Only Aragon alumnus Erik Aadahl can say with complete honesty that he has created spaceships from tea kettles. That is to say, Aadahl transformed the sounds of a howling tea kettle into the sounds of the Decepticon attack spaceships in the movie Transformers: Dark of the Moon, earning him a nomination—with his partner Ethan van der Ryn—for the Academy Award for Sound Editing at the 84th Academy Awards.
Aadahl explains, “As a sound supervisor [or] sound designer, my job is to imagine and create all the sounds you hear that aren’t an orchestra playing the score.”
While he has edited the sounds of feature films such as Megamind, Shrek Forever After, all three Transformers, and both Kung Fu Pandas, Aadahl reached a new level of innovation in his work with the third Transformers movie, a science fiction epic detailing the Autobots’ fight to learn the secrets of a Cybertronian spaceship on the moon and foil a plot to enslave humanity. Indeed, the creativity of the plot of Transformers may only be exceeded by the creativity of Aadahl’s sound innovations for the film.
“Starting on the first Transfomers movie and collaborating with Michael Bay and the visual effects team, I developed the robot characters and their personalities, what they sound and feel like,” says Aadahl. As he has been with the franchise since its first movie, Aadahl has helped to shape the characters of Transformers through sound.
Aadahl describes his work from the bottom-up, saying “The process begins with lots of field recording; getting fresh sounds for explosions, guns, jets, robotic motors and so on. I then spent time designing synthetic sounds, trying to evoke the “sonic souls” of the characters and different situations. Optimus is based on “air” and good-feeling sounds, and his arch-nemesis Megatron is based on the inverse: hissing and evil-feeling sounds like sharp blades, tiger growls and minor-chord tones.”
Aadahl continues, “I especially enjoy using sounds one would never expect for what they’re seeing on screen. For example, for the Decepticon attack spaceships I used a howling tea kettle for the engine, and an electric guitar for the gun turrets. For the alien mothership, I got an African elephant to stampede and trumpet. Her trumpeting, slowed down to 25 percent, became the powerful mothership drone. Some of Bumblebee’s emotional sounds were my dog Freja whimpering, processed in my computer to sound robotic. My favorite sounds are often counterintuitive and a bit abstract.”
Aside from marking a personal milestone for Aadahl, the magnitude of the sound editing required in Transformers transcended the perceived limits of sound programs. Aadahl elaborates, “The ending 30 minutes of the movie actually hit the technical capacity of our ProTools computers, of 30,000 fades in one session. The programmers never imagined anybody hitting that threshold, so our movie was the first to max it out!”
With such groundbreaking work, Aadahl received the ultimate honor in his recognition from the Academy. Upon his nomination, Aadahl says, “My first reaction was that I was incredibly honored. Ours is a genre that does well at the box office but isn’t always recognized by the Academy. My second reaction was, do I take my fiancée or my mom to the Oscars?” Aadahl eventually compromised between the two ladies of his life, taking his mother to the nominees’ luncheon and his fiancée Nia to the ceremony.
Aadahl’s experience on the red carpet was one of chaos and excitement. “The studio hired a limo for me, and as we wove through the police security barricades, we could hear the cheers of the big crowds that had come out to watch the red carpet.”
Aadahl’s talent captured the attention of even some of Hollywood’s biggest stars throughout the evening. Aadahl recalls, “Meryl Streep approached my partner and co-nominee Ethan Van der Ryn and said she was a “big fan” of ours. Either she really is a great actress or she was telling the truth!” After the ceremony, Tony Bennett serenaded Aadahl and other nominees and winners on the dance floor of the Governor’s Ball, the official Oscar afterparty.
But while the world may know Aadahl as a sound supervisor in Hollywood, Aragon knows him best for his earlier work.
Indeed, Erik Aadahl got his start at Aragon early. “My earliest and sweetest memory of Aragon was when I was four years old. At the time Aragon had a day care, and I remember toddling around the halls on a small plastic motorcycle,” says Aadahl. Yet shortly after his biker days—around the age of eight—Aadahl discovered the art of film.
Erik Aadahl’s father Jorg says, “[He] borrowed my Super-8 camera. He would build sets with scary characters and make drawings that he tied together for cartoons with moving characters.”
Erik Aadahl’s cinematic passion persisted throughout his youth. When he wasn’t playing the trumpet in Aragon’s jazz band or writing for Aragon’s newspaper, Erik Aadahl says, “In AP US History (taught by Mr. Peter Lawrence) I was allowed to make documentaries for my unit projects, ranging from topics like slavery and religion to the Vietnam War. I also made two feature length movies, James Bond spoofs, with my friends and teachers in the cast.”
Lawrence, who was just inducted into Aragon’s Faculty and Staff Annual Hall of Fame, says. “For most, the traditional written work was most comfortable, but Erik consistently chose a video camera. His work included ‘Slavery and Religion,’ ‘The transcontinental RR,’ ‘In the Trenches,’ ‘Space,’ [and] ‘JFK: Into Vietnam.’ He was our Ken Burns.”
“I pitched [Slavery and Religion] to Lawrence. The first thing he said–as he looked at me and cocked an eyebrow–was that students a few years ago failed [to make a successful video]…with that caveat, he put it in my hands.” Aadahl laughs, remembering “Out of 60 points, I got 67.”
Jorg Aadahl recalls these early indications of his son’s talent, saying, “I remember Mr. Lawrence as an CNN reporter, describing some alleged event in the Middle-East, involving the main character, James Bland. Mr. Lawrence told me that he had to audition for this role and was very proud to be selected in competition with other teachers, but he had to go through several takes before director Erik was satisfied!”
Erik Aadahl’s early Bond spoofs featured dozens of Aragon students. Jorg Aadahl remembers, “One of [the Bond spoofs] was partly filmed at Filoli Gardens, which [Erik] talked them into letting him do for free, while they closed it for the general public. A studio from LA was turned away because the ‘facility was already occupied by the Aadahl film crew.’”
Along with his classmates and teachers, Erik Aadahl included his two-year younger sister Nina, another Aragon alumnus, in his movies. Jorg Aadahl recalls, “As a sister, [Nina] felt she deserved special consideration…[but] Erik took care of her occasional prima donna aspirations by rewriting the script and [killing] her off early in the movie. She usually met a very gruesome, violent death, which she got very good at acting out, with twists and convulsions galore.”
Before his graduation as the valedictorian of his class of 1994, Erik Aadahl says, “I always thought I would go into medicine. I enrolled in Stanford, but two weeks later, I felt sick, I couldn’t eat, sleep, I was a psychosomatic wreck at the time…I was worried I was dropping off a part of my life that had become really important.” Erik Aadahl withdrew his commitment to Stanford, accepting a full Trustee scholarship to USC, where he entered their Cinema-Television School in his junior year. Aadahl reflects, “If you [follow] your passion, nothing else trumps that.”
Of his work at Aragon, Erik Aadahl says, “I think the success of those projects helped me realize film making could be a viable life direction…Maybe the word ‘magical’ is wrong, but Aragon is a special, special place…that will be a part of me forever.”
