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Hey, everybody, welcome to Car Stories.
This is some King and Amelia Hartford.
Joining us today is Peter Brown.
He has been the supervising sound editor for the Fast and Furious franchise. It's Tokyo Drift.
Yeah, I mean a big part of why we love cars is the way it sounds. It's the voice of
the car. Yeah, it's the voice of the character.
Peter himself is going out there recording the cars on a Dino on the street, getting microphones all over from the engine bay and the cab to the exhaust. Like
we get in some crazy detailed conversation about what that process looks like in his hunt for very specific sounding cars, and.
A lot of you know, car guys will not let a Hollywood production come and use their car. They will
let Peter, you know. And this passion is infectious.
It's really cool to see someone who wasn't necessarily into cars before joining Tokyo Drift in the Fast and Furious franchise to what they've grown to love. Because everyone who
gets into cars finds their lane upon intent, so it's really cool to hear what he was so.
Passionate about, speaking of following your lane. I love Peter's
ethos about knowing yourself and what you believe in and what your passion is and not worry about other people.
And it's almost so simple and he applies it to his sound work. And without further ado.
We'd love to introduce to you Peter Brown.
So we're here with Peter Brown Sound. What would your
title be? Peter?
I usually introduce myself as a sound guy, but I'm a supervising sound editor, so I work with a team of folks to put the sound into motion pictures and we have to do every sound that you hear except for the music, so the dialogue, the sound effects, the folly if you've heard of that, which is where individual sounds are reproduced in a studio for the film, and sound design explosions, horse whinnies, creatures sounds, horse.
Weenies, whinnies, whennies and footsteps and horses weenies had sound, was like, that's a different kind of film. So when
you say sound design, you actually make some of the sounds, like you create it from scratch.
Well sounds sounds are invisible, so they're kind of hard to quantify, but they usually come organically through a microphone, like we're making sounds here, and then through the glory of machines and technology, you can manipulate those sounds, make them go backwards, speed them up, slow them down, combine them with other sounds. And sound design is a somewhat
new term, but it encompasses all of that, and it could be everything from making the doth rocky language in Game of Thrones to making the sounds of the undersea world of Atlantis, things that have never been heard before.
But are you made of things that have been recorded before or things that are synthesized completely from scratch in a computer.
Have you always been into sound growing up?
Yeah, I listened to a lot of radio when I was a kid. I think that was the I'm not
old enough to have just had radio as entertainment, so I definitely watched my television as well. I do recall
a number of things, you know, that were only available.
I'm from western New York, so it was not in any of the big cities, and there were things that would come on the radio that were just kind of amazing to me, like Doctor Demento. I don't know if
that hits your generation at all, but it was a weird radio show that this guy had out on the West Coast and covered all different genres of music and novelty songs, but also told a lot of history of sound.
And then the BBC did a series based on Douglas Adams books called The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Yeah,
it's had television shows, it's had movies, but for me, nothing compares to what the BBC Radiophonic Studio did. Their
sound effects and the stuff they created there was fantastic.
So you know, I spent a lot of a lot of time listening to weird things. It wasn't my main focus,
but yeah, I think I've always been into sound.
That's so interesting because when I was younger, like the acting is what stood out to me, And I'm sure there's different things that stand out to different people, but for you being the sound, was there a certain point where you're like, this is what I am passionate about pursuing and doing.
I would say that that didn't come into my life until probably my early twenties, when I was in grad school.
I'm from Rochester, New York, the land of eastman Kodak, where my dad was an electrochemist and so he had the rare privilege to be able to bring home expired Super eight film. So I basically, as a kid, had
this rare opportunity to have free motion picture film and processing, which was sound free, by the way. But I developed
a passion for that, just shooting little films with my friends and cutting them together and learning how to work with film. So I knew before I went to college
that I wanted to go into filmmaking. I love that,
and I went to undergrad at a nice liberal arts school, where I found a wife and learned excellent cocktail conversation and had generally a fantastic time. But I knew that
I wanted to go out and do a trade. I
wanted to learn something concrete and specific. So I went
to grad school, came out here to the West Coast, and I had the dream. I think that a lot
of the other people who went there, we wanted to be the next John Singleton or Steven Spielberg or George Lucas wanted to be a writer, director, auteur kind of filmmaker.
