"At its core, ‘Project Hail Mary’ is about communication, and sound is communication." So says Erik Aadahl — and few people in Hollywood are better positioned to make that case.

In this Q&A with technology journalist and author Carolyn Giardina, sound designer and supervising sound editor Erik Aadahl — a four-time Academy Award nominee and co-founder of E² Sound — gets into the experimentation, the dead ends, the technology, and the moments when something finally clicks.

Aadahl will discuss his work on “Project Hail Mary,” which he describes as the hardest and most rewarding project of his career, including the months-long process of inventing a complete alien language for Rocky the Eridian. He’ll talk about what directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller demanded of that language — that it perform, not just accompany — and the wild experimentation that followed. “This whole process is very much about experimentation,” he says, “trying to find what starts to tickle you — when do we feel like the soul of Rocky is coming out?” The answer involved everything from MIDI keyboards and ancient instruments to animal recordings and transducers resonating sound through solid granite.

Aadahl will also cover the specific creative and technical challenges that have defined his career across some of Hollywood’s most ambitious films. On “A Quiet Place,” where he said “sound is the danger but also the weapon,” the challenge was building a world out of degrees of silence — “probably the most dynamic contrast of any film we’ve ever done,” he says, “which made it a thrilling nut to crack.” On “The Creator,” he and Van der Ryn shot guerilla-style across Southeast Asia, fusing real location recordings with high-concept technology to create, as he puts it, something that “looks and sounds like a $300 million movie but isn’t.”

On seven “Transformers” films, it was finding “the soul of these characters” — giving each robot a distinct sonic signature that audiences could feel as much as hear. And on “Godzilla,” it was engineering a roar that tapped into something genuinely prehistoric.

Expect a frank, funny, and deeply informed conversation with one of the most inventive sound designers working today — and a rare chance to get inside the process behind some of the most memorable audio experiences in recent cinema.

Erik Aadahl: Amaze, Amaze, Amaze — Building Worlds Through Sound

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