The sound designer Randy Thom was faced with a challenge: What does a robot sound like? And what if that robot learns to love? Get more from your favorite Atlantic voices when you subscribe. You’ll enjoy unlimited access to Pulitzer-winning journalism, from clear-eyed analysis and insight on breaking news to fascinating explorations of our world. Subscribe today at TheAtlantic.com/podsub. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: Who is the sound designer behind The Wild Robot?
Hello.
Bonjour. Guten Tag. Buongiorno. Hola. Congratulations on your purchase of a Universal Dynamics robot.
That is the voice of Roz from the animated film The Wild Robot, up for three Oscars this weekend, including for Best Sound. Ra's, whose voice by Lupita Nyong'o is a helper robot, a kind of turbocharged Siri, who gets stranded on a deserted island and learns to communicate with the animals that live there. She also finds a goose egg, the only one left after she accidentally destroyed its nest.
And she decides that her task is to raise this gosling and basically become its mom. But that means she has to do all the parts of becoming a mom. Okay.
Aber sie erinnert sich an eine Sache. Dich. Und wenn sie endlich dich sieht, fühlt sie sich... Krass.
Obligation.
Sehr glücklich, Mutter zu sein.
Das hat eine interessante Herausforderung für das Film-Sounddesign-Team geschaffen. Was soll dieser Roboter klingen? Und was soll es klingen, wenn es eine Seele hat?
How do you know if you love something, someone?
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Chapter 2: What challenges do sound designers face in film?
If you do, you should probably tell them.
What if it is too late?
This is Radio Atlantic. I'm Hannah Rosen. Today we're talking about how a movie handles our complicated feelings about robots. With a guy who had to figure that out in sound.
My name is Randy Tom.
And who did it well enough to get an Oscar nomination.
And I'm the supervising sound designer on The Wild Robot.
There is a long history of robots in film. From him... Hello, I'm here.
What do I call you? Do you have a name? Yes, Samantha.
Randy und die Wild-Robot-Filmmacher wussten, dass sie einen Element des klassischen Robot-Feels für Rosses Stimme verwenden mussten. Ein bisschen Monotone.
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Chapter 3: How is a robot's voice created in movies?
Und dann noch etwas zusätzliches Prozess in der Stimme.
Ein guter Beispiel wäre C-3PO. His voice, when C-3PO was speaking English, was processed quite noticeably in terms of restricting its bandwidth, so it sounds a little bit like you're hearing it over a telephone. It doesn't have many low frequencies in it or extremely high frequencies.
What makes you think there are settlements over there?
Don't get technical with me.
There's this thing called audio phasing, where a signal, a sound gets combined with itself, but slightly out of sync with itself. And it makes this kind of swishing sound. And so a little bit of that is typically added to a voice to make it sound a little more like a robot. I've just about had enough of you.
Go that way. You'll be malfunctioning within a day, you nearsighted scrap pile.
By the way, Randy would know all of this, because... I'm the director of sound design at Skywalker Sound.
Are you looking for that kind of title?
I mean, if you had that title, would you ever introduce yourself in any other way? Anyway, back to Roz and the Wild Robot.
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Chapter 4: What makes a robot sound more human-like?
And so what you hear in the film is something that does sound very much like a robot for the first six or eight things that she utters.
Was this task accomplished to your satisfaction?
Aber dann, ziemlich schnell, schalten wir das Prozessing aus, sodass du nur Lupitas Reaktion als Roboter verpasst hast.
Sie haben meine Macht gesperrt, aber ich habe dich immer noch gehört, weil ich mit einem anderen Teil von mir zuhören musste.
Ra's ist nicht der einzige Roboter. Du hast einen Roboter gespürt, einen Wildroboter. Du spielst das Äquivalent eines Sturmtruppers, also Muskeln, einen schlechten Muskelroboter. Wie hast du diese Roboter anders überlegt?
Das ist ein Fall, in dem meine große, große Stimme nützlich war. Das sind sehr große militärische Roboter. Und so habe ich versucht, das so gut wie möglich zu manifestieren.
Dein Ziel ist Rosm 7134. Deploy!
Aber auch meine Stimme musste geaugmentiert werden, um es noch größer zu klingen. Also habe ich meine Stimme fast in eine Oktave gedreht. Du gehörst hier nicht. Das ist eine Wildnis. Und habe ein bisschen Metall-Reverberation draufgelegt.
You do not belong here. This is a wilderness.
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Chapter 5: How does a robot develop emotions in storytelling?
Damn. That's gonna work.
That is coming up.
Ich bin Carla Lally-Musik, Kochbuchautorin und kürbische Nahrungsgeberin und die Hostin von Sweets Unwrapped, einem neuen Podcast von Ferrero und Atlantic Rethink, der Atlantik-Kreativ-Marketing-Studio. Habt ihr jemals gewusst, woher die Haselnüsse und Nutella kommen? Oder wie Keebler seit über einem Jahrhundert gestanden ist?
Ob ihr einen süßen Teig habt oder interessiert seid über Flavorscience oder wollt wissen, was in der Welt von R&D kommt, schreibt euch zu Sweets Unwrapped, wo auch immer ihr eure Podcasts bekommt.
So, one thing Randy Tom had to figure out is what Roz's voice would sound like. But he also had to figure out how Roz would sound when she moved, like when she twisted her body or extended her arm and when she walked around.
The tradition for doing robot movement sounds for movies is to use recordings of servo motors. Servomotor ist eine Art elektrisches Motor, das oft in Roboten verwendet wird. Und das Geräusch, das es macht, ist, wenn der Roboter läuft, ist es so... So ein Geräusch wurde in den Star-Wars-Filmen benutzt.
R2-D2 rollt eher als geht, aber C-3PO ist anthropomorphisch, hat Arme und Beine und man hört Servomotoren, wenn C-3PO geht.
Er hat mich gezwungen, in diese Richtung zu gehen, aber er wird es besser wissen.
So, you know, that approach had been done well, but at this point it seemed like a bit of a cliché. And so I wanted to stay away from it for that reason. But probably the more important reason I wanted to not use servo motors is that Roz is supposed to be very high tech. So she had to sound elegant and smooth and subtle when she moved. So I started listening to pneumatic systems.
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Chapter 6: What role does sound play in conveying love through robots?
Chapter 7: What is the significance of the Oscar nomination?
Chapter 8: How has sound design evolved in films about robots?
Dein Ziel ist Rosm 7134. Deploy!
Aber auch meine Stimme musste geaugmentiert werden, um es noch größer zu klingen. Also habe ich meine Stimme fast in eine Oktave gedreht. Du gehörst hier nicht. Das ist eine Wildnis. Und habe ein bisschen Metall-Reverberation draufgelegt.
You do not belong here. This is a wilderness.
And I just needed to perform it in as kind of aggressive and intimidating a way as I could muster.
Okay, give us one line. I'm trying to imagine your voice an octave deeper than I'm listening to.
I won't be able to simulate that part of it. This is a wilderness. You do not belong here.
This is a wilderness.
And I am a wild robot. When we come back, Randy has breakthrough.
Damn. That's gonna work.
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