While set in the same fictional universe of Ridley Scott’s original offering, and sharing some of its key dramatic events, the director is clear in his intention that his latest film Prometheus is unrelated to the rest of the original franchise. There had been talk of a fifth Alien movie — with Scott reportedly committing to a sequel or prequel a decade ago — but it took 20th Century Fox to persuade the director to cast his unique vision of the origins and purpose of the Alien civilization, while also explaining the genesis of the enigmatic Space Jockey that forms a direct link to the original space explorers from 1979’s landmark motion picture. Sequel, prequel or neither, Prometheus is scheduled for release June 8 through 20th Century Fox.

In essence, the film (originally to be called Paradise) follows a team of scientists as they journey on the spaceship Prometheus to the distant planet of Erix to terraform the world. The crewmembers discover, however, that what they experience from the indigenous life forms is not just a threat to themselves, but to mankind. Prometheus takes advantage of new-generation sound technologies, while very much paying tribute to the original offering. As Michael Fassbender, who plays David, the artificial person in Prometheus, confirmed: “By the end of the third act, you start to realize there’s a DNA of the very first Alien, but none of the subsequent films,” with imagery inspired by its original conceptualist, H.R. Giger.

Working with elements coordinated by supervising sound editors Mark Stoeckinger and Victor Ennis from Soundelux, the intricate soundtrack was re-recorded at Fox’s John Ford Stage in West Los Angeles by Doug Hemphill (sound effects) and Ron Bartlett (dialogue and music). Creature sound design effects — of whichPrometheus features a wide range — were fashioned by Ann Scibelli, Alan Rankin and Harry Cohen. Other members of the sound crew included Foley mixers James Ashwill and Blake Collins; Foley editors Bob Beher, Bruce Tanis and Glenn T. Morgan; Sandy Buchanan handling the recording of computer voices; ADR engineer Derek Casari; ADR recordists Glen Gathard and James Hyde; ADR mixer Andy Stallabrass; dialogue editor Margit Pfeiffer; music editors Joseph Bonn and Del Spiva; and sound effects editor Tim Walston.

Continue reading at MPEG

[SFX Lab, the laboratory of sound effects, a place dedicated to experiment and explore sound libraries. The main goal is to hear what happens when sounds of a specific kind are combined, processed, and transformed in several ways.]

New chapter of the sfx lab, this time dedicated to explore high doses of resonance, with a quite special kind of sounds: bells and chimes.

These sounds are characterized because of their qualities regarding harmonics and detailed/subtle elements, so combining and processing them is always something interesting and very “musical”. I’m going to play with three different libraries, all of them full of elements that vary from the shortest and exotic, to pretty long recordings with beautiful/long resonant tails. The libraries used are the Bells and Animal Bells packages of Rabbit Ears Audio, plus the Chimes library Tim Prebble released at HISSandaROAR in the last year.

I’m going to do several quick experiments, trying to find different ways to process the recordings, and aiming to achieve different materials from the elements. There are so many things we can obtain from them, so as always we’re going to just experiment and listen. Remember this is not a tutorial or something to go into details regarding the tools. This series of articles are focused on listening to libraries and just playing with them.

We could use these elements to create a wide variety of sounds and layers which, alone or combined with other materials can generate sounds with a particular mood or emotional impact. Eerie atmospheres, nostalgic addons to the ambience, tension, mistery, wonderful drones! Resonant whooshes, magical powers and spells, extension elements for impacts, and lots of things more. They are also rich on tonalities, so the variations in resonance and dynamics can be very useful to give very musical touches to sounds and alter the timbre of designed sounds, in order to add more harmonics and details.

Bells

Let’s start with the big bells, from Rabbit Ears Audio’s sixth release, which includes bells fabricated in all kinds of material and recorded with several positions and performances. That approach creates a fascinating gallery of sounds, including recordings with heavy attack, along others which feature takes with long tails, perfect for stretching, freezing, shimmering, cloud making, and all kind of drone-atmosphere making techniques. Let’s explore that.

Click here to view the embedded video.

In the early days of the musique concrete and experimental/electroacoustic movements, there were two experiments that led pioneers to develop a new world of sounds, and more important, new ways to listen and transform sound materials. The first experiment, coined by Pierre Shaeffer and his research team at GRM was called “closed groove”, which was basically a way to loop sounds as much as you want, so it could be heard repeatedly over and over again. That repetition was connected to the reduced listening experience, where sound is valued as material, trying to avoid the real casualties of the recording and its meaning/context in the visual/contextual world.

As Michel Chion tells in the guide to sound objects, the second experiment was important to further developments regarding the form of the sound, specially the attack and its relation to the timbre of the sound materials. That one consisted on doing the closed groove technique with a fragment of a bell sound’s tail.”A sound like a flute” was the result.

