Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, welcome to Car Stories.
Speaker 2: This is some King and Amelia Hartford.
Speaker 1: Joining us today is Peter Brown.
Speaker 2: He has been the supervising sound editor for the Fast
Speaker 2: and Furious franchise. It's Tokyo Drift.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean a big part of why we love
Speaker 1: cars is the way it sounds. It's the voice of
Speaker 1: the car. Yeah, it's the voice of the character.
Speaker 2: Peter himself is going out there recording the cars on
Speaker 2: a Dino on the street, getting microphones all over from
Speaker 2: the engine bay and the cab to the exhaust. Like
Speaker 2: we get in some crazy detailed conversation about what that
Speaker 2: process looks like in his hunt for very specific sounding cars, and.
Speaker 1: A lot of you know, car guys will not let
Speaker 1: a Hollywood production come and use their car. They will
Speaker 1: let Peter, you know. And this passion is infectious.
Speaker 2: It's really cool to see someone who wasn't necessarily into
Speaker 2: cars before joining Tokyo Drift in the Fast and Furious
Speaker 2: franchise to what they've grown to love. Because everyone who
Speaker 2: gets into cars finds their lane upon intent, so it's
Speaker 2: really cool to hear what he was so.
Speaker 1: Passionate about, speaking of following your lane. I love Peter's
Speaker 1: ethos about knowing yourself and what you believe in and
Speaker 1: what your passion is and not worry about other people.
Speaker 1: And it's almost so simple and he applies it to
Speaker 1: his sound work. And without further ado.
Speaker 2: We'd love to introduce to you Peter Brown.
Speaker 1: So we're here with Peter Brown Sound. What would your
Speaker 1: title be? Peter?
Speaker 3: I usually introduce myself as a sound guy, but I'm
Speaker 3: a supervising sound editor, so I work with a team
Speaker 3: of folks to put the sound into motion pictures and
Speaker 3: we have to do every sound that you hear except
Speaker 3: for the music, so the dialogue, the sound effects, the
Speaker 3: folly if you've heard of that, which is where individual
Speaker 3: sounds are reproduced in a studio for the film, and
Speaker 3: sound design explosions, horse whinnies, creatures sounds, horse.
Speaker 1: Weenies, whinnies, whennies and footsteps and horses weenies had sound,
Speaker 1: was like, that's a different kind of film. So when
Speaker 1: you say sound design, you actually make some of the sounds,
Speaker 1: like you create it from scratch.
Speaker 3: Well sounds sounds are invisible, so they're kind of hard
Speaker 3: to quantify, but they usually come organically through a microphone,
Speaker 3: like we're making sounds here, and then through the glory
Speaker 3: of machines and technology, you can manipulate those sounds, make
Speaker 3: them go backwards, speed them up, slow them down, combine
Speaker 3: them with other sounds. And sound design is a somewhat
Speaker 3: new term, but it encompasses all of that, and it
Speaker 3: could be everything from making the doth rocky language in
Speaker 3: Game of Thrones to making the sounds of the undersea
Speaker 3: world of Atlantis, things that have never been heard before.
Speaker 3: But are you made of things that have been recorded
Speaker 3: before or things that are synthesized completely from scratch in
Speaker 3: a computer.
Speaker 2: Have you always been into sound growing up?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I listened to a lot of radio when I
Speaker 3: was a kid. I think that was the I'm not
Speaker 3: old enough to have just had radio as entertainment, so
Speaker 3: I definitely watched my television as well. I do recall
Speaker 3: a number of things, you know, that were only available.
Speaker 3: I'm from western New York, so it was not in
Speaker 3: any of the big cities, and there were things that
Speaker 3: would come on the radio that were just kind of
Speaker 3: amazing to me, like Doctor Demento. I don't know if
Speaker 3: that hits your generation at all, but it was a
Speaker 3: weird radio show that this guy had out on the
Speaker 3: West Coast and covered all different genres of music and
Speaker 3: novelty songs, but also told a lot of history of sound.
Speaker 3: And then the BBC did a series based on Douglas
Speaker 3: Adams books called The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's had television shows, it's had movies, but for me,
Speaker 3: nothing compares to what the BBC Radiophonic Studio did. Their
Speaker 3: sound effects and the stuff they created there was fantastic.
Speaker 3: So you know, I spent a lot of a lot
Speaker 3: of time listening to weird things. It wasn't my main focus,
Speaker 3: but yeah, I think I've always been into sound.
Speaker 2: That's so interesting because when I was younger, like the
Speaker 2: acting is what stood out to me, And I'm sure
Speaker 2: there's different things that stand out to different people, but
Speaker 2: for you being the sound, was there a certain point
Speaker 2: where you're like, this is what I am passionate about
Speaker 2: pursuing and doing.
Speaker 3: I would say that that didn't come into my life
Speaker 3: until probably my early twenties, when I was in grad school.
