It’s No Lie: ‘Pinocchio’ Sound Designer, Supervisor Scott Martin Gershin Designed a Brilliant Sound Palette For Its Wooden Hero

Audiences knew Oscar-winning director Guillermo Del Toro would deliver his own visually compelling spin of Carlo Collodi’s The Adventure of Pinocchio. Yet, few had any idea the resulting film would be so stunning, so heartfelt, so emotional. Using state-of-the-art stop motion animation technology, Del Toro fashioned his own Pinocchio roughly follows the original story, but he sets it within 1930s Fascist Italy, evolving the story into a decidedly political territory eschewed by the classic Disney adaptation. At the heart of Del Toro’s film, though, remains Pinocchio’s journey of discovery of love and the meaning of humanity.

Naturally, the crafts of Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio stand unparalleled as with most of his projects. The intricate production design steals the eye as Del Toro’s wooden puppet navigates his wondrous settings. Alexandre Desplat’s Golden Globe-nominated score and songs (for “Ciao Papa”) support the narrative with lovely melodies that enhance the rare emotional moments near-impossibly generated from wooden puppets. Viewers feel fully immersed in this world that Del Toro created along with his expert team of below-the-line crafts persons, including sound designer/supervisor Scott Martin Gershin.

Approaching the world of Pinocchio, Gershin needed to replicate the sounds of Pinocchio traversing this intricately detailed world. Of course he could not use single pieces of wood to replicate the necessary sounds. Instead, he leveraged all sorts of wooden objects, including Lincoln logs and 50 pounds of Curly Maple, Brazilian Rosewood guitar wood, to provide different timbres used throughout the film.

“I think the concept, originally, with Pinocchio early on was that it’s jittery, it’s creaky, it’s squeaky. It looks like if you breathe on it, it would just fall over. Then little by little, as the show progresses, you start getting away from that personality, and now he starts becoming a thing. It becomes a character who you really fall in love with,” Gershin said. “He stops becoming foreign and alien and becomes more organic. There are a couple of areas where we go back and remind people, yes, he’s a puppet, but the whole point is hoping that the audience eventually no longer sees him as a piece of wood.”

Here, in an interview with Awards Daily, Gershin dives into the process he followed to create the sounds of Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio. He talks about differentiating between the various wooden objects of the film from Pinocchio’s movements to a pair of wooden shoes. He also reveals the collaborative process involved in working directly with Del Toro. Finally, he gives us an understanding of the complexities in providing sound design for a musical featuring wooden puppets.

Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio streams exclusively on Netflix.

Awards Daily: What were some of your initial concepts when you started working on the project? 

Scott Martin Gershin: When I first approach a film, I start with the story and work to identify the story arc of the film as well as the sub arcs or I like to call them phrases. Such as when Geppetto creates the character Pinocchio and the journey that Pinocchio goes on, as he is introduced to the complex and dangerous world, in which he was created in. I had to be sensitive to the growth and the evolution of that character. And make sure the sounds that I chose helped support and propel the story.

I started looking at classic vintage puppets to possibly utilize those sounds, but as the animation evolved, the type of wood they are made from, wasn’t going to support the feel of what I needed him to sound like. The wood was too dense and hard sounding. I needed to utilize types of wood that sounded fragile and loose. Especially when he learns how to move for the first time. Like a newborn colt, he had to have a certain fragility to his sound, then as he quickly evolved from a monster to the character, Pinocchio, we start to lose the fragility of his movements. Because there was a lot of wood to his sound, I felt that using just wood wasn’t going to work. So I started adding in wood and metal creaks and squeaks to add variety to his sound. I also used breaking walnuts when he snapped his joints. There are eight different elements to his sound that I push, pulled and manipulated in any given moment to create the vocabulary of Pinocchio’s movements and sonic expression.

Awards Daily: Did you find that those initial ideas shifted as the film progressed?

Scott Martin Gershin: Yes, I started working with the foley artist Dan O’Connell, we recorded a lot and I mean a lot of different elements on the foley stage. I also recorded a bunch of sounds separately and combined and manipulated these different elements, to create what would work in any given moment that best supported the subtleties and movements that occurred within Pinocchio.  Early on, I had this idea to use guitar wood because of its tonality, so I reached out to a guitar company called PRS Guitars and asked if I could have their scraps. They ended up sending me fifty pounds of different types of wood. They definitely had a pitch and tone to them, so I had to use them strategically, so as not to get lost against the music. But overall, it had to sound like a single sound, not a bunch of different elements, but a simplistic sound that didn’t get in the way, but supported the character in subtle and complex ways. To stop hearing it as sounds and start believing in the actual character. In the end, you shouldn’t notice any of it, you should just start relating to the character in the same way you forget he is a created puppet in stop motion and relate to him as a real character.