Below is a video with some experiments inspired on that, using GRM Freeze to select specific fragments of a bell’s waveform, and then changing the pitch/repetitions to create variations of the drones and tones generated. Although it’s something you can do manually on an editor, the plugin offers more controls and does the looping/multiplication instantly. I also added a couple of plugins more (eq and doppler) to explore different variations. Let’s listen:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Although GRM Freeze is my favorite, there are also other alternatives and similar tools you may like to explore: Marc Lingk’s TimeFreezer, Michael Norris’ Spectral Freeze/Spectral Gate & Hold, ioplong’s flitchSplifter, and ndc’s Buffer Synth. Ableton Live users can find a freeze button on the default reverb, and also try M4L devices such as monolake’sGrain Freeze, beatwife’s creations, and ck’s m4l pack. Reaktor users checkout these ensembles: Twisted Tools effects (several of them come with freeze function) Fast FX (multi-fx, comes with the software), g-Transformer, Zero Kelvin,Travelizer FX, autoFreeze, and Freeeze. Even Reason users can have some fun with the hold option on the BV512 Vocoder. Anyway, sound freezing FTW!

Now let’s take another approach to the tails of the bells. This kind of material is pretty incredible for convolution process, so you can use the characteristics of the bell sounds and merge them with other sound. In this example I’m going to use the bells as Impulse Responses, inside Altiverb, which since its latest version allows to use WAVs as IRs in a very easy way. The plugin now allows to drag&drop any audio file directly and use it as an IR. Pure quick fun. Let’s take a look at that feature on this video and listen to different sounds being processed “inside” the bells:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Animal Bells

The second bell release from Rabbit Ears Audio is quite unique and interesting, since the wide variety of sounds performed by these bells are really dynamic and diverse. Recordist Michael Raphael, who crafted this fantastic package, explains it in a great way: “The materials include brass, bronze, common metals, wood, animal horns, and even some gourds. So just imagine: ding, clank, ring, twack, rattle, clunk, click, and who doesn’t love gourds?”. All those variations were recorded in different perspectives (close, medium, distant) and include a wide variety of materials. Each bell features an specific type of sounds and includes different takes, with details, movements and lots of great noises you’d like to use on wood/metal articulations, foley tasks and any kind of heavy layering of elements in order to build big structures and rattling metallic sounds.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I specially liked the textures you can obtain with these animal bells. It’s incredible to listen how the simplest variation can achieve lovely elements, textures, movements. When you process sounds which have been performed in such detailed way, processing gets more expressive and fun. Lots of surprises occur when you perform with those sounds in a sampler or something where you can manipulate the files with more expression. Let’s listen to quick experiments I did using Alchemy processing different sounds from the library:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Chimes

Click here to view the embedded video.

Let’s play with HISSandaROAR’s Chimes, which includes sounds with a lot of subtle details and harmonics. Tim Prebble recorded the sounds inside an ADR booth, so you can hear pretty detailed recordings, with lots of variations and even more fun: sounds where recorded at 192k, saying you can go extreme with the processes and stretch them in fantastic ways. For that exploration, I wanted to use some delay/reverb effects in order to listen to what happens when you multiply those harmonics or just extend their tails with echos and feedback manipulation. For that, I’m going to use a pretty crazy delay (which also gets pretty unique chorus/flanging/reverb effects) called ValhallaüberMod, developed by one of my favorite plugin makers: Sean Costello, owner at ValhallaDSP. Besides this fantastic delay, he has also developed two amazing algorithmic reverbs I encourage you to try. They’re just fantastic.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Torture Chamber

So, it’s time to torture these sounds in random ways. There’s a new tool you probably already know about, called Iris, developed by the masterminds at iZotope. Although it really deserves a dedicated review (I’ll share my thoughts in another post), I’ve been working with it since its launch and I’m in love with it. It’s perfect for torturing these bells and chimes, since there’s a wide variety of things you can obtain with it. Iris uses spectral analysis/processing to visualize and transform sounds, offering a spectrogram view where time, amplitude and frequency are showed in the same canvas. That gives you the opportunity of isolating, extracting, filtering and combining sounds based on their harmonic content and spectrum.

As any tool you can have these days, it’s just a different way to transform sound. Nothing to compare with, just a different option. There’re several samplers making impressive things since several years ago, but one thing is sure: there’s no instrument like Iris. It’s fresh, fun, and has a pretty extensive path for experimentation. It’s a fantastic tool to extend/explore timbre and sonic morphologies. Although it comes with a pretty nice library and optional add-ons, the game, as always, is more awesome when you use your own sounds. Experimenting with the stuff you already have, or with libraries like those mentioned in this post, is wonderful. A gift for the ears! Let’s listen:

Click here to view the embedded video.

[Rob Bridgett, audio director on Prototype 2 issues a rallying cry for the mixing of the audio discipline with the rest of the studio, and opening up the closed studio space to collaboration -- perhaps even suggesting a fundamental change in studio structure.]

Read more at Gamasutra

Featuring Rocksteady audio director Nick Arundel, and foley artist John Roesch and gun recording expert Bryan Watkins

Click here for the video

A collection of blog posts, and a special edition of the Game Audio Podcast, have been coordinated by Damian Kastbauer and David Nichols on the dense subject of racing game audio. The remarkably in-depth studies (which feature video examples) rip apart audio techniques for the racing genre, investigating subjects such as tire squeals, surface types, camera perspectives, and of course, the sounds of the engines themselves.