And at USC you get to do a little bit of everything. You know, whatever you want to do. It's
going to be very long answer to a simple question I've had it very interesting.
Yeah.
So I learned pretty early on that if you wanted to make it in Hollywood, if you wanted to write your own destiny, it seemed like the very best thing to do was to be a writer, because that way you could generate things out of thin air, you could control the destiny, and if you were really persistent and super successful, you could eventually kick the door in and become a director. And I found out really early that
writing is pretty painful for me, and I think, you know, to be successful in life, you have to be very you have to have your ears and your eyes open to you know, the most important thing in your world.
You You've got to know who you are and what you're good at. If you know what your impressions are
when you're young, don't always match up with your with your propensities or your interests. And so I that I,
you know, I wasn't going to be a writer. I
did direct the documentary about one of my passions, which is free solo rock climbing, but that was a you know, that was a great process and the film did really well.
I did cinematography on another documentary I did. But anyway,
you know, I wore all those hats, and when I was just in my second year in school, there was an opportunity just for sound people they couldn't and this will be a theme in probably anybody who's ever made an independent film. You can find somebody to do everything,
but you just can't find that production sound guy. Or
everybody will work for free, but the production sound guy won't.
So what I realized in school, by the time I made it to my third year, I had kind of become the go to sound guy. Everybody else they still
wanted to do the writer director thing, or you know, had some other passion. There were very few people at
SC who had, you know, had a taste for sound because it's not glamorous, it's not easy, and it's super labor intensive, so it's very hard to fake. You can't
really phone in a good sound job. So I could
see that my talents the person I am, just matched up with the requirements for sound. And I came out
here from Rochester, I don't know, I didn't know anybody in town, so I knew I had to pay off these student loans by doing something. So it was something
that I was good at, and it was something that I saw that I could get employment with immediately.
So Pete, can you talk about how you got into the Fast and Furious movies, Like when did you start working on those the franchise?
I started working on Fast and Furious with Tokyo Drift, as a lot of us did. The string of events
went like my first job in the sound business, I worked at a place called the Creative Cafe for eight years and my boss, Steve hunter Flick, did a lot of films with Sally Menke, a great picture editor, and as I was kind of, you know, the errand boy, running around doing everything I can, trying to make the most of my opportunity, there was a picture assistant working for a Sally named Fred Raskin.
Fred. I know Fred, you know Freda. So it was
the editor for Better Luck Tomorrow and Fast and Furious, Tokyo Drift exactly now just Quentin Tarantino movies.
And my boss and Sally did Quentin Tarantino movies. So
as we kind of came up through the trenches, we you know, we'd see each other taking stuff back and forth or handing things off. He saw something in me,
and after Better Luck Tomorrow, when Annapolis happened. They needed
a sound guy, and God blessed Fred Raskin, but he insisted that that sound guy be me and the company that I eventually worked for. They threw Oscar winners at him,
they threw you know, really great sound folks at him, and he just stuck to his guns and said, nope, I want Peter Brown. So that opportunity opened a ton
of doors. You know, I really killed myself to do that.
But that was something funny that happened. At the first
preview of the movie, someone in the focus group mentioned how great the boxing sounds were. This never happens in
the focus groups. Nobody really ever talks about the sound,
and so Disney was super happy. The companies who's umbrella
I was working on it was super happy, and so that turned into, you know, a great relationship with the company that I work with now since that time. And
when we were doing the final mix on Annapolis, Justin came into the stage one day and he was really busy because he was like, you know, like a lot of directors, you know, you're only You're only as good as the last thing you've made. So that's the time
to strike the iron and get the next films going, and he came in and he was like, well, I've got three offers on the table. I don't really know
what I should do, and I don't remember what the first two were. It was, you know, film may film
be and Fast and Furious.
And I was just like, justin, you must do Fast and Furious.
Absolutely, and he's like, we'll see, Oh, that's so fun, and you know, sure enough, a few months later he was doing Fast and Furious.
Had you done many car films prior to that?
No, But as a sound guy, I knew that if I was going to do anything of substance, anything you know, worthwhile, you kind of need to do a science fiction film, a war film, or a racing film. It's not entirely
exclusive set, but those are the types of films where you can really sink your teeth in.
Were you into cars prior to Tokyo.
Drift, I'm sorry to admit no, not really.
