Ayla Ruby
Matt Taylor and Mike Schapiro, as supervising sound editor and sound designer, are part of the sound team nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Sound Editing For A Comedy Or Drama Series for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. Along with their team including Sean Heissinger, Kip Smedley, Ian Herzon, Deron Street, Clay Weber, John Sanacore, Matt Decker, Rick Owens, and Jesi Rupel, they’re charged with filling out the science fiction world we hear on screen.
Both Taylor and Schapiro were incredibly generous with their time in this extensive interview. If you’re a Trek fan, you’ll want to read it because not only do they talk about all the different sounds – including alpacas – that they layered to create the various Gorn sounds in the Emmy-nominated episode, but they also talk about their approach to worldbuilding with the sound. Read ahead for the full conversation.
Ayla Ruby: First, congratulations to both of you and the whole sound team, the nomination is amazing.
Mike Schapiro: Thank you.
Matt Taylor: Thank you.
Ayla Ruby: Can you talk about what it means for you, how it feels, and anything you want to share on that?
Matt Taylor: Mike, you want to go?
Mike Schapiro: You can go first. No, you go first.
Matt Taylor: Okay. It’s always, it’s a tough one to answer because I think on the surface for me it’s very humbling because it’s a wide field of people who I feel should be recognized in sound. So just to come down to this handful, it’s a really big honor. But I’m also very happy for everyone who works on the show. A lot of us put in a lot of work, and we’re all big fans of the show and it’s a really great experience to work on it so it’s just really nice to get that little bit of recognition.
Mike Schapiro: Yeah. Yeah, I agree. Whenever the full nominations list comes out, it’s surprising and nice to see my name on there. And then I see everybody else in the list that I’m like, “No, what?” So humbling is a good way to put it. And just sort of, my words are bad these days. It’s heartwarming almost of like, oh, okay, yeah, people are liking what we’re doing and that feels good and getting that recognition. And for the rest of the team too, because like Matt said, we put a lot of time and thought and it’s nice to see that recognized.
Ayla Ruby: That’s awesome. So you guys mentioned notes, and I guess that’s kind of a great bridge into talking about how you both work together and how that collaboration is. Because I’m very curious and they’re both very integral, so I’d just love to hear how that works from you both.
Matt Taylor: Wow. That’s a big question.
Mike Schapiro: Yeah, I’m curious how Matt feels about that.
Matt Taylor: Mike, you should log off. I’m just kidding. It’s funny, Mike’s been on this since season two.
Mike Schapiro: Of Discovery.
Matt Taylor: Of Discovery, sorry. Yeah, so we’ve been in the Trek world for a while. So our collaboration is kind of, we’re separated. I’m the sound supervisor, but I personally look at Mike as kind of like a co sound supervisor, even though he works a lot within the sound effects side of things.
So how it really works is, I mean Mike handles a lot of the sound effects side. And him and I talk about the broader strokes of the sound effect side and what that is as far as tone and overall needs. But Mike is the guy who’s boots to the ground. Him and Kip kind of do a lot of the sound effect sound design stuff. And I handle a lot of more of the client facing side of stuff, which is shooting ADR loop group fully, most of that type of stuff. And then usually during mix days and spotting and stuff, it’s usually Mike and me and Kip who are kind of handling who does what for notes. I tend towards the ADR, the dialogue stuff, but also jump into the sound effects side as well.
But I kind of just let Mike and the sound effects team roll and I don’t personally as a supervisor interfere too much because I feel like the show is so dense and requires a lot of attention that there really is no time to really, just let people go.
Mike Schapiro: I definitely appreciate that style of working. I like having the sort of freedom to do what feels right to me, which seems to be working for the show, so that’s good. And thank you Matt for letting me do that. I’ve had supervisors that are very particular and it’s often frustrating. Because in that kind of mindset, you’re not necessarily doing what feels best for the show, but you’re doing what feels best for that supervisor and that doesn’t always work great.
I definitely think these Star Trek shows are ones that benefit from having as unofficial as it may be, an effects supervisor as opposed to just a sound supervisor. Because you’ve got to keep track of all the historical elements from the original series and Next Gen and Deep Space Nine and Voyager and the animated series and whatever else has come before while keeping it new and fresh and still sounding like Star Trek. That’ll take up all your time as a person doing sound. And then you also need to have Matt doing all of the dialogue because the story’s important.
But yeah, what I find the most fun is when we have an element that kind of bridges the two sides. So alien vocals that are recorded but need a lot of processing and effects or layering with creature sounds and that we’ll kind of both send things back and forth a bunch until something gels with those instances and that’s always fun.
Ayla Ruby: Cool.
Matt Taylor: If I add one thing to that, what Mike said, and kind of going back to your first question is one of the things that makes me really happy about receiving the nomination is both Mike and I encourage the people on the sound effect side and the dialog side to bring their own voice to it. We’re not very micromanagey and I think that’s a huge part of all of this. And so I think that’s part of our style as well is we try to encourage people to bring their taste and style because it all works.
