The Simpsons - Classics

The Simpsons is cemented in history as one of America's longest running television shows with no clear end in sight. While it is hard for me to pick a single episode as my favorite, one that popped into mind when it came to thinking about sound was an episode from Season 8 entitled "You Only Move Twice." This is an episode that features, Hank Scorpio (Albert Brooks), one of my favorite characters to ever be featured the show. Scorpio is a parody of every over the top James Bond ever made. Which through the course of the episode leads to a hilarious climax with his lair becoming under attack by military to stop his evil master plan. This would fit right at home in the end of any Bond film. While it only lasts one minute and thirty seconds this scene  creates a pretty complex sound mix with a lot of background action and sounds. What makes this particularly challenging is the fact all the background action is secondary to an important story dialog Homer Simpson has with his boss Hank Scorpio about moving back to Springfield. This is an important moment in the episode that can not be overshadowed by what is occurring in the background. The mix was balanced good enough that this does not become an issue allowing us to take everything in without feeling like stuck in a Michael Bay film.

The sound team that worked on this particular episode included:

Dialog Editors: Bobby Mackston, Mark McJimsey, Terry Green
Sound Effects Editor: Travis Powers
Sound Re-Recording Mixer: R. Russell Smith, Greg Orloff
Music Editor: Chris Ledesma


Mix Analysis:

Automated door opens and closes (19:25- 19:28)

Somber score played under Homer's entrance (19:25-19:30)

Foley footsteps for soldiers in background with ADR shouting (19:28-19:30)

Gunfire in background (19:29-19:33)

Cart speeds across background into battle and audio is panned from left to right as it passes across screen (19:32-19:34)

Inaudible soldier chatter for atmosphere (19:33-19:37)

Over a loud speaker a female voice countdown the nuclear launch, voice has EQ to match a speaker (19:33-19:37)

More background gunfire (19:35-19:37)

Explosion with rubble falling sounds for after math (19:38-19:39)

Inaudible soldier chatter for atmosphere (19:39 - 19:41)

Foley of a button being pressed (19:40)

Cauldron tilting over sound following button press (19:41-19:42)

Acid pour sound, resembles water splashing (19:42-19:43)

Screams in pain from soldiers (19:43 - 19:44)

Background gunfire continues (19:44 -19:49)

Dialog between Homer and Hank, background sounds are lowered to make dialog the focus (19:48 - 19:54)

Lady grunts sounds while she flips around in background (19:54 - 19:59)

Heels echo with reverb through the spacious lair as the lady flips around (19:54 - 19:57)

Gun pulled out of holster, most likely foley (19:56)

Solder gets tackled with a foley thud (19:57)

ADR grunt for soldier being tackled (19:57)

Foley sound for soldiers neck being cracked (19:58 - 19:59)

Homer and Hank continue dialog while fight continues behind them, still mixed above all other sounds (19:59 - 20:28)

Background Gunfire returns (19:59 - 20:02)

Two carts race in background with audio panning left to right as they go across the screen (20:03 - 20:06)

Gunfire from the two carts racing panning left to right across the screen (20:03 - 20:06)

Man on fire runs across screen screaming and fire crackling, audio pans from right to left as his moves across the screen. (20:07 - 20:09)

Missile fires and impacts in the background with an explosive impact (20:11 - 20:12)

Aftermath of missile impact results in screaming soldiers with some reverb on their voices (20:12- 20:13)

Gunfire returns in background (20:13 - 20:18)

Hank removes grenade top with a foley sound, followed by an electronic ticking sound for the timer (20:18 - 20:20)

Grenade explodes while accented by glass shattering in the mix for the aftermath (20:21)

Soldier screams at the result of grenade explosion (20:21 - 20:22)

Jets fly across screen panning right to left (20:28 - 20:29)

EQ on female voice on loud speaker returns for countdown timer (20:29 - 20:30)

Explosion and result after shock rumble (20:30 - 20:32)

Foley sound for Scorpio grabbing flamethrower (20:37)

Another explosion in background (20:40 - 20:42)

Flamethrower is ignited resulted in a stream of rushing fire sound, and pans to the right as the camera moves to the left following Homer’s exit. (20:44 - 20:54)

Soldiers scream in result of being attacked with flame thrower (20:44 - 20:47)

Final dialog from Hank to Homer, and pans to the right as the camera follows homers Exit to the left (20:47 - 20:52)

Foley sounds, most likely a billiard ball for a grenade falling in front of Homer, which is kicked back (20:52 - 20:53)

Final explosion from Homer’s kicked grenade (20:54)

Automated door opens and close sound (20:55)



One of the reasons that this scene sounds the way it does has to do with this philosophy when approaching doing the sound for the show: "The Simpsons, after all, is different from most other cartoons. Lampooning life and human behaviour, the show is written for an adult audience and, as such, it doesn't fall back on slapstick and 'bam-splat' Hanna-Barbera-type sound effects to support the story-line. Just as the music underscores emotion rather than comedy, so the sound effects need to be real, and this can be quite demanding when considering some of the unconventional situations and locations in which the characters find themselves." (http://www.filmsound.org/studiosound/pp_simpsons.html)

It is hard to look at an evil masterminds secret layer being attacked, while a giant nuclear missile is about launch as anything other then being unconventional. That is unless you are James Bond himself, then it is just another Tuesday. But for Homer Simpson this is strange territory he has gotten himself into. Yet throughout this sequence nothing int he sound design becomes what you could call cartoony. These are all sounds being created that you would hear in any summer blockbuster action movie from your Die Hard and Lethal Weapon movies to something like The Rock and of course James Bond movies.

Once the sounds are all created with this mindset, and the dialog recorded it is all brought to Rusty Smith for the mixing. The characters dialog get delivered to Smith in mono and are all put on their own faders along with a special fader track dedicated to the inaudible background vocals to help create atmosphere. For this scene, this fader would most likely of been all the soldiers you can hear throughout the battle in the lair. An interesting point that Smith makes about his mixing process is how little processing he has to do, he says “all that I use is dbx 160X compression. I don't de-ess it or do anything else, because it's pretty much handed to me in good shape.”   (http://www.filmsound.org/studiosound/pp_simpsons.html)

For this scene I would guess that he would of had four dialog tracks to mix with, one track dedicated to music and three effect tracks. Even with all the action in the background, the sound layering never seems to exceed no more then three sounds occurring at the same time. The three main effects that the mix consisted of would be reverb, EQ adjustment, and panning.

This mix session would be easily able to be imitated in Pro Tools by setting up various mono tracks for Simpsons characters, and creating the 3 effects tracks. I would bus to a stereo aux track where I would place the reverb and other plugin effects needed.

Rusty Smith has done mixing for a lot of other television series including “Lie to Me”, “Justified”, and “Big Love.”