Speaker 3: I'm from Rochester, New York, the land of eastman Kodak,
Speaker 3: where my dad was an electrochemist and so he had
Speaker 3: the rare privilege to be able to bring home expired
Speaker 3: Super eight film. So I basically, as a kid, had
Speaker 3: this rare opportunity to have free motion picture film and processing,
Speaker 3: which was sound free, by the way. But I developed
Speaker 3: a passion for that, just shooting little films with my
Speaker 3: friends and cutting them together and learning how to work
Speaker 3: with film. So I knew before I went to college
Speaker 3: that I wanted to go into filmmaking. I love that,
Speaker 3: and I went to undergrad at a nice liberal arts school,
Speaker 3: where I found a wife and learned excellent cocktail conversation
Speaker 3: and had generally a fantastic time. But I knew that
Speaker 3: I wanted to go out and do a trade. I
Speaker 3: wanted to learn something concrete and specific. So I went
Speaker 3: to grad school, came out here to the West Coast,
Speaker 3: and I had the dream. I think that a lot
Speaker 3: of the other people who went there, we wanted to
Speaker 3: be the next John Singleton or Steven Spielberg or George
Speaker 3: Lucas wanted to be a writer, director, auteur kind of filmmaker.
Speaker 3: And at USC you get to do a little bit
Speaker 3: of everything. You know, whatever you want to do. It's
Speaker 3: going to be very long answer to a simple question
Speaker 3: I've had it very interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So I learned pretty early on that if you wanted
Speaker 3: to make it in Hollywood, if you wanted to write
Speaker 3: your own destiny, it seemed like the very best thing
Speaker 3: to do was to be a writer, because that way
Speaker 3: you could generate things out of thin air, you could
Speaker 3: control the destiny, and if you were really persistent and
Speaker 3: super successful, you could eventually kick the door in and
Speaker 3: become a director. And I found out really early that
Speaker 3: writing is pretty painful for me, and I think, you know,
Speaker 3: to be successful in life, you have to be very
Speaker 3: you have to have your ears and your eyes open
Speaker 3: to you know, the most important thing in your world.
Speaker 3: You You've got to know who you are and what
Speaker 3: you're good at. If you know what your impressions are
Speaker 3: when you're young, don't always match up with your with
Speaker 3: your propensities or your interests. And so I that I,
Speaker 3: you know, I wasn't going to be a writer. I
Speaker 3: did direct the documentary about one of my passions, which
Speaker 3: is free solo rock climbing, but that was a you know,
Speaker 3: that was a great process and the film did really well.
Speaker 3: I did cinematography on another documentary I did. But anyway,
Speaker 3: you know, I wore all those hats, and when I
Speaker 3: was just in my second year in school, there was
Speaker 3: an opportunity just for sound people they couldn't and this
Speaker 3: will be a theme in probably anybody who's ever made
Speaker 3: an independent film. You can find somebody to do everything,
Speaker 3: but you just can't find that production sound guy. Or
Speaker 3: everybody will work for free, but the production sound guy won't.
Speaker 3: So what I realized in school, by the time I
Speaker 3: made it to my third year, I had kind of
Speaker 3: become the go to sound guy. Everybody else they still
Speaker 3: wanted to do the writer director thing, or you know,
Speaker 3: had some other passion. There were very few people at
Speaker 3: SC who had, you know, had a taste for sound
Speaker 3: because it's not glamorous, it's not easy, and it's super
Speaker 3: labor intensive, so it's very hard to fake. You can't
Speaker 3: really phone in a good sound job. So I could
Speaker 3: see that my talents the person I am, just matched
Speaker 3: up with the requirements for sound. And I came out
Speaker 3: here from Rochester, I don't know, I didn't know anybody
Speaker 3: in town, so I knew I had to pay off
Speaker 3: these student loans by doing something. So it was something
Speaker 3: that I was good at, and it was something that
Speaker 3: I saw that I could get employment with immediately.
Speaker 1: So Pete, can you talk about how you got into
Speaker 1: the Fast and Furious movies, Like when did you start
Speaker 1: working on those the franchise?
Speaker 3: I started working on Fast and Furious with Tokyo Drift,
Speaker 3: as a lot of us did. The string of events
Speaker 3: went like my first job in the sound business, I
Speaker 3: worked at a place called the Creative Cafe for eight
Speaker 3: years and my boss, Steve hunter Flick, did a lot
Speaker 3: of films with Sally Menke, a great picture editor, and
Speaker 3: as I was kind of, you know, the errand boy,
Speaker 3: running around doing everything I can, trying to make the
Speaker 3: most of my opportunity, there was a picture assistant working
Speaker 3: for a Sally named Fred Raskin.
Speaker 1: Fred. I know Fred, you know Freda. So it was
Speaker 1: the editor for Better Luck Tomorrow and Fast and Furious,
Speaker 1: Tokyo Drift exactly now just Quentin Tarantino movies.
Speaker 3: And my boss and Sally did Quentin Tarantino movies. So
Speaker 3: as we kind of came up through the trenches, we
Speaker 3: you know, we'd see each other taking stuff back and
Speaker 3: forth or handing things off. He saw something in me,
Speaker 3: and after Better Luck Tomorrow, when Annapolis happened. They needed
Speaker 3: a sound guy, and God blessed Fred Raskin, but he
Speaker 3: insisted that that sound guy be me and the company
Speaker 3: that I eventually worked for. They threw Oscar winners at him,
Speaker 3: they threw you know, really great sound folks at him,
Speaker 3: and he just stuck to his guns and said, nope,
Speaker 3: I want Peter Brown. So that opportunity opened a ton
Speaker 3: of doors. You know, I really killed myself to do that.
