BONUS: Spooky Sounds w/ Jonathan Wales

How do you create the sound of a jump scare? Welcome to our first special bonus episode where Stacey and Lindsay sit down with Sound Editing Superviser Jonathan Wales!

Two more bonus episodes to go, so stay tuned!

Episode Transcript

(00:01):
Straw Hut Media. Hi, I'mStacy Nye and I'm Lindsay Jones. Welcome
to episode nine. What nine.It's a bonus episode of psychoanalyzing the Fall
of the House of Usher. Let'sdo it. That's right, folks,

(00:27):
we have a bonus episode for youtoday. Let's just talk about this episode.
We need to break down what we'redoing here. So if you watch
the Fall of the House of Usher, and let's just say, for example,
that you don't have that automatic thingon Netflix that automatically kicks you into
the next episode as soon as theprevious episode ends, and you were to

(00:48):
watch the credits, the end creditsof the show, you would hear that
frequently what accompanies the end credits isnot some sort of musical theme, but
it is in fact sound effects fromthe show, sometimes really fascinating sound effects.
And so for this episode today,this bonus episode, we are bringing
in special guests to talk with usspecifically about those sounds. And that's why

(01:11):
this is the end credits, becausewe're gonna hang out with the sound people.
So there's no episode recap because therewas no episode. We're just going
to get right to our guest Lindseytell us about our guest today. Our
guest today is Jonathan Wales, whois a re recording mixer and supervising sound

(01:32):
editor with an enormous list of creditsthat includes Get Out, Memento, Et
The Extraterrestrial, and many more.He was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award
for his work on the previous MikeFlannagain series Midnight Mass and he won an
HPA Award for his work on adifferent Mic plan Again series, The Haunting
of Hillhouse. We are super excitedto have him with us today. Please

(01:56):
welcome supervising sound editor Jonathan Wales tothe show. Jonathan, thanks so much
for being here. Welcome. Weare so excited to have you with us
today and to talk to you aboutstuff. Stacy and I have talked at
length about how much the sound isabsolutely amazing on this show, Like it's

(02:20):
so exciting, And I guess Iwant to start by asking when you get
a scary TV show? Right,because it's my theory and I bet you're
going to agree with me that youreally cannot have a scary film without scary
sound, Like basically you have nothingwithout scary sound. What do you do
when you get a project like thisand it's got and you're like, Okay,

(02:44):
it's going to be a lot ofscary stuff. What do you do
as like your prep for this?How do you what's your philosophy behind how
you do these things? And likewhat's your preparation like for a big scary
thing like this? Well, Ithink, first of all, I'm going
to read the scripts. Mike usuallysends the scripts out ahead of time by

(03:05):
quite a chunk, so you know, I definitely remember reading the first sort
of two episodes sort of back toback because I just wanted to get into
it and figure out, you know, what's what's going on here, and
the quickly gives you a sense ofthe sort of the type of universe you're
going to be playing in. Afterthat, I think for me at least,
I don't like to do very muchuntil until they've put a cut together

(03:30):
that you can actually watch it,because that's when you really get the sense
of as filmmakers, where are theycoming from? You know, what is
the feel of it, what arethe actors like, what's the vibe?
How you know? What is itthat's going to create tension? What is
it? How is the story beingtold. You know. I mean,
if you look at this show,the story is told in a partially sort
of almost narrated style with the withbut not with a narrator, but rather

(03:53):
with this whole conversation that keeps onoccurring in the old dilapidated house and sort
of so trying to understand how thatrelates and what's the idea, what are
the through lines here? We thinkabout sound like like we sort of quote
unquote do scary sound, but itisn't really that's not really how it works.

(04:14):
It's more that, as I lookat it, at least, it's
like we try to control the experienceof the audience so that we can sort
of make them a little bit uneasywhen we choose to, so that we
can create this sort of almost destabilizingeffect where you sort of you know something's
not quite right, but you maynot be sure what it is, and
you sort of hope you're going tofind out. I think that's a lot

(04:38):
of how I approach sound for somethinglike this. You know, this is
a dialogue show everything, although anawful lot of stuff happens when you actually
boil it down, it's really aseries of conversations telling a story over an
extended period of time, and thenobviously bad stuff happens. So the bad

(05:00):
stuff has no context if you don'thave the characters and all the rest of
it. This is something Mike is, you know, amazing at is getting
you into a world and letting youexperience that world from the viewpoint of the
characters and really immersing you into theirlives, so that then as stuff starts
to unfold, it's as sort ofnew for the audience almost as it is

(05:23):
for them. Wow. That's great, And from what you're saying, it
seems like you're doing your job wellif we're not even aware of the sound,
you know, like you're kind ofmanipulating the audience with the sound to
generate certain emotions and fear and tension, but we're not really aware of that
at any given point. Yeah,I think that's entirely correct. That for

(05:46):
sort of seventy percent of it.If I've done my job correctly, you
shouldn't be aware that I was everthere. What's the other thirty The other
thirty is when you've got cats inwalls and weird machines killing people, and
you know, you know, likethat obviously some of that stuff. It's
like fairly straightforwardly obvious that we mighthave done something. But I think that

