Peter Lehmann - Sound designer and Composer
"The results are just amazing"
True Lies, Natural Born Killers, Jerry Maguire, Joseph, Heat, Sudden Death, Fair Game, The Cure, Spiderman, Twister, Haunted, Bad Company
Peter has over 50 feature film credits for sound design including an Oscar and MPSE Golden Reel award for Best Sound Effects Editing on Braveheart (click here for his credits). He has also written music cues for films such as Jerry Maguire. He did original music, sound design, and mixing for most of the top attractions at Universal Studios Orlando, Hollywood, and Japan including T2-3D, Spiderman, Twister, Fear Factor Live, The Mummy, and more. He also just finished sound design and mixing for the "Superman Returns" game for Electronic Arts.
Tell us a little bit about the term "sound design" and what a sound designer does?
As a sound designer, I am called on to create and provide custom sound effects and textures and integrate them into a soundtrack. On Braveheart, for example, my job was to create all of the weapon and impact sounds for all of the battles in the film. Every time weapons clashed, a person was hit in any way, or any contact was made in battle, it was my responsibility to create that sound in sync with the picture and deliver it in several discrete layers to the mixing stage for final mix in the film. I think those elements alone spanned 48 tracks constantly checkerboarding across the tracks and starting over again. It was quite a bit of work considering the amount of fighting in that film. In "The Amazing Adventures of Spiderman" at Universal Studios, I wrote and produced the musical score along with creating all of the sound effects in the attraction such as Spiderman's web, the Anti-Gravity Cannon, Electro's electrical attack sounds, and so on. I was also responsible for mixing and tuning the playback of the entire soundtrack.
What was your most demanding project, so far and why?
The Amazing Adventures of Spiderman for Universal was the most challenging from a technical standpoint. I had to write a custom score that could be broken up into scenes and have an overall flexible timing due to the speed of the ride vehicles. Along with that, there were several hundred custom sound effects that had to time out perfectly with the show while playing back from different hardware than the music with no timecode! Everything had to be driven by the actual ride vehicle's position. Also, there were speakers in the vehicle and speakers all over the venue and you travel past them and spin around, and the background noise is usually in the neighborhood of 85 to 90 db! Try doing a mix in that environment sometime. It's really fun, really challenging, and really tiring. The end results were really great, and a lot of people have really enjoyed that ride.
You own all our plug-ins, how do they help you with your work?
The low CPU usage and sonic transparency are absolutely fabulous. The Uniquel-Izer is so flexible and sounds so good that you can really do just about any EQ job with it. I use it on everything from voice over to instrument tracks to explosions. My favorite plugin so far is the Dynam-Izer. This thing is sheer genius! It works absolute magic on instrument tracks. With the Dynam-Izer, I'm able to quickly and easily bring out the tone and body of an instrument while leaving the peaks and attacks completely intact. That just doesn't work that well with compression. Then once I've got the track tamed down and toned up, a little bit of compression or limiting goes a lot farther. Since I started using the Dynam-Izer on tracks, I've noticed that mixing is more fun and it's a lot easier to get the instruments to sit together and blend well. The Dynam-Izer works incredibly well on sound effects as well. Again, you can really punch up the body of a sound without killing the transients. The results are just amazing. I also use finis a lot to tame peaks and make tracks sit louder in the mix without overdriving the overall mix level. I am eagerly awaiting the release of the Detailer as well.