Speaker 3: But that was something funny that happened. At the first
Speaker 3: preview of the movie, someone in the focus group mentioned
Speaker 3: how great the boxing sounds were. This never happens in
Speaker 3: the focus groups. Nobody really ever talks about the sound,
Speaker 3: and so Disney was super happy. The companies who's umbrella
Speaker 3: I was working on it was super happy, and so
Speaker 3: that turned into, you know, a great relationship with the
Speaker 3: company that I work with now since that time. And
Speaker 3: when we were doing the final mix on Annapolis, Justin
Speaker 3: came into the stage one day and he was really
Speaker 3: busy because he was like, you know, like a lot
Speaker 3: of directors, you know, you're only You're only as good
Speaker 3: as the last thing you've made. So that's the time
Speaker 3: to strike the iron and get the next films going,
Speaker 3: and he came in and he was like, well, I've
Speaker 3: got three offers on the table. I don't really know
Speaker 3: what I should do, and I don't remember what the
Speaker 3: first two were. It was, you know, film may film
Speaker 3: be and Fast and Furious.
Speaker 1: And I was just like, justin, you must do Fast
Speaker 1: and Furious.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, and he's like, we'll see, Oh, that's so fun,
Speaker 3: and you know, sure enough, a few months later he
Speaker 3: was doing Fast and Furious.
Speaker 2: Had you done many car films prior to that?
Speaker 3: No, But as a sound guy, I knew that if
Speaker 3: I was going to do anything of substance, anything you know, worthwhile,
Speaker 3: you kind of need to do a science fiction film,
Speaker 3: a war film, or a racing film. It's not entirely
Speaker 3: exclusive set, but those are the types of films where
Speaker 3: you can really sink your teeth in.
Speaker 2: Were you into cars prior to Tokyo.
Speaker 3: Drift, I'm sorry to admit no, not really.
Speaker 2: So you had a lot of fun learning about the
Speaker 2: different engines and the different sounds of them, so much fun.
Speaker 3: And you're totally right about the education thing. I mean,
Speaker 3: one of the one of the best things about life,
Speaker 3: or one of the things I think that keeps you
Speaker 3: alive is just curiosity and learning.
Speaker 2: I always say the same thing. If I'm not learning,
Speaker 2: then I need to reevaluate things, because that's what keeps
Speaker 2: me engaged.
Speaker 3: Interested and what makes documentaries so great to work on. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but here was a situation where there was a whole
Speaker 3: world of things that I knew nothing about and was
Speaker 3: able to just throw myself into it. And it was
Speaker 3: a great time to do it because La was alive
Speaker 3: with people drifting and so you know, suddenly, you know,
Speaker 3: my vocabulary was one jay z RB twenty four. All
Speaker 3: these you know, letters and numbers and things that I
Speaker 3: didn't know, and you know, our job is to augment
Speaker 3: the story in the film, and cars are a fantastic
Speaker 3: opportunity to you know, be an extension of the characters
Speaker 3: in the film. So I had to learn about all
Speaker 3: these different cars and figure out, you know, what they
Speaker 3: were and what would be correct. Very often, you know,
Speaker 3: the studeo seems to be kind of relaxed about what
Speaker 3: you use. They kind of think all these things exist
Speaker 3: in libraries, can't you just use that? But one of
Speaker 3: my favorite parts of the process is going out and
Speaker 3: finding the right material, the organic, original piece and then
Speaker 3: bringing that into the studio, so I had to learn
Speaker 3: about all these cars and stuff that really didn't exist
Speaker 3: in libraries at all. And so I recorded, you know,
Speaker 3: two forty s x's, three fifty z's, all the cars
Speaker 3: in there. And I think I even I recorded what
Speaker 3: is still my favorite car, which was the Fulcon Motorsports
Speaker 3: RX seven, which we used for Hans car.
Speaker 2: That is beautiful. That erodary is your favorite sounding car
Speaker 2: on your first car project, ad.
Speaker 3: I mean even I listened to a lot of cars.
Speaker 3: I cut in a lot of cars. Nothing sounds like
Speaker 3: this engine.
Speaker 1: It is such a beast.
Speaker 3: And what I brought along to take a listen to
Speaker 3: is the best recording of that engine. And indeed it
Speaker 3: died either during this recording moment or moments afterwards.
Speaker 1: What do you mean it died, I mean it died.
Speaker 1: The engine died. Oh anybody? This is why nobody wants
Speaker 1: to let the Fast and Furious crew borrow their cars,
Speaker 1: because it's notorious.
Speaker 2: I guess for people who don't know a rotary, I'm
Speaker 2: probably not the best to explain it because I haven't
Speaker 2: had my hands on one yet. But they're also known
Speaker 2: as Dorito's and it's essentially a cameless engine. You have
Speaker 2: this Dorrito kind of creating revolutions internally, that's creating combustion.
Speaker 2: It's just a different a different style of an engine.
Speaker 2: I'm not doing it justice at all. Rotaries are notorious
Speaker 2: for that blop blop sound.
