In this second part of Damian Kastbauer’s exclusive interview with New Zealand based music producer and audio designer Jeramiah Ross / Module , they discuss how important the team dynamic is for development studios, working with coders and space-rock opera. You can read up on Part One of this gargantuan interview here and check out his latest album release Imagineering here

I feel like there is a ton of potential to tie things together and experiment, from the mix perspective.

That’s something I did with [PlayStation 3 game] Shatter. I did it with the stereo field. The music is really wide, I need all that space in the middle for sound effects, you know! I basically used lots of instances of the Waves Stereo Expander, and tried not to over-phase everything, but keep everything nice and beautiful, that the effects are all mono and on-key with the music and everything else, all humming together nicely. I wanted it to feel like you are looking out over a horizon and the music is everywhere and the sound design is right there.

I actually think a lot of my mixing and production approach comes from my time in radio audio production.I was always fighting against that bloody radio compression to get the best sound I could. Radio compression is extremely strong and just squashes everything, and so i eventually found a way of mixing that suited that kind of stupid compression. I found I could get great mixes without having to kill off all the dynamics. I love things that breath sonically. Sometimes I don’t even use any compression.

How do you bridge the gap in communication between the developers expressed needs and your position as the audio professional?

It’s similar to being in a band; if you think about being a musician or audio person and you think about working in the video game industry, if you switch the roles of your drummer to being your programmer, your bass player to being your designer and establish those kinds of relationships and treat the whole thing as a band trying to perform a really awesome piece of music. that seems to me personally as a great way to mentally approach the creative & production process and in terms of establishing these relationships with people who may not be as tuned in to your discipline as you might be. That’s the challenge! It’s just as important. It’s not easy. As everyone knows when something isn’t working sonically. But pretty much, like myself, everyone I work with share the same goals. to create something cool that people like that suits what it’s been made for, so with that in mind that is the wood and nails holding the bridge together, bridging the gap and connecting both sides.

Right, and it’s a process to get everyone “tuned in”…

Totally! The key thing is that human beings will instinctively feel when things are right, and people will know when things have the right creative energy.most things that people react to, and that people enjoy or love are usually of some form of passion.

The key thing you can do as a creator is get into a situation where you are working in a creative environment that is really open to expression and creative ideas which will create good energy within the product or project. Its like if you’re playing a keyboard part, and you’re really enjoying it, that’s going to come across in the music. If you have that kind of fun, creative, open approach during audio design and during the creation of your audio projects, then people are going to feel that. It’s just the way it works.

That’s actually what happened with Shatter. I just got lost in that world, and wasn’t even thinking about it half the time just doing it.  It was a very small core team that just explored this exciting tangent for 18 months and Shatter just happened to come out of that (laughs). It’s one of those things that happened. There only pressure in regards surrounding schedules and everything came at the end when we ran out of time but the team was all in it together and we really believed in what we were making. There was a strong sense of it being something really cool that helped drive us all across the finish line. It was one of the highlights of my creative career so far without a doubt.

Yeah, with everything coming together simultaneously it takes everyone to pull it together.

I am such a strong believer of that. It can get really hard, and really full-on when you’re balancing deadlines and schedules and so on and that’s part of the beast.

The best way to approach that is, just do what you can to make it sound the best you can. Obviously there are other conditions involved, such as budgets, health, family, time but as long as you are in a situation where you know your tools and you can establish these creative relationships with the people around you to create this awesome thing. You end up in a situation where your doing something like Motown records where you’re just pumping out these awesome great hits because its fun to be involved in and your audience is enjoying it.  That’s how it should be…in a perfect world of course.

It’s the team dynamic that makes the game.

There is a lot more to being an Audio designer than just the Technology and the technique; it’s also about the whole creating an emotional response thing too, so you have to find balance and compromise between those thing to bring the creative vision to life, which is a really exciting thing to do. But yeah, it can get really draining on you emotionally as you’re pushing constantly all the time, but then again it only exists because of what other people are creating and my role when I am working in video game audio is mostly a very servant one. Creating audio for elements created by other people to work for the audience to enjoy which is why I really have leaned on the Usability department at PikPok but I try and make the whole thing fun for myself and hopefully that translates across. There is a lot of fun to be had with a bunch of good people creating crazy stuff for other people to enjoy. That’s what you need to tap into as that’s what it’s about really.

Speaking of,  The most fun I’ve ever had recently on a project was ‘Monsters Ate My Condo’, that was just insane! It’s an iOS title created by PikPok for Adult Swim. Working the Producer We went for a really fun, catchy J-pop style. That whole thing is really hilarious actually, because the lyrics of those tracks are actually in Japanese. We used Google Translate and we typed in what we thought the lyrics should be, and through some mutual friends we found a lovely Japanese girl who had a great voice  so we invited her in to the audio studio and she did the track in one take, as well as helping us refine the translation so that it made sense in Japanese and sounded like a bad English translation of Japanese, You know how sometimes the translation and its wrong, its kinda like reverse bad subtitles but poking fun ourselves.

I also did a number of tracks in different styles for specific monsters, like the giant crab is a kind of lullaby, a campy unicorn that spurts rainbows out of its horn has some cheesy 80’s rock, and a broken robot puppy which is my favourite because it’s like a crazy dubstep version! I did that version by beatboxing the tune and then replacing that recording with synths in Ableton.

I then used an iPhone and a synth app called bebot and put it against a guitar pickup and started making all these crazy noises of this broken, angry little robot puppy (laughs)!

There was also a Green dancing Bulgarian Monster in shorts which I was quite surprised how well that came out, considering it was all just MIDI instruments running through guitar amps. there was also this ‘Megazone’ track for when players reached a bonus area, which is kind of a Motorhead ‘Ace of Spades’ style track It all just got completely out of control which was great.

That sounds awesome!

It was. It was insane! The whole intro menu track was actually placeholder, but we ended up using it anyway! It needed a vocal in the middle, so I just went “MONSTER! CONDO! RRRAAARGHH!” into the mic as placeholder as a demo for the Producer to listen to and it just worked so we just left it there. I didn’t even play the guitar parts properly, I was just mucking around with that kind of ‘Ren & Stimpy’ vibe. And because I gave our vocalist the demo she learnt her vocal parts to the placeholder guitar, which sounded really cool! The bass was one single take, and the drums were just played on a keyboard. The whole track came out with a really cool, loose vibe. It was a neat experiment in just letting loose and going with your gut instincts .

There are some other cool things too; I generated lots of really cool 1980s 8-bit sounds. we just made positive and negative tones rather than having to match each type of message. We completed this project in 2-3 months; 12 songs, the effects and all the audio and sound design

Each individual condo building has its own sound effects which I created by throwing wooden objects around the studio. I cut up the individual impacts and put them in random events in FMOD and touch detection on the buildings so when you drag them you are also dragging the sound.

We even had a professionally trained opera singer come in to perform the part of the Fat Lady singing on the game over screen! She was about to have her first child so she wasn’t offended by playing the part of the “The Game is over so now the fat lady is singing” bit. She is such a lovely person.

I also composed a cool 8-bit style piece of music for the results screen as a homage to Shatter. The credits screen is this rainbow man in white underpants that dances to a country track. I managed to get away with all that craziness and get in into the game(laughs).

In terms of the amount of audio, the amount of styles of music and different sound effects, it’s been a really cool project to work on & has had a great response because all 4 elements are at their strongest, Design, Gameplay, Graphics and Audio and that’s something PikPok games is really known for because of the great talent at the studio in all the different departments.

What tools are you using outside of the game environment?

I try and work as much as I can with external stuff as I love playing with real things. I’ve got some outboard gear, but essentially now its all done in Ableton Live or Pro Tools. Over the last few years, especially since becoming an audio/sound designer, I have found myself leaning on Pro Tools a bit more, because it offers a smoother experience in terms of editing and sound design and region editing and working with motion picture content.

I’ll essentially create a whole sound project and not even go near the game, so that I can export it all out and chuck everything in FMOD and hook it all up. I’ll get Designers, Coders or Producers to throw me lists of sounds that they think the game might need and go back and forth a bit and  work against videos and concept art and then I’ll go about my merry way to try and create that through whatever means and change it around to suit. Ableton Live gives you a lot more options for sound design, as its easier to bounce stuff around and is a lot more streamlined in regards to busses, groups and chaining. I did all of the work for Shatter in Ableton Live including all the sound design.

How do you like the Ableton workflow?

