Randy Thom & Jamey Scott: Honoring Iconic Game Audio for ‘The Super Mario Bros. Movie’

Universal Pictures’ box office smash The Super Mario Bros. Movie isn’t just a kids’ film; it’s a film for anyone who has played Nintendo games from the Mario Universe. For adults, the film’s sound brings back childhood memories of pumping quarters into The Super Mario Bros. coin-op arcade games, of blowing into Nintendo cartridges to get them to work in your NES console, of playing Mario Kart all weekend alongside your bestie.

For sound designer Jamey Scott, working on a film that’s based on this beloved Mario Universe was a dream job, and working with legendary sound designer Randy Thom and supervising sound editor Daniel Laurie at Skywalker Sound was a dream come true.

Here, Thom and Scott talk about building out the film with sounds taken straight from Nintendo, enhancing those original sounds, reworking, or recreating them to fit the film’s needs, creating new sounds based on the Nintendo game sounds, designing energetic platformer-style scenes, epic fights, fast-paced kart races, and so much more!

The Super Mario Bros. Movie | Final Trailer

How did you want to honor the sound of this iconic game series in the film?

Sound designer Randy Thom

I was first brought onto the movie to work on Bowser’s voice. The filmmakers wanted to obviously respect Jack Black’s performance but also try to make Bowser seem as big as possible and intimidating as possible. And so I was asked to see what I could do with that. Then, I started getting more involved in the other sound elements in the movie.

…Jamey and I had been corresponding with each other for 25 years on various sound design forums.

We knew we were going to need another sound designer to work on the effects for the film. And Jamey and I had been corresponding with each other for 25 years on various sound design forums. I had heard great things about projects that he had worked on, and so I begged him to become involved with this film. Lucky for all of us, he agreed.

Sound designer Jamey Scott

When you get a text from Randy saying, ‘Hey, do you want to work with me?’ you drop everything and you do that.

I was finalizing the very last mix of the very last episode of Lost Ollie, and poking around. I had a couple of gigs booked and I had a game booked that I had already started. But when Randy called, I thought, ‘Yep, let’s do this!’ So I hung up the phone and made those calls. This was the first time in my life that I’ve ever backed out of ongoing projects. I didn’t even know what film Randy wanted me to work on; it was just an opportunity to work with Randy.

RT: Jamey knew about a thousand times as much as I did about all things Super Mario. He was very familiar with the games and with all the legacy sounds, so it was a match made in heaven because he is not only a super fine sound designer, but had all of that inside knowledge that I certainly didn’t.

That obviously helped us a lot in terms of paying proper respect to all of the legacy sounds associated with the Mario Universe and, in some cases, taking the liberty to enhance some of them and make variations on some.
 

Were there any sounds that you could lift from the games? Probably not! They were probably all 8-bit!

JS: Actually, we used a lot of the original sounds. In fact, one of the great things about Nintendo’s direct involvement with the project was that they were extremely forthcoming with assets and very excited that I was so into the idea of using them.

…one of the great things about Nintendo’s direct involvement with the project was that they were extremely forthcoming with assets…

And so I made lots of different requests for specific elements that I was looking for, and I would get them back within a day. Nintendo was really agreeable and really involved and happy to supply all that.

They gave us an initial dump – a very large library – of Mario-related sounds. As you could imagine, I was like a kid in a candy store. At that point, I wanted to use all of these sounds.
 

Were the sounds high-quality enough for use in film? Or, did you have to recreate them? It seems like they are sprinkled throughout. For example, Mario slides down the pole in front of the burger place and it makes the ‘wooooop’ sound, and the coin dispensers in the Mushroom Kingdom have that iconic ‘bling!,’ and Mario eating the mushrooms have that power-up or shrinking-down sound…

JS: It was all of that.

Yes, I did use a lot of sounds as is. A lot of the sounds I enhanced, making them hyper versions of the original sounds, and then a lot of the sounds I created or reverse-engineered and recreated for specific purposes.