Speaker 1: Opposed to the piston sound, which sounds like a sewing machine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've never heard so. Yeah, that's a perfect way been.
Speaker 1: Down opposed to you know, rotary right spinning again.
Speaker 3: And I think what broke on this thing was the
Speaker 3: tip of one of those corners of the Dorito. Something
Speaker 3: went wrong in that.
Speaker 2: Here's the definition. The Winkle engine is a type of
Speaker 2: internal combustion engine using an eccentric rotary design to confront
Speaker 2: pressure into rotating motion.
Speaker 1: I like Darden, Yeah, yeah, okay, So it's like a
Speaker 1: Dorito spinning.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then intake goes in the rotation, crazy the compression,
Speaker 2: and then it goes out the exhaust.
Speaker 1: Well, let's listen to this, bad boy, I want to
Speaker 1: hear it.
Speaker 3: So we put Mike's in the engine apartment, we put
Speaker 3: Mike's on the exhaust pipe. We put microphones inside the
Speaker 3: car so that we have a whole variety of perspectives
Speaker 3: of the car, and no matter what gets thrown at
Speaker 3: us on the film, we can reproduce it. If we're
Speaker 3: having the driver's POV, we've got the perspective. If we
Speaker 3: want to feature the blowoff valve on the turbo, we've
Speaker 3: got a mic right next to that, and so we
Speaker 3: can isolate that from all the rest of the sounds.
Speaker 2: You know, it seems so obvious, but that's not something
Speaker 2: that I would think of. Is usually when I'm recording,
Speaker 2: it's like, okay, microphone by the exhaust. But to put
Speaker 2: one in the engine ban and then also in the
Speaker 2: cab of the car, I mean, I guess, yeah, you
Speaker 2: need those different sounds.
Speaker 3: This is an exterior perspective. So in addition to having
Speaker 3: all the mics on the cars, we'll be lined up
Speaker 3: along the racetrack or the runway, one person after the other.
Speaker 3: So one person will get the car starting up, and
Speaker 3: then the next person gets the car going by as
Speaker 3: it's in second gear, and then the next person gets
Speaker 3: the shift from second to third, and then the next
Speaker 3: person you might get the shift from.
Speaker 1: Third to fourth.
Speaker 3: So this one is getting the car further down, further
Speaker 3: down the track, but you'll get to hear this performance.
Speaker 3: All these microphones are recording the same performance of the car,
Speaker 3: and you'll get a chance to hear the differences between them.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's a good sound.
Speaker 3: It is, okay, So why is the RX seven special
Speaker 3: to me? There's definitely some of it which comes from
Speaker 3: the first time you'd do something. This was the first
Speaker 3: car film that I did. When we were putting the
Speaker 3: mix together, it was just so it was so loud.
Speaker 3: It was really hard to get pieces to read. You know,
Speaker 3: I don't think we knew what We don't know what
Speaker 3: we know now about how to balance some of those sounds,
Speaker 3: but never had any problem getting that to cut through.
Speaker 3: And the way some combination of the amount of horsepower
Speaker 3: in that car and the way the rev limitter hits
Speaker 3: is just it has the element that we are always
Speaker 3: asked for in film sound, which is the director will
Speaker 3: always come in with some difficult spot and say, okay
Speaker 3: the sound for this, and I want an iconic, I
Speaker 3: want a signature sound. So this was like my first
Speaker 3: signature sound. It's something that I think you could play.
Speaker 3: It's you know, it's my lightsaber. You could play it
Speaker 3: for anybody anywhere who knows a thing or two about cars,
Speaker 3: and they'll be like, hey, that's that's Hans RX seven
Speaker 3: from Tokyo Drift.
Speaker 2: Very unique sound for sure.
Speaker 1: Can we hear another perspective of the road re engine?
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is closer to the start of the launch here.
Speaker 2: So this is still the RX seven. We're now listening
Speaker 2: from a different here.
Speaker 3: You'll hear, you know, just a really really nice, rich
Speaker 3: recording and the type of you know sound that you
Speaker 3: hear in multiple places in Tokyo Drift.
Speaker 2: M God, I love cars.
Speaker 1: That that sounds like that sequence at the stoplight with
Speaker 1: the exchanging of the numbers, and they're like.
Speaker 3: It brings you back, like the smell of your girlfriend's.
Speaker 1: Perfume donuting around the girls that recording that's that Yeah, wow,
Speaker 1: there you go. But it just it's it's it was
Speaker 1: on loop, like as we spent around.
Speaker 3: There's definitely you know, there's other pieces in there. So
Speaker 3: this is a tailpipe mic from the same performance, but
Speaker 3: this is attached to the car, so you don't get
Speaker 3: any of the perspective change. And this would have also
Speaker 3: been used in that in that scene.
Speaker 1: M hm. Iconic one of a kind.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Typically, when I'm recording my cars, it's for YouTube,
Speaker 2: and I want to show the audience what you know,
Speaker 2: how a modification can change the sound of a vehicle.
Speaker 1: That sounds really cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I like the sound coming from a tailpipe the best,
Speaker 2: unless it's like a supercharger or something turbo. You want
Speaker 2: that microphone in the engine bay. But I find that
Speaker 2: when I'm recording, most of it is from behind the car,
Speaker 2: so people can really get that that raw tailpipe exhaust sound.