So you had a lot of fun learning about the different engines and the different sounds of them, so much fun.
And you're totally right about the education thing. I mean,
one of the one of the best things about life, or one of the things I think that keeps you alive is just curiosity and learning.
I always say the same thing. If I'm not learning,
then I need to reevaluate things, because that's what keeps me engaged.
Interested and what makes documentaries so great to work on. Yeah,
but here was a situation where there was a whole world of things that I knew nothing about and was able to just throw myself into it. And it was
a great time to do it because La was alive with people drifting and so you know, suddenly, you know, my vocabulary was one jay z RB twenty four. All
these you know, letters and numbers and things that I didn't know, and you know, our job is to augment the story in the film, and cars are a fantastic opportunity to you know, be an extension of the characters in the film. So I had to learn about all
these different cars and figure out, you know, what they were and what would be correct. Very often, you know,
the studeo seems to be kind of relaxed about what you use. They kind of think all these things exist
in libraries, can't you just use that? But one of
my favorite parts of the process is going out and finding the right material, the organic, original piece and then bringing that into the studio, so I had to learn about all these cars and stuff that really didn't exist in libraries at all. And so I recorded, you know,
two forty s x's, three fifty z's, all the cars in there. And I think I even I recorded what
is still my favorite car, which was the Fulcon Motorsports RX seven, which we used for Hans car.
That is beautiful. That erodary is your favorite sounding car
on your first car project, ad.
I mean even I listened to a lot of cars.
I cut in a lot of cars. Nothing sounds like
this engine.
It is such a beast.
And what I brought along to take a listen to is the best recording of that engine. And indeed it
died either during this recording moment or moments afterwards.
What do you mean it died, I mean it died.
The engine died. Oh anybody? This is why nobody wants
to let the Fast and Furious crew borrow their cars, because it's notorious.
I guess for people who don't know a rotary, I'm probably not the best to explain it because I haven't had my hands on one yet. But they're also known
as Dorito's and it's essentially a cameless engine. You have
this Dorrito kind of creating revolutions internally, that's creating combustion.
It's just a different a different style of an engine.
I'm not doing it justice at all. Rotaries are notorious
for that blop blop sound.
Opposed to the piston sound, which sounds like a sewing machine.
Yeah, I've never heard so. Yeah, that's a perfect way been.
Down opposed to you know, rotary right spinning again.
And I think what broke on this thing was the tip of one of those corners of the Dorito. Something
went wrong in that.
Here's the definition. The Winkle engine is a type of
internal combustion engine using an eccentric rotary design to confront pressure into rotating motion.
I like Darden, Yeah, yeah, okay, So it's like a Dorito spinning.
Yeah, and then intake goes in the rotation, crazy the compression, and then it goes out the exhaust.
Well, let's listen to this, bad boy, I want to hear it.
So we put Mike's in the engine apartment, we put Mike's on the exhaust pipe. We put microphones inside the
car so that we have a whole variety of perspectives of the car, and no matter what gets thrown at us on the film, we can reproduce it. If we're
having the driver's POV, we've got the perspective. If we
want to feature the blowoff valve on the turbo, we've got a mic right next to that, and so we can isolate that from all the rest of the sounds.
You know, it seems so obvious, but that's not something that I would think of. Is usually when I'm recording,
it's like, okay, microphone by the exhaust. But to put
one in the engine ban and then also in the cab of the car, I mean, I guess, yeah, you need those different sounds.
This is an exterior perspective. So in addition to having
all the mics on the cars, we'll be lined up along the racetrack or the runway, one person after the other.
So one person will get the car starting up, and then the next person gets the car going by as it's in second gear, and then the next person gets the shift from second to third, and then the next person you might get the shift from.
Third to fourth.
So this one is getting the car further down, further down the track, but you'll get to hear this performance.
All these microphones are recording the same performance of the car, and you'll get a chance to hear the differences between them.
Wow, that's a good sound.
It is, okay, So why is the RX seven special to me? There's definitely some of it which comes from
the first time you'd do something. This was the first
car film that I did. When we were putting the
mix together, it was just so it was so loud.
It was really hard to get pieces to read. You know,
I don't think we knew what We don't know what we know now about how to balance some of those sounds, but never had any problem getting that to cut through.