(06:08):
if we're also doing it correctly atthat point, then nothing about that when
we bring the big sounds, whenwe do things when there is a cat
in the wall, you shouldn't itshouldn't be something that is an audience you're
like, haha, I see whatthey're doing now, you know, you
should be sufficiently caught up in theexperience of the character and what's going on
for them that you're like, well, of course there's a cat in the
wall, Like why wouldn't there be, you know? And I think that

(06:30):
really is the goal, is toput you into this thing and then let
you experience the world as a participantin their universe. And that's one of
my big approaches to this is alwaysto think of the audience as that they're
in there with the characters, andso the stuff that's happening, the stuff
the characters are experiencing, the audienceshould equally be able to experience, but

(06:51):
without it being weird. Yeah,I mean it's still weird for the record,
but nevertheless, Okay, you mentionedthe cat in the wall. Was
that your biggest challenge. What wasthe biggest challenge for you when you were
reading the scripts and you're like,oh my god, why am I going
to do this? You know,was there anything that really stuck out at
you? I mean, the bigsequences are technically challenging just to figure it

(07:15):
out, and a lot of itis also just making it convincing. So
if you're going to make like there'sa cat in the wall, you at
least have to make it convincing tothe audience that there actually might be.
The reason that's in works is onehundred percent because of Raul's acting here actually
isn't a cat in the wall.He's just acting off of nothing. You

(07:35):
know, we're going back in behindand trying to sell to the audience this
thing that he's already imagined in hishead and has convinced us. And I
think that's part of the genius ofthe way that Mike works, especially with
actors, is he's able to getthese performances that if you turn everything off
you just watch the actor, you'restill convinced that they're convinced that something's happening,

(07:59):
you know. So, yeah,that's challenging, but it's also on
the level of fun like. Oneof the more difficult things for me with
this show was that we spend alot of time in very quiet rooms.
And again, when you go tothe whatever I do, you're not supposed
to know that I was ever there. Thing. But there's nothing worse for
sound than sitting in a glass conferenceroom where half the time you can't have

(08:22):
a boom because you could see it. Or One of my things was to
play the obviously originally Mike's idea,but then I took it and around with
this idea of playing the interiors ofthe Usher offices is very sterile. You
never hear anything from outside the office. It's always like just a little droney

(08:43):
like there are no people, thereare no phones in the present day Usher
offices. It's literally just the mostclinical, sterile, sort of impersonal environment
sort of give this setback Ivory towerthing. And of course therefore you have
nothing to hide behind. You can'thave like there's a problem the dialog line.
Oh, let's have a phone ring, you know, to throw people

(09:05):
off or whatever it happens to be. So that's technically challenging. Then we
went and had you know, thebig sort of masquerade or g scene and
then in the middle of that,you know, Mike writes this completely intimate
scene on a bed with two people, while this is supposed to be this
whole thing going on the whole time, right, you know, So those

(09:26):
things are to get a perspective thatcan be convincing for the audience that,
like, these two people are borderlinewhispering, but there's also all this stuff
going on, and to sell thoseperspectives as believable, you know, is
fun. And one of the interestingthings that that is not necessarily obvious is

(09:48):
that we didn't mix this show inorder. So actually the first episode that
I started working on was episode three, oh, which actually was really interesting.
And look, I mean the uxoryof the fact that visual effects sometimes
takes a long time means that Iget to spend some time playing around and
revisiting things, and so I thinkI actually mixed episode three, then five,

(10:13):
then two or four, whichever oneof those. Then six. Episode
one was like one of the lastepisodes we did actually really interesting. I
recommend that to myself in the futureif possible, really, because the hardest
thing that happens, especially with theseries like this, is if you start
at episode one, usually you're settingup a lot of things that are going

(10:33):
to happen later, but you don'treally know what they are, and you
don't know what they're going to involve. Then when you get there, and
then all of a sudden in episodesix, you're like, oh, we
got to make this work. Likethen, you kind of usually wish you
could go back to episode one andsort of sell it better. So by
going out of border and literally Iended up mixing episode one in episode eight.

(10:54):
Back to back was really interesting becausewe got to really get the progression
and the perspectives and all the restof it really dialed in. And then,
of course, you know, thefirst scene I mixed in the whole
movie is basically Mark Hamill arriving ata room full of gory dead bodies,

(11:15):
which pretty fun. That was alsothe Chimps episode three. Yeah, it
was, so we did the firstversion of the chimp scene with no chimps
because the chimps are you know,like spoiler alert, the chimps are not
actually real. They're actually CGI becauseit turns out they're just not super cooperative
in real life. And puppets weheard. We interviewed Ozzie and he told

(11:37):
us about the puppets. But webasically had to do that scene with almost
nothing to react against. So TrevorGates, who's the sound designer who built
all the really cool stuff like thecat and the walls and the chimps and
stuff, you know, we literallyjust did a version that seemed like it
had jumps roughly where the jumps shouldbe. Then we got hold of the