Speaker 2: And yeah, every little modification on a car seems to
Speaker 2: change how that sounds.
Speaker 3: I also I feel the same way about tailpipes. That's
Speaker 3: to me, where the signature is. Yeah, with accents from
Speaker 3: the or the supercharger totally, And that modding process, even
Speaker 3: though I don't understand it, is very important to me
Speaker 3: because if I get, you know, a car, you know,
Speaker 3: just from the manufacturer generally and especially nowadays, it doesn't
Speaker 3: really sound like much because what I'm interested in in
Speaker 3: a car is the power of the engine, the sound
Speaker 3: and the character of it. And what car manufacturers are
Speaker 3: interested in is that the car is silent and is
Speaker 3: a nice ride.
Speaker 2: So the non muffled version is what.
Speaker 1: You like, right, and which is what we all like.
Speaker 3: And I don't like I don't like to cheat because
Speaker 3: the fans are important. But in Fast nine, for example,
Speaker 3: you're driving a Supra and we went and recorded that Supra.
Speaker 3: It was a brand new Supra, so they often do
Speaker 3: product placements, and it sounded like nothing. It's just it
Speaker 3: was a nice, quiet car.
Speaker 1: So we might have put a three fifty in there, really.
Speaker 3: Because I thought that was appropriate for your character, and
Speaker 3: it had a little bit of the rev limitter hit.
Speaker 3: I wanted to I wanted to harken back to that car.
Speaker 3: So that was a moment where took some artistic license
Speaker 3: and said, look this this is not going the It's
Speaker 3: not going to cut through the sound of the rest
Speaker 3: of the film, but Hans driving it, so it needs
Speaker 3: to sound like a Han car.
Speaker 1: If you had called me, I could have got you
Speaker 1: Supra that had some modified sound.
Speaker 3: The problem was and I would have called you, but
Speaker 3: it was it was plague years right. It was like
Speaker 3: a day or so after Tom Hanks got COVID and
Speaker 3: we realized in Hollywood it was real.
Speaker 2: Is it possible to hear the other car sounds if
Speaker 2: you just do one of each of the few you.
Speaker 3: Brought, Well, we can listen to the Chevy. But here's
Speaker 3: another example of cheating. This is Hans' car in Fast
Speaker 3: and Furious four. What the production car was was a
Speaker 3: nineteen sixty seven Chevy C ten, but it had pipes
Speaker 3: up the side of it like a diesel. So if
Speaker 3: you're confused, is that driving reverse? That's that's when you
Speaker 3: do your one eighty and then you're driving in reverse.
Speaker 3: So that is a Frankenstein car. Dom was in what
Speaker 3: a Grand National There was a semi like a Cummings
Speaker 3: Diesel semi, and you and Tigo were in these pickup
Speaker 3: trucks I think are used an LS three, probably from
Speaker 3: one of Dennis's trophy trucks for Tigos. But this one
Speaker 3: is this is a doppelganger Frankenstein car where I wanted
Speaker 3: it to sound like a diesel because that's what looked like.
Speaker 3: But getting good diesel recordings is really difficult.
Speaker 2: Why is it difficult to record diesels?
Speaker 3: You know? The it's a similar problem with with a
Speaker 3: lot of cars is that car manufacturers are just getting
Speaker 3: really good at this, and so engines are getting more
Speaker 3: and more efficient with diesels in my experience, and I
Speaker 3: don't exactly know how they're made. Most diesels these days
Speaker 3: are turbos and the turbo you know, is very efficient.
Speaker 1: It's taking those.
Speaker 3: Exhaust gases and turning it back into you know, forcing
Speaker 3: air into the engine and power, and it's it to me,
Speaker 3: it just sounds like a hair dryer, just a lot
Speaker 3: of air. We recorded Banks's diesel Dragstert and it just
Speaker 3: you know, it just sounds like.
Speaker 2: That sounds so good, but I understand it's also not
Speaker 2: the sound you're looking for.
Speaker 3: Well, it's just when mixed in with music and other things,
Speaker 3: it's kind of like white noise.
Speaker 2: Do you lose the sound of the engine.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And so from my ears, I like old, you know,
Speaker 3: crappy fifties diesels stuff where that aren't all turbocharged and
Speaker 3: they really have a you know, fun sounds to them.
Speaker 3: Or you know a diesel that's you know, just doesn't
Speaker 3: is not so efficient that it just sounds like a
Speaker 3: big hair dryer. And they're really hard to come by,
Speaker 3: sure because you know most of those are you know,
Speaker 3: getting older, or they're not. They're built as workhorses, they're
Speaker 3: not built as race cars.
Speaker 2: Well, if I'm happy to help you find one, if
Speaker 2: you want to record one and need help sourcing one.
Speaker 3: There's probably somebody somewhere. Oh yeah, until you listeners out there.
Speaker 3: If you've got an old diesel that you want recorded,
Speaker 3: give me a holler. But back to the C ten,
Speaker 3: you know that there's all kinds of cars mixed in there.
Speaker 3: When you really get on it, I actually cut dragstre engines,
Speaker 3: so it goes from a diesel to a V eight.
