Welcome And Meet Dash

Speaker 0:00

Greg Staffa 0:07

You're listening to the Staffa Corner Podcast. with your host, Greg Staffa. Today on the Stafford Corner, I'm joined today by Dash, a sound designer and supervising sound editor, whose work includes Trap, Resident Evil. Welcome to Raccoon City. He helps create the sounds that pull us into the movie, whether it's the roar of a concert crowd or one small noise that makes a quiet scene feel terrifying. Dash, thanks for joining us today.

Speaker 0:50

Yeah, thanks, Greg. Thanks for having

Growing Up In Yellowknife

Speaker 0:52

me.

Greg Staffa 0:52

So tell us a little bit about yourself. What was your upbringing like? Were you a creative kid as a child?

Speaker 0:58

Yeah, I think I I I really was sort of very left-brained, and I didn't realize it or attribute it to a career, obviously, when you're young, but I, you know, looking back, I can definitely tell you I was more imaginative and inventive in that sense. Uh, and that just turned into career. I'm from Yellowknife uh Northwest Territories, which is way up north in Canada. So it's it's a small community town up there. And so that's that's where I was born and raised. Watched a lot of movies growing up, you know, Back to the Future being like a very vivid memory of the match that lit my filmmaking passion. And uh, you know, just a lot of stuff through the 90s as well. My post-high school uh education, I went to a film school in Oakville called Sheridan, and it was a three-year program. I went into that program not knowing that I wanted to do sound. I probably was more focused on directing or cinematography, but for whatever reason, I took a sound course in my first year and it just sort of lit the bulb in my brain that this is what I want to do and be a part of. And I just really focused on that for three years. So once I graduated, I was fortunate enough to have a professor at Sheridan College that was also a working supervising sound editor, and he kind of allowed me to come into his company and start there as an intern. And that company is Sound Dogs Toronto, and I've never left since.

Movie Magic That Sparked A Career

Greg Staffa 2:43

It's it's amazing. There's that it seems to be that a lot of the people that have been doing this for a while, their generation grew up, you know, between the years of Star Wars and Back to the Future. Or those were like the instrumental ages. And I wonder, you know, so many great people attribute to their love of movies to that kind of window of films. And I wonder if we're still doing that these years, you know, are people going to like a Marvel movie and say, I want to become an you know a sound person or I want to get into the movies the way that they did back in the 70s and early 80s? It seems like that was a rare time for creativity that really sparked a great generation of film people like yourself.

Dash 3:32

Yeah, it's a really good question. And I I probably haven't thought about it, but I I want to say I hope so, because I I remember the feelings I had from watching those films. And I know there's there's a lot more visual effects now in movies and television that might sort of make the audience a little more comfortable with what they're seeing. Whereas the days of Back to the Future, to see to see that those sorts of visual effects, to see, you know, the DeLorean and the Lightning and everything else that went into that movie, for me, it was groundbreaking. That and movies like Jurassic Park, you it was mind-blowing. But I still think, and I like to think that that magic still exists in a in a newer generation, and there's there's they're still fascinated by what filmmaking can do because I I do value storytelling, and I think beyond anything, a movie with a great story is is still as inspiring as or just as inspiring as a movie with just a lot of great craft work that goes into it. So yeah, I hope so.

What A Sound Designer Actually Does

Greg Staffa 4:42

Tell us a little bit about what a sound designer actually does. Because I think a lot of people take it for granted. I think it's one of those jobs where if you do it really well, no one notices. Can you tell us a little bit about what your job entails?

