In movies and television, special effects aren’t limited to the visual – there’s the audio wizardry behind the scenes, too.
And Matt Hall, a 2003 Madison County High School graduate, is living and working in Los Angeles as a sound engineer, creating such effects for television.
In fact, he’s already got an Emmy award in hand.
Hall was part of an engineering team that won an Emmy this year for “Outstanding Achievement in Sound Editing” for their work on Nickelodeon’s “Penguins from Madagascar,” a spinoff of the Madagascar movies.
“I’m in charge of everything you hear other than the voices and the music,” said Hall, the son of Tommy and Pam Hall. “Everything else comes through me and the other guys I work with. Anything from the penguin’s footsteps, the car explosions, the gunshots — if there are gunshots in a Nickelodeon cartoon — any of those weird sounds, I put those in there.”
Hall said the Emmy awards show was fun, adding that it’s “not the Emmys everyone sees on TV.”
“It’s actually a different show,” he said. “You won’t see it on television. No one wants to see us up there getting awards. They want to see Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie. And so it was this show in downtown LA in a hotel. It was cool.”
Hall said he worked with sound engineer Ian Nyeste on the Penguins project.
“He’s the main guy; he kind of calls the shots,” said Hall. “Then there’s another part called ‘Foley.’ It’s two guys, and one guy records while the foley artist is in a separate room with all these weird little props and gadgets and stuff. They cover all the things that are just straight up hard for us to cut into a show. They’re another part of the crew. Then Ian and I go back through and put in whatever else is needed. So, as a team, we combine all our efforts.
Hall said that even mundane sounds require editing work.
“If there’s a scene where someone is sitting on a couch, picks up a cup of coffee, drinks it and puts it back down, they (the foley) will probably get the movement off the couch,” he said.
Hall uses the Pro Tools sound editing system to fit sounds to scenes. He’s collected his own large sound library to use in his work. Hall said he works at a studio sometimes, but he can do most of his work from his home in Manhattan Beach.
Right now, he’s working on several shows, including “Monsuno,” “Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness.” and the new Beavis and Butthead series.
“Mike Judge (the Beavis and Butthead creator) is in there and he wants it realistic and not overly cartoony,” said Hall. “It’s mainly adding as painful a sound effects as you can.”
Another notable job for Hall has nothing to do with TV. He said he’s working to help develop sounds for the Ford Focus electric car. Federal regulations require that electric cars make a sound.
“They (the cars) need some kind of sound going through parking lots because they (regulators) fear blind people won’t be able to hear them,” said Hall. “And so a couple of the other guys and I from Oracle Post actually came up with all the sounds that the new Ford Focus is going to make. Because they wanted it to sound all sci fi. So we had to put all that together. It’s another cool project that’s kind of random.”
Hall said the sound is pretty space age.
“It’s basically if you can picture a hover space craft in a movie,” he said. “They want it to have that cool, edgy sound. You can actually go online and hear it.”
Hall’s path to a sound engineering career has included a lot of perseverance and foot-in-the-door work. The Madison County native loves music and sought to become a recording engineer in the music industry.
“There’s a place in Athens called Pigpen Studios,” said Hall. “And I called Daniel (Collins) who is the owner over there. I cold called him and asked if he needed some help. And he said I could take out his trash. So I went in there and I actually became really good friends with him, but he started showing me the ropes, and that’s when I figured out that this was something I definitely wanted to do.”
Hall moved to Los Angeles and enrolled in Musicians Institute.
“I got a technical degree in recording arts,” he said. “I was mainly wanting to do music and music just didn’t pan out. It was just too hard to get a job.”
Hall said he took a “post production class” in school.
“It was putting sound effects to a scene,” he said. “And I thought, I could do that. It was a cool gig. And all my instructors had said that’s where all the jobs are nowadays. So I went on Craigslist and looked for internships. And there was an internship at a place called Oracle Post.”
Hall got the internship, then later took a minimum wage job at Oracle setting up equipment for engineers.
“I hounded some of the higher ups, guys that were editing foley and sound effects,” said Hall. “ I said ‘Let me edit some of your stuff. Show me what I did wrong. And don’t pay me for it. I’ll just stay after and do it.’ So enough of doing that, and I proved to myself I could do it. And then I ended up landing a couple of sessions filling in here and there. And eventually a spot opened up and I moved up out of the machine room and became freelance after that.”
Hall said he tries to get back to Madison County about once a year, usually during the summer.
“I miss the food,” said Hall. “I miss Zaxby’s. I miss Zeb’s and cooking from my family. I miss that and I miss the people.”
Hall says he thinks he’ll stick with sound engineering.
“My main goal is to work on big movies,” said Hall. “I want to work on cult classics and stuff like that … I’ve been on the lot at Sony and Paramount just trying to get a job. I feel like it’s going to come. It just hasn’t come yet. That’s basically where I want to end up, doing big movies.”
