spinning-barrel sound.
That was sort of a signature sound,
along with the explosive shooting sound.
(Stone) To be fair,
that was inspired by production recordings
because the prop sounded that way,
but we had to enhance it.
(Anderson) It wasn't as good - rather thin.
(Stone) We put a little sound make-up on it.
Everybody loves that moment.
One of the filmmakers doesn't remember
the scene or the gun quite as fondly.
Cinematographer Donald McAlpine:
The Gatling gun fired directly
into the hand-held camera - held by me.
It was spewing flame and blast.
Coming out is pressurised air and
bits and pieces of who knows what.
Three grips would stand behind me
pushing forward against the blast.
It was like sticking your head
in an airplane engine.
With all the thousands of shots,
one mistake with a load and I'm dead.
The cameras were all set up,
looking at ajungle set up to explode.
I was on a tower 30 to 40 feet up.
At that height, I was blown from
one side of the tower to another
by an explosion that was a little too close.
There had been a language problem.
It never happened again, though,
I can tell you that! (laughs)
An important aspect of "Predator's"
sound design is its logic.
The sound is imaginative,
but it also reflects the design
of the Predator's technology.
(Stone) We've both done
a lot of science fiction movies.
Whenever we do a show,
we talk about that stuff.
Somehow the logic there was
more the result of problem solving
than something predetermined by a writer.
A script might say:
"He pulls out a medical kit
and fixes the hole in his leg. "
End of sentence.
Well, some poor prop person had to figure
out what to design and how to make it.
(Anderson) It opened up, didn't it?
It opened up and a section slid out.
(Stone) We decided that hydraulics
and pneumatics would be part of that
because there would be
this sense of air releasing,
and we could also use stuff that
sounded like crustacean plates.
Vanessa used pieces of plastic and
Samsonite to make his body feel organic.
Sometimes we're helping
to complete the logic of the story.
Part of what we do is to help
the sleight of hand of the director.
(Anderson) As I recall, we did a lot
of the Predator's screaming and yelling.
But that sort of trilling sound that he makes,
head dialogue editor
Norman Schwartz's people did.
(Stone) I think of it as a lobster purring.
It had a hard edge.
(Anderson) I'm pretty sure
it was done vocally by somebody.
Norman's forte was looping people,
working with actors.
(Stone) He was one of the first people
to specialise in that.
(Anderson) The scene where
the Predator takes his helmet off
and confronts Arnold mano a crustaceo,
those sounds were from us.
They were animals of some sort.
(Stone) And when he's dying later,
and gurgling,
we worked on those vocals, also.
We were crossing our disciplines.
It wasn't conscious or deliberate,
itjust evolved this way.
(McAlpine) We were a long way
from the processing lab
and there would be long delays
in getting our dailies back.
I'd shoot down the middle
and achieve the effects in the lab.
That means shooting
at a conventional exposure.
The lab's a wonderful tool. It should be used
to enhance, but not as a recovery tool.
The idea was to make the jungle a threat.
To enhance the threat,
the greens look more black.
We used a metallic blue cast
to kill much of the green.
According to McAlpine, because
"Predator" already employs blue,
the night scenes do not have
the same stark blue tint
that can be seen in other Hollywood movies.
When the pig attacks...
(McAlpine) We used an arc light
swinging in a crane.
We used the maximum exposure
to make sure the information registered,
then took it down in the lab.
One crew member would be