Sound artist Alan Howarth (Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Halloween 2–6) has spent decades developing a philosophy of sound design rooted in storytelling, restraint, and musicality. In this video, the legendary collaborator of director John Carpenter shares his core approach to designing sound for film — from asking the right questions before you cut a single effect, to knowing when you've finally found the one.
0:00 - "What're you lookin' at?"
For Howarth, every sound decision begins with three questions: What are you looking at? What is this for? And what part of the story does this sound effect serve? Whether a scene calls for dread or joy, those answers should shape everything, down to whether a door hinge squeaks or swings smooth.
1:50 - The kitchen sink problem
Good sound design, Howarth says, is usually a few things working well together, not 48 tracks of everything you have. "There should be some essence to these things," he says. That minimalist instinct is something he traces directly to John Carpenter: if a sound satisfies its purpose, you're done. "That's what I learned from John Carpenter – you just don't need a lot of that stuff. You don't need to be clever."
"That's what I learned from John Carpenter – you just don't need a lot of that stuff. You don't need to be clever."
3:26 - Never cut the same door twice
Sound effects should reflect what's happening emotionally, not just physically. The same door can close gently, normally, or as a slam – each one says something different. Cutting the same sound for an entire scene, Howarth says, is lazy. "Put a squeak on it. Do something. Give it variety. Be an artist."
4:08 - Sound FX are music
Howarth approaches sound design as a musician, and it shows. On the original Star Trek, he learned the hard way that sound effects tuned to the same key as Jerry Goldsmith's score would simply disappear into it — for Star Trek II, he started designing them off-key on purpose, using dissonance instead of consonance to make them cut through. Volume, envelope, and tonality aren't just technical considerations, they're compositional ones. "Sound effects is still music to me. Everything I do is very musical."
"Sound effects is still music to me. Everything I do is very musical."
5:30 - Art, tools, and decades
Technology changes; fundamentals don't. Whether you're writing with a pencil, a typewriter, or a computer, Howarth says, you still wrote a book. The tools are at the discretion of the artist, and the best one is usually whatever gets you to the work fastest. And one more detail worth knowing: sound effects have eras. A 1930s street sounds nothing like a modern one. Just as music has genres by decade, so does sound design.
If this conversation sparked something, the Alan Howarth Collection is the place to dig in. Curated from Howarth's personal archive and meticulously restored by the PSE Library Development team, it brings together original sound design alongside ambiences, Foley, weapons, machines, and more — all drawn from the films that shaped modern sound. As Howarth puts it: "These are sounds that are now classic. They're little nuggets of gold."