(11:58):
CGI and so we actually, Ithink redid that scene four times because they
kept they kept dialing in what thechips are doing and all the rest of
it, and so you just kepton tweaking it and the basis of it
didn't change, but the but thedetails did. Is that the kind of
thing where you guys, the soundpeople take a pass at it, and

(12:20):
then it goes to the digital peopleand then they are inspired what you do,
and then they do make changes,and then they send it back and
then you make changes based on theirchanges. Is that how that works?
I think we wish that was howit works. I think I think a
better answer to that would be that'show it works in some very specific situations,

(12:41):
especially when you have like true interactivedigital characters, which these really aren't.
These are just digital extras. Thatdon't run a foul of any Peter
rules while you're actually doing it.I see, right, you know,
no animals were harmed in that scene. We only made it look that way.
Yeah, definitely, But we doget passes of what they're doing visually

(13:05):
to see what they're doing, andthen we we sort of look at it.
Some of it is just to tryand figure out, well, you
know, how agitated are they.You know, we started with a version
where they where at some point theywere way more agitated. Then we calmed
it down. Then Trevor came upwith this idea that you know, when
she starts doing her whole that thechimps all sort of start joining in,

(13:26):
and that was really really cool,amazing. But again she also I mean,
look, carl is the most incredibleactress, and if nobody realizes just
watched this show, and then shegives that speech which is basically a whisper
in the in the middle of allthis, so you know, again when
it comes to challenging, you know, it's like, okay, how do

(13:46):
we get her to still have thesame performance but get big enough to be
able to get over all of thisstuff so that you can actually again guess
get the perspective right that she's youknow, the conversation between her and Camille,
right, So I understand. AndI asked one of our other guests,

(14:07):
although I don't remember which one now, about the sound at the beginning
of each episode, which is aclue as to how that character dies.
So I would love to hear moreabout that, and if there are any
other sound easter eggs that we shouldbe looking for or listening for. Ooh,
let me do the first one first, because sound easter eggs to think

(14:30):
about. So Mike had this wholeconcept that basically the end of an episode
is the continuation of that episode overthe credits effectively, so we keep the
backgrounds going, we keep whatever washappening going, and then the beginning of
the next episode, like you said, sort of poor tends what's going to
happen at the end. So youknow, a really good example would be

(14:54):
episode seven, which is where Freddydies with the giant pendulum machine. So
at the beginning you sort of hearthat, and we played around with that
in relation to the clock that's thenon the wall, so it's sort of
they sort of join into each other. It was something that they actually started
doing in picture editorial, you know, Brett Backman and Mike who were editing

(15:18):
the show. You know, theyoften do this. They come up with
ideas that they think are cool,and then they'll do a rough version of
it. And sometimes the rough versionis really good, and sometimes the rough
version is like, well, hereyou go, this is the idea,
and they'll make it work. Butthe basis of it is, you know,
I think really cool because it's likeyou're opening the window into the episode,

(15:41):
you know, And I think it'scool because the audience has no idea.
I don't think the audience knows thatthat's what those things are, and
so I think it's just it playsus something cool and maybe you remember it,
maybe you don't. But it's sortof just like another one of those
sort of slightly destabilizing backdrops. It'slike, oh, what's that? Oh

(16:02):
wait, now I'm in a scene, you know, and I do you
think? You know, these thingsare just like audience destabilizers. You know,
they throw you off a bit.You may not understand them, you
really may not. But sprinkling themevery so often, you know, it's
like a little hot pepper that youget that you don't know, but you'll
see, you see what happens,you know. I love that image of

(16:25):
a hot pepper of sound that's justhiding and hiding in the show, like
in some sort of hot pepper inyour food that you don't see coming until
it's until you buit it in.Yeah. So I did a lot of
work with the individual characters with theirvoices in different rooms. One of my
big things was to make the roomsthemselves like an environment that is reactive with

(16:45):
the characters. So the glass conferenceroom has a certain sound, and Freddie's
house with the bowling alley like that, that's kind of an echo environment.
And you know, playing with allthese different spaces because we're not making them
extremely noisy, then obvious, seewhen we go back into the sort of
the early you know, the Trucoscenes with Griswold and in his office then

(17:07):
where it's a little bit more sortof like Madmen kind of vibe of like,
yeah, phones and secretaries and thereis life to it, then it's
not like hasn't fully gone to thedark side yet if you like, you
know, and then we're you know, obviously the original apartment where Roderick lives
with Nli. My whole thing therewas like that has to be the roughest,

(17:30):
most undesirable apartment again, so yousort of get this development of his
rise from basically nothing to everything.So Stacy just to sort of help you
and other less sort of sound orientedfolks out there who who might not completely
understand what this is about. Theway sound is recorded on set, They

(17:52):
try to get the quietest, mostisolated recording of the actor's voice as possible,
with no environmental sound around them whatsoever. Then it goes to someone like
Jonathan, who not only has toadd background sound, but then also uses
audio effects like reverb and other thingsto sort of simulate the room that they

