soda into the tip of his penis. Desperate times
Speaker 1: call for desperate?
Speaker 2: Was this literally you in the kitchen? Kind of Yes,
Speaker 2: it was some kind of effervescent thing in a glass. Yeah,
Speaker 2: hopefully your penis was not involved, but you know, if
Speaker 2: it is, there's no judgment.
Speaker 3: No, no, no penises were harmed in the making of
Speaker 3: this episode.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's sort of like method sound, isn't it. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I literally brought some baking sod and water into the
Speaker 3: into the studio and did that. Now, the practicalities of
Speaker 3: making a show that's thirty five forty minutes long and
Speaker 3: needs scoring and sound designing in a certain timeframe means
Speaker 3: there's often a lot of you know, there's there's certain
Speaker 3: kinds of corner cutting, and there's a lot I have
Speaker 3: lots of sound libraries, but there are certain things that
Speaker 3: are just they're not going to be in there, and
Speaker 3: so in the quality that you want or the style
Speaker 3: that you want, and it's that sort of quicker to
Speaker 3: do it yourself, and I really want I wanted to
Speaker 3: illustrate that.
Speaker 2: So a sound library would be, oh, I'd like a
Speaker 2: sound of someone messing around in the kitchen.
Speaker 3: Or some sound libraries are full of all the all
Speaker 3: the classic stuff, whether it's cars crashing or buildings falling
Speaker 3: down or you know, arrows, bullets, screams, all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 2: And presumably of a car crash or a building falling
Speaker 2: down is not I'm sure you could have a go,
Speaker 2: but that's not the kind of thing it's easy to
Speaker 2: generate at home.
Speaker 3: Yeah quite. I mean I love to record my own material.
Speaker 3: I do lots of field recording, and it gets used
Speaker 3: a loss in cause to me tales. But yeah, when
Speaker 3: we're in the business of crashing airliners or having tankers
Speaker 3: run aground, I just like, oh, yeah, darling, I'm just.
Speaker 2: Going to go and run an oil tanker into the
Speaker 2: seven systems.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm going to go down as seven four seven.
Speaker 2: There was one particular plane crash episode, a very harrowing
Speaker 2: story of air France four four seven, where an airline
Speaker 2: pilot wrote to me and said, you even got the
Speaker 2: correct cockpit alarms from the right kind of plane. So
Speaker 2: there is attention to detail there. I do admire.
Speaker 4: Yes, I think or I think it's this one.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's the episode. And he was like, no, you've
Speaker 2: got you didn't just make that one up. That's the
Speaker 2: real alarm anyway, Sorry, I interrupted.
Speaker 3: No, not at all. So in that I decided with
Speaker 3: that that once you once you sort of start to
Speaker 3: hear the fizzing of the bicarminate of soda, I felt
Speaker 3: like the imagination kind of takes over. And I liked
Speaker 3: the way that sound was, yes, illustrative of what was happening,
Speaker 3: but it was also it created almost just like a
Speaker 3: nice field of sound, you know, like a sort of
Speaker 3: a fizz that was just illustrative of the whole situation,
Speaker 3: not just you know, what is actually doing and knowing
Speaker 3: that I really didn't want to mickey mouse a sense
Speaker 3: of like, oh, you know or whatever.
Speaker 2: And the sound of a swinge anyway. So yeah, so
Speaker 2: that's where the music comes in. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think what's really interesting is this really good example
Speaker 3: of where the music takes over from what you might
Speaker 3: call sound design. It almost it hands over, and I
Speaker 3: felt that the point of sort of him puncturing, if
Speaker 3: you like, was was much better handled musically.
Speaker 1: Injects the baking soda into the tip of his penis
Speaker 1: desperate times called Yes.
Speaker 3: It's something that's sort of like yeah, but it's it's
Speaker 3: slightly removed from the practical, you know, and that I
Speaker 3: wouldn't know we do it workshop on that later. That
Speaker 3: also gives me something that can be recalled later in
Speaker 3: the episode that hopefully what you've done then is you
Speaker 3: planted the idea of that note being a moment of strange,
Speaker 3: you know, desperate discomfort. And then later if I just
Speaker 3: plock that note in, hopefully there's a sense of, you know,
Speaker 3: recalling that I've got a note up here of engines. Now,
Speaker 3: let's see it's interesting what your memory is of this.
Speaker 3: Let's see what I did do.
Speaker 1: They followed the young coastguard through the fog to where
Speaker 1: he'd encountered the men. The men weren't there, but they
Speaker 1: could hear the roar of engines and smell diesel fumes.
Speaker 1: The fog briefly eased, revealing a long, dark shape a
Speaker 1: U boke.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I've sort of hedged it. It's not a
Speaker 3: big raw. I've gone for a sort of a bit
Speaker 3: more of a putter. Were obviously in cause detales, we
Speaker 3: sometimes have aspects of it acted, and I think that's
Speaker 3: a really interesting conversation of its own. You know when
Speaker 3: to do that and when not.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because often I will just the lines that could
Speaker 2: potentially be given to an actor, and it's partly a
Speaker 2: matter of budget, and it's partly a matter of taste.
