Ben Reichstein’s Field & Foley Podcast – a member of the Audio Podcast Alliance – has shared this interesting new interview with Kai Paquin, sound librarian and recordist at Skywalker Sound, on caring for the studio’s vast sound library and the craft of recording impulse responses:
Here’s the official episode description
My guest today is Kai Paquin, a Librarian of Skywalker Sound that worked on fantastic movies like Jurassic World: Rebirth and How to train your dragon. But on top of this he is also diving deep into a topic I wanted to have on the show for a while now – Recording Impulse responses!
Hear the full conversation with Kai Paquin:
Some of the topics covered in the interview
- What a sound librarian actually does – from the physical tape-and-spool era to running a centralized library on Soundminer for hundreds of editors
- Licensing and sound continuity for the Star Wars universe – keeping era-accurate sounds like Obi-Wan Kenobi’s lightsaber consistent from the films to the merchandise
- Preserving the archive – digitizing thousands of DAT tapes to rescue alternate takes from Jurassic Park, Terminator 2 and Titanic before media rot sets in
- The craft of recording impulse responses – Kai’s mobile rig, his single-speaker approach, LOM mics and 5.1 surround setups, and why balloons and claps rarely give a usable IR
- Post-processing an IR – EQ-matching against pink noise, and deciding whether to bake a wet/dry balance into the finished result
- Field-recording adventures – gathering Groot’s wood for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, wrangling sand for a Netflix animated feature, recording biplanes, and a few desert off-roading misadventures
- How Kai landed at Skywalker Sound through the UCS categorization project with Tim Nielsen – plus the gear he’s most excited about now, including MEMS microphones
Explore Kai Paquin’s sound libraries
Beyond his work at Skywalker Sound, Kai recorded and released his own sound libraries as Kaibrary – and a selection is available right here on A Sound Effect:
The Field & Foley Podcast is part of the Audio Podcast Alliance – meet all the members below, and hear their latest episodes:
More great reads