Yes, I did use a lot of sounds as is. A lot of the sounds I enhanced…and then a lot of the sounds I created or reverse-engineered and recreated…

As an example of reverse-engineering a sound, Randy and I were just talking about creating the sound of Peach lighting her fireball. Yes, there’s that power-up sound and that sound is iconic, obviously, (it’s one of the most popular sounds from the Mario Universe) but in this particular case, the music was really delicate and that sound is a musical sequence that runs through a different key. So I had to change it so that it stayed in the key of the music in the film.

I slowed down the original sound by about two octaves, and by doing that, I was able to hear all of the notes that are involved in that sound. Then I found a very similar sounding piano sound and recreated it in the right key and then sped that back up two octaves. This gave me the same quality of sound in the right key.

The coin dispenser sound is original but we also enhanced it. Foley did some really cool metal clinking sounds that we used in combination with that. We enhanced the sound rather than using it completely raw.

RT: And to give you an idea of how little I knew about the Mario Universe, that ‘woooooop’ sound for Mario sliding down the pole, I initially said, ‘Well, he’s going down the pole, so maybe we should reverse the sound.’ And, Jamey said, ‘No, I don’t think that’s right. That’s an iconic sound. We don’t want to mess with that one by playing it backward.’ And, of course, he was right.

JS: I never actually anticipated myself being in the ‘Nintendo police’ position, but that’s sort of how it ended up.

…we went pretty far in terms of trying to be as faithful to the sounds as we could and be respectful while changing some sounds…

RT: Yeah, we were nervous about how Nintendo fans were going to receive the whole thing because obviously, it’s an important part of a lot of people’s lives and their childhoods. So we went pretty far in terms of trying to be as faithful to the sounds as we could and be respectful while changing some sounds a little bit and enhancing them when it seemed appropriate.

JS: In this film, there are actually sonic Easter eggs within Easter eggs. That was one of the really fun things about this, to approach it with a sense of humor and do the kinds of things that, as a fan, would make me laugh. It was fun to do that, and then just see who catches what.
 

So as a fan of the games, and as a sound designer on the film, what were you most excited to work on?

JS: One of my first greatest memories was walking to the drugstore and playing the Donkey Kong coin-op machine. That’s where it all started for me. Growing up I had a Nintendo 64 that I basically wore out. My first job was in the game industry and we played Super Mario 64 every day at lunch for probably five years. Mario is very deep in my blood and I know a lot about it (not everything!). I’m not a super fan, but I had it in my life for so long that I know pretty much most of it.

If you’re a big fan of Mario Kart, that must have been a dream come true because there was that huge sequence in the middle with the karts and the weapons on the karts…

JS: Oh, that was a thrill. I was uniquely left to my own devices on that whole sequence. Randy started out and some of his ideas became a bouncing board for me. But there was a two to three week period where I got to just focus on that.

I got to discover how far I could push things…but also how I could use ‘Mario’ sounds and how I could deconstruct them and repurpose them…

And that was a thrill because that was a moment of discovery. I got to discover how far I could push things, and how many sounds I could make that fit within the Mario Universe, but also how I could use Mario sounds and how I could deconstruct them and repurpose them, using things from other parts of the world to create my own things. It was really one of the more fun sequences in the production.

RT: Yeah, I got to say, ‘Um, Jamey, what does a hot rod driving on a rainbow sound like? Can you figure that out? Thanks.’

JS: I remember getting an email from Randy saying, ‘What is this vehicle that the Koopas are driving?’ I was pretty sure it’s a clown car, but I couldn’t tell because there wasn’t a finished shot. This was when we were working with the pre-rendered visuals and there wasn’t a shot with the face on the front of the kart, so I couldn’t tell for sure. But within two days, we got a shot with one that had the faces on it. And, yep, it’s a clown car.
 

One of the sequences I really enjoyed sound-wise was the bathroom scene in which Mario and Luigi end up bursting all the pipes in the bathroom. It had this almost melodic pipe bursting sounds. What went into that?

RT: I did a pass or two on that and then passed it onto Jamey, who enhanced it and did slightly different things. We passed it back and forth two or three times.

JS: That was one of those wonderful collaborative moments that Randy and I both got to tackle.

Baihui Yang started at Skywalker as my intern from USC, and she’s really blossomed into a fantastic sound designer/sound editor.

