I am proud to have worked with MGM Studios for the last 38 years as the audio designer for the logo that bears their name. Not that I was asked, mind you. I made this up as I went and didn't set out to change Leo or movie history or burst any bubbles, as you will see.

In 1981 I was struggling to create creature voices for the film POLTERGEIST, specifically the closet monster that steals Carol Ann and threatens her mom in the hallway. Here's that beast:

Taking a page from the Ben Burtt playbook, I set about recording all manner of wild animals to use as acoustic fodder that I would later manipulate into the other-worldly vocalizations needed. I found myself renting time with animal trainers at Steve Martin's (not related to the comedian) Working Wildlife in Acton, CA to capture sound from their big cats, including panthers, pumas, tigers and lions. After 8 hours of standing and waiting (and rolling a lot of blank 1/4" tape) I recorded promising material that would make its way into the beast voice that graces the final film.

However, before we got to that final mix (during an intervening temp mix for audience preview), I noticed that the music editor had placed the 'approved' MGM Lion roar sound fx on the logo at the head of our movie. This was an audio track that was recorded and copied, ad-nauseam, from its original optical sound recording made over 50 years ago. It had been passed down from movie to movie for generations and it showed. It sounded awful!

Remember, this was in the early days of Dolby Stereo and high fidelity sound tracks were on my mind (and many others). It's ability to provide a richer, wider range of aural experience began to show the flaws in traditional sound libraries and music recordings and this old shoe was really showing its age. Something needed to be done.

At that time Richard Anderson, Stephen Hunter Flick and I were attempting to set ourselves apart from the sound "pack" by dedicating ourselves to recording every sound in our films fresh and new. No tatty old optical sound would find its way into our movies. The light bulb went off. Having just recorded lions for the Closet Beast, and ignoring any sense of protocol and tradition, I saw an opportunity to rethink this iconic sound and bring it into modern times. For two days, I edited the best takes together to manufacture a new, improved (I thought) MGM lion roar and presented it to Steven Spielberg at our final mix. He loved it. Poltergeist would become the first film to introduce Leo with a new voice in almost 50 years. Months later the studio would ask me for the original print (made on 35mm magnetic film) and would make it the required audio master from then on, to be used on all future MGM film releases. That felt good.

Truth be told, and it needs to be, the MGM Lion, then and now, isn't exactly a lion. What I mean is, as I watched and listened to the original optical track, frame by frame, it became patently clear, having just recorded big cats, that Leo's voice couldn't be made completely from sounds made by the king of the jungle. I had learned the big cat vocabulary and discovered that lions, for all their ferocity, don't make the most terrifying sounds when showing the majestic, teeth bared open mouth seen in the logo. No matter how much editing I did, I could not make my lion roars sync up with what I was seeing. Something was wrong. I would discover that, in fact, the sound that one would hear when a lion roars is something more akin to (to my ears) a giant yawn. That awe inspiring, open mouthed gape is actually accompanied by something sounding more like a beast that wants to take a nap. This, I thought, isn't going to inspire movie audiences the world round. Not that lions are incapable of making terrifying noises, just not when doing what we see in the logo. I was in a pickle. I felt it was treason not to use lion sounds but they just didn't sound all that terrifying. So I substituted tiger roars. They just sounded bigger and more majestic. And that's the truth. And that's all I have to say about that.

In 1995 MGM, this time, came to me to "freshen up" the audio for the logo I had made in 1982 to commemorate their "Diamond Jubilee". We were just getting into the digital age and 5.1 audio was standard issue for movie sound tracks and my original was in stereo Left/Right format. So I recut the logo from the original materials that I had recorded for Poltergeist, literally frame for frame, using digital tools (my first rethink of the roar was cut on analog 35mm magnetic perforated film). Ron Bartlett would remix it in 5.1 from my re-edit to create a gorgeous sound that filled the theater (instead of just the center channel).

In 2006 I was creating (again!) creature voices for a Korean produced fantasy/action film called Dragon Wars. This time I had 20 or so creatures to design voices for. The panic set in. I knew I again needed a fresh audio palette to design these sounds from; the world had gone fully digital in the intervening years and I had new and never before seen or heard from creatures to design. Time to get back into the field for more recordings. Luckily the director, Hyung-rae Shim, was good friends with the Curator of the Seoul Grand Park Zoo. He arranged for clearances for Mark Binder and I to have full access-all-area passes to record whenever and however we wanted.

We would spend a week in Seoul, trudging in and out of cages and sanctuaries capturing an extraordinary palette of wildlife, including big cats. But it was the big cats we were after. In our favor were slightly more lax rules regarding how we might approach the animals and how the trainers could work with them to get the sounds we needed (no animals were harmed nor abused, just teased). As you will see, in the videos below, the cages themselves were solid steel, allowing us to be safely within inches of the animals, unlike most traditional zoos where we are separated from them by large moats and chain link fence; anathema to good sound recording.

Here's some video of Mark and I recording the Tigers in Seoul:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ig86vzXIb7o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFhVWc9s2LY

These and many other wild animal recordings (at 24b 192kHz) would provide fodder for design and become the basis for the Imoogi and Buraki snake creatures I designed for Dragon Wars. (Dave Whitehead designed many of the other creatures in the film)

Two years later (2008), MGM came to me, again, to freshen up Leo yet one more time for their 75th Anniversary celebration where they were going to show off a new, improved visual logo for the studio. Boy did I have some great new raw materials to mine for this redesign! I used mostly tigers (and a small amount of lion) from the Dragon Wars recording, re-cutting the logo from raw materials. It sounded stunning.

So that's the story of the MGM Lions and Tigers (and no Bears)...oh my!