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EESTI ELU reedel, 24. septembril 2021 — Friday, September 24, 2021
Nr. 38
Professional Spotlight: Luke Dante, one of the sound effect wizards behind PAW Patrol Vincent Teetsov
English-language supplement to the Estonian weekly “EESTI ELU” Tartu College Publications Founding Chairman: Elmar Tampõld Editor: Laas Leivat 3 Madison Avenue, Toronto, ON M5R 2S2 T: 416-733-4550 • F: 416-733-0944 • E-mail: editor@eestielu.ca Digital: www.eestielu.ca
Russian elections, so predictable With 98% of the ballots counted, the United Russia party had won nearly 50% of the vote, with its nearest rival, the Russian Communist Party garnering 20%, leaving all others far behind. For their consistent dominance in the Russian State Duma, this is a 4% decrease from the last elections for the party. However United Russia will still have more than two thirds of the seats in the 450 lower house of parliament giving them the uncontested power of pushing through legislation without support from the other parties. Most important, United Russia has been and will be slavishly obedient to Vladimir Putin’s political agenda, even though he does not officially belong to the party. Once again, Putin’s most strident critics were barred from running and monitors allege numerous cases of ballot stuff ing and forced voting. For the first time since 1993, election observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) were shut out from observing the elec tions. But the independent vote monitoring group Golos, which the Russian government has classified as “a foreign agent” tracked over 4,500 election violations. Golos claimed to have received numerous reports from individuals who were be ing forced by employers to vote as well as allegations of elec toral fraud. The State Duma has without hesitation approved any bill, budget or political item that Putin has proposed. Western governments, international ob servers and independent Rus sian observers have all main tained that the parliamentary vote has been rigged from the start. Putin accordingly dis tanced himself from any cam paigns and avoided any show of support for favourites. Opposition candidates were barred. Aleksey Navalny sup porters and independents throughout Russia were subject to intimidation, arrest and smear campaigns. In a spring survey the Levada Centre polling organiza tion concluded that United Russia only had a 27% popu larity rating among the public. Why then did it once again win
a ‘supermajority’? The electoral process ensures a pro-Putin win. Half of the Duma’s seats are filled by direct elections. But each voter makes a second choice picking one of 14 parties to send another candidate to the Duma. This is known as picking from a ‘party list’. Ballots cast for parties that drew less than five percent of the vote – the minimum needed for winning any seats in the Duma – are redistributed and counted in favour of the largest faction which is the Kremlincozy United Russia party, despite its low polling recently. But only four of these parties have any numerical relevancy and aren’t tiny, marginal group ings – United Russia and three others, all of whom have played a perfunctory role as an opposi tion, camouflaged as political plurality. The second largest and oldest of all the parties is the Communist Party, led by Gennady Zyuganov and sup ported mainly by elderly voters who are nostalgic about their Communist youth. The next largest is the oddly named Liberal Party whose ideology espouses a far-right nationalism. Its leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky, is anti-Semitic, has urged the Kremlin to use nuclear weapons in its fight against Chechen separatists, to re-pos sess Alaska and the Baltic states and annex Finland and Poland. It’s said that his deranged suggestions are a deliberate effort to make Putin appear as a thoughtful, stable leader. The third party of the three that are to appear as an authen tic opposition is a nominally socialist A Just Russia party. It merged with Patriots for Truth, a nationalist grouping that was involved in fighting in Ukraine, claiming thereafter that they had killed “lots and lots” of people. Although Putin’s popularity has dropped from a past high of over 80%, he still remains at a 61% approval rating among Russians who credit him with standing up to the West and restoring national pride. He is able to tap into the resentment about the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian empire. Russia, according to most in ternational observers, is steadily moving towards an autocracy. This seeming aversion to de
If you have kids in your family or kids of your own, you will very likely be acquainted with the rescue operations of Ryder and the dogs of PAW Patrol. You will also certainly have seen these heroic animated characters on mer chandise all over. Action figures, backpacks, lunchbox es, posters. But none of this would have the same magni tude if it weren’t for the hit animated TV show that it’s all sourced from. And with all of the whoosh ing, running, engines, sirens, and more, the thrill factor of this show is dependent on its sound! Together with his studio colleagues, Luke Dante, an American-Canadian with Esto nian and Puerto Rican heritage, is on the case to add sounds like these. How did he get involved? Dante was born in the United States, on Staten Island, New York, to an Estonian-Canadian mother and an American father of Puerto Rican origin. After spending his first few years in the US, in 2002, his family moved to Oakville, Ontario, where family members of theirs were living. After finishing high school, he was inspired by his family to take a creative path and study Media Arts at