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Devendra Cleary Dives into the Sound of Twisters & Star Wars: Skeleton Crew

Photo credit: Kevin Estrada

When movies made the rocky transition to include sound, it was nothing short of a reinvention for the artform. Almost one hundred years after the release of The Jazz Singer, sound’s role in film is unfathomable. Sound effects, music, dialogue, and more all add to the sonic landscape of a movie. At the end of the day, though, it’s the dialogue that must cut through all the noise and it takes someone with an ear for detail to make sure the words of the actors are properly captured. For Star Wars: Skeleton Crew and Twisters, that person is Devendra Cleary.

After the release of the full season of Star Wars: Skeleton Crew and the at-home streaming release of Twisters, Devendra Cleary sat down with Film Obsessive News Editor Tina Kakadelis to discuss the beginning of his sound mixing career, playing in the sandbox of Star Wars sounds, and managing all of the wind on set of Twisters.

The transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Film Obsessive: I saw that you wanted to be involved in sound design when you were 18, so I was curious, why sound?

Devendra Cleary: Oh, that’s a great question. There’s a whole bunch of things. I’m just trying to put myself back in that headspace of being 18 years old. I was in this high-school-level film program in Denver called the Career Education Center. They had real facilities to work with, oddly enough. I think it was a vocational program. We had 16mm film cameras to work with, we had AVID stations, we had ProTools, and stuff like that.

I think at the time I really, and still currently, feel captured by the technical stuff. I enjoy learning the tools, playing with the toys, like the technical stuff that we get to work with. Whether it’s ProTools, microphones, or recording equipment. I think I wanted to be immersed in the technology.

The other component was when I would just go see movies. At the time, growing up in the ’80s, watching TV was just watching a little TV with a little speaker. It wasn’t really about sound. Even nowadays, it’s great to watch with such a high-quality picture and sound system. TV wasn’t about that then. It was just Sesame Street or game shows. It wasn’t about quality and prestige.

Devendra Cleary in 1999 at Colorado Film School.
Courtesy of Devendra Cleary

I’d go to the movies and I would just be loving the way it looks and being immersed in a big screen. Also, the way it sounded, like I couldn’t believe it. Even just dialogue! I know sometimes people get sound design tangled with what I do. I do production sound, which isn’t always as interesting to the broader audience as sound design, like what Ben Burtt does with Star Wars.

It’s a huge technical job that’s artistic in its own way, but its primary focus is to reinforce artistic endeavors, reinforce artistic people, and just support them. It does obviously require a big understanding of being artistic, and it doesn’t hurt to actually be artistic to do it.

There was just something about the way those movies sounded, the way the sound effects sounded, the way the explosion sounded, the way the music sounded. It was just like candy. Eye candy and ear candy. That’s enough to draw a child into this and make it their career. Once you’re doing it, especially if you start to climb the ranks and have some success, you’re just sucked in.

Focusing on Star Wars: Skeleton Crew and Twisters, you had two slightly different jobs. You were the sound mixer for Twisters and the production sound mixer for Skeleton Crew. Is that just a slight change of title or is there a difference between these two roles?

There’s no difference. It’s really like a distinction in terminology on how they choose to do the credits. I was hired to do the same thing on both. Even the on-screen credit, not just IMDb, sometimes it’ll just say sound mixer because it’s a generic term, even though in post-production there’s other sound mixers that get involved and they’ll be called the rerecording mixers. Then there’s a dialog mixer and a scoring mixer. It’s just more proper to have the distinction for post-production.

If it just said sound mixer, it’s probably the production person. Because post, I feel like it’s always attached to the more specific distinctions.

But it’s funny that you say that because I do somewhat feel like I had a different job on the two.

How so?

For both jobs, I’m in charge of recording all the actors’ performances. My team is in charge of that. Plus, we’re in charge of communications. We set up speakers for music, we set up speakers for our directors and aides to talk through wireless microphones to everybody on set.

Skeleton Crew had this very special component to it, which was in the form of playing back sound effects. If you watch the show, I feel bad for my wife because I’ll pause it like, ‘Oh yeah, we played those X-Wings going overhead during that scene and it was so perfect because I had the X-Wing sound pumping from one speaker to the other, and it sounded like it was literally flying from that side of the room to the other’.