Ableton is every paint brush you need for music and sound. It still needs to sort itself out with video and dual monitor support, having to flick constantly between 2 views to mix is a pain.  video scrubbing is not as good as protools and a few other things that protools does nice (exporting separate Regions/clips all at once would be great in the timeline rather than one by one) But It’s really all the same. The goal is to create lots of audio files and music that work with the game. And you could do that with a 4 track reel to reel and a freeware editor if you wanted. Might take a bit longer.

Overall, Live is really cool, Groups, Automation, Effects, Bus, Bounce, Freeze, Mix, Instruments and Render it’s all there and then some. The stuff I love the most  is the ‘Max for Live’ toolset which gives Ableton a “Mad Scientist in a audio Lab” feel in terms of things you can create.  MAX/MSP is very much like a lot of the API’s and middleware found in games and similar to what I am use to with FMOD so I have been looking at ways in which we can control other things, create our own stuff. I talked to FMOD a year or so ago and I asked about OSC (Open Sound Control) control and I actually think they have that support in the new FMOD Studio.

Yeah, that would be rad!

OSC is such a great platform, with so many options. You can create your own hardware devices and tune them in the way that you need to. If you want to build your own 24-channel mixer out of whatever  you need to, you can just send the data out and in for hardware and software control and that’s really useful.

How strongly are you driven by the Visuals ?

Video games are so heavily reliant on the visual element, and the audio serves those visual elements. Essentially, in games you are mostly making sounds for something, so its a very serviceable medium in that respect. You know, ‘this character needs to talk’ or ‘this event needs an explosion’, that kind of thing. The visuals & design tell you what they need, and in that respect I’ve always had strong visuals in my mind when making music, so I just make the music to the pictures in my head, and that’s what i love doing. I’m really influenced by architecture, geometry, colours, shapes, moods and abstract concepts like that. It is never anything specific, I’m not trying to create the sound of a lost girlfriend or trying to attract personal attention.(laughs) It’s more abstracts and observational moments in time and space that fascinates me creatively, and it’s why I really enjoy working in this medium, because you are creating worlds for people…Windows into other places. That’s what it’s about for me.

My latest album that I have just finished is like that, in the way that it is imagination music basically. I have been creating these detailed audio paintings; I have a strong visual image in my mind as I’m composing, I see audio quite visually. I’m think I’m really lucky in that sense.

Do you listen to many soundtracks for games?

When I did Shatter wasn’t very much aware of what was going on in the world of game soundtracks. I think that fresh approach really helped out, I came at it like a album and a musician, but was scoring the emotional journey of a machine exploring other worlds. I love the music out of Mass Effect series; it is beautiful, but at the same time i can hear everything that it’s paying homage to as well.

I can hear all those influences. Sometimes it sounds like Blade Runner meets something like the Inception soundtrack (laughs). You know, those two very strong elements. One of my favourite bands of all time is Pink Floyd and every time I pick up the guitar I have to resist the urge to just play David Gilmour guitar solos (laughs)

Are you planning a space rock-opera?

(Laughs) That very much might happen! I love guitars, and I love drums, and I love the whole band approach, but also i love the synthesised, futuristic approach too. No comment! (Laughs)

I’ve been listening to a few bits and pieces that are floating around, like Machinarium. That’s beautiful. And Night’s Sky was another one that I came across that I really loved.

Rez I also liked, in terms of interactive stuff and of course Limbo as mentioned before, which reminds me I have to finish it!

And speaking of interactive audio and working with coders.

Those things are very tricky to achieve if you are a mostly a content creator as you are relying a lot on other people to help bring your vision to life. Unless you happen to be an super ninja audio coder or something (laughs)! That takes time to research and develop those tools, finding that balance between being that audio creative and understanding the dynamics, psychoacoustics and psychology of sound, but then mixing that with an person who can program the heck out of anything, its always going to be a good thing.

You can be the composer, and you can write the best music ever for your game, but if the audio coder or studio or person you deliver too doesn’t understands that musical or audio vision then it can go wrong and just not sound as awesome as it could have been.

That person is implementing that vision and the success of that vision. They are almost if not completely responsible for the audio as you are. I’m really lucky that I have people that I trust that  help me bring all of my work to life. That relationship is really essential.

Right, building systems to support composing styles or technical aesthetic.

That’s essentially where you are moving more into the realm of Audio Design where you are literally becoming the architect, and building that vision as best you can with the resources given to you. And that’s become one of the enjoyable part of the process for me as time has gone on. I feel like a Director for film sometimes that needs that scene and that shot to make it all happen. I really love it.

I’m finding myself doing that along with the content creation, the design and implementation. But working with the coder is such a strong essential part of the process of all of that. It’s great when Creative and Technical are racing side by side on the same road heading towards audio awesome town.

Where do you see things going in the future?

As more as time moves on you know like, “we’ve done this with movies, we’ve done this type of thing with games and we’ve got these types of things that have been done with sound before. So where can we go now?” With all the current media and technology changes you’re going to see more interesting stuff happening like 3D audio beyond 7.1 somehow maybe holographic audio?

Whatever happens with the visual component of technolgy 3d or whatever, Those types of things are going to need more interactive and more immersive audio to support those more immersive visuals.

I think that We’re at the 90% mark of our current entertainment technology and what we’re using to support these creative visions us humans have so until the technology goes further we’re going to see a lot more interesting things come out as a part of that.

Part of what will happen is that people will need all this extra code support for new technology so coders will become a lot more commonplace and people will be exposed to that side of it a lot more. seeing that blend of the creative and technical. the emotional and metal.

While making the process more accessible for sound designers and composers.

Yeah, definitely.The options and tools now are definitely a lot better than they were are few years ago. Game audio is almost now becoming like using Ableton live or Pro Tools and that’s exciting.

A lot of people working in the creative industries on interactive media content will be able to achieve those things on their own through various tool sets and middleware and interfaces to the buckets and bolts but right now it’s very important that you have your coder working with you to help deliver your sonic visions in the interactive audio space.

But pretty much looking ahead…The future is complete media immersion somehow.

What are some of your creative processes and how do you manage it?

In regards to working on projects there is always a scrunch at the end, but that’s because game audio is so desperately, heavily, reliant on things working properly when the scope is large or time is tight it can get pretty wild.

Just finding that compromise and balance between what I need to make versus the time I need to implement it and other things like space, delivery and memory budgets to factor in as well. It’s a challenge. It’s also about managing your creative energies as well, getting yourself into the right mood so you can pump out music constantly is no small task in itself. Its like a creative exercise you have to go through.

You really have to switch focus, or find a way to creatively pull out of that feeling or genre and put yourself into another one. There’s a lot of creative stuff that goes around doing this stuff, but I don’t think it gets much attention because its not as flash as maybe something that’s technical. It’s the creative management that’s just as essential to being a full time audio creative as well.

Exercise, eating and sleeping properly, Stretching, hanging out with friends, spending time with family. Doing other stuff non audio related, Have some fun, big walks ! Relaxing, laughing at yourself. Those are some of the most important things. That stuff is the gas in your tank. I learnt the hard way but luckily enough I did learn this.

But in regards to work, It’s something that fascinates me because it your job and you have to come up with the goods no matter what. If you’re working in Television. Games or Movies and you’re working with Music, it needs a certain emotion to suit what it needs to. Like I was saying earlier, people react to projects imbued with passion. Just trying to tap into that emotional reservoir and deliver content that has that emotional feeling to it can be just as hard as trying to use a set of tools that might not be doing what they should. But I think if you can find ways to let the emotion drive you while technically leaning on your tools. You can get whatever you’re working on to a good place.

My advice is to let love for what you do drive the need to keep exploring the world of sound and what it can offer both creatively and professionally, while pushing towards something people will enjoy listening to and you yourself had fun making. It is what it is all about really.

Can you tell our readers a little bit about yourself, and your path into game audio?

I am a classically trained piano player and have been making music since I was 4 years old. I spent my teens experimenting with 4 track recorders and synths and Amiga 500 computers.
I created Module in 2003 as a little side project after being in a few well known New Zealand bands at the time. After a few years of working on it I released my first album Remarkable Engines in 2006 which  got quite recognised by everybody around New Zealand  which was quite fun! I found myself having to tour to support that  album that I made for a record label called LOOP at the time to pay back the thousands of dollars it took to make it.

The more I was exposed to the live environment, and what people actually wanted from a gig, the more my music started changing from the downbeat-y sort of music that I started off with into more the kind of thing Shatter sounds like, really fun electro/rock’n'roll over the top music.

It was just a direct response of being somewhere between a DJ and a one man band. New Zealand Music industry is really small and I just had to adapt. Looking back on it, It was like pick a path adventure story. Everything I did was so I could survive as a Musician. I feel good now as I am 34 and still doing it full time !

