How ‘Luca,’ ‘Vivo’ and ‘Raya and the Last Dragon’ Sound Designers Created Sonic Landscapes of Animated Worlds

One of the “great things” about doing sound design for animated films is that one is involved from the early stages of production, says sound veteran Randy Thom, an Academy Award winner for The Incredibles and sound designer and rerecording mixer on Sony Pictures Animation’s Vivo. “The filmmakers really need sound in their early experiments to see how scenes are going to work when all they have visually is storyboards.”

For Vivo, which debuted this summer on Netflix, that included vocalizations for the title character, a kinkajou voiced by Lin-Manuel Miranda. “Vivo speaks English some of the time,” says Thom, “but he also ‘speaks kinkajou,’ [requiring] a set of sounds that is believably animalistic.”

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To do this, Thom combined sounds of puppies, cats, monkeys and, of course, kinkajous. “I did use bits and pieces of my voice. I had to pitch it way up, but it is mostly actual animals,” he adds. “These creatures express a wide range of emotion, from fear to anger to sadness to joy. That’s why we [use] all kinds of animals. … The creativity is in finding those moments that seem to work and then linking them all together so you can come up with a believable little phrase that Vivo utters.”

The teams on animated films are tasked with creating the soundscape for their worlds, effectively beginning with a blank page since there is no sound recorded on set because, in animation, there isn’t a production. For Vivo, this included the distinct sounds of Havana, Miami and the Everglades. “I’ve recorded in the Everglades before, so we were able to draw [from those],” says Thom, adding: “The storm in the Everglades was a big challenge. We have vast libraries of recordings of wind, water, storms and trees blowing around. [We] sift through those and find the pieces that work in that storm sequence and then mix those with the dialogue or music in a way that gives the storm power but doesn’t overwhelm the story.”

Pixar’s Italian Riviera-set Luca follows a teenage sea monster from an underwater home, for which “we recorded with mics in a swimming pool and on a lake,” says supervising sound editor Andre Fenley. The coastal village that Luca visits was based on the region where director Enrico Casarosa grew up, and the helmer had “very specific things he wanted to hear, whether it was the church bells or the way that the sound bounced off of the buildings.” Adds Fenley of the need to be specific, “Not all bells are created equal, so it was about finding the nuance and texture of a bell that’s not too new.”

Vespas also play an important role in the story. Several employees at Skywalker Sound and Pixar had access to period models, so they recorded new sounds while steering the scooters around Skywalker Ranch and San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park.

Shannon Mills, supervising sound editor/designer for Walt Disney Animation Studios’ Raya and the Last Dragon, notes that the story involved travel through different regions of a Southeast Asia-inspired fantasy world: “They wanted to contrast how each area of the whole territory sounded, so we did research [on] wildlife that lives in Southeast Asia. … We took ambiences that were recorded in Southeast Asia and morphed them to make them a little more fantastical.”

For Raya’s pet Tuk Tuk, the team recorded actor Alan Tudyk and [built] “a more animalistic sound around that performance,” using sounds of raccoons, camels and elephants. Another key sound for Raya was her retractable sword. It involved “metal combined with whip sounds and ratcheting elements,” says Mills, “like putting things in bike wheels to create a pattern.”

This story first appeared in a December stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.