Mark Roberts has been a BBC natural history sound recordist for over 20 years. During that time he has explored some of the remotest parts of the planet. His career has taken him high into the Papua New Guinean rainforest canopy, deep underground inside Venezuelan mountains and even right into the heart of Indonesia’s volcanoes. He has been privileged to work with the world’s … [Read more...]
Dialogue on the move – panning in Gravity, Cars and Strange Days
When I saw/heard Gravity last year it set me of on an exploration of dialogue panning to such an extent that I experimented with some fairly extreme panning in the film I was working on at the time. My experiment proved to be, well, inconclusive at best. So I went back to Gravity to see just how the panning worked within the context of the film, then decided to look beyond it … [Read more...]
Kinokophone – Art & Field Recording
Kinokophone is an art collective with sound at it's heart, producing interesting and unique sound installations and listening experiences. Both Amanda Belantara and Jon Tipler were kind enough to spare some time to talk about their work currently taking place on both sides of the Atlantic. … [Read more...]
Spectral Analysis: Interview with Saki Kaskamanidis
Many thanks to Brad Dyck for contributing this interview. You can follow Brad on Twitter @Brad_Dyck BD: How did you get involved in game audio? SK: It all started back in 1995. I was in a band and our keyboard/synth player, Jeff Van Dyck, was working for EA. He was working on the soundtrack for NHL 96 and needed a guitarist to lay down all the riffs, so he hired me. … [Read more...]
Expectations of Noise
(This one fell through the cracks for our noise feature last month, we bring it to you now...better late than never. ;) SF) I’ve spent most of my engineering career (the last 13 years or so) doing my best to eradicate noise from my work. Working to tape as a music engineer I became well acquainted with noise gates and expanders (equipment I haven’t made any serious use of in … [Read more...]
Nightmares and Soundscapes: Implementation of Acoustic Ecology Related Sound Design Techniques to Better Terrify your Players
Guest Contribution by Dr Tom Garner This article addresses contemporary concepts regarding how we attune to sound within a fear context and discusses the potential impact of these ideas upon sound design, specifically with regards to evoking disorientation in survival horror computer games. Relevant theory is distilled to consider an ecological perspective of sound experience … [Read more...]