The Shatter soundtrack was the culmination of years and years of playing live, and the kind of music I’ve always wanted to create; futuristic rocky synth music that has been buzzing around my mind for quite a long time. I took everything I learned from the live environment and channeled it into the Shatter soundtrack. It seemed to have worked really well.

Module really changed and became less about being a live indie band thing and more about a business! (laughs) It was quite a crazy change, as all of a sudden I ‘m doing video game soundtracks, movie soundtracks and sound design; all these kind of project based kinds of work things, which is interesting, and totally different from the ‘set up and play a concert’ type vibe I had come from.

But that’s cool that’s the way it worked out, and that’s the great thing about being a solo artist. I think its a massive change in technology that happened between when I started and now, because you can create literally anything almost anything on a computer, and it doesn’t really matter anymore. You don’t have to be this famous entity anymore, you can just do audio or music because you like making it, and it can become your life and your job That’s what has happen to me, and I feel very lucky.

Do you find that in your work for games that you end up sacrificing creative vision?

Yes, it’s kind of a compromise, it’s more of a relationship you get into a with a creative team. or the people driving the product be it designers, producers If it’s something that’s going to make the project better and more people are going to like it, then I will do whatever I need to in order to make that happen. At the end of the day. It’s just one part of what I do. You need to split yourself out. There’s work and then there is you. Work is work, so you just need to do your best for what the project needs unless you’re working on it on your own. Then you can do what the hell you like.
It’s the creative vision versus the schedule. The schedule is all powerful. The schedule must be obeyed.

Have you ever found yourself having to write a reggae track, or something outside  of your comfort zone in order to fit a gameplay segment?

(Laughs) I have done lots of different styles of music, but I guess I’m more known as Module for my electronic-y type stuff. But then again, doing a lot of other things. Like, when I was working on Rugby Challenge I was writing a lot of New Zealand based rock tunes. I don’t know if you’re familiar with anything from New Zealand like Dave Dobbyn, and The Exponents. Crowd-signing, anthem rock music. I actually enjoy making that kind of music! (laughs) I started to realise that I was slipping more into a producer kind of role, where I’ve got more scope, as opposed to limiting myself to a specific genre because it follows what I’ve established in the past. I enjoy country music, and I love rock music. I like the beats of hip-hop, My music tastes are very clear, and that come across in my compositional choices.

But even so, I get frustrated with the amount of time it takes to produce something using a computer, because I’ve come from a musical background; I’ve been playing piano since I was a kid. I love the immediacy of being in a band. I feel that people get too picky on music [production]; It’s the sloppiness and the more feeling based stuff that people respond to better, and not the over-produced stuff, you know what I mean?

Speaking with my own view, Who really gives a shit what EQ you’re using, the average person doesn’t. There is a trap a lot in music production, It’s an industry that’s not too far from the fashion industry. Use this plugin, mix like this, sound like that. It’s all rubbish. You just have to follow what feels right and if it doesn’t work keep trying.

(Laughs) But, I’m always trying to find a counterbalance between the two, and I think my life has been about that lately. I really try to find balance. Even in my own music, I’ve been writing a lot of piano compositions. As I come from a classical background, I find myself gravitating back to that style of music, away from that flashiness of game soundtracks and Module, and everything else.

I really need that sometimes, and it will probably be the kind of music I make more of as I get older! I still love the opportunities that video game music and sound design work have handed me. I’m extremely lucky in New Zealand to be one of the very few people doing what I’m doing, and have had such massive exposure to a global audience through many Apple devices and consoles.

How do you handle the dynamics of gameplay when things are quite focused on the music and sound side of things?

It’s very much a relationship between the composer and the audience. You have to think about how this is going to affect people, and what they are going to feel in these key moments and how you can take them on journeys. It’s very much like orchestrating an reaction from people in advance.

That’s the side that I find quite fascinating, because it’s almost like when you do a gig; You hit certain key moments within your set for people to react to. It’s a lot easier to achieve that in a gig, because people are in the concert, in the mood, at that moment. I mean the whole “drop” thing found in dubstep music is all about that. I guess I am trying to engineer in advance lots of mini audio drops relative to the game in some way so the player gets jazzed about it.

I’ve started thinking about video games as very similar; people are locked into that universe, or paying attention to the sequence of events and interacting with it. What can I do as a composer to enhance that? That’s generally where I will come in to it, and try to identify key moments within the experience; whether it’s from a story perspective, or a feeling, a visual or an action, or something that will give me some cue as to what the music should emotionally feel like, and what the player should react to. It’s all about context. what are the key things that are going on in this space and time. Love it!

How much of the implementation can be done from within FMOD Designer?

You can do everything in Designer in regards to setting up the project and the sound files and music and events and structure.

But It’s a very  much a 50/50 kind of relationship; there is a lot of stuff that needs to be done in code, but I use a lot of FMOD parameters, velocity based settings and real time reverbs

In the last game I worked on, for which I put a 75MB audio budget straight into an iPhone device  It has eleven tracks, and it has the most amount of audio I’ve put inside an iPhone game (so far). This was for Monsters Ate My Condo for Adult Swim, which is being really well received. The music is just batshit insane and is some kind of godzilla based pop music and there is a lot going on with the audio. That has been the result of geeking out and getting to know my tools, and trying to develop this really cool thing that people will listen to and enjoy, and hitting all those key moments. Alot of that was all done in designer with basic code hookups.

How much DSP parameterization are you doing in order to achieve certain effects or react dynamically to the game?

We try do that all the time, especially with low pass filters and volume its good to make sure things are sounding awesome. Shatter was really the first time we really took advantage of the parameter based DSP effects. We’ll use just those parameters, and you can hear it at specific moments, like, when you die at the end of a level, it will phase out, or would control the cutoff frequency. Not as much as other things we would use, like the crowd system I developed for the Rugby Challenge game, that was a bit insane! We used FMOD in a really cool way; basically the crowd system was several different layers of several different reactions and works the same way as if you were revving up a car engine based on emotion

When I first looked at FMOD it weirded me out. It took me a long time to understand the parameter based stuff, and that there wasn’t a timeline, because I was so used to working in DAW’s like Ableton Live. I’ve been making electronic music since the Amiga 500 days, so I’ve been exposed to technology most of my creative life, so I’ve been really lucky in that sense in that I’ve always had the kind of brain that understands that stuff. It was really cool because the more I understood how FMOD worked, the more I understood how it talked to the API, the more I realised the tools I had available as a creator and I found that really exciting.

One of the most interesting thing about Rugby Challenge was the limited memory I had to pay with, 11MB I think. At the start of the project I didn’t want to to deal with the commentary because it was over 14,000 files. So it was always space vs time vs creative vision.

Can you speak more on the dynamic system for crowds?

As you can see above in FMOD In the first layer is a low loop, then a medium loop, then a high loop, which represent different frequency ranges. When you roll over those, they play from a list of callout things, and horns and that kind of stuff. These are controlled by a parameter called ‘Emotion’, which is driven by a context bucket, so if someone starts running for a Try, it will amp up the emotion. And on top of that I’ve got some reaction cues set up. The Cheer cues play 10 different cheers at one time, which is all positioned around in surround sound randomly, which makes it sound like a whole big audience. The whole entire reactive crowd audio is only 4MB. It sounds ok, but as I only had a budget of 11MB I had to compress the hell out of it to make it work. I can really hear the compression, and its nowhere near the quality I would have liked, but considering I just placed 4 Zoom H2 mics around the Westpac stadium, I was happy with the result.

The great thing about FMOD and most of the Middleware engines for audio is that you can design everything and hand it over to a studio It’s a really good platform for me. I haven’t had the chance to explore the others as much as I would like.

Especially being able to draw parameters in the Event Editor.

I know, Its just the multiple parameters per event, that’s I love. Its like “Hey, I can have unlimited parameters here, I can do what I like!” You can get right into the detail, and when the emotion is on those parameters because they are all different reactions, its closer to being more intensity based, reactive crowd stuff. I didn’t even know if that would work, it was basically the emotion meter runs over, and just triggers that sound, I was like ” That actually works, that’s great!” The other solution was more complex, there had to be a secret event, and that wouldn’t fire because of a whole host of reasons. So I was like, “Ah, lets try this”. But you know, just really cool things like we’ve managed to get some really cool reverb definitions going. The thing with a lot of iPhone and iOS titles is that you are not really dealing with a 3D world as much, which is something I’m kind of missing a little bit.