Devendra Cleary sits at his sound cart
Photo credit: Kevin Estrada

As much as we did some of that on Twisters, it was far more often on Skeleton Crew. I actually got Twisters because of Skeleton Crew. Even though Twisters came out first, Skeleton Crew was filmed first. I met Twisters’ director, Lee Isaac Chung, on his episode, number seven, and we had filmed it kind of toward the end of the season. He and I just hit it off so well, and he was loving the sound effects for Skeleton Crew, so I feel like that could have been one of the reasons why he brought me over to Twisters. Twisters had some of that, but it just wasn’t as much.

It wasn’t about that. Twisters was all about getting the circus of it all. All the moving-car dialogue, it was such a fast pace and it was crazy fun. But I do feel like the on-set special effects sounds were part of it. Lee knew that was something I could do, and maybe the few times that we did do it on Twisters, it was helpful.

It was definitely a Skeleton Crew signature thing because I don’t think they’ve done it on other Star Wars shows yet. Like, The Mandalorian, I don’t think they do it. It’s slightly different teams that do some of these shows. The sound effects thing was new and emerged on the first episode of Skeleton Crew when they were working their way through the engine room and it finally turned on. It just felt kind of strange to not hear it turn on, but that’s how we do it.

There’s cues and things like that. On set, we’re trying to just get the dialog as clean as possible. In that scenario, though, it felt weird. It felt like we should be hearing the sounds even though that’s not what they’re going to use. Ultimately, they’re going to rebuild it, but there needs to be something for the actors to react to. Not only the actors, though. A lot of times, the camera operators, the dolly grips, anybody else like cueing a light or a special effects cue, it became helpful during the one or two days that we took to shoot that sequence.

I’m so glad I don’t have to worry about spoilers on this one (laughs). That first scene was what started the sound effects. It turned into a fun thing we did in that one scene to producers asking, ‘Can we just keep doing that? What can we do to help?’ They got me access to Lucasfilm’s sound library. Not all of it, I had to ask for categories. I would prep the script and say, okay, what categories would be helpful for the next episode? They would send me a little cache of choices. I would download them and put them in one big ProTools session for the whole season.

The Skeleton Crew stands around a computer
Image credit: Disney

The method behind the madness was I would usually wait to rehearse. I would rarely prep anything the day before, because it’s not like producing a song where you’re polishing it up so that it’s ready for playback tomorrow. It’s more kind of a vibe that’s happening. I would watch the rehearsal, the kids would go away to go to school and get ready, and we would set up cameras and lighting. Sometimes that would be an hour-and-a-half, two hours, honestly. It’s not because anybody is slow, it’s just that these shows are very heavily involved. Especially when you’re talking about video walls, screens, special effects, intricate camera moves, and very specific lighting.

A lot of times, the first assistant director would narrate through the script as we worked out the scene with the second team, which is the stand-ins. It would be super helpful because the stand-ins would act through it too. It gave me a chance to start introducing and rehearsing some of the sound effects playback that I was going to do. If we’re in the cockpit of the ship, there might be some sound effects that I would do for spaceships that are incoming, an attack or a crash sound, the engine failing, or the jump to hyperspace.

I was trying to not contaminate my own dialogue and had my hand on a fader. I can kill the speaker if it gets close to the words. As each week passed, it just became a built-in thing on the show. It was expected, and it was the most fun I ever had on any TV show to date.

I read that you’re a Star Wars fan. Do you feel like part of why this came about is because you had grown up watching these movies, you’re expecting to hear those sounds, and something felt like it was missing without the sounds?

Yeah, I think so. I’m trying to think how I would do this, if I had to do it on a different project, like a Marvel movie or some other kind of IP that…Yeah, if I wasn’t as ingrained in Star Wars as I am, I would have to probably work harder at it to understand the aesthetic of the sound for that show.

I think you’re onto something with that question because it’s so ingrained in me. Then I noticed it’s ingrained in everybody else too. The sound of Star Wars is so iconic that, if you’re even just a lower-level or mid-level fan, you’ll recognize those sounds. One time, just for fun, I played back the sound of, you’ve seen Empire Strikes Back, right?

Of course!

Okay, good. There’s the sound of the probe droid, that [droid sound effect]. I played it just for fun. Just on set quietly, while the crew is lighting and one of the crew members just said, we know the Empire knows we’re here or something. He said the line right after the probe droid sound because that sound triggered that memory in him of knowing exactly what part of the movie that was from. That translated to X-Wings, some of the creatures, and the blaster sounds. Everything has its signature sound.