Speaker 4:56

Yeah, so my job as a sound designer is to create a signature or that movie or TV show, or to find, to find, to work on those elements that that are very story motivated and and things that are more conceptual. But in addition to that, my job is to make sure that all of the sound effects of a movie or TV show uh help tell that story. So as a sound designer and a supervising sound editor, I'll usually be the head of a team of on a busy feature film, let's say three to four other sound editors. If the movie or TV show is big enough, I'll have somebody else work working as a sound designer with me to help kind of hit those big moments and those big conceptual ideas. So usually when I start on a film or a project as a sound designer, I'll usually run at the bigger conceptual, very story-driven, important pieces to a director. And those are often dictated by my first watch of the film, but even more dictated by a meeting with the director, where uh we call it a spotting session, where we'll all sit down as a sound team with a director, with producers, with even the picture editor, and we'll creatively talk about the sound for the film. And the director will start to explore ideas about sound, but also focus our attention, whether directly or indirectly, on things that they are uh uh really focused on in terms of wanting to get right. And so the once that creative meeting is done, I'll usually jump right into what I feel and what was made apparent in that meeting about what is the most important thing that we need to start tackling. Um and so from there, I'll work on those pieces where uh in conjunction with my team who's working on everything else, whether it's ambiences and doors and car buys and you know, all the sort of real world stuff. And as the process moves on, I'll start, I'll start to populate my Pro Tools session, which is the digital audio workstation we use in post-production sound, uh, with all of these sounds, and we'll start to construct the worlds and the conceptual ideas. And as we go through this process, I'm I'm sending these ideas to the directors and the producers so that they can review these ideas and get a sense of here's a starting point, or here's a direction we can take it. And I really try to make that my uh number one priority is to get those ideas out as soon as possible. So I front load a lot of that big thinking because at this point in my career and even early on, uh I knew that those were the things that were gonna go through the most process. And it's really important to build trust in this in this industry. I I think any department would say that. But speaking from a sound person's point of view, I really try to build trust and I really want to impress right out of the box. So I really work hard to to put a scene together that has a lot of story-driven conceptual ideas, but I really piece it together with everything, whether it's foley to the ambiences, to everything in between, just so a director or producer can get the complete vision of what something can be from a sound point of view. And that starts the conversation. And it's a really important to keep that conversation going. So as I work through a film, I try to send as much out as possible and get as much feedback back to me as possible so that we can continue to go through this process of refining, refining, refining until we reach an idea that we're okay, let's stick with this, let's run with this all the way through the mix and see how it plays out. Oftentimes we get to the mix after going through that process and ideas start to change. And that's completely fine because that's part of the process. And a a lot of what might change those ideas might be the music, because when we're working in the early stages of a film or TV show, we don't have the final music. A lot of the time, what's in the track is a temped-in version of music, often taken from uh other movies or other TV shows and and just repurposed to kind of fit the emotion of what they're going for, knowing that it's going to be composed down the line. Given a tight schedule, or given the way a schedule works, or given the fact that we start earlier than a composer might, we might not hear that music until the final mix. So once all of our big conceptual ideas are in, whether they're approved or somewhere in some middle ground, once it plays against the music, it can change a lot. And now we're finally hearing the dialogue track, which is, you know, been cleaned up and refined and lines added by great dialogue editors and supervisors, and we're hearing the music track by great composers, and we're hearing now the sound design and sound effects track from my team, and it naturally can change how we hear things. So then that can start a whole nother conversation. But the idea is to get in a ballpark, and even, you know, maybe ballpark is the wrong word, to get into a space where the sounds are right, the idea is right, and the intention is right. So if we if let's say I cut a lot of low-end sounds to build tension in a scene, but the composer comes in with a lot of bass sounds, well, those two sounds are basically conflicted. So now the design isn't playing, it's just sounding like a bunch of mush in the low end or the sub-range. So what I'll do is I'll now go, okay, now I gotta build tension in a higher range. So it might just be adding one or two more layers so that both of us can coexist in this world.

Designing Distinct Worlds By Sound

Greg Staffa 11:09

That is an amazing answer that sprung out about plenty of other questions that I have. I think the easiest way to simplify kind of what you said is that you're creating a world. And I think if you look at like Star Wars versus Star Trek, each of them have ships flying through the air, each of them has lasers, each of them have you know explosions. But if you close your eyes and if you're uh you know a casual fan of both series, you can tell which one is which world based on the sounds that you guys have created, you know, guys like you have created for those films and series where each one has its own kind of universe, even though they're very similar, they're also very distinct and different.