Speaker 2: Sometimes it's great to hear an actor and sometimes you've
Speaker 2: got like three words.
Speaker 3: And so this was really interesting. You know, the coastguard
Speaker 3: is shouting at them, and it felt important. You know,
Speaker 3: the perspective of this felt important to me. You know
Speaker 3: that this person should sound distant to them. This is Jamal,
Speaker 3: who I think is going to be in the next
Speaker 3: Star Wars film. That's what I've heard. Very exciting, and
Speaker 3: I know that in this, for instance, Marilyn with a
Speaker 3: keen ear for what's probably going to happen further down
Speaker 3: the line, ask Jamal to stand off the mic, stand
Speaker 3: away from it, which is really important actually, and it's
Speaker 3: so easy not to forget that kind of stuff, you know, people,
Speaker 3: there's such a different sound when someone is shouting from
Speaker 3: a distance, and the way the perspective with you and
Speaker 3: the mic is really important. So there's a little bit
Speaker 3: of reverb still on this, but we go.
Speaker 1: Who are you?
Speaker 2: Which is close that's close to but not quite but
Speaker 2: close to what was captured in the studio. So Jamal's
Speaker 2: in the studio yelling at a mic from across the room.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Then we put on something in this case which
Speaker 3: it's almost like a quick and easy artificial thing to
Speaker 3: give it a sense of distance. Who are you? Now?
Speaker 3: It hasn't given it a sense of distance yet in
Speaker 3: terms of it sounding further away. What it's done is
Speaker 3: it's taken off some of the high frequencies which would
Speaker 3: tend to be lost. And then I'll put it into
Speaker 3: this thing, which is a kind of binaural encoder, which
Speaker 3: has a very good sense of placing something off to
Speaker 3: the distance. And I've there's a head here which and
Speaker 3: where I've placed him is demonstrated by the two dots here,
Speaker 3: So if you put it all together, it sounds who
Speaker 3: are you? Like that? And then more distance and then
Speaker 3: are you? And again once it's mixed with the background
Speaker 3: it it helps it sound even more distant.
Speaker 2: And there's so much going on, and that's that's just
Speaker 2: that's one and a half seconds or two seconds of audio,
Speaker 2: and you've got you've got Marilyn in the studio with Jamal.
Speaker 2: They're working together to create a certain performance recorded in
Speaker 2: a certain way. And then you're then thinking, Okay, how's
Speaker 2: how does this sound? How's this How does this fit
Speaker 2: with the sound effects? Do we want to sound like
Speaker 2: we're next to Jamal? Do we want to sound like
Speaker 2: we're a long way away from Jamal? There's so much
Speaker 2: and this is just a couple of seconds.
Speaker 3: Of and then we've got it's incredible exactly. Yeah, We've
Speaker 3: got three layers of water one plus a more of
Speaker 3: a distant seed one, so we know that that's the
Speaker 3: close stuff. There's the more distant seawashed, and then we
Speaker 3: know that there's also going to be some way. I've
Speaker 3: got a few of those. Quite a lot going on,
Speaker 3: even in a bit of the show actually, which is
Speaker 3: fairly calm.
Speaker 2: Calm, but there's a real sense of place there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and there's there's a actually got a foghorn and
Speaker 3: played around with it, changed its pitch quite a lot.
Speaker 2: Interesting because because there's no I don't think there's a
Speaker 2: foghorn actually in the episode, so this is subliminal.
Speaker 3: There's a gong in there as well. Forgot about that.
Speaker 3: That's giving us a sense of something quite ominous, hopefully.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: One of the biggest problems you face when you sit down,
Speaker 3: particularly with the extraordinary technology technologies that are available, not
Speaker 3: to mention you know the huge resources in terms of instruments,
Speaker 3: is you just face with the infinite. And it's almost
Speaker 3: a cautionary tale in itself. You know, how how on
Speaker 3: earth do you start making decisions in a in an
Speaker 3: infinite space? It's like, because you could do anything. So
Speaker 3: I'm always hunting for ways to narrow my options down
Speaker 3: and and I just find it very satisfying to try
Speaker 3: and build the music from instruments that just have some
Speaker 3: some relationship to the story. And that could be something
Speaker 3: really simple, like if we're at sea and constantly talking
Speaker 3: about vessels that are larger metallic than I might aim
Speaker 3: for you know, big metallic drums or in this or
Speaker 3: like in this, you know the foghorn, And even if
Speaker 3: it's not sounding like a foghorn, there's a kind of
Speaker 3: DNA in there that I think hopefully travels through, you know,
Speaker 3: to the final thing.
Speaker 2: Tell me more about about how you use music and
Speaker 2: how much you use music, because I mean, potentially you
Speaker 2: could compose music for every second of audio, but actually
Speaker 2: you want to be much more sparing than that.