And the way some combination of the amount of horsepower in that car and the way the rev limitter hits is just it has the element that we are always asked for in film sound, which is the director will always come in with some difficult spot and say, okay the sound for this, and I want an iconic, I want a signature sound. So this was like my first
signature sound. It's something that I think you could play.
It's you know, it's my lightsaber. You could play it
for anybody anywhere who knows a thing or two about cars, and they'll be like, hey, that's that's Hans RX seven from Tokyo Drift.
Very unique sound for sure.
Can we hear another perspective of the road re engine?
Yeah, this is closer to the start of the launch here.
So this is still the RX seven. We're now listening
from a different here.
You'll hear, you know, just a really really nice, rich recording and the type of you know sound that you hear in multiple places in Tokyo Drift.
M God, I love cars.
That that sounds like that sequence at the stoplight with the exchanging of the numbers, and they're like.
It brings you back, like the smell of your girlfriend's.
Perfume donuting around the girls that recording that's that Yeah, wow, there you go. But it just it's it's it was
on loop, like as we spent around.
There's definitely you know, there's other pieces in there. So
this is a tailpipe mic from the same performance, but this is attached to the car, so you don't get any of the perspective change. And this would have also
been used in that in that scene.
M hm. Iconic one of a kind.
Yeah, Typically, when I'm recording my cars, it's for YouTube, and I want to show the audience what you know, how a modification can change the sound of a vehicle.
That sounds really cool.
Yeah, I like the sound coming from a tailpipe the best, unless it's like a supercharger or something turbo. You want
that microphone in the engine bay. But I find that
when I'm recording, most of it is from behind the car, so people can really get that that raw tailpipe exhaust sound.
And yeah, every little modification on a car seems to change how that sounds.
I also I feel the same way about tailpipes. That's
to me, where the signature is. Yeah, with accents from
the or the supercharger totally, And that modding process, even though I don't understand it, is very important to me because if I get, you know, a car, you know, just from the manufacturer generally and especially nowadays, it doesn't really sound like much because what I'm interested in in a car is the power of the engine, the sound and the character of it. And what car manufacturers are
interested in is that the car is silent and is a nice ride.
So the non muffled version is what.
You like, right, and which is what we all like.
And I don't like I don't like to cheat because the fans are important. But in Fast nine, for example,
you're driving a Supra and we went and recorded that Supra.
It was a brand new Supra, so they often do product placements, and it sounded like nothing. It's just it
was a nice, quiet car.
So we might have put a three fifty in there, really.
Because I thought that was appropriate for your character, and it had a little bit of the rev limitter hit.
I wanted to I wanted to harken back to that car.
So that was a moment where took some artistic license and said, look this this is not going the It's not going to cut through the sound of the rest of the film, but Hans driving it, so it needs to sound like a Han car.
If you had called me, I could have got you Supra that had some modified sound.
The problem was and I would have called you, but it was it was plague years right. It was like
a day or so after Tom Hanks got COVID and we realized in Hollywood it was real.
Is it possible to hear the other car sounds if you just do one of each of the few you.
Brought, Well, we can listen to the Chevy. But here's
another example of cheating. This is Hans' car in Fast
and Furious four. What the production car was was a
nineteen sixty seven Chevy C ten, but it had pipes up the side of it like a diesel. So if
you're confused, is that driving reverse? That's that's when you
do your one eighty and then you're driving in reverse.
So that is a Frankenstein car. Dom was in what
a Grand National There was a semi like a Cummings Diesel semi, and you and Tigo were in these pickup trucks I think are used an LS three, probably from one of Dennis's trophy trucks for Tigos. But this one
is this is a doppelganger Frankenstein car where I wanted it to sound like a diesel because that's what looked like.
But getting good diesel recordings is really difficult.
Why is it difficult to record diesels?
You know? The it's a similar problem with with a
lot of cars is that car manufacturers are just getting really good at this, and so engines are getting more and more efficient with diesels in my experience, and I don't exactly know how they're made. Most diesels these days
are turbos and the turbo you know, is very efficient.
It's taking those.
Exhaust gases and turning it back into you know, forcing air into the engine and power, and it's it to me, it just sounds like a hair dryer, just a lot of air. We recorded Banks's diesel Dragstert and it just
you know, it just sounds like.
