“You can’t have too many doors…” says sound designer and composer Paul Rischer during our chat about his successful career which has seen him play a significant part in manipulating movie goers’ emotional responses to the moving images playing before them.
After attempting life as a rockstar in his younger years but driven by his interests in drawing and music post-graduation, Paul decided to pursue media design in Mainz, where he was first exposed to filmmaking. An internship at a brand new Berlin studio where he painted walls in between recording and sound design, allowed him to demonstrate his natural skills before being encouraged by his mentors to apply to the prestigious Tonmeister program at the University of Potsdam where he was accepted at the age of 27.
Paul’s ambition to become a cinema sound designer flourished as he collaborated with talented directors, camera operators, and animators and his big break finally came with the successful diploma film Kriegerin (Combat Girls), which went on to win a German Film Academy Award. Since then, he has continued to work with director David Wnendt, handling on-set sound, sound design, and mixing for all his films.
So, tell us more about how you ended up in sound design.
It sounded really cool to be a sound designer for movies. I previously wanted to mix music but then it felt like this is what I wanted to do. I heard about guys like Ben Burtt (Star Wars, Indiana Jones, E.T., Star Trek) and Walter Murch (Apocalypse Now, The Godfather, Ghost, The English Patient), and thought this is really cool, I want to do that.
Were you listening to movies and thinking, that’s really cool sound design?
Yeah, it came to me step by step – what it means and how much of a story you can tell with sound. When people ask me ‘what do you do, are you doing music?’, I have to try and explain what it’s all about. If the director tells you the scene is frightening and it has to be cold or something, then I tell people there are cold winds that you can hear. There’s a warm summer wind that you can hear, and there’s so many differences and this is what makes it so interesting.
Also, it’s like we’re working in secret, we’re doing stuff and manipulating the listener without them even noticing on a cognitive level, it’s much more visceral, but it has such a big impact on the whole thing, that’s what I really like about it.
I did a horror film recently and I worked on everything like the sound design and supervising, re-recording mixing and it was such fun to have it all under control. Also, the musicians were very open because, with this director, I offered a lot of non-screen related sound design, like where it gets more musical or it’s more a feeling expressed in sound and the composers were very open to it intervening with their music. They really welcomed the fact that it was overlapping and they even asked me to send them the sound design layers to be part of the music, like in the soundtrack.
How do you approach a new project? Do you sit down with the director and the composer and try and get some kind of symbiotic relationship going early on? Or is the music sometimes presented to you halfway through the sound design projects?
Yeah, it’s all of that. Usually, when I hear of a project or I get hired for a project, if it’s not finished or if there isn’t an edited picture, I ask for dailies or the script and I start there. I talk to the director and gauge what she or he is all about and what the film is about and just try to get to know them or the people in charge to see how they function and what their taste is and everything.
Then it gets more and more detailed when we have an edited picture. The best way for me is to just sit down with the director and go through it step by step, and make marks and notes, if it’s possible. Sometimes I ask for music to be sent to me early on, as soon as they have anything, but often I get the final music when I’m finished.
Are you trying to create an aesthetic throughout the whole film so that there’s a kind of DNA to the sound so that it’s not just a load of disjointed sounds?
Yeah, of course. As I said, I have to get to know the directors and their taste and what the movie needs. Sometimes it can be over the top, like I worked on movies for children, which are very popular in Germany, called Bibi & Tina. Others are really sparse. Right now I’m working on a Netflix series, and the show runner asked me to not do too many squeaky doors. He said, ‘the doors don’t have to tell me a story, it’s a door’, but it’s these little pieces and puzzles that you put together to create a language.
There can be a lot of cliché-type sounds but if it tells a story then it’s just the right sound to tell that.
For example, when anybody gets on a mic on stage in a movie, there’s feedback noise, it’s a cliché, but if you have a scenario where it feels awkward and embarrassing because somebody is standing in front of a crowd and doesn’t know what to say, then that feedback howl is just the right sound to use. Also, for the kids’ movie I mentioned, we really did use clichés because it’s funny, because it’s cartoony.
People don’t realise that kind of thought goes into sound design, do they?
No, they don’t. There’s an upside and a downside to it. The upside is that you can really manipulate people without them knowing and give them a feeling for a character or a place; even a car can have a character, that’s what I really love about it. The downside is that people say ‘what are you actually doing? Does it have to be so long and can’t you do it quicker?’, and this is what not everybody appreciates. But I can’t complain, I’m still doing my stuff.
Let’s talk about sound effects generally, do you make your own or are you relying on libraries?
I try to record more and more, for every show or movie I try to record something special. Often there’s not too much time but I really try to record. My library grows with every movie or show I make when I record specific stuff, even if it’s simple things like running up and down stairs in a house or something common, like doors, you can’t have too many doors!
Is that because you want to put your own fingerprints on the project?
Yeah, I try to create something unique and specific for the project and often it’s just quicker to record it than to build something else out of several layers, so that’s what I usually do.
What kind of stuff have you used BOOM libraries for?
I use a lot of the Everyday Cars library everyday, it’s a good name for them! But on the show I’m working on right now, it’s more like horses and carriages and stuff. I’m using Cinematic Darkness too, I really like it, so much cool stuff in there. Like for drones, there is so much great material to start from.
You can layer it with other stuff, you can pitch it up, down, play it backwards, you can bend it in every direction and you get something that’s always cool and unexpected.
You surprise yourself and that’s a pretty good creative process for me. Like with an instrument, you can play around and go somewhere. Or I know the exact sound I need within that library and just use it as it is.
Do you find it’s ever a challenge finding the sounds you need fast?
Yeah, but sometimes I take the time to just find different sounds because, for example, when there’s a cold wind in movies, often it’s always the same and I try to avoid those kinds of sounds and find something different or something fresh or new or create my own. Also, when I use sounds it’s always a question of layering, I rarely use one sound and that’s it, like for a door, I usually use three, four or more sounds.
So do you use these libraries as construction kits?
Most of the time, and that’s where it gets unique and where you can really give character to things.
I understand you use BOOM ONE, how do you find that as a general sound effects library?
I really like BOOM ONE. What I really like are the variations or even just long recordings, then you can pick your own. It’s really usable and great as an overall sound library. They also have the Mechanicals library, which has longer takes.
They really are the masters at this – the sounds have structure and stand out in the mix or in the sound design.
They clearly put a lot of work into it, it’s not just they record something and that’s it, it’s really serious business..
There’s lots of people who’d love to do what you do for a living. Have you got any advice for anyone who is thinking about getting into sound design?
What worked out for me is to be passionate about it and to be thorough, regardless of whether you like the film or not. I find my fun in every project and I give everything to contribute to the film makers goal of making a great movie. I love doing this work and maybe that’s my secret. Sound Design is not just putting the right Sounds to the picture and to have all the plugins. It is more about telling stories, and creating emotions.
Also, never get tired of learning new stuff and just connect with as many people as possible. In our job, we sit most of the time in a lonely room so it’s good to know a lot of people so that they think about you when they make new projects.
