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MillimeterThe Sampler — July 27, 2005
Jul 27, 2005 4:46 PM
The Hollywood Edge: Quality SFX From Film Sound's Best
In a way, it seems like such a natural idea: Take the myriad effects that are produced by top sound professionals for feature films and make them available to media producers and sound designers in the form of sound effects libraries. Yet surprisingly few sound editorial and post houses are in the library business. One that has enjoyed tremendous success, however, is The Hollywood Edge, now in its 16th year of operation. It was started by Oscar-winning sound designers/supervisors Lon Bender and Wylie Stateman of film sound giant Soundelux, which these days is an arm of Ascent Media.
"In the beginning, Lon and Wylie were basically looking for a way to get their excellent material out to the public," says the company's managing director, John Moran, "and I don't think they realized how much demand there would be. Now here we are at about 350 CDs in 15 1/2 years, and the company is going stronger than ever."
Soundelux encompasses more than just the work of Bender and Stateman, of course; every year its staffers contribute FX (and other sound services) to many major and independent releases, so there is a plethora of material for The Hollywood Edge to draw from. In fact, one of the hardest tasks the library faces is sifting through the mountains of material to determine what would be most appropriate for release. That, primarily, is the domain of Moran and Ken Stateman, Wylie's brother.
The company has a policy of not releasing the names of the specific films from which the FX are drawn for a given library (except for the Apocalypse Now collection), and there is also a three-year waiting period after a film is released before any of its FX can be considered for a library. Still, Moran says, "I don't think it would be giving away too much to say that quite a few of those scary, horrible sounds on our Evil FX collection, which came out a couple of years ago, came from Resident Evil." We should note, too, that there are a few titles in the library's extensive catalog that are devoted to the work of specific designers, such as The Serafine Collection (covered in this space a few weeks ago), The Alan Howarth Signature Series, and Lon Bender's Wacky World of Robots.
Other releases cover the full gamut of film sound possibilities, which explains in part why The Hollywood Edge is so popular with sound designers and mixers—even within the Soundelux family. (Sound supervisors on major Hollywood films sometimes don't like to admit it when they use library material, yet it happens often.) Among the company's other popular titles are The Guns of Cinema, Heavily Armed, Martial Arts and Human Impacts, Foley Steps, Sounds of Speed, The Car Chase Scene Set, and Laughs, Cheers, and Applause. A new release coming out in the next week or so is called High Impact, which is exactly what the title implies—explosions, crashes, and assorted mayhem. Also relatively new is the Sound Designer's Tool Kit. "[It] includes a lot of elements which sound designers use to put things together—they'll string different effects to create things," Moran says. "So the kit contains a lot of basic sounds—foley things and other FX that they can take and build and layer into their own new FX." The company is also considering putting together a 5.1 FX library for surround work.
"We've always strived for quality first and foremost," Moran says. "We might not generate 20 libraries a year; usually we'll do two or three good releases. But there are never any duplicates on our libraries; we don't recycle our sounds and put different names on them. That's why our clients come back to us. They've always said that our material is 'box-office quality,' and that's what we shoot for."
Though best known for its SFX collections, The Hollywood Edge also offers a number of production music libraries, ranging from Matt Rollings' keyboard loops to dance tracks to world music styles. Additionally, they have a handful of music sampling discs, including one featuring Giorgio Moroder's rare synth sounds and another couple with a multitude of drum loops.
GMP Music: Cruising in the Midwest
"I'm a born production music creator," says Gene Michael, founder and principal composer for GMP Music—a division of Gene Michael Productions—based in Buchanan, Mich. (about 20 minutes from South Bend, Ind.). "Some people have asked me, 'Why didn't you chase the pop thing, like so many other musicians?' Well, I did for a little bit, but I hate touring and it turns out that production music is something I'm pretty good at, so this is the perfect situation for me and my ADD mentality."
Growing up, Michael took violin, cello, and flute lessons, and picked up other instruments on his own. "[I] naturally gravitated into composition," he says. "I always enjoyed instrumental music. I think I started writing instrumental music when I was an early teenager, maybe even before. But I listen to everything—I enjoy classical to heavy metal. I'm a big fan of film music, too, and that's definitely influenced the types of things I write for the library." Michael cites Danny Elfman as his favorite current film composer. But he says, "Film music is so wide open now; it's great! It can be anything from Nine Inch Nails to Randy Newman; it's very broad and colorful."
Those are adjectives that could be used to describe GMP Music's library offerings, too. Over the past 15 years, Michael and his associates have been turning out a huge volume of work in every style imaginable, from classic rock to orchestra to industrial to Latin to Christmas to action/adventure—more than 10,500 cuts overall—and they're still keeping up a dizzying pace of more than 20 CDs per year. That's one reason there are some companies that use GMP Music as their main source of production tracks—it's all there.
Though production music necessarily changes with popular trends and tastes, Michael says, "There will always be things that are timeless in the music library business, whether it's Christmas music or certain kinds of traditional styles. We have an 11-CD set of the Russian Philharmonic playing the classics, and that's going to need to sound the same 10 years from now or 20 years from now.
"At this point in time, the same composing and recording tools are available to everybody, and when everyone's got the same hammer and chisel, then it's going to involve creativity to set yourself apart. I've found through the years that sometimes the technology leads the industry, sometime talent leads the industry; it vacillates back and forth. I like personal creativity more than machine creativity. The trick, too, is to learn how to be creative with machines. But I've been in business long enough that I've been through the cycles where it's all acoustic, then it's all MIDI, then it's half-MIDI and half-acoustic, then it's all samples, then no samples," he laughs. "You have to keep up. That's part of the business."
What's hot right at the moment? "Right now, a lot of things are really guitar-driven—it's pretty quirky, pretty funky, but I like it a lot," says Michael. "Of course retro music has also been king for a while. I still hear that a lot in national spots."
Michael plies his trade at his own studio complex, which includes a large tracking room and also a personal composition suite. Michael says, "[The personal composition suite] has everything I need in it—electric and acoustic guitars, keyboards, a Mac, a hot Gigastudio setup. The idea is that within a 20-square-foot room I have everything I need to compose and play and record and even post stuff on the Internet."
"You never have to leave," I offer.
"Yeah, that's what my wife says, too," he chuckles. "Hey, I'm working on my studio tan. At least this studio has a window. It's a nice setup." Michael's primary compositional and recording tool is MOTU Digital Performer.
All of GMP Music's tracks are searchable and downloadable through its Internet site. "They're complete, not partials," Michael says. "So a producer can go through 24 hours a day and find what they need quickly and easily." The library has managed to draw local, regional, and some national clients through the years—when we spoke, Michael was excited about a pair of Ford and Lincoln/Mercury spots that were employing GMP cuts. "It's fantastic," he says. "Things are going really well right now. I'm enjoying it as much as ever. I'm going to be doing this for a long, long time."
Just don't tell his wife that.