Because I’ve been doing a lot of iPhone iOS development, and have been trying to push FMOD to the extreme in regards to what we can deliver. I do kind of miss making things for consoles, or even PC because you just have a bigger scope to work in, and it’s much more creatively satisfying working on larger scale projects. Sadly, they are few and far between! But getting things sounding awesome on the iPhone is still very satisfying.

In a way, it makes you work creatively within your constraints.

Yeah, that’s something I really enjoy. Having limits to things. It’s the new old school all over again. The pipeline we’ve got now is really quite cool, and exposing other people to that is really neat and that has ended up being quite a collaborative process. so you have to work with what you have to get things out the door.

How have you been handling the mix phase, are you connected to the game?

We used the FMOD net connection to mix straight off the iPads, which has worked really well. We can get a really good mix like that. Prior to that, we used the real time connect straight into the PS3 so that we could do surround sound mixes. But now I figured out how to launch xcode and the iPhone simulator and can connect to that instead on my local machine during development which is pretty crazy. I can build the game and be up and mixing and creating audio on a virtual device emulating a real bit of hardware. It works really well.

When you get that whole system up and running though, it’s a phenomenal feature. When working with hardware I just plug my iPhone or iPad output directly into my Pro Tools 003, which is all metered up, with some test tones I can just send out a 0dB signal and monitor everything from my computer. I’ve got some spectrum analyser software as well so I can monitor the frequency content and make sure it’s going to sound great for people.

But I don’t really bother anymore on tailoring audio to work through the speakers; When those devices came out There was a lot of emphasis on getting iPhone audio to sound good through the bullshit device speaker but I’ve given up on that now and I think everyone else should too.

There is really no point modifying the audio for it to work like that, it’s like, if you want to hear good audio, put some headphones on! The quality that you can get out of an iPhone, with the right compression codecs and a good pair of headphones is pretty close to commercial audio quality. I have some impulse reverbs that can emulate the sound of the iPhone and iPad speakers I can put across a pre-recorded output in Pro Tools to get a idea of what things will sound like and check out the frequency spectrum. There are alot of immersive games now that need good sound for the experience.

But why bother turning all the treble up, or modifying things so that it sounds better through those  speakers? As long as its not annoying, obnoxious sounds that will piss people off or overload the speakers and get basic messages across to the player but sound awesome once you put the headphones on. I think that should be ke

Do you work algorithmically at all, or using any other interactive or dynamic techniques?

I’ve had quite a few projects that we just generated by lots of tuned loops randomly playing. It sounded almost like Brian Eno! Just by messing with parameters, layers and controlling different settings. You can do a lot with spawning lots of sounds within a sound definition with FMOD.

There was great because there was this beautiful generative random music that just twinkled away in the background. I’ve looked at FMODs music system and really researched it You can do basic cueing template-based themes between sections.

With iOS you can’t get away with a 32 channel stream inside memory limits or anything like that. Even the PS3 would struggle with it. So for now It’s a very much ‘pre-baked’ kind of approach, or maybe a one or two layer kind of approach. Maybe things will be better on the iPad 3. It’s a few years away still.

But I have been using alot of random sounds to make generative backgrounds such as forests and storms and city ambience. say 10 different car and horn sounds, a ambient loop and various traffic noises. It’s interesting the patterns that appear in that kind of audio are all pretty much the same but with different noise sources.

I’ve always found that these technical challenges really drive the creativity in games.

It’s pretty interesting, I remember when I  first got exposed to FMOD, one of the biggest problems I had was in the API, the system I/O was defaulted to 16 channels. For the ‘Blood Drive‘ game I was working on at the time, which I had 8 months to complete,we had 8 cars, zombies were screaming and the whole game was just chaos. We had 217 events firing at once at one point. There we explosions, each car had its own explosion, each car had multiple layers of engine sounds, running over multiple zombies, it was madness! And I was trying to mix this thing!

So we developed our own code-based sidechain compression. If anything exploded, it would turn down the  music, and things like that. That was a lot of fun to implement, and is part of our pipeline now as an sound effects code, so whenever we need that kind of level of control, we can always use the DSP to control a wide variety of dynamic effects. All that process that I’ve taken from using other software, and trying to figure out a way I can replicate that using DSPs and FMOD.

Those are really great tool-sets to have, particularly in games that have commentary, or vocals and music, with chaos in the background! You still need to relay that information in a way that is digestible by the player. In one game we used these effects to add a cliched Matrix-style bullet-time effect just for fun! (laughs) I do find myself doing quite cliched stuff sometimes, but having a lot of fun with it, you know, really dramatic sounds just for the hell of it!

Right, as long as it supports the gameplay you can go really dramatic. Are there any examples of game audio where you think it’s been done really well?

The game that does that best in the whole entire ultraverse is Limbo. Its understanding of space is phenomenal. I listened to that the other day in the studio  and the intricate design between what’s happening with the relationship between events and the sonic is really amazing.

It’s that’s the kind of approach where that single sound has has so much design and attention, that when you hear 100 of those, it’s still phenomenal and I don’t think you get to do that much in a project often. I also think because of the way the game is playing, and the way that it is literally spotlighted, the audio and gameplay and the way it’s presented is spotlighted bit-by-bit, instead of having it all presented at once. You really get to take those moments in so the detail really needed to be there.

Part Two (Coming Soon)

Here is the first interview with this month’s special guest Elliot Koretz, talking about general aspects of his career.

How did you get started in sound design?

My first industry job was as an apprentice editor in the shipping room at Disney Studios. I was exposed to all types of editing (picture, music, and sound) but I was attracted to sound for not only what I saw as the ability to be very creative but for the autonomy of working independently of the director and producers who seemed to be always in the picture editors room. At Disney I met a sound editor who was also moonlighting at Neiman-Tillar, a leading independent sound house back in the day. He saw my interest in wanting to advance to editor a little quicker than what was the norm at Disney and offered to put in a good word for me there. I was offered assistant editors position and took it. While there I was first introduced to electronic editing. This was approximately 1980 and they had, as far as I know, the first system that was used for this, ACCESS. That’s really pretty amazing for so long ago. I think the first show I ever cut on electronically was a tv show, “Aloha Paradise” It was a kind of “Love Boat” on land and the sound needed was pretty straight forward fx. But I do remember one particular episode where the story line had a man who was interested in a divorced woman with a young child. The kid was opposed to this relationship and at one point bites the guy on the leg in kind of a comical manner. This lead to what I believe may have been the first “design” moment of my career. I layered a celery snap with some sort of other big crunch and………I was off and running as a designer.

After that I moved around landing at a number of post facilities for a while. I was an editor at Stephen Cannell, which turned out to be a great place to learn to cut action sequences. On shows like “The A-Team” you had a week to cut an entire reel (approx 12 min) of Dia, FX, BG’s and Foley. And inevitably you had a scene like this: Our heroes were in some sort of large vehicle, traveling pretty fast on a rough surface, being chased by a helicopter that was shooting at them. They meanwhile had constructed some sort of rapid firing gun that was shooting nails or some other projectiles……..and little to none of this could be created just straight out of the sound library.

These kinds of sequences needed multi-layered design and remember this was on film. Many units and also much of the final result of my work couldn’t be heard played together until the dub stage. On an old fashion film sync block you could only hear three or four “channels” at once. Anything wider than that and you had only your experience and imagination to visualize the combined sound.

I think doing this kind of design work way back then really helped me understand how to efficiently combine elements to get the sound I wanted.

I spent some time at Soundelux when the company was still pretty young and while there moved into cutting sound on features. (Still editing on film). I did return to tv editing and ended up working first as an editor then as supervisor on the show, “MacGyver”. It was another busy design show with the lead character always inventing something to beat the bad guys that required creative design work. After a successful first season the producers wanted to change to an all-electronic post. Soundelux at that time was not prepared for the huge investment in equipment and ultimately the show was moved to a newly created facility, Modern Sound. Over that summer they built a new mix stage, foley stage, and editing rooms using both Synclavier and 24 track editing systems. I was offered to continue as the supervisor of the show and accepted. After a very brief training period at the offices of New England Digital (the creators of the Synclavier) I jumped into the world of electronic post again.

The problems we faced were immense. This was 1986 and the technology was still in it’s infancy. There were not yet sound libraries that were “digital” and the decision was made to purchase a copy of the library of a leading sound supervisor at the time, Fred Brown. Then the issue was storage. The best we could do at the time was to digitize onto floppy discs. They could only hold a few seconds of sound each so you can imagine the challenges that caused. This was truly the bleeding edge of technology.