Dash 11:55

Yeah, and all by design, um as you know, it it's it these are the conversations we have, and this is the the kind of thinking we as sound designers really kind of deep dive into. And I've worked on enough sci-fi myself to know how important it is to distinguish one world from another world, and how much that conversation happens over and over again, and how much we refine, even on a micro level, like the door in this world should sound slightly off compared to the door in this other world. So when I say it's all by design, I um uh I genuinely mean nothing is by accident, everything is just very well thought out.

Working With Music On The Mix

Greg Staffa 12:39

How is that relationship between someone like you and say the composer? I mean, you you talked a little bit about how you know his music might offset what you're trying to do, and so there's a little bit of back and forth. I look at the movie, you know, Jaws, when John Williams approached you know Spielberg and said, I have the great idea for this thing, and it was basically it was so basic and minimal that it was almost brilliant before we realized it was brilliant. You know, how much going back and forth do you have with a composer trying to find the right balance of working together?

Dash 13:14

Uh there's a little bit, and m a lot of it does happen on a on a mixed stage, like I said, given schedules and who starts when, a lot of the time we will hear how it all plays together on a mixed stage. And I'm uh you know, the more the more I do this, the more I'm just so comfortable in in kind of losing my stuff if the music is is really telling the story. I I I I approach a mixed stage now like I want to just build the best track and tell the best story. Um so there's always a give and take. And and it's really a lot of the time at the director's discretion. You'll have directors that really love their music, and that's great, and will favor music over sound effects and design, and that's completely fine because that's what the movie is supposed to be from that director's point of view. Uh and then I've been in on on stages with directors who just love to play uh scenes and ideas as simple as possible and just explore a world without music or a movie without music in certain spots. And and so it's it's never that I can apply the same thinking from one movie to another. It's it's that, you know, like I said, it's totally at the director's discretion as to how we play a scene. Um, certainly as a sound designer and supervisor, I'll give my input, but my input is really honestly based on what is best for the movie, even if it means you know, dropping a bunch of stuff that that we designed and we thought worked really good on its own. If it doesn't really work in the moment with the music anymore because they're both doing the same things and the music is might be doing a better job, we'll favor the music. If it's a hybrid and I can I can exist, coexist in that world a little bit, then I'll I'll design something that fits in that world without getting in the way.

Greg Staffa 15:14

When

Why Sound Became The Path

Greg Staffa 15:15

was it that you discovered that sound was the way that you wanted it to go? I mean, you'd gone to the film school and done some studying, but what was it about sound that you found interesting? Did you have like a musical ground? Was sound something that you found interesting?

Dash 15:30

I think it was it was the it was the process of it. I I remember one of the first projects we were given in film school for sound was to redesign the sound for a trailer. And that I think just sitting in a room and working on that really felt like a comfortable space to me. And I also just you know, over time, I just love that's that sound design is this is this mixed bag of uh sort of logistics, engineering, mechanics, and creativity. And I think it just hit all the notes of what I love to do. You know, the one of the examples I can give you is is if if there's a car in a movie that a hero character is driving, we might have a creative talk about what that car should sound like with the director. And the director might be like, Well, I want this this car to sound way bigger than it is. I want it to sound like a caterpillar hauler in a mine, though those massive hauling trucks. And and so our job is to really take that idea and run with it. And so, what my team will do is we might actually go out and find somebody who has a caterpillar hauler and pay them a bit of money and ask if we can record it. We'll go out to a location, hopefully an isolated location, and choose the right mics for this for this hauler, choose the position of where these microphones go, and we'll mic up this entire vehicle inside and out, and we'll spend a day recording this thing. We'll take all of those recordings of this hauler, bring it back into our systems, organize it into a logical library that we can pull from, and then we'll start putting it into the show by designing it out, by adding a like a bunch of low-end to it, or by pitching it down, or pitching it up. And so for me, it was that process, that that idea that there's there's the mechanics and sort of engineering sort of thinking of it that meets creativity and it's like 50-50, and I love that.

Greg Staffa 17:48

You've been doing

Field Recording Versus Sound Libraries

Greg Staffa 17:49

this for a few years now. Is that type of research and development still as prevalent these days with everything being so digital these days? Or is it less and less that you're relying on being out in the field and and making recordings?