From the Lost Chocolate Blog;

These informal game sound studies aim to expose the technical side of game audio by making an assessment of current generation titles. The assessment is then used as a way to better understand the differences in approach, aesthetics, and progression of techniques across a small sample. By turning the focus onto emerging details that arise during the course of the study we are able to identify area’s of significance and interest that help communicate the current state of the art. These finding are then represented in a content-rich report that includes: videos, article links, and specialized interviews. The goal is to help raise awareness for the technical side of sound design and help in the understanding of what is often not very well represented in current literature.

Check out the study in all it’s glory at the following links:

Vroom Vroom – A Study of Sound in Racing Games ( Introductory article in Game Developer Magazine )

TrackTime Audio blog – Racing Game Sound Study

Lost Chocolate Blog – Racing Game Sound Study

Game Audio Podcast – Racing Game Sound Study (with guests Mike Caviezel, Mike de Belle and Tim Bartlett)

[Article written by Frank Bry about his new library Ultimate Destruction, a collection of+600 destruction sounds recorded over a five year period at 24-Bit 96kHz in a multitude of dirty, dusty, smelly, noisy, dangerous and physically grueling locations. Available at The Recordist]

The Idea

Where do I begin? This sound effects library has been in the making for over five years so I need to access my memory banks and see if I can remember some of the crazy sessions I did. But first, I want to share some of my thoughts on why I made this collection and the theory behind the madness.

Ever since I started in sound design I’ve always needed all kinds of crashes and general destruction source material. This kind of material is not easy to find and sometimes recording your own can be a challenge. There are some great CD library collections of destruction sounds but most of it is designed. While these work great for a simple “drop and play” audio situation when your in a time crunch and they sound wonderful when played by themselves, they often leave you to a situation that is just not quite right. What if you have a complex destruction scene in a film or need to create that incredible crash sequence in a video game? You need clean, high quality sound elements separated out that you can manipulate and process so it sounds like something you created, your signature sound. That is the idea behind Ultimate Destruction.

From My Mind To The Microphone

Some of the sessions for this collection were planned multi-microphone fiascos and others were just from being observant or being in the right place at the right time. When I was recording the crashes and other crazy stuff on my ranch I ran images and sequences through my mind of my favorite crash scenes from my favorite movies. I tried to remember what certain scenes sounded like and how the arrived at the final audio destination. One of the things I noticed in theses scenes is there are a lot of elements used to create them. How can I mentally break them down to the individual parts was my obsession during the recording process.

My goal was to record them as big as I could and as long as I could and this presented many challenges. The first was having the various objects needed to make the vibrations and second, the tools need to make the action happen. I’m always on the look out for stuff to smash. My garage is full of things like old TV monitors, computers, boxes of bricks, metal objects and other stupid stuff any sane person would dispose of. When I purchased my ranch it had a lot of junk laying around and I have kept it all and even found some things I never knew were there until recently. I have my tractor, long chains and cables and many farming tools to hit stuff with. OK, a good start. Time to begin recording.

Got Concrete?

After recording Ultimate Concrete SFX I had tons of cement block and sidewalk debris left over. I wanted to record long dumps and pours with the tractor but the loader bucket always made a multi-pitched metal tome when things fall out. I needed to solve this problem as the concrete dumps sounded like they were coming out of a metal container. I experimented with many types of padding inside the bucket and finally found the right combination of a couple of old rugs clamped and taped inside the bucket. This was no easy task since the weight of the concrete would sometimes pull the rugs off and they would fall to the ground with the debris. This did not effect the sound that much but is was a pain in my backside to put the whole dampening system back in place after each dump. It was enough I had to hand load the bucket each time so this was an extra step I wanted to do without.

The concrete still made some noise as it was falling out of the bucket so I carefully positioned the microphones so that sound was off axis and I tried to dump from as high a location as possible. I have a dirt ramp I built to drive the tractor up on and was able to dump the debris onto a concrete floor I found buried in a hillside that was from an old barn the burned down many years ago.

Cool! I Found a BIG Rusty Old Tool Box!

Just recently I found a old construction tool box that fits into the back of a pick up truck on a remote corner of my ranch. I pulled it out and dragged it to my foley pit and planned my next sessions with this lucky find. My goal in recording this metal box was to create source material that could be used for a variety of crash situations. From a car rolling down a hill to a large bus hanging off the edge of a cliff and falling over.

This tool box was full of old nails, tools, chains and other disgusting things so when it was moved it made all kinds of noises not just a hollow metal sound. Stuff was rattling around inside the box and I knew it would eventually all fall out so I only had a few takes to get that sound. The first thing I recorded was the rolling and tumbling down a hill. This did not go as planned at first because the box would not roll! It would just fall to the ground and stop even on a steep embankment. This was actually a good thing because I was able to kick it down the hill one or two revolutions at a time. I was able to digitally edit the take together for a full roll and still have the separate parts that can be timed to a sequence.