It was at times very exhilarating but often very frustrating to be at the forefront of this transition. There were times we struggled to achieve what was extremely easy to accomplish on film and other times we saw how cool it was to work in a non destructive environment with new tools to manipulate the sound.

After that season I moved around again to a couple of different facilities but then found what turned out to be a long-term home at Weddington Productions. The three owners at that time (Steve Flick, Richard Anderson, and Mark Mangini) were doing some of the most creative sound design anywhere. There is no question that was the turning point in my becoming a much more accomplished designer. Working with the talented people at Weddington constantly challenged me to step up my game and really think hard about what I could do to impact the movie sonically in every detail.

While there I made the full time transition to ProTools and it’s world of opportunities that cutting digitally has brought to all of us.

All these pieces of the puzzle have helped form what I do today. At Universal where myself and my crew have 5.1 editing suites and all sorts of plug in devices I reference all that experience from both the film and digital worlds when conceptualizing the design work I do.

How has been the evolution of your work and how your approach to sound has changed over the years?

Well, in some ways it’s changed dramatically and in others not so much. In a practical sense I mentioned the switch from film to digital. I really embraced it and all the flexibility it gave me while staying in my editing environment and not having to wait for a reprint of something or a specialist for processing. It’s just more efficient and much easier for me to experiment with sounds. In a more subjective perspective I think I grow after every film I do. I am a very hands on supervisor and I feel that one of the perks of being in charge is that I get to choose which elements of the project I will personally handle. I still try (time and budget permitting) to be very old school in my method. I like to pull and organize the fx and bg’s my editors will work from (I always encourage and give them the option of going beyond the pull) and give them a “cut list”. I think that method lends itself more to continuity and flow of the sound of the film. If I can’t do that then I meet with the editors, run the reels and give as much info as I can to them and review the work later. I think one of the bigger changes in my approach in recent years has been to make a concerted effort to co ordinate with the composer more. We all have been in the situation in a mix where we are fighting for the same sonic space with the music tracks. If I know where the music is working and in what frequencies and what type of rhythm I can attempt to compliment it and not fight it.

I wonder how sound design has changed the way you listen.

I think I listen and think about emotions. What are we trying to say to the audience? Like with music I don’t want to fight the dialog so I see fx, bg’s and design as a tool, sometimes very subtle other times not, to promote the directors’ vision. I listen for bridging opportunities to use sound to connect scenes. I always remember on the dub stage for the movie “Speed” Greg Landaker (not sure about spelling) the lead fx mixer suggested some great ideas to do just that. The frenetic pace of the film lent itself to fast whooshing elements to bridge cuts. It was just one more layer to make it a more finished and cohesive movie.

How has been your work with directors? any particular story on that?

You touch on a very important question. I think that just as important as my design work on the film or maybe sometimes even more important is my rapport with the director (and the picture editor as well). We as supervisors and designers need to be very politically astute and sensitive to the personalities we work with. Some clients like a “take charge guy” who they are counting on to lead the way in the sound post. Some want a person that gives them exactly what they ask for…and nothing more. I guess what I am saying is that we need to size up who we are working with and as early as possible give them what they need. As wildly creative as we are we can’t lose sight that we are a service. I don’t believe that one style will fit all.

I have been very fortunate to work with some amazingly talented directors. When people look at my resume they usually want to know about Michael Mann. In addition to working on and supervising some of his television shows I supervised and did the design work on both “Collateral” and “Miami Vice”. Michael is without question a creative genius and a visionary that has given us some amazing tableaus. The challenge is that he is so demanding of himself, often working 20 hours days for seemingly months on end and he expects his team to keep up with him at all times. I think he has his ideal of the visual and sonic harmony he wants and has little tolerance if you are not on board with him. If you understand that it makes your job less difficult. People always want to hear horror stories, the truth is that the hours were long and tough but as I was mentioning in the previous question when you understand who you are working with and what they expect of you then you as a supervisor can depersonalize challenging situations for you and your crew and keep everyone on point.

I did a film with the amazing Irish director Jim Sheridan. He was a very easygoing guy with me and my crew and regaled the dub stage with wonderful tales, as is the tradition for storytellers like him. His style was more to allow me the freedom to bring design ideas to the stage and then he would give input.

I love when a director really understands and supports what sound and sound design will bring to their film. I worked with Gavin O’Connor on the film “Miracle” a few years back. He wanted realism throughout his film. He wanted hockey players that could act as opposed to actors that could skate a bit and for sound he wanted the most realistic sounding sports movie ever. We did extensive recordings of skating and hockey crowds and then mixing with Mike Minkler and Myron Nettinga we got a terrific soundtrack. Gavin was so incredibly appreciative of the work we all did and that’s always refreshing and nice to have.

Another great collaboration has been with the director Thor Freudenthal. His name may not be familiar to everyone but I think it soon will be. He is a very talented young director. I worked on “Hotel for Dogs” and “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” with him. Both films presented unusual design challenges and Thor was very supportive to make that sonic space that we all hope for available in the final mix.

All these directors I just mentioned understood the value of doing field recording for their films. Whether it’s getting out to Miami and recording onboard speed boats at over 135mph (Yikes!), Directing a crowd of 5,000 people chanting “USA, USA” or dog ADR sessions (Story on that to follow), working with someone that gets the concept of what we can bring to the film by doing these things is always a bonus.

I wonder how you approach the different roles you can play on a film, such as sound designer or supervisor. Any preference?

I really enjoy them all. Unless a particular film is just too demanding a job for me to exclusively hold both titles I will try most often and handle those myself. To accomplish that I am fortunate enough to have worked with for almost ten years one of the best assistants (who also happens to be one of the best field recordists, great editor and also talented mixer) Bruce Barris. His wide range of skills allows me the freedom to be creative while he has handled some of the other aspects of the workflow. He has been an invaluable partner in the design process.

And speaking of that I do see the work we do as a collaborative effort. I am most definitely the point man with the client but it is the entire team that I count on. With the budgets so tight these days my crew is often small. Everyone has to be really capable. I try and spend quite a bit of time with each member keeping them up to date with as much info as I can.

On some of my films for one reason or another I have assumed the role of ADR supervisor as well. I do really enjoy getting the opportunity to work with the actors.

So I guess that although design is probably my favorite part of the job, as I like to say “it’s full service” and I’m good with hands on the other tasks as well.

What are your favorite tools to work with?

I think it’s rare that I use any effect out of the library without doing some sort of tweaking to it. I use quite a bit of the standard plug ins that are included in ProTools and also the Waves bundle, Izotope (particularly Trash), AltiVerb, and Speakerphone to name a few. Multiple layers of sounds addressing different frequencies are the key. I look for new plug ins and applications all the time as they are rapidly growing.

Do you have any special method for dealing with deadlines/creative challenges?

Well, that’s not very easily accomplished. It’s time management. I think one of the most important skills in that regard is having the dub stage experience to really understand what will play and what will be less important in the overall mix. Sizing up the key sequences and looking at how much time you have to spend on them is crucial. I find this does not come naturally to everyone and I help my crew know what areas to concentrate on.

Is there any of your projects that you remember for being the most challenging or favorites?

Which of your children do you like the best, eh? So hard to answer. I will pick out one but I probably could find examples in almost all my films.

A couple of years ago I did a family film, “Hotel for Dogs”. On the surface it seemed like a fairly simple movie to do. There were some Rube Goldberg like mechanical inventions to design but otherwise I didn’t at first see any challenges or possible difficulties. Was I off the mark…..by a mile. The movie had many dogs in it (it was titled Hotel for Dogs…..right?) a number of them feature performers. The conceit was that they sounded like normal dogs. Nothing comical or unrealistic in their performance. It turned out that in every single bit of production the tracks were filled with the sound of the various trainers urging on their dogs to perform with whistles, clickers, and other devices that basically made the original sound track unusable.

So now I was faced with the reality that I had to replace every single sound all the dogs made for the entire movie. There was no library in town that has such a variety and complete sets for all these dogs. I was in serious trouble until an incredibly serendipitous event occurred. Some of my crew members and I were walking to lunch. We were working at Universal and sometimes we would cut through the theme park to eat up above us at City Walk. As we walked through the park I noticed there was a stage with the sign that read “animal act”. There was a worker standing in front with a dog beside her. I told her I was a fellow employee and what I was working on and asked, “Do the dogs in the act follow commands to bark?” She assured me they did and led me to backstage to meet the trainers. Turned out they had worked on my movie and actually some of the same dogs were here in this live show. After discussing what was needed with the trainers we set up a date and brought the dogs down to the foley stage for a “doggy” ADR session. Each dog responded to silent commands and barked, whined, sniffed and growled as we recorded them. I now had my kits for each of the main dogs in the movie.