Dash 18:06

Uh I try to do it as much as possible. And I I don't, I mean, I don't think that will ever go away because we'll always need to capture sounds from the real world. And every project is different, and every project has its has its uh has its unique challenges. And so, you know, I'll I have a massive library of sounds. And if I don't have the time to go out and record stuff as much as I'd like to, then I do have a large library of stuff that either we've collected or recorded over the years that I can pull from and you know make art of as well. But I don't think that will ever stop being a part of my process. I think that for me is the magic of what we do. And it's it's also as a sound designer, like I was saying, my ability to add a signature to a show happens at that level as well, where if I can fully create an idea, at least for the big, the big concept ideas, then I will. And part of that is going out and recording fresh ingredients and collecting these fresh sounds and bringing them back into my system and and working them into the movie.

Greg Staffa 19:21

Can you explain

Foley Versus Hard Effects

Greg Staffa 19:22

a little bit what the difference between a foley person is and a sound person is?

Dash 19:29

Yeah, so Foley, they they are a team hired, uh, and I don't work in Foley. They are a department of their own that works in the sound department. Their job is to record to sync pictures. So their job is to record clothing moves, props, so cups up, cups down, hands on doorknobs, uh, you know, faucets turning on and off, things like that. Everything, all the human movement that happens in a film, including footsteps, and I say human, but they also do animals and everything in between. So their job is to fill out that world of human movement, a human interaction and and that sort of uh interaction with the world. A sound person's job is to cut in the hard sound effects, or we call what we call the hard sound effects. So door opens and closes, cars going by, animals barking, things like that. And then a sound designer's job is to work on the bigger conceptual stuff, the stuff that binds all these ideas together.

Greg Staffa 20:36

And is there much communication between the two, or is it pretty much you know your scale and scope of things, and so you stick in your lane?

Dash 20:43

There's a lot of communication. I think if I'm doing my job right, I'm communicating a lot between all of those departments. Uh, because at the end of the day, I have to put Foley, sound effects, and sound design together in my system and hit play, and it should sound like one idea. So I'm very, I'm very aware of that as I work, that I need to be in contact with my Foley department, with my with the sound effects editors, and everybody has to be working towards the same goal. But in parallel to that, directors often have Foley notes. Like there, there's a lot of directors and showrunners out there who are very aware of Foley and they they love Foley and they want to hear more of it, or they want a very specific style of it. So I also have to convey that to the Foley team. And if if time permits, I'll have the I'll ask the Foley team to do a version of something, send it back so that I can fit it into everything else we're presenting to the director, so that the director who's kind of focused on Foley can also hear what's coming out of that department.

Realism Versus Drama In Audio

Greg Staffa 21:54

How much of your job would you say is mental and how much of your Job is to be realistic. And the reason I asked that is because, like in so many movies, we'll see a car on a dirt road where the tires suddenly squeal. Now the tires aren't necessarily going to squeal on a dirt road, but our brain hears it and we know that the tires are squealing and the car's about to get going. So there's a there's almost a compromise in the sound of, yeah, it might not be realistic, but it conveys a message that you're trying to send that this car is getting ready to go.

Dash 22:32

Yeah, and that's a great example. And I I I've probably had to do that a handful of times in my career as well. And you know, sometimes the sound editors, we go, oh, I wish I didn't have to do that. But from a dramatic point of view, it might work. It might tell a story that nobody else is going to notice but another sound editor. But obviously, you notice it. But the idea is it helps to sell an idea dramatically. And I think that's an important piece of our puzzle as well, is that we're there to be accurate, but we're also there to tell a story. And that is a priority for me is we have to tell the story and we have to work on the drama of the story. I often tell people who ask about what I do to watch movies and not just listen, pay attention to what they hear, pay attention to what they don't hear. Because the amount of decisions we remove and the amount of sounds we move remove to make space for things to play, it's pretty fascinating. And I know a lot of my sound colleagues pay attention to the same thing. By nature of being a part of the process, we're very interested in how scenes in other movies come together. And it's really fascinating once you pay attention to the things you're not hearing versus the things you're hearing to understand the decisions that are made to put a track together.

