The Sound of Hotel for Dogs.

“When I saw it, I was amazed how old-fashioned it felt, in a good way,” comments Gary Rydstrom, who was co-supervising sound editor (with Richard Hymns), sound designer and FX re-recording mixer for the film. “So many modern movies tend to have more edge or sarcasm or self-awareness, and this is telling a very big story in an episodic way. It’s traveling long distances and meeting a lot of different characters. It has a David Lean grandness.

“It’s a story about humanity surviving in the midst of war, told through how people relate to horses, really,” he continues. “It has a beauty to it that’s fitting and also a real emotional power. I had never worked on a movie quite like this. For me, it felt like I was able to get into a time machine and do a movie in 1960, but with Pro Tools and digital consoles.” [Laughs]

Continue reading…

Ann Kroeber: I don’t think of myself… I’m not going out and thinking that I’m an animal expert just because I can talk to them. I think that every time I do it, it’s always something new. It’s like a surprise to me.

You can listen to the interview (or read the transcription, but you’ll miss some interesting recordings that way), on the Weekend America site.

Don’t forget to send us your questons for Ann, and to sign up for the webinar we’ll be hosting with her later this month.

Mangini decided to capture original penguin recordings, so he arranged to have access to the birds that were used in the film.

“We couldn’t use a regular recording facility because penguins need to be in an environment that is 40 degrees or colder at all times,” he notes. “So we built a recording room equipped with a special air conditioning system. It became our ‘penguin ADR room.’”

Continue reading…

BOOM Library has announced the release of Wildcats – Tigers & Lions, a new sound effects library packed with 3.4GB of great source sounds from lions and tigers.

Get one of the most extensive collections of big wildcat recordings. This library ships on 1 DVD with a full 3.4 GB set of great source sounds. All of the recordings on this disc were recorded in 192 kHz, 24-bit. The collection also contains a 48 kHz, 24-bit version for your convenience. To provide you with the fastest and easiest workflow possible all files contain extensive metadata. You can use this library as a fully grown animal library for all sounds related to big wildcats or as a source for designing incredible creature sounds. The high audio quality provided gives you all possibilities to pitch, fx process and edit the sounds while keeping the a top notch level of clarity and precision. Make your mixing room shake with these huge sounds!

Wildcats – Tigers & Lions – €149 | 192kHz/24-Bit | 3,4GB | Well-grounded Soundminer Metadata

The video does not contain the sound quality of the library.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Frank Bry (The Recordist) has released SoundBox HD – Pigs at only $10 until November 15th.

I know November is usually the time of year that Turkey is on everyone’s mind but a fox came in and killed all the wild turkeys on my ranch earlier this year so I had to settle for recording some pigs. Oh well. Pigs. Until 11-15-10 get this collection of pigs sound effects for only $10.00. Regular price is $20.00.

Want some pig sqeals and screeches? This collection has them and more. Growls and wacky vocalizations from baby pigs. Create awesome creature effects with this set. Also included are large pig grunts, snorts ans breaths. 27 Files.

The Recordist’s HD Sound Effects are professional sound effects recorded and mastered at 24-Bit/96kHz. Included are 24-Bit/96kHz Broadcast WAV files embedded with Soundminer and Pro-Tools metadata.

More info: The Recordist – Pigs

The guys at BOOM Library have announced a new sound effects collection, called Creatures, featuring three different libraries:

• Creatures – Construction Kit – More than 9 GB of source material including more than 6000 single sounds in over 1000 files, oriented to create your own unique creatures.
• Creatures – Designed – 250 “ready to use” sounds of different creature designs, including huge and rumbling beasts, tiny and nasty insects, brutal and slippery zombies, and more.
• Creatures – Bundle – Includes Designed and Construction Kit collections at less price than buying both individually

All the content was recorded at 192kHz and is delivered at 24-Bit/96kHz and comes tagged with Soundminer Metadata. For the Designed package, they are also offering a 48kHz version.

You can pre-order “Creatures” now and get a 25% discount on any of the three collections. Creatures SFX Library wil be available on November 15th. For more info and audio examples, feel free to visit BOOM Library.

Chuck Russom has announced the release of his Dogs sound effects library, from his independent company Chuck Russom FX. The collection includes 158 sounds recorded at 192kHz.

Dogs Sound Library from Chuck Russom FX features vocalizations from 14 professionally trained animal actors.  This collection includes barks, whines, yelps, growls, snarls, and sounds that I can’t even begin to describe. Dogs was recorded and mastered at 24 bit 192K. Delivered to you as 24 bit 192K metadata-embedded wav files. 24bit 96K versions are also included.

If you want to know more about the recording process of this library, you can visit our brother site Sonic Terrain, where Chuck has written a great detailed article about the library. Also, I’ve made a demonstration+review of the library. You can see it here.

Dogs SFX Library is available now from Chuck Russom FX at $75.

The Recordist has released “Flying Insects“, a new sound effects library on his Soundbox HD series.

Introducing Flying Insects SoundBox HD. This collection has some crazy sounds from real live insects recorded over the last few years. Insects are really tough to record. For one, they really do not take well to trainers as they have a mind of there own (I think). Second, they are not very loud unless they bang into the microphone at high speed so getting good recordings is a challenge. These recordings come from chance encounters with the insect population here in North Idaho where we have a few bugs.

The library is available online at $35. Included are 24-Bit/96kHz Broadcast WAV files embedded with Soundminer and Pro-Tools metadata.