Cutting their tracks was like doing voice replacement for about eight actors throughout an entire movie. Dogs never stop making sounds. They are always panting and licking and doing something that required considerable thought. I would find the most evocative material while still “keeping it real”.

The satisfaction came that in the final product my work was truly invisible. The dog vocals fit perfectly (being from the same dog in many instances) and no one would ever suspect that what they were hearing was not production. The work did not call attention to itself but never the less was some of the best sound work I’ve done recently.

What are your favorite films for sound?

That’s another loaded question. There is such great work out there. I go all the way back to classics like “Shane” and “Forbidden Planet” as early examples. And certainly I used to try and destroy my speakers playing “Top Gun” and then “Days of Thunder” at dangerous volume levels. The work of Ben Burtt, Gary Rydstrom, Randy Thom, Ren Klyce….I could go on and on. When I worked with at Weddington the movies that we were doing, Die Hard, Apollo 13, Speed, all the Joe Dante films……..were so incredibly well done. And recently my colleague at Universal Scott Hecker has put out some of the coolest tracks (300, Watchmen, and Suckerpunch) with Chris Jenkins and Frankie Montano mixing. I thought Avatar was an incredible piece of work knowing the difficulties in having to conceptualize design when you may still be working against a storyboard. I love movies. Always been a film fan and it’s just too hard to narrow the field on my favorites.

This is a good point to mention mixers. To understand how to collaborate and help them do their job is huge. I can’t emphasis enough my belief that it’s a team effort and although I do plenty of premixing back in the editing room I love that another set of very talented ears listens to the material and can add their expertise to it. I always try and meet with the team as early as possible and include them in the process.

Is there any advice you’d like to give to other sound designers out there?

Well, I think the key is to think divergently. Outside the box. Don’t be confined by the laws of nature. That’s how little kids think and that ability seems to disappear as we grow up. I know that there are sounds that have to be exact and correct but emotional sound has a huge role in design. And the practical advise is to put your ego aside and listen to what the filmmaker is saying and present yourself in a manner that instills confidence that you are the right person for the job. One of my favorite stories that help bring that point home is this. Walter Murch and Randy Thom were participating in a forum about sound. When Randy was speaking he told a story of how when he meets with the director he regales him or her with visions of incredible design to come with all sorts of amazing nuance and the client is wowed. They know they have he right person. The the meeting ends, Randy goes into the privacy of his editing room and says to himself, “How the f*ck am I going to do it?”

So don’t let them see you sweat. Bring your best attitude to your meetings……and then go back to your room and start panicking!

Seriously, this has been a lot of fun. Thanks for the opportunity to share some stories. I hope this has been informative and a little entertaining.

New year, new month, and of course, a new featured sound designer. This month our special guest is sound designer Elliot Koretz.

I was born and raised just outside Boston and got my start in the industry very early. I guess I was always fascinated with tv and movies. When I was fourteen a cable tv/public access facility opened in my hometown and I got a job there (sometimes volunteer sometimes paid) working in tv production. It was great exposure and training. A number of years later when my dad got a job transfer to the Los Angeles area I moved out to L.A. with the thought that this really is the ultimate place to be for the film industry. I had a degree in film and went looking for work. After what turned out to be a very short search I landed an entry level position at Walt Disney Studios. I worked in the mail room for and then I had an opportunity to get into the editing dept which started me on my my way to being a sound editor and designer.

I am married with two children, two birds and a dog.

Credits @ IMDb

Let’s get started with this month’s special. Below is an interview I had with our guest Harry Cohen, talking about the general aspects of his career.

How did you get started in sound design and what’s been the evolution of your career?

I backed into sound design by accident; I showed up at EFX studios in Burbank to do some piano overdubs on a new-age-y album, and met the staff. They were a music studio just getting into post production. The owner asked me if I would help with some sound effects for game shows they were posting, since I knew synths pretty well. Three days later he asked me out of the blue if I was interested in trying my hand at doing sound fx for a film. (a super low-budget film !), and for better or worse , I agreed. I stayed with EFX for about 12 years, and slowly we built a reputation and started getting better films. Looking back , it was like a rare alignment of the stars or something; so many talented people were associated with that place. (Paul Menichini, David Farmer, Ann Scibelli, Tim Gedemer, Tim Walston, Mike Kamper, Gary Rizzo, Mark Fishman, and on and on). Later, I accepted an offer from from Wylie Stateman and Lon Bender to join Soundelux. Except for a 6 month period where I was ‘on loan’ to Soundstorm, those are the only 3 facilities I have worked for. I’ve been with Soundelux for more than 10 years now.

What are your biggest influences inside and outside the world of sound?

Well , of course , all the great sounding films over the years, and, all the other sound professionals I have worked with. Many people are so open and willing to share what they know, and that is probable the greatest resource we can tap.

I think also that being a musician has had a lot of influence on how I hear things.

How you deal with deadlines and creativity? Is there any special method you have for staying creative?

Aha ! Deadlines and creativity… I find that fear and panic have great effect on your productivity ! But seriously, my thoughts on it are that when you are crunched, you tend to work longer hours, and that after several hours of working with the problem and your material , something ‘clicks’ in your brain , and you go into this mode of being focused and productive. So often we go back to the stuff we did in a hurry when under time pressure , and realize that it is good ! Unfortunately, this is not a great way to work all the time; it tends to take a toll on your life. But I am not one who can be creative all the time; it comes and goes, and I have to take advantage of it when I am ‘in the mode’.

DS: What are your favorite tools in the studio and the field?

In the field , I love my Sound Devices 722. The small portable Zoom type recorders are also super convenient for casual and ‘stealth’ recordings. I have been doing most of my recording with either a Sennheiser 416 or 418; I also love the Neumann 190i. This year I intend to try some larger diaphragm mics. In studio, pro tools of course is the main platform, but I also work in Logic, Max msp, Reason, and other standalone programs. Kontakt has become an important tool for me.

DS: What’s your take on technology and how do you think it has affected the way you design sound today?

Well, looking back, I used a synclavier and a rack of outboard gear. Complex patch-ups were often hard to re-create. Now, if I need 3 more eqs and 2 more compressors, a couple of pitch shifters and some reverbs and delays, the computer isn’t even breathing hard. Also , there are constantly new plug-ins and
new sound technology coming out. I try to experiment with new stuff when I can.

How would you define sound design? What is the essence for you?

Sound Design has really come to mean two separate things. In the larger sense , a sound designer can be someone who is involved with the whole sound of the film; the creation or supervision of all the elements,(except the music) and how they fit together, the arc of the soundtrack, actively working with the mixers to realize the directors wants and vision for the film. But, it also means the guy(s) (or gals) that are tasked with creating and organizing the cool sounds themselves.

Much of what we need does not exist in the real world; or there is a creative ‘re-purposing’ of real world sounds to be something else. Its hard to be both of those people; they are both very time intensive. In practice, my work falls somewhere in between the two, which is to say that I am usually present during the mix to contribute a voice to the shaping of the track , and to manufacture lots of last minute adds and fixes.I do a lot of work with supervisor Wylie Stateman , and we tend to see a lot of things the same way, in terms of what we are trying to accomplish with the sound.

Harry Cohen and Michael Keller

What have been your most challenging projects and why? Any favorites also?

Challenge can be lots of different things. Earlier this year I helped out on Green Lantern, doing the evil monster, his thrall, and any ‘evil energy’. My first day on the project was also the first day of predubs ! That was a particular kind of challenge. Each film presents its own challenges, and while that sounds like a cliche, it is very true. I once told Wylie that if I was really honest with a director at our first meeting, I would say that I have no idea what I am going to do for his film. The film will tell me what it needs……to which Wylie replied “You’d better let me do the talking at that first meeting !”

As far as favorites; the first ‘Blade’ and the more recent ‘Wanted’ are two films that sound very close to my intentions.

What are your favorite type of sounds or scenes to work with and why?

I like creature sounds; I love the subjective type of sounds that are somewhere between sound effects and music. I enjoy doing things that affect the audience emotionally.

DS: Would you like to give an advice to other sound designers out there? What would it be?

My advice to up and comers would be to seek out other people to learn from. One of the things that made EFX such a special place was the continual sharing of information and techniques; its hard to figure everything out yourself. Build your own custom library full of your own recordings and creations. When you are making new sounds, make more than you need, and save some for later. When you wander into an interesting area (design-wise), explore it and record some stuff, even if its not what you currently need. And when playing with processing or plug-ins, I always think ‘how do I know if I’ve gone far enough until I have clearly gone too far ?” Listen to stuff you like and try to figure out how to do some of that. Heck , email the designer , and ask him !

