
Show Notes
Episode 123: Vickie Sampson – Dialogue, Detail, and the Art of Sound In this episode of The Filmumentaries Podcast, I speak with sound editor, dialogue and ADR supervisor, and filmmaker Vickie Sampson. Vickie’s career began in the early 1970s, and she’s since built up a mighty list of credits including Romancing the Stone, The River, Tank Girl, The Fifth Element, Ordinary People, and Return of the Jedi. She’s also the daughter of the trailblazing Kay Rose – the first woman to win an Oscar for sound editing. We discuss: Growing up surrounded by film and sound Her hands-on experiences on shows like The Big Valley and The Rifleman The vital but often misunderstood role of dialogue and ADR editing What makes a great production sound handover (and how so many indies get it wrong!) ‘Temp love’ and the challenges of directors getting attached to scratch tracks Working with actors like Keanu Reeves, Meryl Streep and Sigourney Weaver Her time in London supervising ADR for Return of the Jedi – including a story about the reels being stolen from her car Why clean dialogue is the bedrock of a good film Her continued work as a director and teacher This one’s packed with stories, insights, and practical advice for anyone working in – or just obsessed with – film sound. 🎧 Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. 🔗 Mentioned in this episode: Skywalking Through Neverland Podcast – Episode 72 – More on Vickie’s Jedi reels story Simon Hayes' article on the sound of Wicked “A Letter from Your Sound Department” (available upon request or via Vickie’s site) Support the podcast: Grab some merch: filmumentaries.creator-spring.com Or support on Patreon for just $1 a month: patreon.com/jamiebenning
Follow me on social media: @filmumentaries on Threads, Instagram and Facebook
Filmumentaries Linktree
This podcast is completely independent and made possible by listener support. If you’d like to help me keep making these episodes, you can join my Patreon community here: https://patreon.com/jamiebenning
Watch more on YouTube: Check out the Filmumentaries YouTube channel for behind-the-scenes clips and extra content: https://youtube.com/filmumentaries
All my links
More from The Filmumentaries Podcast
John Knoll is Chief Creative Officer at ILM and visual effects supervisor on The Mandalorian and Grogu, the first time Mando and Grogu have been on a cinema screen. He describes two forces pulling against each other. It had to feel like it came from the same group of people who made the series, which meant keeping the handcrafted approach — puppets, creatures in rubber masks, motion control miniatures, stop motion.
This one's a bit different. It's shorter, and it's about a film that doesn't exist yet. Christopher Jacobsen is an actor and filmmaker, and full disclosure, the brother of one of my good friends. He's trying to get a documentary made about Daragh O'Malley, who played Sergeant Patrick Harper in Sharpe.
Sean England has been at Skywalker Sound since 1993. He didn't arrive as a foley artist. He came in on the technical side, in the machine room and the transfer department, back when everything went to analog tape and film was spliced on a Kem. He calls those years his film school. He watched sound get made from one end of a picture to the other, then became a foley recordist, then a mixer, then went through the glass and became the artist.
Ep 154 — Wolf Kahler — Colonel Dietrich in Raiders of the Lost Ark
Brad Fiedel wrote one of the most recognisable pieces of music in film history, and he did it on a drum machine, a sequencer and a keyboard chained together with a computer ribbon cable, before MIDI was really a thing. The famous lurch in the rhythm is him hitting a button by hand and deciding the wobble was better than the fix. Years later Henry Mancini rang up wanting to record it with a big band, and the man writing the lead sheet couldn't work out the time signature.