That sounds so good, but I understand it's also not the sound you're looking for.
Well, it's just when mixed in with music and other things, it's kind of like white noise.
Do you lose the sound of the engine.
Yeah, And so from my ears, I like old, you know, crappy fifties diesels stuff where that aren't all turbocharged and they really have a you know, fun sounds to them.
Or you know a diesel that's you know, just doesn't is not so efficient that it just sounds like a big hair dryer. And they're really hard to come by,
sure because you know most of those are you know, getting older, or they're not. They're built as workhorses, they're
not built as race cars.
Well, if I'm happy to help you find one, if you want to record one and need help sourcing one.
There's probably somebody somewhere. Oh yeah, until you listeners out there.
If you've got an old diesel that you want recorded, give me a holler. But back to the C ten,
you know that there's all kinds of cars mixed in there.
When you really get on it, I actually cut dragstre engines, so it goes from a diesel to a V eight.
And then when you spin around that wine that you hear that you know that that thing is backing up.
I think that's from a Honda.
Accord, because there's there's a few there's a range of Japanese cars, maybe late eighties or early nineties that really have a very characteristic backup gear that has.
That high sound.
And so when I need to say instantly to the audience, backing up fast, I use that, even though it makes no logical sense to any car people. But so far
nobody's complained about it. But now that I've let my
pants down, I expect the hate mail is going to start pouring in.
But that's the title sound designer. You have to design
these sounds to tell the story too. I mean the
idea of make you know, finding the right sound to go to explain or to showcase going into reverse, especially if the car doesn't or the the engine that's supposed to be in the car doesn't make it. You have
to create that. You have to design that. It's pretty cool.
Who would have known it's a Honda Chord. Huh yeah, right,
let's keep these clips, So let's do another car.
This might be my second favorite. I don't know why
you're always involved somehow in these cars. But in Fast
and Furious five is a brief moment where Han is driving through the city in a Ford Maverick. So part
of it is the engine, part of it is what we do with recording, part of it is editing, but a huge part of it is the performance of the driver.
If the driver knows film and understands storytelling, they can do miraculous things with the car. They can make it speak.
I don't drive these cars. I have professionals do it.
Like we worked with Kenji last week over at Grety, and this is a guy who just understands story and he understands what we're looking for and how to make the car perform in something that's going to sound good on film.
Kenji Somino as the president of Gretty. He actually built
Brian's Supra and Fast and Furious one.
So a problem that I have with professional drivers, with someone like Chris Forresburg, is you have to do a little cajoling to get them at times to drive poorly because they want to do things perfect by the book and they'll hit every shift and everything will be perfect, and that I want that. That's great to have, but
I don't just want that. I want to miss the shift.
I want the clutch to grind. I want because the
people who are driving the cars in these movies are being shot at, or they're being punched, or they're going over a jump or things. So there's the more weird
character that I can get into a car, the better.
So I've recorded a lot of skids over the years, different tires, different driving. But the Maverick that Han drives
in Fast five was probably one of maybe my second favorite car ever because there was something wrong with it.
I don't know what was wrong.
I think the axle mount was broken, and so when you would start to drift with this thing or stop fast, it would sound like this.
You were talking about the shuttering when it was breaking.
That chattering skid is fantastic. It's box office gold. I've
never had a car that's made those sounds.
That's not a stock motor for the Maverick. What car
was that was that? The act Maverick that I don't
I don't know. I guess it was probably an LS three,
but maybe not because it's so beat up. But that's
a it's a vintage car.
So there was a few models of the Americ and I think it was like a two point six Leader that was like the fastest GT model. So I think
that that's completely a modify. That's that's a swap. That
has to be something else that's like a.
V six or it didn't sound like an LS to me.
It did not. What's a Ford? Most likely it's a
Ford motor.
Yeah, right, I would hope.
While we're talking about great entrance, I think we should take a listen to the Fugazi.
Yes, faguzzi. Sorry, the fugazi means fake in it, right,
fuguzzi fu gou fish plus a z. Fuguzi. I'm JSL
what's that?
Japanese is a second language.
Yeah, So the figuzi is the name of this too forty Z this nineteen seventy three dots in two forty Z and I named it Figuzi because goofish is a blowfish that if you do not prepare it properly, it will kill you. So the you know the concept of
a race car being dangerous if you don't do the right prep it will kill you as well. And then
I added the Z at the end, so feguzi right.