Speaker 3: I remember Mike Figures being interviewed the film director and
Speaker 3: saying that applying music to film, and I think it
Speaker 3: could be said also of you know, podcasting or any storytelling.
Speaker 3: So he said, it's it's sort of addictive. Once you start,
Speaker 3: it's very hard to kind of rein it in, and
Speaker 3: before you know it, the whole thing is covered in music.
Speaker 3: And I think you then lose, you lose the power
Speaker 3: of it. You you end up with something that never
Speaker 3: really never really sort of surprises, never really makes the
Speaker 3: best of itself, because it's just become a constant presence,
Speaker 3: and it's constantly illustrating or even trying to instruct the
Speaker 3: viewer as to what to hear. So I tend to
Speaker 3: look It's almost like I'm hunting more for places where
Speaker 3: I don't need to use music, and that's part of
Speaker 3: that's just practical, you know, we've got certain amount of
Speaker 3: time and budget to make the stuff.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: Rather than thinking, oh, we can have music here, I
Speaker 3: try and be really disciplined and go, this doesn't need anything,
Speaker 3: you know, because you've got to really force yourself to go.
Speaker 3: You know, what do I add here? What do I
Speaker 3: flesh out for the listener? I suppose my feeling is
Speaker 3: use it as sparingly as you can and try and
Speaker 3: find spaces around the emotion that the words are already conveying.
Speaker 2: So, Pascal, are you ready for a couple of quick
Speaker 2: fire questions to wrap up?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Go on, then I should have a sort of
Speaker 3: bell or something, shouldn't I okay? So what is the
Speaker 3: hardest scene that you've ever had to work on?
Speaker 1: For?
Speaker 3: Caution me tales battles, things with lots of footsteps do
Speaker 3: my head in Although for the marathon episode, I just
Speaker 3: literally went out running and epping for it and hung
Speaker 3: a mic, you know, in front of me. So that
Speaker 3: was quite a nice solution to that problem. But yeah,
Speaker 3: the really tricky bits are where you have a lot
Speaker 3: of human activity that needs choreographing, and I've decided we
Speaker 3: should hear it. You know, the sort of shuffling from
Speaker 3: one place to another, doing something like opening a bag, whatever,
Speaker 3: closing a door. Footsteps and that kind of stuff are
Speaker 3: really tricky. There are time sink and they're hard to
Speaker 3: get right, hard to get believable. Footsteps, particularly if I
Speaker 3: can nominate anything, it would be footsteps. They are a
Speaker 3: real pain. And do you have a favorite episode. I'm
Speaker 3: really fond of Jaws. I have to say I really
Speaker 3: enjoyed working that through.
Speaker 2: You had to pastiche the famous Jaws soundtrack, which we
Speaker 2: weren't allowed to use. You needed to kind of call
Speaker 2: it to people's mind how to be.
Speaker 3: John Williams in One Afternoon. Quite often face with that challenge,
Speaker 3: which is, you know, we are referring to a composer,
Speaker 3: so it would be ridiculous for you not to somehow
Speaker 3: nod to it. But you can't do it. You can't.
Speaker 3: You know, you have to try and satisfy your own
Speaker 3: creativity by doing something that resonates, but you also need
Speaker 3: to make that person think of that composer. So you know,
Speaker 3: the same with Keith Jarrett and the Coln episode trying
Speaker 3: to do my own John Williams impression. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 3: fools errand that, but really good fun to work on.
Speaker 3: Lots of lovely sort of terms in that episode.
Speaker 2: We feel very lucky to have you Passala. I'm sure
Speaker 2: I'm sure many of our listeners feel the same way.
Speaker 2: It's great because the show resets every week.
Speaker 3: There's not a set. It's very difficult to tire of
Speaker 3: it because you know, that sense of reset and the
Speaker 3: knowledge as I open up every new episode that's I
Speaker 3: have no idea where we're going to be and what
Speaker 3: time we're going to be is what keeps it amazingly
Speaker 3: fresh for me.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you so much, Pascal. We've barely scratched the surface,
Speaker 2: so I hope you'll come back and do this again
Speaker 2: for us very soon.
Speaker 3: But yeah, we could do a walk through of an app.
Speaker 3: That would be quite fun.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that would be great. That'd be great. I
Speaker 2: love that, Pascal. Your website pascal wise dot com or.
Speaker 3: Yeah, pascal wise dot com or dot net. And that's
Speaker 3: why is w y s E. That's sort of my
Speaker 3: memory bank, the website. It just reminds me what I've
Speaker 3: done so those things I've worked on are up on there.
Speaker 2: And if you have any questions for Pascal just what
Speaker 2: do they say on YouTube? Just stick them in the comments. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I think that's possible on Patreon, so please do that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm very happy to answer any queries, however small
Speaker 3: or obscure. Obscure ones the best Pascal wise, thank you
Speaker 3: so much, lovely to see thanks to him