The next thing I recorded was pulling the box with a cable attached to my tractor. I had 75 feet of cable so the tractor was far enough away from the microphones that the engine sound is not there. I proceeded to yank the box up and down a steep dirt embankment and got some great stuff. Slowly the box began to empty itself and was now becoming lighter in weight that I was able to easily pull the box with a short cable against the dirt. I later added some metal pieces and then some glass windows for added effect.

No, You’re Not Tearing That Building Down, Are You?

When one of the auto dealerships moved out of their downtown location, the new owners scheduled the buildings for demolition. I kept an eye on the location as I drove by it on my trips to town. I finally noticed the big excavators and cranes in the parking lot next to the buildings. Soon they would be ripping the buildings apart, and I wanted to be there. I missed the first part of the tear down, but I eventually showed up and recorded the machine operators pulling some of the walls apart and separating the metal into piles. Wanting to be mobile, I used my MKH-8040ST rig on a boom pole. I was there at the right time. They had already pulled the roof off and the machines were inside the building behind the walls they were about to rip down. I was able to get up close (maybe too close for comfort) to the wall as they tore it apart and it fell over. I struck gold! I was so nervous and excited that I barely shot any video. The video I got was with my iPhone while I was holding the boom and positioned to flee if debris headed in my direction. This was a little dangerous I guess, but in the end, it all came out great. Thankfully I did not breathe any toxic dust.

The excavator operator came over to chat with me during the metal separation. He was more than happy to “perform” some cool metal mangling for me. Metal can make such unexpected sounds and this metal certainly did. As he shoved it around and slammed the excavator bucket into the pile, I recorded all sorts of nice big wrenching and squeaking sounds. Gold!

On another occasion, a house right up the road from my ranch was being destroyed, and I was able to get the final stages of that tear down. I recorded some wood crunches and cracks along with some metal roofing being rolled up for recycling. This was the same house where I recorded glass windows being broken for Ultimate Glass SFX.

Wood and Glass Make A Great Couple

I recorded some hard breaks, cracks and dumps using some old, slightly rotted lumber that I had laying around. After whacking them with a sledgehammer and breaking them to bits, I loaded them into the tractor bucket using the same dampening technique used with the concrete. I dropped them onto the ground and also onto the concrete floor. I had some alternate microphone recordings from Ultimate Wood SFX of plywood rips in my archive that I included in this collection.

Glass is a very difficult thing to record. It’s dangerous, loud, and messy. My goal this time, using all the left over debris from recording Ultimate Glass SFX, was to get some long glass debris sprays and dumps. After hand loading the glass into the tractor bucket (I always wear hand, eye, and hearing protection when working with glass), I was able to slowly pour the glass out. I had previously separated the large mirrors and thinner glass so each pour had a distinct size to it. Mirror glass is thicker and heavier while window glass tends to be much thinner. I tried short and long pours, but at times it did whatever the hell it wanted to do and it all fell out.

I had saved some broken window frames and was able to crunch and crack them in a stack using a MKH-8040 to record them. I also had some computer and TV debris set aside that contained glass pieces along with the plastic and metal portions. These made for some great debris movements that can be used to sweeten a crash scene. Some of the sounds are subtle, but they are still destruction.

Metal Madness . . . The Recycler!

I took a quick trip to the local metal recycling facility to ask them if they would allow me to record. They were super nice and loaned me a hard hat and said, “stay out of trouble.” The only interesting activity they had going on was some scrap aluminum bundling. This giant machine is belt fed with scraps of metal. After tumbling down the chute into the compactor, the scraps come out bundled in a fairly large size rectangular hunk of metal.

I was able to position the MKH-8040ST microphone just inside the top of the chute and get the pieces falling in and being mangled. The machine is powered by a large electric motor and hydraulics which produce a very loud whine and hum. Since the mic was just inside the chute, the motor noise was minimal. This machine was extremely loud when the metal was falling in. Since I had to wear a hard hat I could not wear headphones, only earplugs. Good thing I did not monitor the recording with headphones as I’m sure hearing damage would have occurred.

The sounds this machine made were awesome! Most of the time the belt would continuously feed hundreds of pieces of metal into the compactor so it sounded like one long, drawn out metal crash, perfect for sound design. The metal pieces were not that heavy so the resulting sound does not have much low frequency information, but when a larger aluminum chunk hit the side of the chute, it was great.

KABOOM!

I’ve always wanted to record explosions and while I was recording a few guns last year I had my chance to record some Tannerite. Explosions are not something you can record everyday. It takes some planning, a good location that allows this kind of very loud noise, and a very good rifle shot. Since I have the gear, all I needed was the above. It all came together after months of planning with the local gun shop. After recording multiple guns, it was time to set off the Tannerite. If you don’t know about Tannerite, it is two (legal) substances that when mixed together and hit with just the right projectile at just the right velocity, it goes BANG!

We brought along 25 half-pound canisters and planned how many we were going to tape together and set off. We started out with a few singles and doubles and then moved on to the big ones—up to five taped together. We set the canisters on tree stumps so they would not kick up too much dirt and debris. I recorded with all the microphones I had on the gun shoot placed at various locations in the gravel pit. I used a Sanken CSS-5, AT 835ST, MKH-416, PCM-D50 (96k), MKH-8040 and my MKH-8040ST microphone set at 24-bit 192kHz and 96kHz. I aimed the microphones in different directions and set them at different distances. I would guess the mics were anywhere from 30 meters to 50 meters away from the blasts.

