Lend an ear for sound engineers. They don’t just mix soundtracks. They design and produce audio not heard in real life. Recall that ‘eeek, eeek, eeek’ sound in Psycho, or the ‘badum, badum, badum’ shark attack theme music in Jaws?

‘In Psycho, that sound was perfect. And Jaws. Both sounds manipulate you to enjoy the picture even more,’ explains Roy Clute, VP of operations and a partner at Wanted! Sound & Pictures, a 12,000-square-foot video and sound post house in downtown Toronto.

Wanted! combines video edit suites and sound mix studios to create a comprehensive post facility.

‘Up to now we have been one of those ‘best kept secrets.’ But now it is time to come out to the world,’ Clute says of the new-look facility. In all, the shop offers 16 audio theaters and video suites, including five audio mix theaters.

‘We have hi def, 5.1 surround [sound], and all these rooms in a one-stop shop,’ Clute explains.

On the video editing side, Wanted! has added a new Autodesk Flame and Smoke compositing/effects suite and an Avid Symphony Nitris system. And the facility is HD-ready, with new Sony decks.

Yet it’s the technicians behind the technology that layer video, audio and FX that really make the post facility, says Clute.

Wanted!’s video engineers include Flame and Smoke artist Lee Maund, Symphony Nitris editor Jasen Marks, an animation specialist, and Avid editor Miles Davren, who earned a Gemini for The Rick Mercer Show.

On the audio front, Wanted! has Mike Jones, whose sound mixing credits include Sarah Polley’s Away from Her and the Russell Crowe-starrer Tenderness, to be released this year.

Clute says his audio engineers do more than mix sound. They design it. ‘They take and analyze the scenes and create the proper sounds for them. They enhance the picture. That’s where the audio plays a major part,’ he explains.

Wanted!’s post credits also include the CBC/SRC series Magi-Nation, for which the shop technically advanced the show from leica reels to offline and online editing, audio editorial/FX and final mix.

Sound-wise, animation is especially challenging because there’s no original sound.

‘You have to make it up,’ Clute explains. ‘We’ll go to the folio room and make the sound effect. You have digital libraries, but the guys mostly make up their own sound. If someone is walking through a kitchen on tiles, you create the footsteps.’

Wanted!’s clientele covers the waterfront – from TV dramas and documentaries to broadcast specials and commercials, music videos and short films, and feature films, including the Disney feature The Wild.