The Skeleton Crew looks throw a window
Image credit: Disney

I think you’re right, since that’s something I grew up with in that it’s just ingrained in me. It came natural to plug in those sounds to make it work because this does exist in that funny place where it’s all going to get thrown away. They’re not going to carry my sound effects over into post. With that said, it still kind of needs to be heard to work. Directors, actors, and the crew all need to hear it too. It does need to be the correct vibe of the sound for everyone to sort of buy it.

I want to jump to Twisters if we have a little more time.

Sure! Yeah, okay.

Twisters seems like a genuine nightmare to record audio, just with the wind alone. I know you didn’t work on the original film, but if you could talk a little bit about how technology has changed between the two and what making the film in 2023 allowed for you to do that they could not have done in the ’90s?

I’ll definitely speak to that on the production side of technology, but also just because I was involved a lot with communication and going to Skywalker Sound for the final mix. Even though I’m not an expert in this, they educated me and showed me the kinds of tools they use and the technology that’s changed, that’s even different than three years ago, much less like almost, what, almost 30 years ago.

On the production side, first, I know the sound mixer who did the original Twister. His name is Geoff Patterson and he’s a colleague I’ve known forever. I think he came in and did a second unit on Glee when I was still an assistant. When I moved up to mixing, he was always a really good friend and in my corner. He set me up with my first agent and everything. He was on ‘Team Devendra’, just trying to help out my career.

When I booked Twisters, I called him and I was like, ‘Geoff, I’m so terrified. I’m doing this movie and I don’t know what I’m asking of you. I kind of just want a pep talk from you’. He was so helpful and encouraging. He mentioned a bunch of things about how they did it back in his day, how they got through it.

A man in a cowboy hat talks to a crowd gathered by his truck.
Glen Powell in Twisters. Image courtesy of Universal Pictures.

They did the car work, they did the challenging wind stuff. Geoff says he does wish he could do a movie like that again now. He’s retired, but if he wasn’t, he’d want to make something with the tools we have now. We have better microphones that we use on booms, more sensitive and more isolating. We have better lavaliers too.

I had so many tools at my disposal and it was still hard work to capture a lot of that car work. We did it all free drive. If you’ve seen the way they do car work in movies, they’ll hook up the picture car to a tow truck essentially. That’s a specially designed tow truck and it has a camera crane on it and stuff.

Twisters had a big enough budget where it had doubles and triples of a lot of these cars, so we have the clean version. We’d have the version that’s meant to be popped on a tow rig quickly. We’d have the version that had a driving pod on top, so a stunt driver can actually just drive the car in. I noticed over the course of filming that it was the tool we used the most because it seemed the most flexible. You can go fast on the dirt roads. You weren’t shackled onto this tow rig.

The original Twister probably used the tow rig a lot. The reason I’m mentioning that, and how that relates to sound, is what we ended up having to do. On the original, if they were mostly towing, then wireless is within a good, reasonable range of the actors from where the sound mixer is probably sitting in the shotgun seat of the tow vehicle.

The way we had to do it is I had to stay permanently in a follow van. The department that’s in charge of video recording, recording all the clips so they could play it back for the director, that person is in the follow van. The producers, the gaffer, and the DP are there too. I’m also in the back of the follow van, recording on a little miniature sound cart. My wireless basically had to reach farther because of that. Are they going to be 100 feet away? Are they going to be 300 feet away? It was really varied, there was no exact distance.

Daisy Edgar-Jones as Kate and Glen Powel as Tyler in Twisters, directed by Lee Isaac Chung. © Universal Pictures, Warner Bros. Pictures and Amblin Entertainment. Photo credit: Melinda Sue Gordon. Kate and Tyler standing in a field watching a tornado drift lazily by.
Daisy Edgar-Jones as Kate and Glen Powel as Tyler in Twisters, directed by Lee Isaac Chung. © Universal Pictures, Warner Bros. Pictures and Amblin Entertainment. Photo credit: Melinda Sue Gordon.

The other technology I had at my disposal was a portable system I also dropped into the picture cars. I would record all the actors’ lavaliers onto that because the lavaliers wouldn’t reach me in the follow van. It was too far. We would also plant mikes all around, but just out of frame. That’s generally how we captured most of the sound.

