Pomann Sound mixer/sound designer Justin Kaupp shares his unique moment of inspiration that helped bring the new Apple TV+ series Duck & Goose to life.
Creatively, it’s been quite a ride to do the mix and original sound design on Apple TV+’s Duck & Goose as, July 8, they kick off their all-new summer shows for kids. The animated series, inspired by the New York Times bestselling books by Tad Hills, is about two best feathered friends, Duck and Goose, who don’t always see beak to beak.
With a target audience for pre-k and kindergarten, Duck & Goose had to be very, very purposeful with sound. Children at that age are easily distracted and very sensitive to color, sound, light and action, so we paid close attention to make sure the story was always the focal point.
Pomann Sound has a terrific reputation for sonic storytelling and finding creative solutions to any soundtrack. We’re known for our original sound design for the Nickelodeon/Disney Emmy Award-winning Doug, where we created imaginative Foley from mouth sounds with Fred Newman. Owner/Creative Director Bob Pomann has been an incredible collaborator and mentor. I’ve worked with him since the early aughts, starting as an intern.
Having grown up watching Doug, it’s a unique opportunity to be the Supervising Sound Editor on Duck & Goose. I’ve completed the mix and sound design for all 20+ episodes of Season 1. Eliott Taylor at PostWorks did the Atmos reform mix, and Titmouse is the animation production company.
Since Duck & Goose takes place outdoors, the show’s creators and producers were intent on keeping the environment natural, so the sound design is natural too. Our first challenge was to create a lush ambience that didn’t call too much attention to itself, but had to have character. We even focused on how sounds felt without ever reverting to traditional BOINGS, etc. Even if Duck tumbles drastically down a big hill it needs to sound fun — not abrasive or painful.
To further create the character, we built custom ambiences with specific nature sounds using recordings of birds, chirps, critters, branches, wind gusts. From there we built layers and layers. We’d sometimes add distant owl calls or a crow caw under a line, to subtly enhance the emotion of a moment. You might not notice it, but you feel it.
Some of my favorite sounds are the wing flaps. Duck, Goose and Bluebird are constantly flapping their wings. The show not only uses wing flaps for movement and flying/jumping, but also for when the characters are startled, excited or clapping.
Early on, we realized this was going to be an integral part of the sound design and would need a lot of variation. Since we couldn’t record real wings in flight, Bob Pomann purchased real feathers to find the proper texture and sent me Foley. We even bought all sorts — pheasants, parrots — and set them up in the studio to record wing Foley. We layered it in with other bird recordings and created our own bird SFX library. How does a bird flap slow, then fast, then quick?
I experimented with all sorts of cloth like pillow, felt, suede, an old pillow case, but nothing felt right. Then, one night, I ended up finding the perfect sound accidentally while changing my daughter’s diaper. A little fussy, she grabbed her diaper (it was clean) and started shaking it really fast. That was it!
The next day I took a couple of diapers to the studio, and recorded about two hours of flapping a diaper in various speeds. It had the correct weight, and a little waxy sound from the soft plastic. Since there are three different winged characters — sometimes all flapping at the same time — they needed to sound different. Duck is a little more rambunctious and energetic, so I used a thicker overnight diaper. Goose is a little shy and soft-spoken, so I used a lighter pull-up diaper. And Bluebird is much smaller and lightweight, so I ended up using just a diaper pad for her sound.
We did the show remotely, including a weekly spotting session with the creatives. But the work-from-home trend is the biggest change in the business this last decade, even beginning pre-COVID. The easy exchange of files, anytime-anywhere, has helped us develop great relationships with clients all over the world because they truly trust us. They know they don’t have to be onsite because no matter what, they’re confident we will make the surround mix simply amazing.
I always had a passion to create cool, original sound effects, but it was the practical and technical knowledge that built my expertise in sound design. Editing dialog and voiceovers taught me to edit incredibly fast, fix glitches, combine syllables to make new sentences, properly EQ, see the focus in a sound, and know when to use that shiny new effect processor – and when not to. Once you understand the science behind sound and how it can be manipulated, you can literally cut a snippet of spoken word and transform it into a gigantic thunderclap with minimal tools. My advice to anyone starting out is to learn everything, and don’t to skip over the small stuff. Treat every project as if it’s the biggest, so when the biggest really arrives you are a fine-tuned oiled machine.
Justin Kaupp is a Mixer/Sound Designer at Pomann Sound, a full service, fully remote audio-post production facility located in New York City, since 1984.
