Gary Rydstrom
Sound Designer
Gary Rydstrom is a sound designer since 1984 and has done many films that include Jurassic Park (Spielberg, 1993); Saving Private Ryan (Spielberg, 1998); Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (Lucas, 1999) and a couple Pixar films. I have had the chance of watching two of his films Jurassic Park and Saving Private Ryan and notice how much sound is very affective in his films. According to the book Making Sense of Cinema: Empirical Studies into Film Spectators and Spectatorship it mentions that “Gary Rydstrom is pertinent and makes direct comparisons between the audience responses to the films of different genres.” All his films show that he finds sounds appropriate and different for each film that can relate to the audience. For example, in the documentary The Making of Jurassic Park he tries to look for sounds of different animals and wants to change them into new sounds never heard before like the Velociraptors and the Tyrannosaur. Another example is in Saving Private Ryan: Music and Sound he mentions that the opening scene of the D-Day Invasion is unique. He quotes “Having sound and no music to allow the audience experience and feel what it was like being on the battlefield, Steven and I thought of this and didn’t want Hollywood no cheesy war sounds and find unique ones.” He has used different and unique sounds. In both of these films and others he makes a good point in describing his sound styles, with the roars of the dinosaurs to the gun fires in Saving Private Ryan. His films are a great example of sound design and editing.
Works Cited
Making of Jurassic Park (40:00)
Saving Private Ryan: Music and Sound (6:17)
Saving Private Ryan Behind Scenes Part 7Links to an external site.