Mike Schapiro: There’s something about this show really brings out the best in people, which is tropey to say, I guess, but stereotypical I guess. But it really does, and you can tell just every level, everyone is really excited to be working on it and it shows in the show.
Ayla Ruby: As a viewer, it feels like you’re all just having fun, which I’m glad to hear that that’s kind of the reality.
Matt Taylor: Love it. Love it.
Ayla Ruby: So you guys were nominated for Hegemony and it’s the season finale and it’s of also my favorite sort of Star Trek episode so I’m excited to talk about it. And Mike, I’ll kind of jump in with you here. So you’ve kind of likened your work in the past to archaeology in some ways and going into-
Mike Schapiro: I’m glad that’s catching on.
Ayla Ruby: Yeah, know, it’s great. I think it’s a brilliant way of putting it. And Hegemony, is there anything that’s like a callback to past Trek episodes or past from the history, 800 some – maybe we’re at 900 now episodes of-
Mike Schapiro: Is that high of?
Ayla Ruby: It was like 800 something a year ago or something. I don’t know how many it is now.
Matt Taylor: Oh, it’s tough because this particular episode, I feel like we’re working with a lot of stuff that we’ve kind of established in Strange New Worlds and have kind of made our own, Strange New World. So there wasn’t anything in particular in this episode that I felt like, oh, we’re hearkening back to a certain era because the Gorn is TOS, and we’ve kind of made the Gorn our own in this series. So I don’t think there was any specific discussion of like, “Oh, we need to have a specific callback.” A lot of the sounds that are made for the show like some of the weapons, the interfaces and tech and stuff, that’s very to TOS-y and something we’re always doing. But there wasn’t a particular, oh, this is a very specific callback.
Mike Schapiro: Of like, yeah, here’s a specific thing. Because the Gorn in our show are pretty different from the silver-eyed guy in a suit sweating in the desert.
Matt Taylor: Yeah.
Ayla Ruby: They’re quite scary.
Mike Schapiro: Yeah.
Matt Taylor: They are. Yeah, this was a lot of world building it felt like in this particular, establishing a lot of Gorn stuff that we’ll see later.
Ayla Ruby: Can you talk about developing the Gorn sound? Because there’s a lot of stuff. And I was re-watching the episode trying to figure out all the different sounds and then I lost track. There’s roaring, clicking, there’s anger. There’s a lot. And it all builds so much tension. And it’s again, it’s so scary and so delightfully scary. What went into designing that and creating that?
Mike Schapiro: A lot. There’s definitely the clicking. I think a good chunk of that was many years ago I had a cold and access to a high resolution microphone at the same time. So it’s me with a sore throat is kind of the base of those things from 10 plus years ago, something like that of the clicking and that kind of stuff. And then we’ve got, there’s camels, pigs, probably some metal screeches.
Matt Taylor: And of course Kip’s story if you want to-
Mike Schapiro: Yeah, Kip’s alpacas. Our effects editor, Kip [Smedley], has an alpaca farm. And one of the alpacas is a drama queen. So they sheer the alpacas every year or every six months. I’m not sure exactly how that works, but because they need the wool. And this particular one screams her head off whenever they do the that.
Ayla Ruby: Oh wow.
Mike Schapiro: That is a layer of the Gorn vocals is Kip’s. I should get that alpaca’s name.
Matt Taylor: And you’ll hear it on a lot of pain-y scream-y stuff. That’s where you’ll hear it mostly. That’s where it’s most prominent in my recollection, the alpaca effects.
Mike Schapiro: Yeah, and the roar. I think there’s probably some goat in there. Anything that makes a interesting sound that we can kind of bend to the Gorn and blend it all together and make it scary.
Matt Taylor: And I know I’ve thrown in some loop group vocalizations for some specific moments, but it’s usually lower end gurgly guttural stuff.
Mike Schapiro: Gurgly guttural stuff. I’ll use reptile, actual reptile sounds wherever I can because they are reptilian, so snakes, alligators. Those in reality tend to be very noisy. I think there’s that clicking. There might be a level of turtle I think is in there because they do some interesting stuff. But yeah, it’s-
Matt Taylor: I thought we used some cockatoo in season one.
Mike Schapiro: Did we?
Matt Taylor: Was that 106 on the flashback to the Gorn planet? I thought so. On the last stage day, we were like, they wanted some off stage-
Mike Schapiro: It’s the whole zoo, an entire zoo goes into these Gorn.
So besides the Gorn, this episode or this season, was there anything really, really fun to bring to life or really challenging and that you were amazed or really glad that you guys could actually pull off?
Matt Taylor: Good question.