(18:15):
would have been in. So likewhen we want to make Freddy sound like
he's in a bowling alley, Jonathanactually has to go in and add the
bowling alley sort of room effect aroundhis voice, which is a whole other
level of work. I think peopledon't necessarily understand. They just assume they
see the person in the room andthat's that's the sound of the room.
But of course all of that isadded after the fact. Down the line

(18:38):
is that right one hundred percent thedialogue tracks that you would hear if you
listen to just the dialogue is literallyjust the talking. Yeah, if you
actually watch, like these actors areso good, you'll see that when they
do something like when Freddy throws abowling ball, he doesn't throw it while
he's talking, so he'll actually Oh, they'll do the big actions actually in

(19:00):
between a line. That's just theskill level that they have, you know,
So that way later on we cancome back and you know, the
bawling ball that you hear is notthe balling ball that he rolled, you
know, right, you've got toreplace the real bowling ball with the sound
bowling ball sometimes or sometimes it's both. Sometimes the real one is good,

(19:22):
sometimes it's not. But you know, on set, we're not trying to
record a balling ball. We're tryingto record Henry Thomas, you know what
I mean. I mean, Ididn't know any of that until last time
we did the podcast and we interviewedJames David Redding, and that blew my
mind to learn how all those thingswere done. I had no idea.
So well, and that's the goalagain, same thing, right, if

(19:45):
you can tell then we've done itwrong, So we'll take that whin yeah,
when it comes to Easter eggs.I think there's a smattering of things
that we hint at, but somuch of the of the work here is
actually is more in the open.And then that, you know, like
the whole Telltale Heart episode is onegiant sound construction. Really like they're all

(20:07):
acting or Tana acting off this thingthat doesn't exist when we're playing with it,
like, well, can she hearit? Is it actually there or
is it in her head? Andthat's really an interesting sort of perspective to
try and get, Like at thevery beginning, when she first starts hearing
it in her office, we startedto play like, oh, maybe it's

(20:27):
over there, or is it inthat vent or is it up on the
wall where the clock is. Sowe tried to be a little bit more
real with it and maybe fake itout to the audience that like, well
she thinks it's real, maybe itis real. And then after a while
you fairly quickly start to realize thatit's not, you know, and then
you start going inside her head andeverything gets very strange, and they we're

(20:49):
playing with people's voices in a while, they're talking to her like I guess,
like how she's zoning out, likebecause she's so focused on what she
thinks she can hear and what hervarience of that is. And that's challenging
because for the audience, you stillwant to understand every word that they're saying.
So it's like we're zoning out,but we still don't want to do

(21:11):
it to the point that you don'tunderstand, you know, either what Mary's
saying or what Carla is saying whilewhile they're talking to her. So that's
kind of fun. There's a lotof that type of stuff. I mean,
I think the big Easter eggs arethe heads of the episodes that we
already talked about, which is likewe sort of foreshadow different things that are
going to happen. But then,like I say, I mean, most
of most of the actual work ismuch more overt. There's obviously, you

(21:36):
know, the jingle bells from theJester Hat, which are sort of tormenting
Roderick when he goes into the basementand he's like knows that he was behind
the wall kind of thing. Youknow. Again, like Mike's storytelling here
is so great because all these thingsare going on, you have no idea
what they are, and a lotof them, you really don't find out

(21:56):
until much later on. You know, you have no idea what the deal
is the Gester character, no ideauntil the very end. If someone knew
that, and our listener knew thatthat was coming the Gester in the Wall,
I need you to write to meand let me know, because I
was so shocked and delighted weirdly delightedat the same time to learn that,

(22:21):
and it pulled all the bells together. It was just a brilliant moment.
I watched the series with captions onand when the sound of the Jester bells
is there, there's just a captionthat says metal clinking. So I want
you to know that even in theworld of captions, you're still like,
what the hell is that? Like, you still don't know, so your

(22:42):
caption people have kept your secret untilthe moment it's revealed, which I think
is awesome. That sound was onewe went through quite a lot of variations
on because you're supposed to sort ofhave an inkling that it's a bell maybe,
but you're not really supposed to fullyunderstand it. It's one of those
ones you get to the end andyou really realize then you go back and

(23:03):
like, oh, that's that thingwe've been hearing all along, and I
think that, like I say,that's how it ties up so well.
I mean the effectiveness again though,of that scene, the bricking up scene,
is all because of my Trucker.How well he set that character up,
that one part of you sort ofsecretly linked he's awesome, and another

(23:25):
part of you wants to kill him, and he plays it so perfectly.
And then when you brick him up, and it's like he goes through all
these various stages of realization or thestages of grief, as she says in
the scene, it's like, yeah, you can see him going through that
stuff. You know, when youdo what I do, it really is
a joy to work with characters likethat. Actually, that was a scene

(23:45):
which we did a couple of times. Like one of the things sometimes that
happens with sound is like we overdoit. We go all out for making
it as cool, realistically cool aspossible, and everything sounds great and everything
is great, and we built thatscene or every single little touch on building
the wall and everything that was goingon and everything. The wall was over