If you would like to know more about the recording process of some of those insects, you can check these three posts published by Frank some days ago:

Broken Beetle Bug
Crazy Bee Talking
Dragon Fly Wings

Untrained dogs can be very hard to record. Unlike trained dogs, they don’t know commands and are usually scared or uneasy when put in a different environment. Also, their reactions are hard to predict and most likely they will not perform as you want them to when the time for recording comes. In order to minimize these problems there are some things you can try doing:

First of all, be calm. Animals can somehow sense your mood (especially dogs) and if you’re jumpy and stressed you will end up stressing the animal and the owner.

Always ask the owner or handler about the dog, they know it better than anyone else and can give you helpful tips on how to get a good performance. Take their advice and include them in the shoot. When recording Chihuahuas for “Beverly Hills Chihuahua” at some point we recorded over 10 untrained dogs at the same time. It was important to have the owner around to help out with the animals. We even used him on a recording: as we recorded, he would silently hide form the dogs, which made them call their owner and they make some really interesting barks.

Use body language, dogs respond to your body language as well as vocal commands. If you stand up, the dog will perceive you as an authority and may not perform the desired way. Try lowering your body at the dog’s level for a different approach. Always beware that dogs might suddenly react in an unexpected way, stay at a safe distance.

Don’t follow the dog’s head with your microphone, it will only cause the dog to move more and your recording to have more noise (inherited handheld noise. Place the mic in front of the dog so that it becomes used to it, let it sniff around it and satisfy its curiosity for the new object. After that the animal is more likely to ignore the mic and focus on what the trainer/owner is doing.

A good, safe way to record single dogs is to separate them from their owner or pack. Leaving a dog alone in a room would cause it to bark or cry, so if you have more than one dog, try separating one from the pack for it to react. Be aware that the dog might try to scratch the door of the room or make paw/nail sounds on the surface it is on, so placing a mat or blanket under it is a good idea.
On another instance of our “Beverly Hills Chihuahua“ recordings, we separated the alpha male from the pack and brought in a female dog in heat. The male dog reacted and we got great sounds of barks, groans and yelps.

On the movie ‘The Shaggy Dog’ we used handheld microphones and tracked the dog’s movements to keep the mic on axis with the vocals. As mentioned before we had a slight problem with handling noise. Anytime you track an erratic dog’s head, little moves or “mic bumps” are incurred in the recordings. Moreover, the real big problem is that waving a microphone around any dog seems to encourage the dog to move even more. It is almost as if the dog is interacting with the microphone as we try to follow his moves.

For ‘Underdog’ we took at different approach. We put a cloth collar on the dog and used three microphones: one shotgun straight on his stationary spot, a second, slightly closer stereo (X/Y) microphone to cover any dog vocals that are off axis from the shotgun mic, and the third, an onboard Sanken boundary mic applied to the cloth collar.

The end result is a tight mono shotgun recording when the dog is on axis, or a close stereo recording, and finally an ECU onboard recording that has more low end, less room, and is slightly less defined in the high frequencies.

For this same shoot we worked with an experienced dog trainer. This was very helpful as he knew the dogs well and had some tricks up his sleeve to get good sounds.
In the photo below, the dog trainer holds the dog’s mane and gently squeezes the dog’s vocal chords. This technique provided some very unique dog sounds. We had never thought of doing this before because it seemed inhumane, however, we were assured that it does not hurt the dog at all.

One of the dogs we recorded was this Great Pyrenees Mountain Dog, a male Uruguayan champion originally from France. This impressive animal weighs about 160 Lbs. He made deep guttural grunts, woofs, and had this impressive deep panting. We tried several methods to extract good sounds from him like bringing by different females in heat and other dominant male dogs. Nothing really worked, the dogs became sedate in his presence so no barking occurred.

On another shoot we had several Labrador dogs but only got good sounds from “Benny” the golden Lab puppy. Benny was great, it just took us a while to figure out how to get him to perform his crying and whimpering with the help of his owner. After some tests we found that leaving him in a room by himself he would whine at the entrance of the door so we placed two mics pointing in both plausible directions Benny would face, and then added a Sanken Boundary mic to the ground.
This wasn’t the smartest move, Benny ate the Sanken microphone cable. So another tip on recording dogs, especially puppies, is be aware of your precious equipment, don’t leave cables or anything that the dog might find chewable on the ground.

Continuing with our “BHC” shoots, we ended up at a dog breeding farm one day. It was a really nice place, nature, animals…which meant it was a terrible place for recording. The background sounds were everywhere: birds, distant dogs, people and tree leaves (it was windy on top of things). So we worked with the elements and came up with an interesting set up for that location. In order to minimize all that BG noise and wind, we created a “closed” space in the entrance of the farm that had two big brick walls on the sides. We placed a van across the entrance thus blocking the sounds that were coming from that direction (birds, dogs and more). The set up looked like this:

We also swept the floor to get rid of pebbles and took our shoes off to minimize steps.

Our goal at this place was to record mean Dobermann growls and barks. But as it usually happens with animals, the Dobermans turned out to be the sweetest dogs and were more interesting in cuddles than mean barks. The owners attributed their initial quietness to the unfamiliar environment and that their presence eased the animals too. Other animals were brought in in order to make the Doberman bark but we couldn’t get the desired sounds. Then we put our knowledge in practice and two Dobermans were taken from the recording area and once they felt they were being left alone they began barking as expected. Separating the dog and owner made the dog bark.

We noticed that physically standing up put the dogs in a submissive position making them more quiet, so sitting down next to the dog provided the best solution.

Written by Rob Nokes for Designing Sound