Speaker 3: And then when you spin around that wine that you
Speaker 3: hear that you know that that thing is backing up.
Speaker 1: I think that's from a Honda.
Speaker 3: Accord, because there's there's a few there's a range of
Speaker 3: Japanese cars, maybe late eighties or early nineties that really
Speaker 3: have a very characteristic backup gear that has.
Speaker 1: That high sound.
Speaker 3: And so when I need to say instantly to the audience,
Speaker 3: backing up fast, I use that, even though it makes
Speaker 3: no logical sense to any car people. But so far
Speaker 3: nobody's complained about it. But now that I've let my
Speaker 3: pants down, I expect the hate mail is going to
Speaker 3: start pouring in.
Speaker 1: But that's the title sound designer. You have to design
Speaker 1: these sounds to tell the story too. I mean the
Speaker 1: idea of make you know, finding the right sound to
Speaker 1: go to explain or to showcase going into reverse, especially
Speaker 1: if the car doesn't or the the engine that's supposed
Speaker 1: to be in the car doesn't make it. You have
Speaker 1: to create that. You have to design that. It's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: Who would have known it's a Honda Chord. Huh yeah, right,
Speaker 1: let's keep these clips, So let's do another car.
Speaker 3: This might be my second favorite. I don't know why
Speaker 3: you're always involved somehow in these cars. But in Fast
Speaker 3: and Furious five is a brief moment where Han is
Speaker 3: driving through the city in a Ford Maverick. So part
Speaker 3: of it is the engine, part of it is what
Speaker 3: we do with recording, part of it is editing, but
Speaker 3: a huge part of it is the performance of the driver.
Speaker 3: If the driver knows film and understands storytelling, they can
Speaker 3: do miraculous things with the car. They can make it speak.
Speaker 3: I don't drive these cars. I have professionals do it.
Speaker 3: Like we worked with Kenji last week over at Grety,
Speaker 3: and this is a guy who just understands story and
Speaker 3: he understands what we're looking for and how to make
Speaker 3: the car perform in something that's going to sound good
Speaker 3: on film.
Speaker 1: Kenji Somino as the president of Gretty. He actually built
Speaker 1: Brian's Supra and Fast and Furious one.
Speaker 3: So a problem that I have with professional drivers, with
Speaker 3: someone like Chris Forresburg, is you have to do a
Speaker 3: little cajoling to get them at times to drive poorly
Speaker 3: because they want to do things perfect by the book
Speaker 3: and they'll hit every shift and everything will be perfect,
Speaker 3: and that I want that. That's great to have, but
Speaker 3: I don't just want that. I want to miss the shift.
Speaker 3: I want the clutch to grind. I want because the
Speaker 3: people who are driving the cars in these movies are
Speaker 3: being shot at, or they're being punched, or they're going
Speaker 3: over a jump or things. So there's the more weird
Speaker 3: character that I can get into a car, the better.
Speaker 3: So I've recorded a lot of skids over the years,
Speaker 3: different tires, different driving. But the Maverick that Han drives
Speaker 3: in Fast five was probably one of maybe my second
Speaker 3: favorite car ever because there was something wrong with it.
Speaker 1: I don't know what was wrong.
Speaker 3: I think the axle mount was broken, and so when
Speaker 3: you would start to drift with this thing or stop fast,
Speaker 3: it would sound like this.
Speaker 2: You were talking about the shuttering when it was breaking.
Speaker 3: That chattering skid is fantastic. It's box office gold. I've
Speaker 3: never had a car that's made those sounds.
Speaker 4: That's not a stock motor for the Maverick. What car
Speaker 4: was that was that? The act Maverick that I don't
Speaker 4: I don't know. I guess it was probably an LS three,
Speaker 4: but maybe not because it's so beat up. But that's
Speaker 4: a it's a vintage car.
Speaker 1: So there was a few models of the Americ and
Speaker 1: I think it was like a two point six Leader
Speaker 1: that was like the fastest GT model. So I think
Speaker 1: that that's completely a modify. That's that's a swap. That
Speaker 1: has to be something else that's like a.
Speaker 2: V six or it didn't sound like an LS to me.
Speaker 1: It did not. What's a Ford? Most likely it's a
Speaker 1: Ford motor.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, I would hope.
Speaker 3: While we're talking about great entrance, I think we should
Speaker 3: take a listen to the Fugazi.
Speaker 1: Yes, faguzzi. Sorry, the fugazi means fake in it, right,
Speaker 1: fuguzzi fu gou fish plus a z. Fuguzi. I'm JSL
Speaker 1: what's that?
Speaker 3: Japanese is a second language.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So the figuzi is the name of this too
Speaker 1: forty Z this nineteen seventy three dots in two forty
Speaker 1: Z and I named it Figuzi because goofish is a
Speaker 1: blowfish that if you do not prepare it properly, it
Speaker 1: will kill you. So the you know the concept of
Speaker 1: a race car being dangerous if you don't do the
Speaker 1: right prep it will kill you as well. And then
Speaker 1: I added the Z at the end, so feguzi right.
Speaker 1: And I tested it with a bunch of like six
Speaker 1: year olds, going, can you say faguzi? And they're like, Faguzi, Foguzi.