And I tested it with a bunch of like six year olds, going, can you say faguzi? And they're like, Faguzi, Foguzi.
I go, well, okay, that's easy to say. So I
like to name all my cars, like to give it like a character, you know, and a personality.
Yeah.
One of the things that I need to do my job well relies on the kindness of strangers. And Sung
has been a very kind stranger lately by hooking me up with people with fantastic cars. And I happen to
have a need for an RB twenty six engine, which I think is very hard to find but really has a signature sound, and it just so happens that Sung has one of these cars.
So this is exterior prospect that sounds so nice, Like.
I'm grin and cheek to cheek. Those just sounds so
good to me.
Wow, And that's how I like to record cars out in the world, working with gravity, working with mistakes, working with grit in the road, and working with the character of a driver. But another way to do it is
on a dino. If you've ever had your car smogged,
it's where you stick a car in a garage on a big, gigantic roller. It's strapped down so it doesn't
go anywhere, and then you can just drive it up to its top speed without having to deal with you know, and.
I'm assuming you said this is a roller dino, whereas sometimes if you have a high performance vehicle, they'll just you take off the wheels and you strap it straight to the hub of the car.
Right, this is a roller dino. Okay, this is a
tailpipe sitting by the dino, but it's not going anywhere.
And you will hear the whine of the barrel the drum at the end of this dynamometer run.
Yeah, I hear that.
I'm with you. I like it on the street, and.
I'm really excited to get this whole record together because we've got MIC's on the turbos in the engine, and it'll be fun to hear how those sound. I haven't
mastered it all yet, but I can already tell from this that it's going to be a really nice set.
Have you recorded much evs?
Very little? Yeah, we have.
I didn't record it, but we have the EV one in the library and for many years that. I think
that was the first electric vehicle that's used a lot, But from what I can understand, the variation in them is not much. They all sound very similar. However, if
you know anybody who does that, whatever the racing is, formula e, formula e, I need to meet those people, because those sound different.
They sound pretty awesome.
Yeah, I feel like most manufacturers now are trying to have their unique EV sound.
I worked with Nissan on their VSP, their vehicle sound for pedestrians for belief when they came out with that.
Oh really, they hired us for a little while to come up with a sound for driving, for backing up.
So how did you create that sound?
That was really all sound design. I really like the
backup beeps they were made out of. They're made from
like a woodfinch, I think, so instead of just being this really annoying sound, it was more bird oriented.
Huh so that was you.
It was something that I worked on for Nissan USA.
That is so cool.
Well, it's less cool because it came down to a bake off between what the Nissan USA sound was for the Leaf and what the Nissan Japanese sound was. And
let me let me make you guess which one they went with Japan.
Yeah, so now I hear that and I'm like, hmmm, could have been a wood finch. But that's pretty awesome.
They reached out to you.
They were They were super awesome. I really I like
that company.
That's pretty cool.
And the disappointing thing about it is is that the industry wants there to be one sound so anyone who's hard of hearing knows immediately okay, that's an electric vehicle.
I didn't think about that.
Who wants this industry standards?
So whatever, you know, governing body controls these things. It's
much better to have one to rule them all. But
come on, we're humans. The branding things should have.
Not all cars sound the same, So exactly would TV sound the same? Right?
Why don't you put a full exterior speaker array and you can make your EV sound like whatever you want you can make it sound like a Camaro.
You can make it so Tesla honking is like uh parting noises or something like that.
Change the seems like it's a great future there.
You can make it sound like an RX seven that sad day. But yeah, it's interesting because it sounds like.
You love imperfection in the sounds of the cars because then it allows you to create a character and tell the story and then break it up and match the actor or the character that's playing, you know, or driving that.
Car in life. Though, I feel like people love imperfection,
you know, even like older cars, like I'll use I'm using another Corvette example, We'll use anything like there'll be a particular year that has the incorrect stitching or maybe the leather was notorious for tearing somewhere in particular, and then at the time people like, oh, that's the one that you know had a defect of some sort. Then
fifty years go by and they're like, wow, that's the one that had that famous defect. And people love having
that unique character on something. And same with acting, you
know the take where it didn't go perfectly, where you had that moment where something happened where you can improv It's almost like a blessing because you have something that was unintended that ended up creating this unique not character as in a person, but like a piece of something that wasn't intended that keeps it raw and organic.