And I believe Qianbaihui ‘Baihui’ Yang did a little bit of work on that as well. She was one of our editors that we had for a couple of months. She was really into getting into the details and guts of things. Something would change and I would think, ‘Oh, that’s kind of interesting.’ Then, I’d look at the files and see that Baihui did that.

The pipe burst sequence was a three-way collaborative effort, and I’m glad you pointed that out because I thought it was really excellent the way it ended up.
RT: Baihui Yang started at Skywalker as my intern from USC, and she’s really blossomed into a fantastic sound designer/sound editor.
 

Another sound moment I really enjoyed was the windy pipe that sucks Mario and Luigi into that vortex light tube that delivers Mario to the Mushroom Kingdom and Luigi into the Dark Lands…

JS: That was so beautiful. I think that was mostly Randy’s work actually. Unfortunately, it sounded way better before the mix because the music became the bigger player there.

When I got to hear it with just the effects that Randy did, it was just this glorious moment.

RT: It always makes us sad when the music obscures the fine work that we do, but I know it’s part of the process and we try to find at least a few moments in every project where the sound effects can be clearly heard.

It always makes us sad when the music obscures the fine work that we do, but I know it’s part of the process…

But, I was a little depressed when I heard the degree to which the music was dominating that sequence. Overall, the music in the movie is fantastic and it’s exactly the kind of music that the movie needs. So I can’t complain because it’s really an important part of the movie’s success, I think.

I started working on that sequence before Jamey came on the project. Usually, we begin working these things against visuals that are very often pretty primitive – no lighting and no animation – so you’re guessing at a lot of things. You inevitably wind up redoing a lot of what you do, but you’re still in love with the first pass in some ways.

JS: I was really in love with that whole sequence. I loved the work that Randy did. I didn’t really want to mess with it too much because it was just so perfect. I’m glad that it actually did play for you and that you could tell that it was some really great stuff.
 

I could hear the sound of that windy pipe, and how it goes from a natural sound with the pipe reverb into a more synthy, crazy vortex light tube sound. I loved that transition from an organic windy sound into something that gets pretty crazy and synthy. That transition was so fluid…

RT: Stylistically, that’s one of the things that worked well with our collaboration, especially the collaboration between me and Jamey, because I come from this old school background of trying to use natural sounds as much as possible.

…it was exactly the right thing to do on that sequence…to start with an organic sound and then twist it in interesting electronic ways to make it evolve.

And I’m not saying that Jamey doesn’t do the same thing and doesn’t respect that, but sometimes I’m obsessive about trying to keep everything as natural and organic sounding as possible.

But, I think it was exactly the right thing to do on that sequence that you mentioned and on some others in the movie, to use both approaches – to start with an organic sound and then twist it in interesting electronic ways to make it evolve.

JS: It’s funny that you bring that up, Randy, because our origins shape our style and my origin story starts from the game world, obviously, and so that’s how my approach as a sound designer evolved.
I was very limited in my resources when I started working in sound. So, instead of having the resources to go out and record a lot of things, I used very limited tools, which is how game sound began. I would make things from nothing, essentially using white noise or sine waves or very basic tools and then tweak them into what would ultimately become a sound effect. I got very good at that during my tenure as a game sound designer, and I think that origin is ultimately what defines my stylistic approach now.

…our origins shape our style and my origin story starts from the game world…

And you’re right, I do really like working with organic material and that’s become something that’s more open to me now. I reached a certain level of success and have the ability to go out and record, or have people go out and record for me. But the origins of how I create things definitely started from a game-centric perspective.

RT: And that helped us in that Peach fire sequence because some of the sounds that I supplied were more organic, like wind, fire, etc., that kind of evolve over time.

And then Jamey took that material and twisted it a little bit and added his own more synthetic elements but still things that worked for the sequence. And so that was a good collaboration as well.

JS: We complement each other very well, I think.
 

Another amazing sound design moment is when Tanooki Mario leads Bullet Bill into the pipe and it explodes in that huge universe space, that creates this enormous vacuum effect that sucks everything from the Mushroom Kingdom into Brooklyn. That sounded fantastic. What went into that?

JS: That was actually a wonderful collaboration between Randy and me. I did all of the Tanooki Mario stuff – all of his little propeller tail sounds and all of his flying sounds.