Getting In Early With The Script

Greg Staffa 23:59

Tell us the process of when you come in to a story. If you're you know brought on for a feature film, you mentioned that you you start seeing like rough cuts and stuff like that, but how early are you involved in it and start thinking of, you know, we need to come up with sounds here, we need to come up with sounds there.

Dash 24:18

I will try to reach out for a script as soon as possible. I will try to sometimes even before they start filming, if I'm attached to a show, reach out for a script. A script will give us a lot of creative cues on what is important with sound. Um, and I know every script is is highlighted differently and written differently. Some people do focus on the sound of this, and you'll see a lot of the sound of this in a in a script, which is really great. But even without those those sound cues, we can pick apart what's what's important. And even on a broad stroke kind of thing, it's the time period matters, the the shoes that a character is wearing. We can we can kind of start collecting ideas uh pretty extensively off of a script.

Building Zombies And Other Monsters

Greg Staffa 25:08

Was there any sound that was particularly complex for you? Was there something that you were a test that you were given or you said, I don't know how I'm gonna do this, and you were able to pull it off?

Dash 25:20

Yeah, I think it's probably it's probably happened a lot because I've worked on a lot of just conceptual stuff, whether it's sci-fi, uh, resident evil, things like that. You're dealing with, you know, using Resident Evil, for example, you're dealing with zombies and you're trying to create the coolest version of a zombie or that version of a zombie for that Resident Evil movie. And so that really gets the wheels turning in my brain as to how I can accomplish that. And I have to give myself enough runway to have enough of an RD process, enough trial and error process of recording myself, of bringing a bunch of people in to record different vocals, of taking all of these recorded tracks and creating something out of them that sounds like a zombie or versions of zombie, both male, both female, both big, large, small, micro, whatever it is. And so it's things like that. It's it's big concept ideas like that that I feel, you know, it feels daunted, daunting at the beginning. But once I once I start to front load and run at the process of getting my hands in on creating libraries of these things, then it feels less daunting and less overwhelming. What is it about sound?

Greg Staffa 26:47

And this might be above your pay grade or your analytical mind, but why is it that so much sound that we hear in the movies and TV have to be almost created rather than, and you gave a couple examples of going out and recording uh you know an actual engine going, but so much of the sounds we hear are almost artificially created, or we use something else as opposed to the real thing. What is it about creating these sounds that the real thing almost doesn't come across on film as being realistic?

Dash 27:22

I think it's to convey a dramatic sense of that sound. I I think when it comes to layering in things that don't necessarily belong in that sound, but they make that sound more fitting into that story or help punch up the dramatic effect of that sound. It's it's for that reason. It's to help tell that story. There are there are a lot of sounds in a movie that are what you see. They are, you know, you see the faucet turn on, you hear the faucet turn on, you see the dog bark, you hear the dog bark. But then there are the sounds where, you know, the character goes into the dungeon basement and opens the big dungeon door, and that door might have four creature vocals on it, or big animal sounds just to make it screech or give it a give it a voice or give it some sort of personification. That's the reason why we often design sounds out. It's it's not everything gets that, but certainly there are key aspects and key elements in a in a movie or TV show that are in need of making something more out of it.

The Personal Lightsaber Moment

Greg Staffa 28:33

Now, Ben Burt is a sound designer that most people know, or at least those that love movies. He is the one that came up with the the sound for the lightsaber. And I'm just curious, what is Dash's lightsaber moment? Is there a sound that you created that you're kind of especially proud of? Or when you saw it on screen, you're like, I pulled that off. What is what is your lightsaber moment?