Pete, I want to ask this question earlier. You said,
you know, to be successful, you have to know who you are. Right and now, as a older man that
has traveled this road a little longer than the younger folks, if you were to give your younger self advice on some shortcuts to find that, how did you discover or how did you find who you are during your journey of your life? And what advice would you give to
your younger self. Boy, that's a tough question.
It's a really tough question because I feel successful and I feel blessed, and you know, I feel like most of the reason that that happened was not really because of something that I fought for or did. It's because
I had the greatest parents in the world. I mean,
I just I grew up in a home filled with love and was told to, you know, surround yourself with the best people possible, and you can do anything that you want.
And you know, I don't.
Care what you are, just go and be you. That's
I think that's the best way. You know, the best
roads to success are often things that you have no control over. You might be born, you know, unbelievably beautiful
and attractive, and it just opens all these doors for you. Yeah,
so that's a not useful answer.
Be born beautiful and attractive and.
Have great parents.
Yeah, great parents, great parents and trumps all that stuff. Sure,
sure you know. I've got two kids, one, you know,
nineteen and eighteen, and the I feel like the main advice I give them is just to listen, you know, listen to your heart or just know yourself, because everything falls into place if you can keep from lying to yourself, which is so easy to do, or or you know, let somebody else's goal be your goal, or look at somebody else where. Envy might be driving you, but I
just try to tell them to just really take a take a second to think about what it is you enjoy doing who you know, what process makes you feel more like yourself, and pursue that.
Well.
The one thing I noticed about you because I you know, when I meet people that are success fall that our joy to be around and a joy to work with and collaborate with, and I'm looking for traits to take from them and learn from them. Right, And one thing
I noticed about you over the years since we've met, which is like sixteen years ago now right, it's almost two decades. Think about that, is that every time I
meet you where I see you, it's like you just started this job, Like you're so excited about it, like the passion has never dwinduled. Pete, Like, I don't know
if you like noticed that about yourself, but it's obvious that you love what you do and it's like a kid in a candy store and it's infectious it is and you and you know, for the people listening, because you know, I think if I were to talk to my younger self and go, like, you know, you know, are what are the secrets to making it? And it's
almost it's simple, but they're hard to do, you know.
And it's like the one thing the reason I ask you this question. I asked you that question, was you know,
to be able to share, like, you know, the secrets of your success. And it's something that is very very
like prominent with you is that you love what you do, you know, and it's very obvious and hearing your origin story of you've loved it since you discovered it in film school, you know, at USC. So it really is
like a privilege to be around your Pete very kind, it is so and thus that's why you're working on some of the biggest movies in Hollywood. So it all correlates.
You know.
That was the best time I've had in radio in a long time. Thanks time.
Well, Thank you Peter Brown for coming to talk with us and you know, sharing your story. It was a
real privilege and treat to sit down with you and learn a lot about you.
I had a great time. Thank you so much for
bringing me in here.
About this episode
Peter Brown, supervising sound editor for Fast & Furious (starting with Tokyo Drift), breaks down how movie car sound is built—from street recordings with microphones in engine bays and cabins to studio sound design and mixing. He explains why he gravitated to sound in grad school, how a key connection got him into the franchise, and why he loves “signature” noises like the Hans RX-7 rotary. Brown also discusses “cheating” with sound-alike swaps, recording challenges (especially diesels and EVs), and the role of imperfect, characterful driving in making cars feel alive on screen.
Original notes
It's true - we are rebroadcasting the debut episode of Car Stories! Not only do Sung and Emelia have demanding schedules, but they're also working hard to bring you video episodes of Car Stories starting next week - so follow @CarStoriesPodcast on YouTube and stay tuned because new episodes of Car Stories will be back soon!
And in case you missed it the first time or want to hear it again, check out this episode with accomplished sound designer, Peter Brown.
Sung and Emelia talk to Peter about the journey that brought him into the world of sound design and made him one of the most sought after and highly respected Hollywood "sound guys". Peter shares his expertise and gives us a behind the scenes look (and listen) into the recording and creation of the Fast and Furious car sounds we all love.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Car Stories with Sung Kang and Emelia Hartford
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