Randy did the Bullet Bill stuff. So that was a culmination of a really wonderful collaboration. I was making this statement from Tanooki Mario, and Randy was making the statement from Bullet Bill and it was really a fun back and forth that evolved over time.

I was making this statement from Tanooki Mario, and Randy was making the statement from Bullet Bill…

I should note that when we were mixing Bullet Bill’s sounds, Juan Peralta (effects re-recording mixer) was asking for something fierier from Bullet Bill. So we ultimately ended up changing out a little bit of his character and it was Leff Lefferts that actually came up with this really great rumble fire sound for Bullet Bill.

So that was another three-way collaboration, that whole scene, which I think worked out really well.

RT: The propulsion for Bullet Bill I put together from recordings of jets and rockets. The challenge with that kind of stuff is always to find a way to keep it going because most recordings of a jet are either from a very fast fly-by that lasts a second, or it’s just a steady whine that’s not very interesting. In this sequence, there’s a lot of cruising and flying through the air that Bullet Bill does. So it was a bit of a challenge to make it feel like it’s moving, but still be more or less continuous sounding so that it’s not all Dopplers.
 

There are so many amazing scenes for sound, and just fun one-off sounds in this film! What went into the sound of the Dark Lands? And the vocalizations for the ‘Dry Bones’ (skeleton koopa troopas)?

JS: The Dark Lands was a scene that evolved over time and was ultimately a collaboration between Randy, me, and Juan [Peralta, re-recording mixer].

I made a lot of the group sounds in Sound Particles, like the crowd vocalizations, the stampede footsteps, the door bangs, etc.

My initial approach to the scene was a bit cartoony because I felt it might be too scary for kids so I counteracted the dark visuals with silly sounds but over time it evolved into a less cartoony affair. My initial approach had lots of xylophone glasses for the Dry Bones, boings and snaps for the character movements, cartoony chomps, etc., but it ended up sounding a lot more realistic and physical with the Dry Bones sounding more threatening, which I think works well.

I made a lot of the group sounds in Sound Particles, like the crowd vocalizations, the stampede footsteps, the door bangs, etc. All were done with Sound Particles, starting with source material of me just recording short vocal screeches and dirt footsteps and such and then throwing it all into the “particle accelerator” to get those big monster crowd pastiches.

…bubbles in lava do make great, gloopy sounds, and there is a lot of that in this sequence.

The vocalizations are a collaboration between Randy and me. Randy did a pass with these great vampire hisses which worked well and while we were mixing, Juan asked to add something that cut more directly so I did a quick recording of me doing that weird screechy sound you get when you tighten your larynx and inhale. Then, I processed it through Polyverse’s Manipulator (among other plugins) to make it gravely and more creature-like.

RT: The lava streams were fun to do. Real lava flowing usually doesn’t make much of a sound. I recorded a lot of that in Hawaii many years ago, and it basically sounds like hiss – not very interesting. But bubbles in lava do make great, gloopy sounds, and there is a lot of that in this sequence. I pitched down the bubbles at least an octave to give them more body and make them last longer. They sound more ominous that way.
 

What went into the sound of Princess Peach’s obstacle course, where she tests out Mario’s skills? This was such a fun sequence that the audience loved!

JS: The obstacle course was another three-way collaboration between Randy, Baihui, and me. I created a lot of the custom specifics such as the steel Piranha Plants, the blade extractions, the Bullet Bill Cannon mechanisms, the spinning fireballs, and that sort of stuff.

I designed the new Question Block punch sound in that sequence which was one of the first Nintendo sounds that I modified significantly.

Baihui did a lot of Peach’s movement around the obstacle course and some of the great work of the initial cube rolling out.

Randy did the Bullet Bills, the block smashes, the segment separations, and other key pieces.

Then I completed the final prep work before it went to the stage, which involved filing in all of the holes and tweaking everything to the point of making it bulletproof (pun intended).

I designed the new Question Block punch sound in that sequence which was one of the first Nintendo sounds that I modified significantly.

I’m also very proud of the sequence where Mario first powers up. I made the squishy stretch sounds out of rubber stretches and these things that I can only call “blobs” because that’s what a blob sounds like to me. Essentially, I just ran sine waves through a sharp pitch LFO and then compressed the hell out of the bottom end using Disperser by Kilohearts. It has such a perfectly descriptive spongy boingy sound to it that it just worked perfectly for the moments where Mario’s body plumps up.

