Lekha Rathnakumar has some regular filmi visitors these days. Director Bhagyaraj was a regular to the Lekha Sonotone Studio during the making of his Pudhiya Varpugal recently. Starring son Shanthnoo, the film is almost complete. The father-son duo spent a lot of time with Lekha getting the sound recordings for the film from Lekha’s huge library of pre-recorded background scores for every type of situation from love to horror.
And recently Lingusamy came visiting, evincing interest in some action sounds. Now, encouraged by all this interest from Kollywood, Lekha is headed for Hollywood soon. We ask him why? “In two weeks I am planning a trip to Hollywood to record special effects sounds.” So whats special about this? Aren’t such sounds already available with the sound enginners in Kollywood who use them to denote sounds like birds twittering, punches, eerie horror wailing, vessels falling, bullets popping, guns blazing or shoes going tappity tap? Explains Lekha, “Yes such sound effects are available but they are limited. For example, there are standard sounds used for a punch or a bullet whizzing or a person thrown on the ground. In Hollywood there are about ten thousand variations of sounds for any one action. Since a lot of action films are made in Kollywood, I am going to upgrade the action sounds and bring back this huge variety of pre-recorded foleys so that Kollywood directors may have a lot more choice for action films.”
That’s not all. Lekha was recently in Sofia Bulgaria, recording sounds from a 180 piece live orchestra with 60 chorus singers. Composer Gregor Norholz and sound engineer Gerhart Frei assisted in this venture. All this is available at his Sonotone studio for use in films, thus bringing down the cost of live recordings locally. Lekha adds, “When director Mahendran visited me recently, he agreed that this quick time borrowing of sounds for a fee was the future of background music in Kollywood.” Now that’s sweet music to Lekha’s ears we’re sure!
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