Awards Daily: How are you differentiating between the various wooden objects and characters within the film? Pinocchio clearly sounds different than Carlo’s wooden shoes, for example.

Scott Martin Gershin: For Geppetto and Carlos’ shoes, we did go with a wood clog. We wanted to make that what people were used to hearing. When we went after the sound of Pinocchio, because he was made more of tree branches, more organic and less refined, we utilized different types of wood sounds that best supported the look and feel of what we were seeing from him. Also, the more traditional puppets that Spazzatura was controlling, we used little vintage puppets for that, but also introduced a lot of pulled string sounds and creaks. Again, we wanted to make sure that there was a certain lightness and jiggly-ness to them and not heavy wood clacks. Much more of the light wood sound was controlled by string. I was constantly experimenting to see what would work at any given moment, to make it feel like it fit that characters when you saw it. 

Awards Daily: How closely did Guillermo del Toro work with you on the sound design? Describe that collaborative process. 

Scott Martin Gershin: Guillermo and I have worked together for almost three decades, so we know each other’s tastes. He had a lot of confidence in me, to take my first approach of what would work best. We talked about a lot of conceptual ideas, initially, which I ran with and then came up with a bunch of different sounds. I then presented him with a lot of different combinations of what I thought would work and ended up iterating, based on the sounds I provided. A lot of those choices were based on what to play when, and what best supported the emotion of the moment, which was very important. It was less about the literal aspects of what you’ve seen and more about the emotive to try and support emotions that Pinocchio was facing.

In addition, each character has a lot of signature sounds, such as Count Volpe always having coins in his pocket and when he was being dramatic, we added tap shoes to his movement, but had to use it strategically so he wasn’t tapping throughout the movie. Same thing with Cricket, I wanted to give him his own sonic vocabulary and signature. Cricket had to be different sounding. We used crab and lobster shells to give him his own sound and dried up celery for his wings. 

I had a lot of opportunity to design the two sisters: Forest Sprite and Death. I used a complex chain and technique to create their voices, which were similar but different. I had this highbrow concept that since the Forest Sprite represented life, her voice had a prelap element into her words – representing a beginning and Death has a post treatment to her words representing the end. At the end of the day, they just needed to sound godly and have a “wow” factor to them. In Atmos it travels around the room in omni presence way. 

In other details, Death has sharp talons and snakes for her tail and Forest Sprite is made up of these little impish energy eyes that had an innocence to them. 

Awards Daily: What did you use to provide the sounds of the whale, plus the sounds needed inside the whale?

Scott Martin Gershin: The whale was a combination of different things. I have a great creature library that I have created over the decades. I was able to tap into some of that, but a lot of the personality of the Dogfish came from using my own voice, especially during the sequence when he was getting irritated and ready to sneeze. I manipulated my voice to add humanization to the Dogfish such as when he’s being tickled from inside and to give Dogfish his own unique sound and of course to make him a bit scary and cool. Lastly, Guillermo and I wanted Dogfish to have a calling card. I didn’t want to just rely on the low end because this could be viewed from a television or an iPad. It needed to be a sound that played well on platforms, not just theatrical subs. I noticed the character had dual blow holes that kept quivering at times, so I synced up to those quivers and added a giant horn – roar style sound, which I could use when he got irritated or attacked. Again, it adds another dimension to a character and lets the audience have that “oh shit” moment.

Awards Daily: Pinocchio is also a musical. How does that complicate the sound design?

Scott Martin Gershin: Alexandre Desplat did an amazing job on the music. The mix was a bit of a strategic tango (Jon Taylor mixed the dialogue and music; Frankie Montano mixed the FX, design, and foley) when the music would make a statement and then the sound design would make a statement. At any given moment, we were very cognizant of who is taking the lead and who is following as with the music and the sound design. We were constantly pushing and pulling both elements. If there was a great musical motif, then we would highlight that, followed by pushing the design to highlight a character or story moment. It was important to make sure we didn’t lose detail. While this is normal during the mix process, we really worked it. We wanted the sound to have the same complexity, variety and detail that you saw visually. Guillermo referred to it as sonic tango. 

Awards Daily: What was the biggest challenge for the Pinocchio sound design? 

Scott Martin Gershin: The biggest challenge was that there was nowhere to hide. Every sound had to have meaning and had to have a level of detail. Because Pinocchio has no production and everything is heard, the challenge was that you have to find the right and best sound at any given moment. It took a lot of time sorting through thousands and thousands of different sounds to make sure at any given moment that was the best choice and that it best supported either the emotion of character, event and the sensitivity of the scene.