What went into the Mario vs. Donkey Kong fight scene? (I loved when Mario got the cat suit; those were fun sounds for Cat Mario!)

RT: I did the initial work on that scene, including defining the weight and mass of Donkey Kong. The main elements of the body impacts are recordings of large animals’ footsteps, mostly horses, which I beefed up a lot by altering pitch and EQ.

One of my crackpot theories is that anything rolling is really just a series of impacts.

Donkey Kong rolling that barrel at Mario was a challenge. One of my crackpot theories is that anything rolling is really just a series of impacts. The rounder the object and the smoother the surface it is rolling over, the more closely spaced the impacts have to be. I had many recordings of a wine barrel being dropped onto various surfaces. I just spaced a lot of those sounds in sequence with only a few milliseconds between them, and you buy it as a big, hollow wooden thing rolling.

JS: I made over 100 custom sounds for that scene and in trying to match the scale of Randy’s initial work, I took it to 11. Everything was super-hyped up and every motion was an event. Stuff like Mario seeing the boxes had these massive stingers, all of the punches were gigantic, the lands, the swishes through the air, it was all just massive.

But then while we were mixing, it was decided that it was too much, too soon, so we scaled it all way back. In hindsight, that was the correct decision. The rest of the film after that is such a constant escalation of intensity that going full-force as we had in the third reel was not the wisest for pacing. It was also very loud so scaling it back I think put it in a much better sonic range for a family movie.

I was able to make those things super powerful by layering up punches and explosion sounds in Soundminer’s Radium and then processing them with massive compressors and bass enhancers.

It’s still a really effective scene and I really liked DK’s running and barreling sounds, the super flick, and the DK punch when Mario flies up into the sky. I was able to make those things super powerful by layering up punches and explosion sounds in Soundminer’s Radium and then processing them with massive compressors and bass enhancers. Again, a lot of it was toned down in the final mix but they started out so massive that they still easily described DK’s power in a very satisfactory way.

The cat section of that is the grand finale so I put a lot of effort into making that just right. Some of the sounds that I made for that sequence I found to be kind of unique and exciting. His movements are all very fast whoosh-based sounds because he’s moving so fast and jumping around the scene that whooshes through the air were the best way to describe that. His claw extraction, the face swipes, and clanking around on the girder as he hops around were all done in Radium, tweaking everything until they were just right. Once it was all spotted in Pro Tools, it was really just like playing back a sequenced piece of music.

What went into the sound design for Mario and Donkey Kong making their way up to the wedding? (As with Peach’s obstacle course earlier in the film, this is another great example of platformer-type game sounds!)

JS: That was a fun scene. I did the bulk of the build-out on that whole section and then we perfected it on the stage with a lot of help from Leff [Lefferts], who was our stage editor.

It’s a bit of a blur now, but I remember tweaking the heck out of that entire section and coming up with so many new modifications of Nintendo sounds, which was a ton of fun.

…I ended up using the hammer power-up from the original DK coin-op. It was a bit of an homage to all of my allowances spent dropping quarters into those machines.

That was also one of the last scenes to come in as a final render so I worked on a lot of the specifics during the mix for all of the things that I couldn’t see in the preview renders. It also changed several times during production so I had to rework it significantly a couple of times.

One interesting moment in that run-up is when they both get the power-ups. DK powers up to a Fire Kong which I couldn’t find anything for in the history of Mario/Donkey Kong so I ended up using the hammer power-up from the original DK coin-op. It was a bit of an homage to all of my allowances spent dropping quarters into those machines.

I sent the idea to Nintendo and was thrilled when they sent us the sound from their library. The recording was a bit noisy so I reproduced it using Plogue’s Chipsounds synth plugin and I think it sounds really close. I beefed it up with some magic layers and high-end whisps so it’s now its own sound but it’s totally grounded in that old DK sound which I adore.
 

Mario and Luigi get the Super Star and become invincible. What went into the sound for this sequence? There are lots of great destruction sounds in this!