Thankfully, in this movie, they yell a lot (laughs). You know, they’re like, ‘Go, go, go, go!’ Then there are those moments where Daisy says ‘I love this, I love Oklahoma’. She says it super quietly and she turns away from the plant mikes down there. She looks out the window and has a mic on her, but it doesn’t reach me all the way in the follow van. It did get recorded onto the little portable system I would drop in the car. I would transmit the signals from that portable system to me also. I was able to boost the signal and put an antenna on the roof of the car, and I was able to switch my mics to that mic. It was like a subtle thing and the directors don’t even know I’m doing this work back there and basically pump her signal down to get her whispery line.

In post, they have it all recorded on isolated tracks, and they can do whatever they want. They can still ADR that if they want. That’s some of the technological tools I had at my disposal.

(from left) Boone (Brandon Perea), Ben (Harry Hadden-Paton) and Tyler (Glen Powell) in Twisters, directed by Lee Isaac Chung. © Universal Pictures, Warner Bros. Pictures and Amblin Entertainment. Photo credit: Melinda Sue Gordon. Boone, Tyler, and reporter Ben yeehaw as they race in a pickup to catch a twister.
(from left) Boone (Brandon Perea), Ben (Harry Hadden-Paton) and Tyler (Glen Powell) in Twisters, directed by Lee Isaac Chung. © Universal Pictures, Warner Bros. Pictures and Amblin Entertainment. Photo credit: Melinda Sue Gordon.

After filming, I went to hang out at Skywalker Sound. Bjørn Ole Schroeder is the dialog editor and Al Nelson is the sound effects editor. Brilliant guys.

We’ve had a bunch of Zoom meetings in pre-production, during production, post-production. I spent a whole week at Skywalker Ranch. Stayed at the ranch, hung out there, and just spent all day in the mix rooms and doing a multi-day mix. Sometimes there’s not always something exciting happening in the mix room. And producers went away and we’re just waiting. Bjørn would take me up to his edit station on the other floor of Skywalker Sound, and he showed me some of the techniques he used for some scenes where, say, it’s Daisy and Glenn chasing a tornado. They get out and they’re like, wow, she’s beautiful, she’s a beautiful tornado.

On the set, we have two Ritter fans, probably six feet tall. Really powerful. There’s the sound of a motor and then the wind moving. It’s really loud. The two things going for us are one, the actors are yelling, so we’re getting a good signal from two sources: the overhead boom mic and their mics on their body, which are wind protected as well. On top of that, Bjørn showed me what he did with his processing on isotope. He showed me what it sounded like raw without any treatment. You hear them talking, you hear them yelling and then, of course, you hear the droning on of the two Ritter fans all over the dialogue.

(from left) Lily (Sasha Lane) and Tyler (Glen Powell) in Twisters, directed by Lee Isaac Chung. © Universal Pictures, Warner Bros. Pictures and Amblin Entertainment. Photo credit: Melinda Sue Gordon. Tyler struggles to hold onto to Lily as a tornado threatens to suck her out through a collapsed wall.
(from left) Lily (Sasha Lane) and Tyler (Glen Powell) in Twisters, directed by Lee Isaac Chung. © Universal Pictures, Warner Bros. Pictures and Amblin Entertainment. Photo credit: Melinda Sue Gordon.

Bjørn showed me the unprocessed audio.Then he went back, hit a button to process. You can see the waveform and how tall it was from the noise of the fan. Whatever he did, he just shrunk it down to almost nothing. Then probably did some polishing and sweetening of the dialogue to get it to really pop through. You don’t hear the fans at all.

Bjørn was saying that some of those tools they’ve had for over a decade, maybe two decades. But some of the tools he used in this movie, he said, weren’t quite where they were even three years ago. They were able to use more of my dialog. A movie like Twisters is going to have ADR no matter what, but it was probably less than they would have expected since the tools are better.

That’s kind of how we got through it. In one sense, the movie is a nightmare. I mean, there’s a reason I called the sound mixer of Twister needing a pep talk. I kind of just needed an adult figure to be like, ‘It’s going to be okay, you’re going to do a great job’. That’s all I kind of needed. The reason behind that is because it’s a crazy undertaking. It’s a very challenging movie. It’s such a relief to look back on it and yeah, it was hard, but it was fun. It was so crazy and so fun.

Star Wars: Skeleton Crew is now streaming on Disney+. Twisters is now streaming on Peacock.

Written by Tina Kakadelis

News Editor for Film Obsessive. Movie and pop culture writer. Seen a lot of movies, got a lot of opinions. Let's get Carey Mulligan her Oscar.

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