(24:07):
here and he was over here,and and Mike watched it and Mike was
just like, it's it's lost thething, you know, and what he
explained, which I think, youknow, we along the way and this
this is the kind of thing thathappens with with with these processes, you
know, just to keep it realand human. Is like they had cut
it with this specific rhythm, whichis like bomb slap, brick bomb talking,

(24:33):
bomb slack brick bomb talking, youknow, and in putting all the
details in, we'd sort of lostthat rhythm. So I sort of like
panic, just stripped a bunch ofstuff out, panicked over lunchtime and sort
of tried to put a version togetherquickly because it was getting towards the end,
and I knew that if we didn'tget this scene nailed, it was

(24:53):
gonna really haunt us for a while. So luckily we were able to get
back and they had established that thoughthis is the interaction between like picture editing
and sound editing, you know,they had established that rhythm in picture editing,
and we just need to pick upwith it and take it a little
bit further, but without losing theessence of what they're doing. Sometimes these

(25:14):
things are well, very often they'rea voyage of discovery together. I love
what you did with the sound effectsof that in particular. I don't know
how you did this, but theway that you did the scrape of the
sort of metal space across the concretemade this it became more ominous and more
sort of like, I don't know, I had like a real visceral reaction.

(25:37):
Every time they would scrape that concreteacross you really started to feel like
things were getting really bad. Yeah, and there's some things in there that
are none you know, like there'sa little bit of swordshing and a couple
of other things in there that arecomponents of it. And then we dial
up the aggression as we go furtherthrough the scene. Yeah, and we're
sort of following the evolution of basicallytrue Churst reaction. It's like, what

(26:03):
is he going through? How ishe experiencing it, and therefore, how
should the audience experience it? Andthen it reaches this sort of climactic point,
which is significantly before the end ofthe scene, where it's just like
this realization that this they're not gettingout of it, and then it just
becomes much more subdued because it's justkind of like, oh, well,
this is it. That's something Ithink is always very successful. It's the

(26:25):
same thing they said in the Beginning'sthat you follow the experience of the character
and put yourself basically beside them andallow yourself to feel it the way they
feel it, you know, becausewe can do that in sound and also
with how we score to sort ofsupport their what they're feeling. We don't
want to manipulate the audience overtly.What we want to do is help support
the audience. The audience is understandingof what is the character going through and

(26:49):
what is happening here. That's reallythe goal. The same thing you'll see
with music is like, yes,we'll be emotional, but we try to
be emotional underneath. The acting isalways what leads. I mean, like
episode eight, Leonora's death scene onthe bed with Carla, you know,
I mean, really that scene isjust like one person talking to another sitting

(27:10):
on a bed, but it's beenso well set up in terms of that
you kind of already the audience isreally in front of the characters to some
extent, and you don't need todo anything emotional. But then the Newtons
just come up with this score andwe just use it to support and if
you try too hard, then thescene fails because you don't You don't need

(27:32):
to give Carla the emotions. Shealready has it. You know, the
audience is already there with her.So it's like, how do we support
that and just help sort of gentlyguide the audience through it? Okay,
I want to ask about my favoritesound in this entire series, and it

(27:52):
happens almost every episode. The characterof the episode suffers some incredibly elaborate and
horrible death. The camera lingers overthat death just a little bit longer,
to the point where you, asthe viewer, are like, is it
over? Is that it? Andthen around the time you start asking that

(28:15):
question, there is the most spectacularboom that comes up with the title card
at the same time. And I'mhere to tell you seven out of seven
of those episodes, because I knowit isn't in an episode eight, but
in seven out of those episodes,I screamed every single time when that boom
happened. Every single time. Firstof all, I'm curious just what that

(28:40):
boom is, but then also whoseidea was this? Was this something that
was planned from the outset? Didit sort of developed in your are working
on it, like, I justwant to know everything I can possibly know
about that boom because it scared thecrap out of me every single time.
All right, So, in noparticular order, Yes, it was one

(29:00):
hundred percent part of Mike's concept forhow the show worked. The very very
first cut I ever saw of anyepisode ever, which was Episode one,
ended with that boom. They'd cutin a temp version of you know of
it. That was the whole rhythmof it was. Yes, we basically
freeze. Mean, there's like asecond of black and then bam, and

(29:22):
then after the boom, then wepicked back up right where we were in
the scene as if nothing had everhappened, except there's nobody's doing anything,
so we're back to the backgrounds ofthe scene or whatever. The sound department
here is going to take literally nocredit for the boom, because that boom
is one hundred percent music. Whatyep. And I'll take some credit as
the scoring mixer for the fact thatwe did everything humanly possible to make it

(29:47):
feel as big as possible in themedium of television. So if that worked,
then great. But it is literallyit's not one drum, but is
literally composed of like drums and stufflike that, and it is it is
one hundred percent music. Wow,that's great, big loud boom. It
works, and it was I mean, we once we got it working.