Speaker 1: I go, well, okay, that's easy to say. So I
Speaker 1: like to name all my cars, like to give it
Speaker 1: like a character, you know, and a personality.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: One of the things that I need to do my
Speaker 3: job well relies on the kindness of strangers. And Sung
Speaker 3: has been a very kind stranger lately by hooking me
Speaker 3: up with people with fantastic cars. And I happen to
Speaker 3: have a need for an RB twenty six engine, which
Speaker 3: I think is very hard to find but really has
Speaker 3: a signature sound, and it just so happens that Sung
Speaker 3: has one of these cars.
Speaker 1: So this is exterior prospect that sounds so nice, Like.
Speaker 2: I'm grin and cheek to cheek. Those just sounds so
Speaker 2: good to me.
Speaker 3: Wow, And that's how I like to record cars out
Speaker 3: in the world, working with gravity, working with mistakes, working
Speaker 3: with grit in the road, and working with the character
Speaker 3: of a driver. But another way to do it is
Speaker 3: on a dino. If you've ever had your car smogged,
Speaker 3: it's where you stick a car in a garage on
Speaker 3: a big, gigantic roller. It's strapped down so it doesn't
Speaker 3: go anywhere, and then you can just drive it up
Speaker 3: to its top speed without having to deal with you know, and.
Speaker 2: I'm assuming you said this is a roller dino, whereas
Speaker 2: sometimes if you have a high performance vehicle, they'll just
Speaker 2: you take off the wheels and you strap it straight
Speaker 2: to the hub of the car.
Speaker 3: Right, this is a roller dino. Okay, this is a
Speaker 3: tailpipe sitting by the dino, but it's not going anywhere.
Speaker 3: And you will hear the whine of the barrel the
Speaker 3: drum at the end of this dynamometer run.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I hear that.
Speaker 2: I'm with you. I like it on the street, and.
Speaker 3: I'm really excited to get this whole record together because
Speaker 3: we've got MIC's on the turbos in the engine, and
Speaker 3: it'll be fun to hear how those sound. I haven't
Speaker 3: mastered it all yet, but I can already tell from
Speaker 3: this that it's going to be a really nice set.
Speaker 2: Have you recorded much evs?
Speaker 1: Very little? Yeah, we have.
Speaker 3: I didn't record it, but we have the EV one
Speaker 3: in the library and for many years that. I think
Speaker 3: that was the first electric vehicle that's used a lot,
Speaker 3: But from what I can understand, the variation in them
Speaker 3: is not much. They all sound very similar. However, if
Speaker 3: you know anybody who does that, whatever the racing is,
Speaker 3: formula e, formula e, I need to meet those people,
Speaker 3: because those sound different.
Speaker 1: They sound pretty awesome.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I feel like most manufacturers now are trying to
Speaker 2: have their unique EV sound.
Speaker 3: I worked with Nissan on their VSP, their vehicle sound
Speaker 3: for pedestrians for belief when they came out with that.
Speaker 3: Oh really, they hired us for a little while to
Speaker 3: come up with a sound for driving, for backing up.
Speaker 2: So how did you create that sound?
Speaker 3: That was really all sound design. I really like the
Speaker 3: backup beeps they were made out of. They're made from
Speaker 3: like a woodfinch, I think, so instead of just being
Speaker 3: this really annoying sound, it was more bird oriented.
Speaker 1: Huh so that was you.
Speaker 3: It was something that I worked on for Nissan USA.
Speaker 1: That is so cool.
Speaker 3: Well, it's less cool because it came down to a
Speaker 3: bake off between what the Nissan USA sound was for
Speaker 3: the Leaf and what the Nissan Japanese sound was. And
Speaker 3: let me let me make you guess which one they
Speaker 3: went with Japan.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so now I hear that and I'm like, hmmm,
Speaker 1: could have been a wood finch. But that's pretty awesome.
Speaker 1: They reached out to you.
Speaker 3: They were They were super awesome. I really I like
Speaker 3: that company.
Speaker 1: That's pretty cool.
Speaker 3: And the disappointing thing about it is is that the
Speaker 3: industry wants there to be one sound so anyone who's
Speaker 3: hard of hearing knows immediately okay, that's an electric vehicle.
Speaker 2: I didn't think about that.
Speaker 4: Who wants this industry standards?
Speaker 3: So whatever, you know, governing body controls these things. It's
Speaker 3: much better to have one to rule them all. But
Speaker 3: come on, we're humans. The branding things should have.
Speaker 2: Not all cars sound the same, So exactly would TV
Speaker 2: sound the same? Right?
Speaker 3: Why don't you put a full exterior speaker array and
Speaker 3: you can make your EV sound like whatever you want
Speaker 3: you can make it sound like a Camaro.
Speaker 2: You can make it so Tesla honking is like uh
Speaker 2: parting noises or something like that.
Speaker 3: Change the seems like it's a great future there.
Speaker 1: You can make it sound like an RX seven that
Speaker 1: sad day. But yeah, it's interesting because it sounds like.
Speaker 1: You love imperfection in the sounds of the cars because
Speaker 1: then it allows you to create a character and tell
Speaker 1: the story and then break it up and match the
Speaker 1: actor or the character that's playing, you know, or driving that.