Mike Schapiro: For me, that was episode eight, which is their wartime flashback episode. And having this very present, but very distant sci-fi war going on just throughout. We all know what a distant battle sounds like from all of the movie and TV we’ve watched over the years. But doing that with Star Trek weaponry and Klingon stuff and keeping it feeling futuristic and present and imposing, but not right on top of us was really a fun challenge. Of like, okay, yeah, there’s crazy, the machine gun, anti-aircraft fire and that kind of stuff, but it’s all Federation tech that’s making all that stuff and getting it sitting right was challenging and fun.
And then there’s other stuff, the Kerkhovians, that was season two, right?
Matt Taylor:Was it?
Ayla Ruby: I feel like I have to go and look now.
Mike Schapiro: It all blurs together. The Kerkhovian smoke people, those were a fun challenge.
Matt Taylor: Kerkhovians.
Ayla Ruby: They’re in Charades.
Mike Schapiro: The whole show is challenging. It’s great. But yeah, every episode has something new that’s just like, “Okay, what’s that? Oy” yeah, Matt, you have anything? I just rambled.
Matt Taylor: No, it’s fine. I was thinking about it. I think an overall challenge versus reward metric, I feel like it was the musical.
Mike Schapiro: Yeah, I was going to bring up the musical. Whenever there was a song going on, we pitched every sound effect to match the key of the song so that it doesn’t stick out.
Matt Taylor: And I think for us, and for me in particular we’re mixing things. It’s a very musical forward mix. And like Mike was saying, there was a lot of attempt to try to let, during the musical sequence allow the character of the scene or anything going on in that scene be a character in the music, like warp core pulses and stuff like that. I feel like we got to use that element somewhat. For me, it was a learning experience of how to basically an experience to how to handle a musical episode where the music is the most important bit, but yet also try to add a little bit of character from the environment and sound from our side of things. And it was fun. It was a great episode. It was a lot of fun and really, really one of the episodes I’ll remember from this series for sure.
Mike Schapiro: I was so happy when it finally released because those songs were stuck in our heads for six months. And I couldn’t even, couldn’t play them in my car for fear of somebody else, “Is that Spock?”
Ayla Ruby: Oh yeah.
Mike Schapiro: Nothing. So it was just, yeah, I would regularly just start a phone call with somebody else on our team and just say, “The inter mix chamber,” and they’d go, “Damn it, Mike.” Now it’s stuck in my head again.
Matt Taylor: It’s stuck in my head now. Thanks for that.
Mike Schapiro: Yep, you’re welcome.
Ayla Ruby: Is there anything else you want to share with folks about the sound work on Strange New Worlds or anything else?
Matt Taylor: Wow.
Mike Schapiro: Open-ended questions are the bane of my existence.
Matt Taylor: What was that?
Mike Schapiro: Open-ended questions or the bane of my existence.
Matt Taylor: I mean, it’s tough for me to kind of tease something out of this show that would, I mean that other shows couldn’t relate to who are kind of in the same category. But I feel like there’s a lot of original material made for these shows all the time, constantly. Hardly pulling from library stuff unless it’s library stuff that we’ve made. So I feel like, I dare, I call it a challenge, but the constant task is create new stuff all the time. And solve new problems, come up with new voices, come up with new processing, weapons, impacts, all this stuff that’s constantly being made new. And anyone who’s been in this, who’s worked in this side knows how hard and challenging and time-consuming that is. And so I would say, if anything, just know it’s a lot of custom-made stuff. We’re obviously honoring a lot of stuff from TOS and using some of that, but yeah, I feel like there’s a lot of original material being made for this.
Mike Schapiro: Yeah, I’d agree with that.
Matt Taylor: From us.
Mike Schapiro: At some point I need to go through my various Star Trek show sessions and try and categorize all of the stuff we’ve made.
Matt Taylor: Yeah, exactly.
Mike Schapiro: We’ve tried before and we stop after a week because we ran out of time and need to get back to cutting the show and there’s still 90% left to go through. It’s a lot, a lot of stuff.
Ayla Ruby: I mean, I think it comes through and I think it comes through with the fans too. Because if you read the internet, which people should never do, they always praise the sound on the show and just in general. So I think just as a fan, it really, the love comes through.
Mike Schapiro: Awesome. Well that’s great to hear.
Matt Taylor: Yeah, thanks. Because I was going to just about to say too is like, thank you for that. Because I feel like most important, I feel like we hope what we’re doing just resonates with people and helps tell the story. I think that’s what really I would like to say is I feel like if people enjoy the show, enjoy the sound and feel like we are honoring the really rich legacy of the sound of these series and movies, then perfect. Then we’re successful.
Mike Schapiro: And it’s such an honor to be able to add to that legacy too, of this will be hopefully in 30 years some of these sounds will be iconic Star Trek sounds. That’s wild to me.
Matt Taylor: Yeah, it’s cool to be part of … It’s cool is under something. It really, it’s fantastic to be part of that, honestly.
Ayla Ruby: Awesome. Well, thank you. Thank you for your time and I think again, thank you.
Note: This interview has been edited for clarity.
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