Dash 28:58

Oh my god. I I recently had one a lot, actually. I was very fortunate to work on a series that has a lot of of just great moments for me to sit back and go, wow, that's that's my thing, um, in a very highly conceptual way. Unfortunately, I can't talk about that show because it's not out yet. Um, and I can't wait to talk about it, but it it lived in the world of science fiction, and it was it was awesome. It it really um it was really one of those shows that took everything out of me creatively in the best way. It uh forced me to to create my own grab bag of sounds, to record my own sounds, to create a very unique palette of sounds, and then to manipulate them into the world that I was cutting them in for. So sorry to be so cryptic on the question, but it I recently had that experience of of wow, that I think that's my my sort of the Ben Burt lightsaber moment on a at the very least a personal level. Gives us something to look forward to.

Greg Staffa 30:15

Totally. When

Honoring Resident Evil While Rebooting

Greg Staffa 30:17

you're creating something like Resident Evil, you know, you did welcome to Raccoon City, uh, the the the sound was already established by that time, you know, from games and the films and stuff. How do you go into it honoring those sounds that have come before it, but also creating a world of your own?

Dash 30:36

That's a really good question. For that specific Raccoon City, they were trying to be very true to the game. So that in itself became a challenge because certainly we can't use the sounds from the game, but I don't think it translates that way into film. So my job was to keep and keep in the back in my backpack that I have to be true to the to the game while also honoring the idea that this is a reboot of Resident Evil, so it has to have this sort of incredibly cool Resident Evil cinematic quality to it, and it has to be scary, and it has to feel frightening and real. Um, so yeah, it it was a challenge certainly on that film. And what we I remember now what we did on that film to honor those sounds was we tried to use a bunch of like those long moans that the zombies had in the game instead of just the growls and the bites and the snaps. And just the way it was shot as well was very, you know, it tried to honor the video game. So yeah, it's it's certainly a challenge, but the idea as well is that we put our own spin on it, and there that's always going to be a part of it. Uh, so it's a really sort of interesting hybrid of thinking.

Greg Staffa 32:01

No,

Recording With Purpose In Real Life

Greg Staffa 32:02

you seem like the type of guy we're living in the 2000s, so little pocket recorders aren't really necessary. But on your, let's say, if you have an iPhone, how many different sound recordings would someone find if they grabbed their iPhone and started flipping through it?

Dash 32:18

Probably none on my iPhone because I have a pretty good pocket recorder that I'll take with me. Oh, be naturally because yeah. And you know, by way of technology these days, these recorders are smaller and easier to carry around with us, and they shoot at pretty high frequencies, and they have great mics, mics on them. So I'll usually go out on very specific recording expeditions if I need something or if I think something's interesting enough to go out and grab, I'll I'll do it. I I rarely just keep a recorder on me, to be honest. Uh, it's usually pretty I'm pretty I'm pretty focused on recording uh with with purpose.

Greg Staffa 33:05

What is the odd I mean you said you're recording with purpose, but just being on about or even looking for a sound, what's the oddest place that you found a sound that you've used?

Dash 33:15

What is the oddest place I've found a sound that I've used? There was a door in a studio we were working in that just over over the span of maybe six to eight years got creakier and creakier until it just sounded like a creature. And probably close to the time we moved out of that studio, I had logged it in my brain to record that door because I'll probably never find a door with that much character. And I must have spent a good half an hour just recording that really rusted out but creature sounding hinge on that door.

Loud Scenes Versus Quiet Scenes

Greg Staffa 34:00

A movie like Trap has a lot of noisy concert moments, but also has very quiet moments. Is there one in particular that's harder for you to do? Is it easier to be loud or is it easier to be quiet?

Dash 34:14

So there's a saying that loud is easy, quiet is hard. Certainly it is harder to be qu to be in quiet scenes because there's no room to hide behind anything, and every sound is very exposed, so every sound has to be very right and it has to fit and it has to be believable. But I there's also challenges with loud. I think with loud, you don't want loud to be mushy. So you always have to look for sonic space. You can't have too much low because that will just sound mushy. You can't have too much in the high end. So there's this delicate balance where it's it can be loud, but it can't sound messy or mushy. So it certainly both has its challenges, but I have found a lot more thinking goes into very quiet scenes.