I did not know what to expect. I knew they were going to be loud, but since we had just shot off some REALLY loud rifles, my perspective was totally messed up. Needless to say, they were LOUD. Your body feels the concussion but if you’re wearing hearing protection (like I was), they sound muffled. After we set off the first few smaller blasts it started to rain. I quickly grabbed all the gear scattered around the gravel pit and set it under the hatch of my car. It seemed like the rain was not going to stop so we called it a day, and I tore down the gear. Then as quick as it came in, the rain stopped. Since we were running out of time, I quickly got the MKH-8040ST and Sanken CSS-5 set up, and we recorded the remaining explosions.

I thought I was going to regret not setting up all the gear after the rain delay. After I returned to the studio and listened to all the takes, I found the best recordings were the MKH-8040ST. These microphones at 192k sound amazing. They record the full spectrum of the blast and when pitched down, live up to the hype.

It’s A Wrap

I recorded a many more sounds for this library and would love to detail it all out but this article would become a short novel. Head on over to my website and look at the photos from many of the sessions. Some of the sounds date back to a time when I was not documenting the sessions as I do now.

There are no heavily processed sound effects here (except the explosions), just the real life destruction action as it happened. Many of the tracks were recorded with multiple extended frequency response microphones at close, medium, and distant perspectives. Each category was recorded separately to give you, the sound designer, the freedom to layer and process each type of sound individually for the most creative options. I hope you get much use out of this collection and hope it works well and inspires you. If you use it, feel free to let me know where and how. I would love to hear your end results and am honored if you were able to use it in your sound designs.

One of the things I’ve learned over the many years recording sound effects is to be very observant. I’m almost too observant (it drives my wife crazy sometimes). I can get easily distracted driving around town or just hanging out in a public place. I’m always listening and looking for things to record. I was fortunate enough to be at the right place at the right time and get some unique, and maybe once in a lifetime, material. I thank my lucky stars I was not in the right place at the wrong time. As always, be safe and enjoy! -Frank

Click here to view the embedded video.

Kpow, the folks behind the audio design of 2011 hit LA Noire, have published an insightful analysis of the audio systems created in FMOD Designer and used in the game, illustrated by picture maps. The post also discusses how the team pursued the 1940′s aesthetic, and the care and attention used to construct the in-game  reverb definitions. The whole article can be viewed here on Kpow’s website.

This game was a massive undertaking. We put a lot of effort into making the audio detailed and realistic, with as much depth as we could.  As it was set in the 1940′s, we made sure everything was period specific, and sat well in the world.  All the interaction sounds were given texture and tactility, and made to sound “in the world”.  We used a lot of outboard gear to get that fat, rich, and occasionally old tube, broadcast equipment quality to many of the sound. We strived to provide a rich, varied and detailed audio representation of the world that was exciting and period specific, and we are incredibly happy with the result and the reception our work has garnered.

Creating The Sound For LA Noire

GDC Vault has published the presentation materials from GDC 2012 online for free. There is a great wealth of information from a wide section of the game audio community, starting with Darren Korb‘s excellent keynote speech on his experience of creating the audio for Bastion in a New York closet. Thanks to Kenneth Young for tipping via the #gameaudio hashtag on Twitter!

All free Audio Track sessions are listed and linked below for your convenience;

(Video)

Build That Wall: Creating the Audio for Bastion – Darren Korb

(Slides)

80,000 Lines, Three Lessons Learned - Ariel Gross

Audio Boot Camp - Scott Selfon, Garry Taylor, Jason Graves, Martin Stig Andersen, Alistair Hirst, Sergio Pimentel, John Byrd, Bernard Rodrigue, Mike Caviezel

Authoring Soundscapes with User Generated Content and Automatic Audio Classification - Jordi Janer

Digital Orchestration for the Video Game Composer - Fletcher Beasley

From Minsk to London: How to make a live orchestra production in Europe happen - Pierre Langer

How To Ship a Game With Voices In 10 Languages? …On the same day? …And Keep It Consistent? - Alexandre Piche

Journey vs Monaco: Music is Storytelling - Austin Wintory

Orchestral Recording at Abbey Road for Lord of the Rings: War in the North - Craig Duman, Inon Zur, John Kurlander

Racing Games: A Semi-Formal Sound Study - Damian Kastbauer

Real-time Sound Propagation in Video Games - Jean-Francois Guay

Spot the Difference: AAA vs Indie VO Techniques - Michael Csurics, David Gilbert

Squeeze Play: The State of Ady0 Cmprshn - Scott Selfon

The Art of Non-Music: Crime Shooter Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days - Mona Mur

The Dynamic Audio of Vessel - Leonard Paul

The Emotional Puppeteer: Uncovering the Musical Strings that Tie Our Hearts to Games - Marty O’Donnell, Brandi House

The Weight of the World: creating massive destruction audio for  Red Faction: Armageddon - Stephen Hodde

What We Learned About Practical Audio By Going To Disneyland - Dwight Okahara, Chris Olander

Game Audio Mix has posted a list of tips for optimal mixing for video games. The full list can be viewed on the Gameaudiomix website

Here are a few things that I lay awake thinking about last night, and in the hope that I may get a good night’s sleep tonight, unbothered by such thoughts, I wrote them down.

