OU Professor Brings Years Of Hollywood Experience To Students

Deanne Stein, News 9

NORMAN -- Some Oklahoma students are feeling the glitz and glam of Hollywood movie making without leaving the state. They are in charge of the sound effects for not one but two movies being made right now.

It's all thanks to their professor, Kini Kay, who is bringing his years of film experience from Los Angeles to his classroom in Norman.

"I love sound," he said. "The sound goes into your ears and into your soul."

To say Kay is passionate about sound is an understatement. He spent 20 years in Los Angeles putting sound into movies.

"George Lucus said sound is 50 percent of the movie, some say 51 percent," Kay said. "Sound creates a façade of real life. Once you get every detail of the sound correct, then the audience can suspend belief and take in the story."

Once he started a family, though, Kay returned to Oklahoma, bringing his knowledge to his students at the University of Oklahoma, where he too was once a student.

"Just to share it and to watch these kids grow and learn and dig in and do it, it's really rewarding," said Kay.

With his connections in Hollywood, Kay has given his students real experience. They are working on two films, The Shattering and Shades II. The students re-create each scene from a sound studio set up on campus.

"If sound isn't there, then people notice but if it is there, they're watching a movie," said Jonathan Freeman, one of Kay's students.

Kay says for every frame of film there can be up to a thousand tracks of sound, every footstep, every prop an actor holds and the list goes on and on.

"Sound can guide the movie in the story," he said. "It helps smooth it out, it helps tell the story and it does it in such a subtle way, most people don't realize their being told a story within a story with the sound."

"I think Kini Kay has really done well at opening our mind to the magic of sound and how you can really tell a story and have fun with what you do," said Freeman. 

The Shattering and Shades II are in post-production right now. But the students will receive movies credits for both.

Read more about Kini Kay and his movie credits.