An Enlightening Tour of Sharpe Sound Studios

This week, I had the great opportunity to visit Sharpe Sound Studios in North Vancouver, BC with my film class from SFU. According to the website, it is “Western Canada’s Premiere Audio Posting Experience”, and one of the best sound studios in North America. After the tour, I have no doubt that this is true; the tour was so awesome, I just had to take it twice!

Image (c) Sharpe Sound Studios

We learned a great deal from our guide, re-recording sound mixer Kelly Cole (SGU, SG:A, SG:1, Defying Gravity) on the tour through Sharpe Sound, getting a special look at post-production sound editing, recording and mixing. It is amazing just how much of the sound we hear when we watch films or television episodes was created or added later; very little of that sound is actually recorded on set. 

One of the sound designers, James Fonnyadt (SGU, SG:1, Masters of Science Fiction, Tin Man) gave us a great example of how his job works: he receives the final edit of the visual for the film or TV episode and watches it with the producers so they can tell him what they would like for the sound. After, he has a certain amount of time (4-5 days for a TV episode, 4 weeks or so for a feature film) to design the sound effects for every part of the image and action with a team of other sound editors, foley artists, dialogue editors and sound mixers. The number of people working on a project can vary greatly depending on a number of factors, including the length of the project, the type of project, and availability. All sound design and editing is done using the ProTools software, which we learned is the industry standard for all things sound-related. James’ advice for anyone looking at a career in sound design: know ProTools. Without a basic knowledge of the program, it is nearly impossible to get a job at any sound studio.

Foley stage. Image (c) Sharpe Sound Studios

James also showed us a very short clip from an episode of Stargate Universe as an example of how much work goes in to the soundscape of each episode. On average, James says he works with about 90 tracks in the ProTools file to cover all sound effects; each movement or action on screen will have multiple tracks associated with it, because one sound on one track is nowhere near enough. Also, these are only a part of the entire soundscape - more tracks are worked on by other sound editors for dialogue, backgrounds, music and more. Layers and layers of sound form each effect, to give it life and substance. A film would be lacking something vital if it had only a flat, limited soundscape; the sound team gives the film auditory depth, immersing the audience more deeply into the film than visuals can achieve alone.

Along the way, as we moved from one part of the studio to another, we met the sound editing team behind Sanctuary and post-production supervisor Shona Miko (Sanctuary, Life As We Know It). They were busy with scenes from Episode 18 of Season 3, but took the time to give us the fantastic privilege of seeing their work in action and talk to us for a short while. They were set up in a large studio with the episode playing on a theatre screen, while the sound team worked at a bank of computers and sound equipment. Behind them was a long table with chairs where the production team would be (that day it was only Shona). It was fascinating to see the team in action; each person had their specific focus, like dialogue, backgrounds, sound effects and music. Their work sounded really good, too; Shona was particularly pleased with sound designer Mike Paprocki’s work on one scene, which not only sounded cool but looked great too. I won’t say what was happening in the scene because I wouldn’t want to give away any spoilers, but I will say that it involved glowing light and time distortion. Very neat effects, and I can’t wait to see the episode when it airs!

Before we carried on with the tour, Shona had this advice for us: Sound is very important. The audience can be quite forgiving of visual errors, but if something is wrong with the sound, you’re in trouble. The sound team cheered for this statement, and informed us that people often underestimate the importance of the work they do so to hear someone appreciate that importance made them very happy. 

At one point in the tour, Kelly Cole told us that he’d been asked one time about theatre speakers, and if he could install one more speaker, where would it go? His answer: the ceiling. The “Voice of God” speaker, as he called it, would be a great tool for sound designers to use, particularly in such cases as an airplane (or spaceship) passing overhead. As theatre sound configurations are right now (mostly 5.1 surround systems), to achieve that kind of sound effect the sound needs to begin at the front speakers, then be split to the surrounds and pass the audience on the sides; with the “Voice of God” speaker, the sound can truly come from above the audience. This explanation was met with many exclamations of “that would be so cool!” from myself and my classmates; perhaps sometime in the future this could actually happen? Kelly did tell us that this was rather unlikely, seeing as how theatre chains would be unwilling to spend the money necessary to set up an extra speaker in each cinema... but we can still hope. The possibilities of what one could do with sound, using such a speaker, are endless and exciting. 

There was a slight note of unhappiness that occasionally came up during the tour; the night before, Kelly had finished mixing the last episode of SGU, concluding a long relationship with the Stargate shows. He has worked on every series of Stargate since 1998 (SG:1, Stargate: Atlantis, and now Stargate Universe), as have many of the sound engineers, designers, editors and others working at Sharpe Sound Studios. The halls of the building are full of posters and awards for various projects, and a large number of these are Stargate-related. It just goes to show how many people from different aspects of the film industry come together to create films and TV shows, and how many people are affected when shows are cancelled or come to an end. 

We concluded our tour with a discussion of how we should prepare our own soundscapes for mixing in a month or so, and that’s when it hit me that in not too many weeks, I will get to work with these great people and see my group’s film up on the big screen where such fantastic films and television shows have been. I had a similar “epiphany” moment at Deluxe Vancouver (another post-production house, for visuals instead of sound). It is a feeling of realisation that here, where such successful and creative individuals have worked, we are walking in their footsteps; we are the next generation, and we are seeing our futures unfolding before us. After our projects for this year are finished, it is likely that the next time we go to Sharpe Sound it will be for our own endeavours as we officially begin our careers, no longer as students but as filmmakers.

**Note: I hope I have everyone's names right who are listed here; I am mostly going by memory and IMDb to make sure I have the correct names and spelling, so please forgive any errors and if there are please let me know and I will fix them right away!