In no particular order…

1)      PLAN TO MIX

Planning is good, it is healthy, it let’s other people on the team know what you are about to do  AND it means you aren’t scrambling to get something unscheduled crammed into the dying light of a project. This is the most simple element, yet the easiest to forget and to get caught out by. Having some dedicated time built into the overall project schedule to sit down as close to the end of the project as possible, is the best chance you have of getting a final mix pass done on your game. Scheduling this time is simple, but requires some deft political manoeuvring, particularly if your team is not used to running things past a Beta date. Being open and up front with PM and Producer resources from as soon as you get involved on the project is the only way to get anything like this scheduled. If you are doing the mix out of house, or using contractors, this becomes more evident to the PM world, however, if you plan on doing it in-house, it can quickly become overlooked, so constant reminders to everyone on the team about the upcoming mix is usually required. We usually try to schedule a 3 week period after production Beta, called ‘Sound Beta’ in which we do nothing but a mix pass on the entire game. This isn’t plausible, or even necessary, for every game, but the amount of time you need is scalable, usually dependent on hours of game play, and complexity of game mechanics – even if you have a couple of days to set overall levels, this is more than you’d get through not planning.

 

Game Audio Mix

This article is the follow up to Part 1 of Ideas in Sound Design: Deprivation and Barriers. I’ve gathered a selection of media to discuss the ideas presented in the original article. I will focus on three films and one video game trailer: Saving Private Ryan, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Fight Club and Mass Effect 3′s Take Earth Back (extended version). I’d first like to state that the interpretations I’ll be outlining simply reflect my personal perspectives on the films and/or scenes in question. I do not present the single interpretation, merely a single interpretation. If you have an alternative view that adds to or diverges from mine, then I encourage you to say so and share with the rest of the community. Second, I do not mean to exclude mediums beyond the linear cinematic (hence my attempt, perhaps a weak one, to include games by the inclusion of the Mass Effect trailer). My selections were based on pieces with which I was familiar enough with to allow me to coalesce my thoughts in an expedient manner.

Finally, the ideas of “deprivation” and “barriers” are not exclusively the purview of sound editing or design. They belong to the mix as well. And beyond that, the director, the DP, the scriptwriter, etc…but that broad a swath is beyond the scope of this article. The point is that contributions to a piece’s depth come from many places. So, I credit the below examples to all of their respective principal sound artists (Supervising Sound Editor, Sound Designer, Re-Recording Mixers), to the best accuracy that I can.

Saving Private Ryan: Gary Rydstrom, Richard Hymns, Andy Nelson, Gary Summers

Let’s begin with the storming of Omaha Beach scene from Saving Private Ryan (Spielberg, 1998). This scene gives us the opportunity to look at deprivation from both visual and acoustic perspectives, and gives us two very overt acoustic barriers to examine.

The scene opens with, and sustains, close-up shots of the soldiers in their landing boats. We hear the sounds of artillery firing from a distance, and occasionally hear heavy splashes with water spray entering the shot. The closeup shots lock our perspective to the men in the boat. Those heavy splashes could just be the waves crashing against the boats, but they could also be the artillery shells landing in nearby water. Not allowing us to see the cause of the splashes adds tension to the scene. There is a perspective being established for the viewer that is going to carry through a large portion of this upcoming battle. A narrow field of view and a measure of immersion, a sense that we are subject to the whims of the setting…we have no control.

There are occasional ground eruptions, bullet trails, and injured men scattered about the beach. But for most of the scene, the audio is relied on to create the chaos of the battle. Simply look at the picture above. Imagine the soldiers moving through the water, simply wading onto the beach, with no gunfire. Most of the shots have a quality similar to that picture; similar composition (low to the water/ground, constricted field of view), and little to no visual evidence of the bullets cutting through the air. Yet the film presents constant gunfire, ricochets and explosions. Cluttering up the visual field on top of this auditory density would be too much data, but it goes beyond that. The bulk of our information about the environment is presented through sound, adding weight to two moments of auditory deprivation.

The first instance occurs after the soldiers escape over the sides of the boats. As they make their way to the beach, the camera moves in and out of the water. When the image drifts below the surface, the water becomes a physical barrier to the sound of the battle. That barrier helps to shield us, albeit briefly, from the surrounding chaos. Above the water, the number of threats is so great that they cannot be tracked…especially given the field of view with which we are presented. When submerged, the decrease in sonic activity gives the impression that the threats are mitigated. The water seems like a haven when compared to what awaits on the beach (despite the fact that people are dying in the water as well).

