John McClain knows a thing or two about sound.  For one thing, he's the owner and lead sound designer/mixer at The Dog and Pony Show in Las Vegas, Nevada (https://www.dogandponystudios.net/).  For another, he won a Grammy for his work with the late, great George Carlin, and an Emmy for his work with HBO on the series 24/7, his work with PBS on the show Outdoor Nevada and his mix of the documentary African Americans: The Las Vegas Experience.   If that's not enough, he teaches a class in Tech for voice talent through the Voice Actors Studio -  https://www.thevoiceactorstudio.com/ - owned by Melissa Moats (https://www.ladyluckvoiceovers.com/ - another fantastic voice talent in Vegas) and another course on Sound for Film at UNLV.

The first part of our discussion was a fascinating trip through a bunch of topics, such as:

• What he teaches students who take his Sound for Film course
• How music can completely change the tone of a piece of film
• Why sound needs to be paid attention to
• How evolution has shaped our understanding of sound
• How voice talent can use silence to their advantage
• Why marketers and advertisers are starting to pay attention to good sound design
• Some examples of sound design - such as casino "win tunes" for machines
• The laws about manipulation using sound in casino gaming (there actually are some!)
• What music notes are used more often for the sound in casino games and why
• How it's the wild west in advertising when it comes to sound
• How to use compelling sound in advertising

John's podcast, VO Inertia can be found at https://anchor.fm/voinertia
Dog and Pony Show can be found on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/DogandPonyStudios/
and on Twitter at @DnPSound

This episode was very skillfully made to sound beautiful by the talented Humberto Franco (http://www.humbertofranco.com/).

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