JS: If I recall correctly, this was another sequence where Randy did foundational work on it and I did the bulk of the stylization and specifics later on. This was also another scene that came together late in the production, just prior to the mix, so it was one of the very last things I worked on.

…this was another sequence where Randy did foundational work on it and I did the bulk of the stylization and specifics later on.

By that time, I had the stylization concept down as second nature and my chops were limber so it actually came together pretty quickly. I made a ton of custom sounds for the sequence; one of my favorites is when Mario flips around the Hammer Bro in slow motion and then climbs up on top of Bowser. For whatever reason, I really like the color of these sounds. I can’t even remember how I made them but I was using a lot of the pitch envelopes in Radium by the end of the run so I’m sure those were heavily involved.

The destruction sounds were all also done in Radium, with many layers of rock impacts and debris, explosions – all run through Soundminer’s DSP rack with a myriad of processing plugins to shape the transients and give the tails presence as they fade into the tiny delta where the effects speak and the music fills everything.

Foley contributed a lot to every one of these sequences, by the way. Their prop and foot work is fantastic.

Music really dominated that scene, so much of the detail in the effects track was minimized in the final mix but there was a lot of excited jumping around the room by me as that scene came together as an effects-only experience.

RT: Foley contributed a lot to every one of these sequences, by the way. Their prop and foot work is fantastic. I want to acknowledge Jana Vance, Ronni Brown, Sean England, and Larry Oatfield.

And of course, I want to acknowledge our fearless Supervising Sound Editor, Daniel Laurie, who kept us all in line (sort of) – as much as humanly possible.
 

What have you learned while working on the sound for The Super Mario Bros. Movie that has helped you to grow at your craft or helped you to rethink your use of sound in film?

RT: I certainly learned a lot about Super Mario! I really knew almost nothing about it. My son played it when he was little and now he’s 35 and maybe still does a little bit of Mario game playing. So I really didn’t know much about it, and I certainly learned a lot about that.

…something that I appreciate in a new way…is that mix of old school organic sound design with newer, more synthetic and processing-based approaches.

Something we’ve already talked about this interview is something that I appreciate in a new way that I didn’t before, which is that mix of old school organic sound design with newer, more synthetic and processing-based approaches. I’m more optimistic about being able to use both of those things on a given project now, and being able to push it either in an organic direction while still using some synth and processing or to twist organic sounds in a way that makes them feel stylized and processed in a useful way.

So I think that’s probably the main thing I got out of it, in addition to just being able to collaborate with all these great people.

JS: Working on a movie of this caliber, with this stature of people that I got to work with, is an extraordinary event in my life. I think that speaks for itself. Just being able to work on this movie with this material and with these people were really big things for me.

Secondly, being a gamer in the classical sense, my favorite sound design in the world is actually Nintendo, and I’ve talked about this forever with everybody who will listen. Nintendo’s concept for sound design is unlike what you would typically think about for movie sound, or even for war games and things like that. Nintendo, the way that they approach sound design, is so unique; it’s so musical and it’s always just so perfect. My reverence for that kind of sound design and being able to climb up on those shoulders and approach the sound design for this movie with that in my back pocket has been such a dream come true.

…the greatest aspect of being able to work on this film was just being able to pay homage to the wonderful sound designers of Nintendo.

From every little detail in the movie to all the big set pieces, I was able to take all of my understanding of the Nintendo language and make it sound as good as I possibly could. And to me, the greatest aspect of being able to work on this film was just being able to pay homage to the wonderful sound designers of Nintendo.

Also, working with Randy, Leff, Baihui, and our fourth editor Scott Guitteau, and mashing our sounds all together and coming up with this wonderful end product was a life worth living and I can die now if I need to…

RT: …but please don’t.

I think you’re really right about the richness of the Nintendo sound vocabulary. In some ways I think it’s the equal of the great Warner Bros. cartoon sound design vocabulary.

JS: Absolutely. They both have a similar reverence in my mind. Even the UI sounds (I play the Switch all the time) have this cohesive vibe to it and it all just works. And it sounds like Nintendo. How many things can you point to that just sound like a particular brand?
 

A big thanks to Randy Thom and Jamey Scott for giving us a behind-the-scenes look at the sound of The Super Mario Bros. Movie and to Jennifer Walden for the interview!

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