The second moment focuses on Captain Miller (Tom Hanks). A shell or mine explodes in the foreground of the frame, spraying dirt and bodies. As Miller stumbles in to dominate the frame a low-pass filter veils the sound of the battle, and we also hear a steady bed of sound, similar to what might be heard if you were to simply place your hands over both ears. The barrier here is physiological in nature; a reaction of the body to pressure of the explosion. You can even see the blood trickling out of Miller’s ears. This represents a dramatic shift in perspective for the viewer. Up until this point, we are a participant in the battle…situated immediately in the chaos. Now we enter Miller’s perspective, and personalize the experience of this terrifying scene. The timing is everything here. If the sonic barrier went up prior to Miller’s entrance, we would continue to be participants and have less understanding of Miller’s psyche. The sequence becomes a testament to his resolve, as the frequency spectrum comes flooding back with a soldier’s demand for orders. That soldier provides a focal point for him, one that allows him to reconnect with the surrounding events.

The barriers are given a presence within the narrative, they are tied to the events in the scene. Here the combinations of visual and acoustic deprivations, along with the nature of the acoustic barriers, afford us the opportunity to comprehend the terrifying nature of the battle and characterize a central figure in its narrative.

Mass Effect 3 – Take Earth Back (Extended Trailer): Sound team unknown [If anyone knows who handled it, please let me know so they can be credited.]

Click here to view the embedded video.

Because it also focuses on battle, this seems like a good time to examine the Mass Effect 3 (Bioware, 2012) cinematic trailer. The similarities between them, obviously, are passing and general in nature only. Both depict war, but the scope of perspective is different…and the sound designs establish discrete connections between the viewer and respective narratives. Here we are not meant to feel terror or understand the personality of a central character. This is an advertisement meant to create excitement for a product; excitement that is expected to lead to sales of the game.

When the attack begins, nearly 1 minute into the piece, we are presented focused sound elements that tie to specific moments in the visuals. The aural landscape is filled out with a montage of human reactions, news and radio report style dialog…none of which we see on screen. As the visuals continue, we begin to hear some of the same distancing and filtering that occurred with Captain Miller. We are given a brief aural cue of breathing as a pair crosshairs becomes the lens through which the action is viewed (1:02). We are temporarily being placed in the perspective of this lone sniper up in the Big Ben clock tower. Shifting to this perspective, however briefly, distances us from the struggle below…just as he is. Once we return to third-person, when this sniper occupies the frame, the visuals begin to immediately pull away from him as well. The sound design follows suit.

The density of aural activity increases greatly, coming closer to matching the density of visual activity. Simultaneously, the filtering becomes more pronounced…further distancing us from what is taking place. As I mentioned earlier, this deprivation is not meant to induce terror. The barrier, in this case, is an arbitrary construct created by the story-tellers. There is no justification within the narrative as there was in Saving Private Ryan. We are not placed in the events with these victims; we are meant to feel separate from the events. So we watch, and listen, from afar. The sensation created then is shock and horror. A horror that can then be heightened when we return to the little girl in the field of sunflowers (1:36)…the tranquil sound of insects, and the silent Reapers (alien warships) approaching. The Reapers are not truly silent. We already know what sound accompanies them. Depriving us of those sounds leaves us the ability to imagine what comes next; a far more powerful and personal interpretation of the coming violence.

The combination of presented and imagined atrocities leads way to anger, as a time lapse brings us to the aftermath in that field (2:03). Those sensations are what gives the ensuing battle weight and excitement. It creates a need for the battle to happen, a need for participation. That’s what is being offered to the viewer…a chance to participate. “Buy the game, and you can fight this battle…become salvation.” A similar setting, and even some similar techniques, to that in Saving Private Ryan, but a different purpose. What differentiates the two is how those choices in deprivations and barriers complement the visuals…how they tie to the narrative.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: Francis Wargnier, Damien Bera, Dominique Gaborieau

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Schnabel, 2007) presents something wholly focused within one character’s perspective. With two brief exceptions (one a dream, and one a flashback), the film spends the first 17 minutes in a form of perceptual purgatory. The effect is to lock us into Jean-Dominique Bauby’s (the main character) perspective and emotional experience. The camera frame never contracts or expands. We are subjected to viewing close ups and medium shots of characters that barely come into focus, and never quite become entirely visible within the frame.

Jean-Do is confused and struggling to establish a cognitive awareness of his surroundings. This barrier that both he and the viewer are fighting with is a mental and physiological one resulting from the stroke he recently suffered. The movement of those outside of his being exert control over the sounds we hear. As one character asserts dominance over the image, so too does he claim ownership of the aural. We hear the voice and movements of only that one character at a time. There are no background sounds, no room tone, barely perceptible sounds of that person’s clothing…only the figure in the foreground and Jean-Do’s voice. His voice is its own point of interest as well. He goes so far as to say, “I just did,” in response to a doctor’s repeated requests for him to name his children. The fact that he is not speaking had escaped him, for he seems to be able to hear his voice as clearly as the viewer does.

The effects of this restricted perception are extremely uncomfortable. The narrow field of vision, the depth of field, and the perception of only one acoustic being at a time firmly seat us within Jean-Do’s mental state. We are alone, tortured by a state of sensory deprivation, where the only tangible pieces of reality are those that come to the foreground of our limited vision. If we cannot see them clearly (as clearly as he is able to, that is), we cannot hear them. This combination is so effective that it is a noticeable relief when we are finally given a third-person view of his hospital room. Room tone and ambience suddenly appears, and the environment comes to life with the voices and bodies of health-care workers. There is a sense of release; and, in a way, the return of the acoustic world is a bit cathartic. This sudden re-emergence of sound signals the beginning Jean-Do’s new journey in life.