What are your favorite films for sound? Any special recommendations?

Well , I am old enough that Apocalypse Now , the Star Wars films and the first Indiana Jones totally re-defined film sound for me. But advances in recording technology have engendered a whole new era of ‘high definition’ sound that is equally as exciting.

DS: What are you currently working on? What’s next for Harry Cohen?

I am currently working on “Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter’ for director Timur Bekmambetov. Down the road for us is Oliver Stone’s ‘Savages’ and Quentin Tarrentino’s ‘Django’.

As far as sound in these two industries, both film and game sound brings us into the picture and stirs up our emotions.  It also helps make the images come alive. In film as the story evolves the sound is used to back up the story, and helps make us feel a certain way about the images. There are usually longer and more elaborate sequences to take the viewer through a story with film, and with game sound there is a far greater variety of generally short sounds.  Unlike films, these sounds elicit an immediate, active, reaction from the player.

I think whereas more time goes into pre-production sound work on games than most films, unfortunately for freelancers, an awful lot of this time can be spent dealing with contracts and legal issues instead of being creative. Though sometimes on high budget films there is a fair bit of legal back and forth that is needed, I find that there are way more contract negations with game companies over licensing.

You’ve mentioned previously that game audio is more complicated than film in some ways. Can you go into a little more detail?

There are far more sounds needed in a game than a film, and many more variations on the same theme. Take for example a film and a game that has monsters in it. In a film a creature dies once and the designer only has to create vocals for that one event.  In a game there can be many different possibilities of how and when that creature dies and a variety of subtly different death cries that need to be created. It’s often that way in a game with many many different creatures and emotions that need to be represented. Also, in a game there is more dimension to a scene, like when a player moves and sounds need to change as the image changes.

There are starting to be opportunities for creating new sound styles in 3D movies, but so far I think game sound designers are further ahead in that area.

What types of sounds have you been contracted to provide? And do you provide finished designs/assets, or are you providing component elements for the developers’ sound teams to work with?

With games I’ve been mostly asked to provide creature vocals. I have a huge collection of animal sounds that I, and to some extent my late husband, Alan Splet, recorded over decades. I’ve captured animals that have expressed a panoply of emotions across the globe.  Sometimes I’m also asked for nature sounds such as jungle, desert, and arctic backgrounds or city ambiances in exotic locals, but so far not as much as expressive animals. Once in awhile I’ll get contacted for my large collection of vintage cars, planes and weapons.

What are some of the questions you ask when you are approached to work on a game?

After signing an NDA, I try to find out as much information as possible about the nature of the game and what kinds of sounds they are looking for to enhance their project. I tell them about sounds in my library and generally what I have that can help.

My process of coming up with really useful sounds for the game evolves as I talk with the designer, send material, get feedback, and enhance the package as the process progresses. I choose material based on this collaboration and through suggestions of ways that it can be layered in various combinations, or slowed or sped up, and processed to get the effect needed.

Bears, horses, wolves, whales, lions, leopards, monkeys and alligators just to name a few animals that happen to come to mind, can be used in surprising and endless combinations. Sometimes I’ll find material from my library that isn’t an animal but has the right effect. For example, I have some amazing dry ice recordings that David Lynch and Alan created many years ago for Eraserhead.  Some of it sounds like wounded or angry animals and can be really useful in sweetening real animal vocals.

What reference materials do you commonly work with from developers?

Stills, video clips from the game and descriptions and explanations from the sound designer.

Are there any particular characteristics that help you define the sonic palette for a game asset? What structural and visual aspects help you connect a specific sound to a given game element?

The more information I can get and visuals I can see, the more I am able to come up with interesting and nuanced varieties of sounds.  Sometimes I find sounds that you wouldn’t think of for a particular image but really add an extra flavor or exciting dimension to it.

How does the overall look and tone of the game affect your decisions?

Just as in film the look and tone of the images in a game has a huge effect on what sorts of sounds are needed. For example, the sound needs to create threatening monsters for Hellgate London was very different from the adorable, young cats or bears that the guys working on Kinectimals were wanting.

You provided sounds for Spore, which was a rather unpredictable game. Players designed their creatures/races from the ground up, watching them evolve as the game progressed. I imagine that presented a very unique set of considerations when developing sounds for the game. Care to comment?

Spore is an incredible game! I worked with the local sound developers in the East Bay of San Francisco, for several months on the game. They were a great team and I enjoyed the communication, but I think I could have been much more helpful to them during the initial development if the nature of the game had been more clear. The problem was that they hadn’t received enough information themselves about the look of the creatures. We initially thought that the creatures were much more menacing than they actually were when the first images finally came in. I had helped them develop a whole vocabulary that we had thought would be appropriate given the information we had, but needed to be dramatically different once the images started coming in.  It was at that time that a different sound designer took charge, brought in new people, and took the sound in a different direction. I would have loved to be involved in that as well but alas, it wasn’t in the cards.

What is the feedback process like when working with the in-house audio teams?

I tend to get terrific feedback. I develop an understanding and rapport with my clients that evolves over time. I like talking with them on the phone (or Skype) if we’re in different locales. Sometimes I’ll play sounds over a speakerphone just to show them what I’m thinking and that’s an instant way to find out if we’re on the same track or where I need to go.

What’s one of your favorite moments from working on some of these games?

One delightful experience I had was last year when I recorded new animal vocals for Kinectimals. I spent a week at a big cat preserve in the Mojave Desert. I really got to know the kitties while I was there. I fell in love with a magnificent Tiger named Caesar that would come over to me and tell me his woes. He’d look into my eyes and talk right into my microphone. One day he put the back of his head against the fence and wanted me to pet him. I told him I wasn’t allowed and he was very incensed.  He like most of cats there seemed to understand that I was trying to capture their voices with those big mics. Once I convinced them not to be afraid, and showed I was interested in what they had to say, they were wonderfully vocal with me.  There was an adorable leopard cub that would hiss and snarl at the mic and then pull back, sit and smile at me.  I called him “tuff stuff”.  He was so proud of showing me how tuff he was. Then there were other cats that would grumble, and chuff, howl, hiss and sing.

One night I went out to capture a primal chuffing sound that the cats do in a group at night.  They evidently won’t do this around people so I set my rig up at the edge of Caesar. the tiger’s large compound. hoping that maybe I could capture him making that sound.  I turned the recorder on and walked away with my guide. We sat back under the trees and could hear a group of leopards start their chorus and it sounded like Caesar started to chime in.  When I listened to the tape, after the leopards provided the background vocals Caesar had walked right up to the mic and like a great jazz singer sang a wonderfully expressive solo. It took everything in me to keep from going over and hugging him.

You come from a very unique background within the audio industry; having worked on some of the most revered soundtracks for film, and now contributing to some of the largest game franchises in existence. Do you have any comments to the game audio industry?

It seems like there is a general feeling that film is where the most creative and serious sound work is being done, but games are now so much more imaginative and sophisticated than what they used to be. There are more resources and development time being put into game sound than there is on an average film, and the innovations being made are well… awesome.

Ann Kroeber is this month’s featured sound designer here at Designing Sound and this opening interview introduces several different aspects of Ann’s impressive and wide-ranging talents. On a personal note, I’ve collaborated and met up with Ann a few times during the last couple of years and her energy and enthusiasm is always infectious and inspiring. Hopefully, this shows here:

Designing Sound: How did you get started in sound?

Ann Kroeber: I started in sound quite by accident. I was working at the United Nations and was asked by my boss to record outdoor Chinese New Year celebrations. As a girl, I wasn’t allowed to touch any of my father’s records and was strictly forbidden from even turning off his stereo, so it seemed like this guy was asking me to do astro-physics, but, well, he persisted. After meticulously writing down the rules I nervously trudged down to Chinatown with expensive mic and Nagra in hand. I put the headset on, turned on the recorder and a world of fascination and beauty opened to me. I was so excited that I just followed my instincts and captured what sounded cool too me. My boss was delightfully impressed. I was hooked.

DS: What do you love most about sound?

AK: I love the emotionality and musicality of the sounds around us, that you get to hear when you really stop to listen. It’s a kind of listening where you quiet your mind, become all ears and just focus on sound. For example, right now, as I’m typing there is a gentle breeze wafting off my patio that’s making the blinds tinkle. My little dog is under the table by my feet, licking himself to the cadence of the blinds. I wouldn’t normally notice this, but I stopped thinking about what I’d write for a moment and now I simply hear it.