(30:11):
Once we literally were like, okay, this is copy and paste because it
is tricky to get it to feel. And the difference is like some episodes
end more quietly, some episodes endless quietly. So a boom of the
same size always has a slightly differentfeeling depending on what came before it,
you know. And there were definitelytimes where Mic was like, can't we

(30:32):
get that boom any bigger? Youknow? And I think we I mean,
it really is like this one goesto eleven kind of thing. The
boom is pretty big, Mike,I got a hand it to you.
It's it's big. It's anything youcan tell us about the Broken Glass Episode
six is my favorite episode, andthere's lots of glass breaking in different ways

(30:53):
at different times, and I'd loveto just hear about all the different kinds
of glass. Did you have torecord new versions of glass breaking for the
episode? The glass in the episodecomes in sort of two flavors. Really,
there's what we might think of asthe quote unquote real class, and
then there's the sort of more designytypes of glass that are giving the feeling

(31:18):
of it being sharp. There arethree main places where I look at the
glass. There's the sort of premonitionwhere you're in the old house, then
the windows blow in and all ofa sudden, she's in there, and
Roderick's on the floor imagining in hishallucination that she's there walking towards him.

(31:38):
And that one, for me wasalways one of the more the bigger scared
sort of jumps that was really fun. It always works, you know.
Jump scares are good when they getyou every single time, even if you
know they're there. So you know, apart from obviously myself and and Treer,
there are also you know, othertalented individuals who are working on the

(32:00):
sound effects and stuff. This cameto me literally just in the first pass
of what someone was playing with andit just works. It is sound of
like a bed of glass and it'svery crunchy, so you kind of get
that sense that not only is theglass interacting with her, but it's also
interacting with itself. I think that'sone of the things about glass that sells

(32:22):
it is glass on glass is avery very horrible sound for us. We
know we need to stay away fromit kind of thing instinctively, so therefore
we put as much of that aspossible because it gives you that sort of,
yeah, like fingernails on chalkboard kindof vibe. Then there's the whole
scene with the mirrors, when she'shearing Verna talking to her, and then

(32:47):
Verna as herself talking to her,and then she sees her in every mirror
and then she smashes the mirror,and those are like just very real glass
multiple I mean, there is notone track of glass. There are fifty
tracks of glass in that last lastscene. It's just like baking. It's
like a little bit of the highstuff and a little bit of the heavy

(33:10):
stuff and a little bit of this, you know, and you just sort
of like see what combination feels,right. And then the final part,
obviously you get into full crazy modewhere she jumps up on the bed and
does the mirror ceiling thing with thefire poker and brings it down on herself.
And the concept of doing that inslow mo was obviously designed in from

(33:32):
the beginning. It was shot thatway. It was you know, in
picture editing. They had mocked itup that way, and Trevor Gate's sound
designer again just did a pass onthat that was just exquisite And I have
no idea what he did. It'sbeautiful, though, Yes, exactly what
I know is that it just it'sa singular thing. It becomes all encompassing,

(33:58):
and it's exactly what takes you intothat same place of imagining that if
you're her, this is your experienceof it, that sort of whole everything
slows down right before you die kindof idea. So the other problem with
that scene is also visual effects.That was one of the ones that they
kept on working on for a longtime, and one of the last sounds

(34:21):
that got added in the whole showactually was the way that that last shard
that she lands on sort of piercesthrough her and you're absolutely certain that she's
not coming back. Yeah, andwe definitely we definitely amped that up a
couple more times from when we firstdid it till till how it is now.

(34:42):
Yeah, felt pretty amped. Idefinitely like when that happened, I
was like, WHOA. I justwant to say that one of my favorite
scenes from the movie die Hard iswhere all the glass shatters and he's got
to walk over that. And soI must have some weird little obsession with
shattered glass that we'll talk about maybein the next podcast Lindsay psychoanalyzing Stacy Stacey

(35:07):
and her sound problems. But Ithink it is a thing, right,
It's one of those sounds that youimmediately know and you immediately know you shouldn't
be there, especially not in barefeet, right. So you mentioned this
in your previous answer, and Ijust want to ask you a little bit
more about it, because obviously oneof the major elements of the show is

(35:29):
the jump scare. I mean,it's a thing that audiences are expecting.
I remember I sent Stacy a thing. At one point, Netflix tweeted out,
you know Flannagan jump scare season,right, like everybody is there for
the jump scare. And in watchingthe series, I became aware that there
is a little bit of a philosophybehind how the jump scare works, in

(35:52):
that there seems to be a buildof sound and then almost all sound completely
disappears, and then suddenly bammed jumpscare, the big boom happens with some
scary visual image. And I justwanted to ask you a little bit about
the philosophy and the idea behind howjump scares work, how you build them,

(36:13):
and what's the process of Like,Okay, I'm going to get this
audience really good, so I gottawork backwards to figure out how to get
them to that place. There arereally a couple of different types of jump
scares in terms of some jump scaresis just absolutely organic and they just happen
in the course of the scene.So like, I mean, a really

(36:34):
good example of that would have beenfrom Hillhouse when they're driving in the jeep
and she just suddenly screams, andit's like, that's one of the jumpiest
jump scares ever, partly because it'snot really it's a jump scare of an
actor actually doing something as opposed tosomething happening in this There are the sort
of big set jump scares, like, for instance, the windows blowing in