Watching Movies As A Fan

Greg Staffa 35:07

Is there a point where it's harder to watch? I mean, are you still able to be a fan and watch the movies, or are you always kind of being analytical and and wondering, you know, how did they make that sound? Or that wasn't natural. I wonder what they did there, or I would have done this a little bit different. Are you able to be a fan of movies?

Dash 35:25

Yeah, I am, and I'm glad I can. That has I haven't been jaded by by it. I usually try to be in a movie theater at least two to three times a month, and I can watch a movie as a fan. Certainly afterwards, I will pick it apart and and value all of the stuff they did. And and to obviously to a certain degree, I'm as I'm watching it, I'm sort of going, wow, that was that really worked. Like that sound choice really worked. But I don't hold it because I really can still fall into a movie. And and then yeah, like I said, I'll I might just pick it apart after because I'm I'm always so inspired by what other what other designers and sound editors are doing.

Greg Staffa 36:07

You guys

Sharing Tricks In The Sound Community

Greg Staffa 36:08

ever talk to each other and go like, yeah, just you know, hey Joe, I just saw your film and just curious, how did you guys go about doing that sound? Or is it pretty competitive, or how do you guys, you know, do other sound designers talk to each other about suggestions and how-to's and how they came up with things?

Dash 36:26

Yeah, we do, and we're all you know, really supportive of each other in in our sound community. And I from what I know, we're all pretty big fans of each other as well. And I think those conversations are super important. And I always reach out to the sound designers I'm close with or the ones that I know, and if I watch their work, I'm always inspired by it because it's it's it's always fascinating to see somebody else's take on what you would do with it. And it's always seems fresh, and it always, you know, you always appreciate sort of not being the one who's making the sausage, and you're you're not living that process. It's always interesting because oftentimes when we go through the process of building something, we'll sort of over time we might have this interesting relationship with it. If it uh you know it inevitably turns out great and it works for the film or TV show, but as the person who creates it, we often see it differently. So I always I always have I'm always very inspired by what other designers are doing. And if it's if it's inspiring to me enough to reach out to them and be like, how did you make that? Then, you know, even more applause to that designer.

Greg Staffa 37:50

Well,

Unsung Work And Final Questions

Greg Staffa 37:51

and wrapping things up, and I really appreciate you coming on. I think you know, as much as I like doing celebrity interviews, I think it's important to have people like you on. I think your job is one of those unsung hero jobs in the in the entertainment world where if you do it right, no one really notices. Uh, but if you do it wrong, you know, people do notice. I I think it's one of those jobs where people aren't exactly aware of what you do. And I think it's important to highlight jobs like that just to kind of understand how much goes into making a film, all the little details and all the little things from sound and and fully and and you know, props and stuff like that. So I really appreciate you coming on. Final question is what I asked to all my guests. So much of what we think when we talk about you, and we talk about Dash, it's hard not to mention your name without mentioning Resident Evil or the other films that you do, Trap and stuff like that. But when you get up in the morning and you look into the mirror, you know, splash a little water on your face and look in the mirror, who is it that you see?

Dash 38:58

That's a really, really good question and a really deep question. Uh I see somebody who's who's confident in what I do, but still a student and still figuring it out. And I remind myself, you know, to constantly be a student of this craft because it keeps me inspired. It keeps me guessing. You know, the more nervous I feel about something, I think that's healthy for me, uh, creatively. I certainly don't think I have it figured out. My experience has built enough muscle memory in me to help me get to the answer. But I think that's what I remind myself of uh often is continue to be a student of this, continue to be inspired, and and chase the unknown and and just keep keep kind of doing the things that make me uncomfortable, uh, because it always ends up with uh with an interesting answer. So I'm not sure if that answers the question, but that's certainly what I remind myself to be. It does.

Thanks And Wrap Up

Greg Staffa 40:06

Well, Dash, thank you so much for coming on. I am looking at your IMDB right now, trying to figure out what your upcoming Ben Burt moment is going to be. But I guess we'll just have to wait and find out and tune into your work and see if we can't figure it out and maybe have you on in the near future unless we can finally talk about it. But I appreciate you coming on and wish you the best of luck. Great.

Dash 40:29

Thanks, Greg. I appreciate it.