Fight Club: Ren Klyce, Richard Hymns, Michael Semanick, David Parker, Todd Boekelheide

Up to this point we have been discussing deprivations and barriers that have either solely affected the viewer’s perspective, or those that have connected both the viewer and the characters within the film. While it provides a number of similarly natured examples, Fight Club (Fincher, 1999) also gives us the opportunity to examine these ideas from exclusively within the diegesis. Our focus here is on Marla Singer (Helena Bonham Carter).

The two central characters are the narrator (Edward Norton), a character many people refer to as “Jack” (a convention which I will adopt here for simplicity’s sake), and Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt). As the central perspective of the film is the collective experience of Jack and Tyler, the viewer sees and hears from a position relative to them. Marla, as the third main character of the story, “suffers” from a barrier that deprives her of understanding the perspectives of Jack/Tyler and the viewer. This barrier is sanity. Marla is Jack’s “power animal.” She is both the trigger that spurs Jack and Tyler’s meeting, and the voice of reality attempting to enlighten Jack to his duality. The clues she gives come from apparent gaps in their perspectives of sensory information, the most overt of which are auditory…though “overt” may be too strong of a word.

I’m going to point out two examples. The first of which is when Jack is caught peering, through a cracked door, into the room where Tyler and Marla are having sex. Tyler whips open the door to tease Jack. The scene ends just after this conversation, but we are given one important exchange before it does. As Jack walks away, and Tyler turns back, Marla’s head pops up and asks, “Who are you talking to?” Tyler’s response? “Shut up.” Her question raises the spectre of revelation that Tyler is not yet willing to allow. It’s an innocuous enough question, but Tyler is the only one that understands what is going on. If he allows her to persist, it could lead to further questions from both her and Jack. It is one of the reason he forces Jack to swear never to talk about him with Marla.

The second example is when Jack and Marla are conversing in the kitchen. Jack asks her, “What are you getting out of this?” It’s a question that skirts along the edge of the forbidden subject matter…Tyler. As their conversation continues, spiralling directly towards the nature of their relationship, Jack begins to hear the sounds of construction from within the basement. They become an increasingly insistent distraction. He asks Marla if she can hear the sounds, but her response is a quip about “changing the subject.” Of course, to Marla it seems to be nothing more than a cheap excuse to do just that. She can’t hear the sounds that Jack can. It is a dangerous tactic on Tyler’s part to derail the conversation, as it highlights the gap in perception. Tyler needs the conversation to end quickly. He does not want them discussing him or their relationship, and he does not want the fact that only Jack can hear these sounds known. The latter may be a bit of a stretch in the context of Tyler’s self-assurance, but it is essential in terms of the narrative. The nature of Jack/Tyler can’t and shouldn’t be revealed just yet.

Marla’s sensory deprivation (albeit a subtle one) provides a series of clues to the viewer and Jack, leading to the revelation that Jack and Tyler are the same person. Jack remains oblivious to these clues until Tyler’s ambitions overwhelm his ability to manipulate Jack. As more people enter Jack’s life through Project Mayhem, the number of clues begins to increase rapidly. When Jack finally begins to understand what Tyler is, it is Marla that provides the final proof. She confirms his belief, and their history of shared experiences (including her expressed perceptions) takes on a different level of significance and impact.

Wrapping up…

I’ve gone through a number of examples, but I wish to reiterate a few points. Few of the elements in any of these examples operate independently as sonic experiences. They need help; from the visuals, script, the story and from the direction. The deprivations are complimentary of the inclusions, as they only gain meaning within the context of what is shown. The ideas of deprivation and barriers are a means of adding depth and dimension, imbuing meaning, within a narrative. Also, as I mentioned in the previous article, those meanings are personal in nature. If you do not “lay everything out” exactly as it should be, then you leave room for the viewer to interpret (I consider this a good thing). In light of that, I do not present the interpretations in this article to be hard and fast truth; these are the meanings that I derive from the editorial choices embedded within the films. I hope you will take the time examine these examples from your own perspective, and share your thoughts.

If you decide to write up your own thoughts on these scenes, or others, from the perspectives of Deprivations and Barriers, please let me know. I will happily compile a list of abstracts and links into their own post here in the future. I would love to see these ideas applied to other mediums as well. In particular, if any game audio gurus out there feel the desire to cover them from the aspects of interactive narrative and story-telling (and not game-play mechanics…unless it relates directly to the story, of course), I think that would be an article well worth reading. It would seem to be an enormous challenge though, since gaming by nature allows for less rigid control of the individual experience and requires far more active participation than film viewing. Impossible, no…merely difficult. Then again, perhaps that is merely attaching the tropes of another medium to one that is still developing its own language. Perhaps the “experience” is a more appropriate aspect to discuss. I look forward to any and all responses.