(36:54):
or you know, some of thestuff that Rogerick sees. A lot of
times they're able to play with,you know, from his mental state.
We get to do things because he'shallucinating. So if you're hallucinating, you
can hallucinate anything, so that freesit up rather to be able to play
with with that, and I thinkmost of the jump scares in the show

(37:15):
are really from his perspective. Theidea that we turn the sound down before
a jump scare is often true.Sometimes we take it to another level of
we turn it down and then don'tdo a jump scare. The thing is
like audiences audiences know they know nowthat if it starts to get really quiet,

(37:35):
something's coming, and so you canjust play with that. You don't
even always have to serve up,you know, dinner. You can just
play with that sort of notion thatthe audience gets it like, oh shoot,
it's getting really quiet, what's aboutto happen? And it is like
I like, you know, Myfavorite word is it's very destabilizing for people

(37:58):
because they know something's going on,but they have no idea what. There
is another technical reason why we doit, which is just simply that if
you're doing a jump scare that's basedon loudness, then the loudness itself is
all about contrast. So obviously thequieter is beforehand, the louder any given
thing will appear to be just becauseit's that much louder than whatever went before.

(38:21):
So there's that aspect to it.Also, some jump scares are more
driven by sounds. Some jump scaresare more driven by visuals, and then
some are both. Like so whenthe windows explode and everything, that's really
one of those. That's really both. Some of the times when you see,
oh, it's only cut to like, oh, look, there's Perry's
face right in front of me.What's going on here? He doesn't look

(38:43):
very good. More of those aresort of driven a little bit more visually,
and we're more underlining it. It'sinherently horrible, and we're sort of
enhancing the jump, not just beingthe jump right, if you know what
I mean. But it's one hundredpercent sury that we manipulate what's going on.
We don't only manipulate what's going onin the jump scares. But again,
the goal is if you're if you'redoing it right, you do it

(39:06):
subtly enough that no one notices thatthe audience by the time they notice,
it's already too late for them.Like, if you do it badly,
then it's like, oh, ok, I just turned it down mah.
But if you're doing it well,it's like it's just been going away for
a while, and we're not verysensitive to slow changes. You know,
like as human beings, we arebiologically sensitive to things that catch our eye

(39:30):
or things that we notice. Soif you do something very very slowly,
same goes with visuals, Like youcan turn the lights down in a room
very very slowly for a really longtime before people are going to be like,
wait, what just changed? Youknow, it's just it's how we
are as animals, you know,that's what our visceral senses detect. So
for me, I'll actually have beenturning the sound down for a lot longer

(39:53):
before you really notice it. Andsometimes it's not even turning down something is
like removing things that you don't reallynotice are gone, Like we'll take the
fireplace out, or we'll just dullthe fireplace up so it's less of a
thing. You don't really you can'treally tell that it's changed, but it
has and it has an impact.There's a lot of that stuff in horror

(40:15):
is changing small things that you maynot notice, but it's things you feel
more than things you hear or thingsyou see. When you can get people
to feel something that's much more powerfulthan when they just you know, just
hear it or see it. AndI think that's the goal is to do
things that people feel. Jump scaresare part of it, but so is

(40:35):
everything else. You know, thatparticular jump scare with the exploding windows is
partly extremely effective because it occurs justright in the middle of dialogue. He's
just talking, talking, talking,talk boom. There is absolutely no setup
to that one. We really barelydo anything. The whole goal is just
like talking, talking, talking,talking boom. You have absolutely no anticipation

(40:59):
of it that it's going to happen. I think that makes it very effective.
That makes it very much like thehell house in the Jeep because it's
like there is no clue that anything'sgoing to happen, and then it just
does. And those jump scares arethe most organic because they're the ones that
every single time that happens, you'restill going to probably jump if you're not
literally counting words to know which wordit's going to happen on, and even

(41:22):
then you'll probably still jump. That'sthe best. I do a lot of
this stuff, like I do iton myself, like does it work on
me? Like not? It's areally good litmus test. I do it
for that. I do it foremotion. You know, how is an
emotional scene working am I getting goosebumpsfrom this scene not the first time,

(41:45):
but the one hundred and first time. You know, scenes that are inherently
emotionally successful in movies and stuff,they get you every time. You're always
going to cry and eaty because theemotion is inherently there and it's more about
acting and it's a lot to dowith music. Same thing goes for the
horrible stuff. You're You're always goingto get got by stuff that you know,

(42:07):
has that level of organic success toit, and I think that is
the most the most fun things todo are things that are always going to
work. Wow, Jonathan, thankyou so much. What a pleasure and
a thrill to hear you talk aboutyou know, how you work with the
sound on this show. It's trulylike a masterpiece, and knowing the science

(42:30):
and the art behind it is reallyenhanced the experience for me. I really
appreciate it. Yeah, me too. It's it's really amazing and congratulations on
a really incredible job. As Isaid, the sound is so effective on
the show, and it really youknow, it makes a really beautiful and
thrilling experience all that more exciting.It's been really amazing to listen to your

(42:53):
work. Thank you very much,thanks for talking. Wow, that was
so cool. It was destabilizing,which we now know is Jonathan Wales's favorite

(43:14):
word. But that was really fascinatingto hear about all those different things.
You know, like there were multipledrums in your boom, you know,
multiple sets of drums, and youknow, sounds of glass breaking and okay,
just to tie it back into thetheme of our show cycle analyzing here.

