Universal Studios "Twisters" gets Famed Skywalker Sound for Audio Production and [200 Million Dollar Budget]

Twisters is the new Universal Studio Film directed by  Lee Isaac Chung (Minari) that ended up with a 200 million dollar budget. It opened up this weekend July 19 2024 to a box office roar.

The long-awaited sequel to the 1996 film Twister Directed by Jan De Pont and starring Helen Hunt will give new moviegoers an amazing experience all the way around.  Especially with the new Audio production from the famed Skywalker Sound in San Fransico California

The new powerful natural disaster film starring Glen Powell, Daisy Edgar-Jones, and Anthony Ramos opened worldwide this weekend and got started out with a huge lift as box office numbers and reviews rate pretty good thus far. 

But what makes this kind of movie so intense and entertaining is how the sound engineers create a life-like event like a tornado from in the theatre to you being there on the ground in ElReno Oklahoma. A lot of expertise is involved to mix dialog, with loud weather scenes and pull it all together with the flow of powerful music as the backing soundtrack.

Sound Production in the Field

Award-winning Audio Sound Engineer Christopher Boyes and Sound Production Supervisor Al Nelson both certainly have the background to captivate a national movie audience. They both have been the main sound and audio techs on "Top Gun Maverick", starring Tom Cruise, and "Jurrasic World Domination" with Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum for starters.  

Christopher Boyes has a long list of prominent Hollywood Blockbusters under his belt with awards for sound mixing and sound editing production going all the way back to 1998 with "Titanic" plus ", Pirates of the Caribbean" the "Hobbit", "Avatar"r," Mrs. Doutfire" and the Original "Jurrasic Park".

 In the Original 1996 Twister film at the time Stephen Flick. and recording engineer Steve Maslow, created a lot of the original sounds from driving a pickup truck in the around the Mohave Desert in southern California.

 At that time they had empty bottles, fishing lines and other clever apparatus attached to poles with microphones that would pick up the sounds. They also captured real pigs squealing, and actual trains, and dropped real trucks and cars from helicopters to get authentic sounds.

Skywalker renowned Sound Engineers 

We don't know exactly what Skywalker Studio did for this movie however after listening to several interviews with the director Lee Chung who insisted on shooting this movie on 35mm film and using actual local storm chasers in the film, we're guessing they got a lot of authentic sounds along with some CG files. 

They used on-set Jet engines to create and capture certain tornado and wind sounds. They also subjected actors to a lot of wind and debris hurled toward them to obtain realistic visuals and sound effects. The sound department on the set included over 13 personnel including well known Sound Mixer Devendra Cleary and Jamison Rabbe ADR Sound Editor from Westwind Media. 

We do know Devendra Cleary has some great audio carts of equipment that he used on his mobile field truck for audio mixing of dialog and on set sounds. He has several setups and used a very similar mobile sound system on Top Gun Maverick as he did on Twisters. 

It sure is an impressive rig with the Clara X3 recorder, mixer, wireless antenna rigs and plenty of Sennheiser Microphones.   

Camera Crews

The Camera and electrical department of this large-budget film topped almost 100 personnel alone and I'm sure increased their already huge production budget for this movie. Once you are out on the ground in rural areas in Oklahoma you will need to cover a lot of ground and have several shoots going on at one time across large areas.

 Drone operators were used alot during the making of this movie. They have really made diagnosing storms and getting better views of everything on earth a major component in new tech, sound, and video these days.

Movie Soundtrack

You also have the soundtrack for this film which was a huge part of the production of this film and how it captured the emotion of each scene throughout the movie.

Featuring music from a wide variety of musical artists that go back to the 1990s. all the way to brand new songs released by Luke Combs and Miranda Lambert just before the movie's release. 

It's too bad that Beyonce's new Album: Cowboy Carter" was just released this spring. The timing of having a cut from that would not be on this movie tracklist.  There would be a couple good ones to put in this movie,  Like "16 Carriages"

Check out the complete list of musical artists and songs from the list below that was used in the new film "Twisters"   

• “Ain’t No Love in Oklahoma” – Luke Combs

• “Ain’t in Kansas Anymore” – Miranda Lambert

• “Steal My Thunder” – Conner Smith (feat. Tucker Wetmore)

• “Feelin’ Country” – Thomas Rhett

• “The Cards I’ve Been Dealt” – Warren Zeiders

• “Never Left Me” – Megan Moroney

• “Out of Oklahoma” – Lainey Wilson

• “Hell or High Water” – Bailey Zimmerman

• “Dead End Road” – Jelly Roll

• “Country Classic” – Kane Brown

• “Tear Us Apart” – Sam Barber

• “Song While You’re Away” – Tyler Childers

• “Already Had It” – Tucker Wetmore

• “Chrome Cowgirl” – Leon Bridges

• “Death Wish Love” – Benson Boone

• “Boots Don’t” – Shania Twain & Breland

• “Stronger Than a Storm” – Dylan Gossett

• “Chasing the Wind” – Lanie Gardner

• “Leave the Light On” – Jelly Roll (feat. Alexandra Kay)

• “Before I Do” – Wyatt Flores & Jake Kohn

• “Caddo County” – The Red Clay Strays

• “Blackberry Wine” – Tanner Usrey

• “Too Easy” – Tanner Adell

• “Shake Shake (All Night Long)” – Mason Ramsey

• “New Loop” – Tyler Halverson

• “Touchdown” – Flatland Cavalry

• “Driving You Home” – Nolan Taylor

• “Wall of Death” – Wilderado, Ken Pomeroy, & James McAlister

• “(Ghost) Riders in the Sky” – Charley Crockett

That's A Wrap

By the sounds of everything we have heard from staff and personnel on this movie production, it took alot of coordination and expertise by audio-visual crews to pull off when on the ground in the sooner state.  Then to have to mix this all down and weave in and out of chaotic scenes to make sure dialog, loud storm noise, and soundtrack all work together in the theatre can be very tricky. 

You have to move that sound from left to right or up and down in the theater.  This is crucial in the sound production of this kind of movie. Especially in a movie like this where it can go from almost totally silent to an earth-pounding bang in seconds, giving the viewer an exciting experience that they will remember.  

Interviewing locals who have been through such an event and watching many tornado videos gave the producers Pete Chiappetta and Patrick Crowley a lot of first-hand accounts of how a tornado sounds in real life on the ground while you are experiencing it in real life. 

 it is the tornado season now this summer so be careful not to get too swept away by the storm if you go to the theatre to see Twister's "We Got Twins"

Feel free to check out Echotone Music's other sound and audio-related blogs Like the Ramsey Show