King Soundworks
You might not know them, but you’ve certainly heard them. King Soundworks is regarded as the Navy SEALs of the entertainment industry providing the sound design for major feature films including 42, Battleship, Hancock and TV series like Friday Night Lights. Gregory King and his crew can do everything a sound person needs to do. Sound design, mix, field recording… you name it. They’ve even been known to stealthily hide in dark swamps waiting for the right frog to come along and record.
With a strong commitment to film tradition, obsession with technical innovation and an unrelenting need to achieve creative bliss, King Soundworks has emerged into the premium sound design, sound editing and sound mixing house for feature films, global television and other media forms. Additional projects include The Insider, Jane the Virgin, and The Long Road Home, among others.
King Soundworks has state-of-the-art facilities in Santa Monica, Burbank, and Van Nuys, with new stages coming on line in Beverly Hills and Santa Clarita in the coming months. The Beverly Hills stage is in partnership with Seth McFarlane’s Fuzzy Door Productions; King Soundworks is handling sound for season two of The Orville as well as the upcoming Cosmos: Possible Worlds with Neil deGrasse Tyson.
Hotchka’s Justin Moore had a chance to speak with Greg as they prepped to launch the Orville into space once again.
You started your company at 21 years old. Please tell us, how did you get started? Did you study sound design in college?
I started as an apprentice in Toronto when I was 19 years old. I learned under Alban Streeter and Nolan Roberts. They gave me the foundation for everything that followed. After working with them for a couple of years I started to get my own commissions and started my company not long after. Alban and Nolan had worked in England before coming to Canada, and had worked with some very renowned filmmakers. From them I was able to learn this fantastic breadth of experience in traditional film sound. It was 1986, so digital technologies were starting to appear for the first time which really grabbed my attention. I was in the fortunate position to be able to bridge the traditional way of doing film sound with the emerging digital technologies.
You have been the Sound Designer and/or Re-Recording Mixer on over 70 films including 42, The Highwaymen, Battleship, The Founder, Hancock, Friday Night Lights and The Insider. Were there any favorite and/or particularly challenging scenes for sound that stand out from these films and television series you have been a part of the making of?
I’m happy to say that there are many scenes that I feel that way about, picking one is hard so I’ll narrow it down to one movie and I’d say that it would be the overall work we did on Friday Night Lights. I just really like the overall feel of the sound in that film. The style seems widely imitated; I tend to hear it in many sports related films, documentaries and even commercials. The movie carried on in to a television show, of which we did the full run. So Friday Night Lights turned in a multi-year project, and my crew and I left nothing on the field with that one, so to speak.
Fox
Partnering with Seth McFarlane’s Fuzzy Door Productions, you are handling the sound for season two of The Orville, as well as the upcoming Cosmos: Possible Worlds with Neil deGrasse Tyson. Can you tell us more about these experiences?
Seth McFarlane is one of the most dynamic, multi-talented people in show business so to do work for him is very exciting. I was introduced to Seth by his producing partner Jason Clark who I have worked with many times, including the 2017 production The Long Road Home for Nat Geo. Seth’s schedule is incredibly busy and he’s also very involved in all the aspects of his productions. In order to make sure he could attend all the mixes, we brought the mixes to him. We converted a screening room into a mix room for sound, which was the perfect solution. It’s going very well and we love working with him and the team at Fuzzy Door.
Breaking into the film industry can be challenging. What has been the biggest hurdle in creating King Soundworks and what has attributed to making your company into a success?
We’ve always done highly customized work and have given the clients more than they’ve paid for. Being a boutique shop allows us to experiment and try out the newest technologies and methods, which has kept us on the leading edge as far as technology use. Very early on we made the decision to work with the people and on the projects that we really want to work on. This has resulted in some very long-term relationships and a loyalty that goes both ways between us and our clients. That is a plus side of being a more nimble operation; you can choose who to work with. As a result, virtually none of the sound companies in our marketplace that were in existence when I started this company in 1994 are still around – including some of the giants – and even the sound departments of some major studios. So being agile, innovative, and consistently producing high quality work has paid off in that regard.
What’s coming next for the team at King Soundworks?
On the feature film side we have The Highwaymen starring Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson about the men who hunted down and killed Bonnie and Clyde. We have The Intruder starring Dennis Quaid and Meet The Blacks 2 starring Mike Epps. We also worked on a documentary about social influencers called The American Meme.
For television we have season two of The Orville, Jane The Virgin, and Cosmos: Possible Worlds. We will also be doing the second season of Knightfall for The History Channel as well as two new series: In the Dark for CBS Television and George R.R. Martin’s Nightflyers for Universal SyFy channel.
Hotchka would like to thank Greg King for taking the time out of his very busy schedule to chat with us.
The Orville airs Thursdays at 9:00 PM on Fox.
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