Speaker 2: Car in life. Though, I feel like people love imperfection,
Speaker 2: you know, even like older cars, like I'll use I'm
Speaker 2: using another Corvette example, We'll use anything like there'll be
Speaker 2: a particular year that has the incorrect stitching or maybe
Speaker 2: the leather was notorious for tearing somewhere in particular, and
Speaker 2: then at the time people like, oh, that's the one
Speaker 2: that you know had a defect of some sort. Then
Speaker 2: fifty years go by and they're like, wow, that's the
Speaker 2: one that had that famous defect. And people love having
Speaker 2: that unique character on something. And same with acting, you
Speaker 2: know the take where it didn't go perfectly, where you
Speaker 2: had that moment where something happened where you can improv
Speaker 2: It's almost like a blessing because you have something that
Speaker 2: was unintended that ended up creating this unique not character
Speaker 2: as in a person, but like a piece of something
Speaker 2: that wasn't intended that keeps it raw and organic.
Speaker 1: Pete, I want to ask this question earlier. You said,
Speaker 1: you know, to be successful, you have to know who
Speaker 1: you are. Right and now, as a older man that
Speaker 1: has traveled this road a little longer than the younger folks,
Speaker 1: if you were to give your younger self advice on
Speaker 1: some shortcuts to find that, how did you discover or
Speaker 1: how did you find who you are during your journey
Speaker 1: of your life? And what advice would you give to
Speaker 1: your younger self. Boy, that's a tough question.
Speaker 3: It's a really tough question because I feel successful and
Speaker 3: I feel blessed, and you know, I feel like most
Speaker 3: of the reason that that happened was not really because
Speaker 3: of something that I fought for or did. It's because
Speaker 3: I had the greatest parents in the world. I mean,
Speaker 3: I just I grew up in a home filled with
Speaker 3: love and was told to, you know, surround yourself with
Speaker 3: the best people possible, and you can do anything that
Speaker 3: you want.
Speaker 1: And you know, I don't.
Speaker 3: Care what you are, just go and be you. That's
Speaker 3: I think that's the best way. You know, the best
Speaker 3: roads to success are often things that you have no
Speaker 3: control over. You might be born, you know, unbelievably beautiful
Speaker 3: and attractive, and it just opens all these doors for you. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so that's a not useful answer.
Speaker 2: Be born beautiful and attractive and.
Speaker 1: Have great parents.
Speaker 3: Yeah, great parents, great parents and trumps all that stuff. Sure,
Speaker 3: sure you know. I've got two kids, one, you know,
Speaker 3: nineteen and eighteen, and the I feel like the main
Speaker 3: advice I give them is just to listen, you know,
Speaker 3: listen to your heart or just know yourself, because everything
Speaker 3: falls into place if you can keep from lying to yourself,
Speaker 3: which is so easy to do, or or you know,
Speaker 3: let somebody else's goal be your goal, or look at
Speaker 3: somebody else where. Envy might be driving you, but I
Speaker 3: just try to tell them to just really take a
Speaker 3: take a second to think about what it is you
Speaker 3: enjoy doing who you know, what process makes you feel
Speaker 3: more like yourself, and pursue that.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 1: The one thing I noticed about you because I you know,
Speaker 1: when I meet people that are success fall that our
Speaker 1: joy to be around and a joy to work with
Speaker 1: and collaborate with, and I'm looking for traits to take
Speaker 1: from them and learn from them. Right, And one thing
Speaker 1: I noticed about you over the years since we've met,
Speaker 1: which is like sixteen years ago now right, it's almost
Speaker 1: two decades. Think about that, is that every time I
Speaker 1: meet you where I see you, it's like you just
Speaker 1: started this job, Like you're so excited about it, like
Speaker 1: the passion has never dwinduled. Pete, Like, I don't know
Speaker 1: if you like noticed that about yourself, but it's obvious
Speaker 1: that you love what you do and it's like a
Speaker 1: kid in a candy store and it's infectious it is
Speaker 1: and you and you know, for the people listening, because
Speaker 1: you know, I think if I were to talk to
Speaker 1: my younger self and go, like, you know, you know,
Speaker 1: are what are the secrets to making it? And it's
Speaker 1: almost it's simple, but they're hard to do, you know.
Speaker 1: And it's like the one thing the reason I ask
Speaker 1: you this question. I asked you that question, was you know,
Speaker 1: to be able to share, like, you know, the secrets
Speaker 1: of your success. And it's something that is very very
Speaker 1: like prominent with you is that you love what you do,
Speaker 1: you know, and it's very obvious and hearing your origin
Speaker 1: story of you've loved it since you discovered it in
Speaker 1: film school, you know, at USC. So it really is
Speaker 1: like a privilege to be around your Pete very kind,
Speaker 1: it is so and thus that's why you're working on
Speaker 1: some of the biggest movies in Hollywood. So it all correlates.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: That was the best time I've had in radio in
Speaker 3: a long time. Thanks time.
Speaker 1: Well, Thank you Peter Brown for coming to talk with
Speaker 1: us and you know, sharing your story. It was a
Speaker 1: real privilege and treat to sit down with you and
Speaker 1: learn a lot about you.
Speaker 3: I had a great time. Thank you so much for
Speaker 3: bringing me in here.