Sheridan College. Initially, Dante wanted to do video editing because that was his father’s career and the tools were there all around him. However, due to the love of music his parents instilled in him, he combined his interests and gravitated towards sound post-production. After graduation, he inter viewed for an internship at Spence-Thomas Audio Post, a studio in downtown Toronto. He says, “When I was just starting out, it all sort of fell into my lap... I’ve been lucky to be there for five years now. I was able to take the skills that I learned in school for live action [videos], and apply them to the cartoon world, which is something I had never thought of doing in my life.” From the get-go, he was working on PAW Patrol and it’s been a constant roll-out of mocracy currently may be more as a result of emerging from a Boris Yeltsin decade of democ racy felt by most as a decade of national humiliation and de struction of living standards. Putin is credited with reversing both. With these elections, and constitutional changes that were passed this year, Putin’s long evity as Russia’s ruler is guaranteed for an extended period. But analysts say the election’s most important message is one of apathy and inertia that simply hides the growing split between the public and the political elite. LAAS LEIVAT
episodes since. The studio is active in the production at several different stages. The first is the recording of dialogue with voice actors, who range from kids to adults. They come into the studio with the director, before the studio cuts up the dialogue audio and sends it to the animators. Using a Leica reel – what Dante calls “a moving storyboard” that gives an idea of timing – the animators can construct the episode. Once the animation is complete, it’s sent back to Spence-Thomas Audio Post, who create and refine a layer of sound effects and also clean up all of the dialogue. Music is created by the studio Voodoo Highway, which is then edited for the show by music editor Kyle Peters. When he started his job, Dante’s primary work was add ing in the sound of footsteps. I asked about how difficult it was to realistically simulate the walking of characters seen in the show. “When they’re running, it’s something different than when they’re creeping around on grass... All of these individual steps were treated like drum samples, and you put them into a sampler. Then I could use the keyboard and go through the show [to add the sounds]...” Dante had worked with instru mental beats in high school and college, but it was a new challenge to use software like Native Instruments to match character movements, showing how much an audio producer has to understand the nature of sounds. Replicating a series of animated shorts with dinosaur footsteps was also particularly difficult. Over the years, Dante has added foley (i.e. naturally occurring) sounds and helping with dialogue to his role, dis covering how sounds vary from show to show. For some pro grams, like PAW Patrol, sound effects can be comedic and “cartoony”, such as the classic slide whistle when a character falls, or the clatter of bowling pins when a collision happens. Other projects, like Elinor Wonders Why, require more naturalistic sounds to convey specific actions or emotions to viewers. The studio’s sound ef fects supervisor, Tim Muirhead, ensures that these worlds are kept separate. With the studio having reached season eight of PAW Patrol, they’ve hit their stride now. Dante loves how he can make something of an “audio painting” in his job with each episode; and indeed, the audio really makes the story come alive. It’s a studio environment with lots of fellowship and encouragement: he’s hung out with voice actors like Ron Pardo, who voices Mayor Humdinger, ringleader of the Kitten Catastrophe Crew and
Photo used with permission from Luke Dante.
the villain of PAW Patrol. His work has also brought child hood memories full circle, get ting the chance to work with the creators of Zoboomafoo on their latest show Wild Kratts. It’s an encouraging, driven studio team – led by owner and recording mixer Richard Spence-Thomas – which Dante is very grateful for. The company was actually founded as a film mixing studio in 1967 by the sound engineer Patrick Spence-Thomas. It was in the 90s that the Canadian toy company Spin Master sought out the studio to record dubs for an English version of the anime show Bakugan Battle Brawlers. This project is what led to PAW Patrol. Dante’s favourite project be yond this show has been Alma’s Way, created by the Sesame Street actress Sonia Manzano. Dante was thrilled to work on a show that connects to the Puerto Rican culture in New York City, which represents half of his own background. Bolstering his work in sound is his love of music. Through music, he’s made strong con nections to his maternal Esto nian background, attending seven ETHNO music camps and spending summers in Tartu in between semesters at Sheri dan College. All of this indi cates a broader passion for all things sound. At the end of May 2020, for the sound production in PAW Patrol, Luke Dante was among seven of his colleagues to win awards at the Canadian Screen Awards in the category of Best Sound – Animation. In this way, he’s also carrying on a very Canadian tradition within animation, that studios like Nelvana are also part of. When he’s able to watch these shows and see the final product, he says “It fills me with joy to know that it’s going to make kids happy. There’s really no greater reward.” ••• Keep your eyes peeled for Alma’s Way, which will be premiering on PBS Kids on October 4th; and of course, PAW Patrol, which can be seen on TVO Kids. And don’t forget to listen closely to the sound effects!