(43:35):
I love how he sort of describedthere at the end about how sound
has such a psychological effect on theviewer and how it's not just about getting
the right combination of sounds. It'salso sort of like how you manipulate those
sounds to sort of like bring upcertain emotions and the audience and make them

(43:57):
scared or make them tense or whatever. It's it's so cool, I mean,
yeah, and things that we justdon't think about, like as they're
making things quieter, they're not justturning the volume down, which is how
I think about it because I don'tknow anything, but they're you know,
he's like, oh, well,remove the sound of the fire, and
then we'll remove this sound and thatsounds. So you just don't think about

(44:19):
all the different pieces you know thatthey're manipulating to achieve that effect, that
emotion, that jump scare prepping theaudience, everything goes quiet or not just
boom doing it, and yes,the emotion behind it, it's so fascinating.
And as a sound person myself,because I do sound design myself as
part of my day job, Ithink the thing that is the most difficult

(44:44):
for people to sort of grasp aboutsound is because it's a completely oral experience
and you can't see any of it. It's hard, objectively speaking, to
understand its true value of how muchit adds until you know it's not there,
Like it is, a lot ofthe little details that he was going

(45:06):
into, I'm not sure even thata person would even think about those details,
right, the difference between one typeof glass breaking versus another type of
glass breaking. But all of thosethings put together really creates a very sort
of visceral emotional experience that without thatlevel of detail, you wouldn't necessarily emotionally

(45:27):
connect to it as much. AndI think that's a really important lesson.
Yeah, for sure. Yeah,And I don't know, you know,
the audience probably won't have access tobe able to see this, but when
you said how you reacted every singletime to the last boom, you know,
he like raised his hands like,yes, I didn't you know,

(45:49):
like that was that was really great. He was so excited to hear you
say that, Lindsay, I thinkthat means mission accomplished. Basic. Yeah,
for sure, for sure it gotwhat he wanted out of it.
That's awesome. Love that. Ilove it. Yeah, Well, this
has been such a satisfying show.I've been so excited to work on this
show and read about it and learnabout it, and I feel like I

(46:12):
really I appreciate this series. Andyet after having talked to all these different
people who were part of the creationof it, I have so much more
respect and just admiration for all ofthe incredible work that has gone into this
series. It's really incredible. Forsure. It's made me appreciate the series
even more. Like I already thoughtit was brilliant, and then learning all

(46:37):
of the different pieces, you know, the sets and the visual effects and
the makeup and the editing and thesound and you know, the writing,
like things that were added before duringafter like just really made me appreciate it
all the more. And I hopeit's made the audience appreciate it all the
more as well. I really I'menjoying doing the kind of companion podcast,

(47:01):
learning about the shows as we goalong and watch it. It really increases
the enjoyment for me. Well,we want to thank everyone who has been
following along with this podcast series.We really appreciate all of the comments of
support and you're listening to us andyour feedback. We've really enjoyed interacting with

(47:25):
all of you. If you havefriends that you'd like to share this podcast
with and or leave a review forus in Spotify or Apple Podcasts or any
of the formats where you've heard us, we would be so appreciative of that,
and we really really appreciate all ofyour support for this podcast series.
Yeah, for sure, I don'tknow what will psychoanalyze next. We're not

(47:49):
really going to psychoanalyze me. Ah, come on, well, that would
be I don't even know kind ofrating we'd have to give that kind of
show. But fully, we'll seey'all soon. Stay tuned. If you
haven't listened to Psychoanalyzing the Patient,please go back and watch The Patient on
Hulu and listen to that podcast.It's equally as satisfying as this one was,

(48:13):
and hopefully we will see y'all soon. Thanks, Lindsay, thank you
again, and thank you to strawHut. Yes, thanks to Ryan and
Maggie for straw Hut and Netflix forhelping us out with this series. We
really appreciate it, as well asall of our guests. All of our
amazing guests joined us. We're sograteful for them. Yeah, so thanks
everybody. Hopefully we'll psychoanalyze you againsoon. Take care, Bye bye bye.

(48:40):
Psychoanalyzing The Fall of the House ofUsher is a production of straw Hut
Media. Your hosts are Stacey andI and Lindsay Jones. Your producer is
Maggie Bowles. Editing and sound designby Daniel Ferrera. Theme music by Adrian
Berenger, with additional music from MarcoMartini and Artie Son. Subscribe, rate
and review, and come back fornew episodes every Friday, and tell us

(49:04):
what should we psychoanalyze next. Letus know by emailing us at psychoanalyzingat strawhumedia
dot com. See you next week.