DS: You’ve been active for more than four decades now – very impressive! Has time changed the way you think about sound and the film industry in general?

AK: Three Peter! Three decades. I look forward to a fourth.

There are many, many changes and I’ll talk more in detail about this later, but one of my favorites is being able to access and share sounds so much more easily now. I love the interconnectivity and ease of sharing across the planet. Being able to call someone in Mumbai, talk with you in Denmark, send sound files to Moscow, download film clips in a matter of minutes that would have taken an eternity not too long ago, and been impossible when I started.

DS: What are your biggest influences inside and outside the world of sound?

AK: My biggest influence inside the world of sound was my late husband, Alan Splet. His attention to detail, nuance, perseverance, ability to vastly influence the mood of a scene by the choice and placement of sounds will always be with me.

Outside the world of sound is possibly what I learned from Anna Halprin, after my husband, mother and father had all died, all within three years. Six months later I was diagnosed with breast cancer (this is 16 years ago). It was the most challenging time of my life. Anna was a very famous dancer and choreographer, that had suffered from the same form of deadly cancer as Alan, but survived. She taught a class at Marin General Hospital for people with life threatening illnesses. In her class we screamed and danced our fears and anger, and drew pictures, found our animal guides, visited a group of Pomo Indians, and so many other things that many scientists and doctors would scoff at – but we healed! Of the 65 or more people that went thru Anna’s course, I know of only four that have died. That is incredible odds. I have a friend who was in a group of 15 then, and only two are alive now.

DS: I know that you’re doing a lot of sound effects recording, especially recording lots of animals. Any special tricks, tips or methods?

AK: I’m going to tell you more later about how I’ve found how much smarter animals are than most of us think and how easy it is to record them if you respect them, but what I’ll say briefly here is the most important tip is to leave your expectations and prejudices behind and simply “talk” to them. I’ll tell you how to do this and share some of the amazing experiences.

DS: You’ve also released the Unusual Presences library, highlighting your recordings with the special FRAP microphone. Could you talk a bit about the FRAP – it’s a type of contact microphone, right?

AK: Discovering the FRAP was, again, a serendipitous experience. I’m going to talk in detail later about my discovery of recording with this contact mic and the amazing worlds and new possibilities of sound that it opens up for sound designers. These are sounds that you can’t hear with your naked ears or any regular microphones.

Briefly, FRAP stands for “Flat Response Audio Pickup” and was invented by Arnie Lazarus. He customized one specially for me, but now there are several other brands available on the market. Trance Audio, for example, makes a contact mic that sounds fairly close to mine.

DS: How has it influenced your thinking about sound?

AK: It opened up a whole new world for me. The incredible tones, musicality and textures of sound inside just our everyday appliances, not to mention a myriad other machines, offers such a rich palette for sound design.

One of the most incredible discoveries was fairly recent when I heard NASA recordings from outer space and much to my astonishment, realized that they sound just like what I’ve been hearing in inner space,
inside machines, etc. The expression “so above so below” really hit me. We were unwittingly making outer space in Dune sound like it actually DOES sound.

DS: Otherwise, which are your favorite tools?

AK: If I weren’t, alas, still such a blooming technophobe, I’d have a far greater list. My favorite “tools” are very simple, Pro Tools, my custom made contact mics, Pitch ‘n Time, Izotope Rx, and my precious Schoeps, with exchangeable heads, it’s identity type number still escapes me.

DS: What are your favorite films for sound?

AK: There are many. I’ll leave out the films that Alan worked on (to keep from puffing and muffing). Well, a few that just happen to pop into mind are Once Upon a Time in the West, Atonement, anything by Tarkovsky, Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Last Wave, Mulholland Drive, Saving Private Ryan and two recent ones: The American and Super 8. I loved the quiet elegance, imagination and way sound and music played together in The American and when I saw Super 8 I was stunned by the sound design. I was so fascinated by the way sound was used in this movie that for the first 10 minutes I didn’t have a clue what the characters were saying because I focused intensely on the sound effects and how they worked with music. I didn’t realize until the end credits that Ben Burtt was its sound designer. Every film that Ben has made has amazing sound in it but this one has a slightly different style and I thought it was stunning.

DS: What has been your most challenging project and why?

AK: It was a fairly low budget film that I thought had tremendous potential, called American Gun. James Coburn and Virginia Madsen thought so too, and starred in it. It was my first “Sound Designer” position. The director hired me because of my work with David Lynch and his admiration of David’s soundtracks. I worked with a terrific team and I was really proud of our work. We were working in Berkeley and the director was in LA and he didn’t hear enough of our work during the process. A huge mistake on my part! When I took the film down to LA for the mix he switched and became, for some reason, very literal minded (the opposite of Lynch) and took out many of our evocative backgrounds and mood elements that danced with the music, simply because they weren’t “natural”. He said, in reality, ”you wouldn’t actually hear that”.

I had communicated quite extensively with the composer and had designed sounds to work with his music. It was sad, at the time, I didn’t have Randy Thom’s words (or confidence) to explain how sound effects can show and amplify a character’s mood. I just knew it by instinct and had been doing it for years. When the composer and other members of the film crew heard the mix they howled because they’d heard quite different temps of our work. Some of our tracks went back but nothing like the design we had imagined. He admitted later that he was sorry and wished he’d done it differently.

DS: What would be your advice for any sound designer out there?

AK: My advice is to work as closely as possible with the Director all along the way. If you can talk about the sound before even shooting, all the better.

The second is to try and work with the composer. So much time and money can be saved if each knows what the other has in mind and a much richer soundtrack can be had. Also if there is any way you or someone on your crew can convince the producer to record sound effects on the set, everyone will be delighted, including him (eventually).

DS: What have you been working on recently? And what’s next for Ann Kroeber?

AK: Earlier in the year, I taught a master sound class at Gothenburg University in Sweden (wonderful time, I may have learned as much as they did) and gave, as you know, a delightful two day symposium with you in Copenhagen. I’ve worked on several fun (because of the sound people I dealt with) games, including the new World of Warcraft, Ripper, and Dragon Age II. I worked with Pavel Dorueli, long distance, in Moscow on Alexander Sukurov’s new film, Faust, that just won the prize over lots of big names films in Venice. (Bravo, Alexander and Pavel!) I really enjoyed working with Pavel, think he has a  terrific sound sense and am looking forward to seeing the finished movie. And, of course provided sounds for you, which is always a delight. I also provided some “little bear sounds” for the new Kinectimals II game, including recordings of my little “bear” who is doing some great whining, that I could have used, right now because he wants to go for a walk. Next, is another game that I can’t talk about and advisory work I’m doing on a feature called Us.

We’re starting off this month’s special with an exclusive interview with our guest Tim Nielsen, discussing influences, creative methods, techniques, and much more. Hope you enjoy it.

Designing Sound: How did you get started in sound design? What’s been the evolution of your career?

Tim Nielsen: I have to blame my dear friend and brilliant sound person Addison Teague. At USC in the graduate program, you have to crew on a student film in one of a handful of positions: director, producer, editor, cinematographer, or sound. Addison came to me one day, said “I’m thinking about crewing up in sound, but need a partner, are you interested?” To be honest until that point I hadn’t given sound a lot of thought. I entered USC sure I wanted to be a cinematographer, but quickly realized that I hated being on set, hated the energy and the insanity of it. So I thought, sure, I’ll give it a shot.

About a year later, while still at USC, I did an internship at Skywalker Sound with Gary Rydstrom. That was I believe in 1996, and actually I think I might have been the first summer intern Skywalker ever took. When I graduated a couple of years later, I was hired by a supervising sound editor at Skywalker named Tim Holland. His first assistant was going off to explore work in the picture department if I remember correctly, and he needed a new first assistant. I came up to the ranch in April of 1999 to work on Liberty Heights, a Barry Levinson film.

Tim Holland was about the best person in the world to work for, in the sense that even on that first show, when I asked Tim if I could cut something, he was totally open to it, and so I cut a reel. On my second film, Galaxy Quest, I cut more, and Tim being the incredibly great person that he is, went to bat for me and got me my first Effects Editors credit, on only my second film.

From there it’s been a combination of hard work, lots of luck, and having the honor of working with some really wonderful people who have and continue to give me incredible opportunities, even leading up to the project I’m involved with at the moment. I’ve certainly worked hard, and have a pretty good ear for this line of work, but I would be really foolish not to acknowledge the lucky breaks that I’ve gotten that plenty of others haven’t. USC led to an internship which led to my career. That needed have been the case, I had to do my part too, but I’ve been very lucky.

DS: Has working at Skywalker Ranch changed the way you think about sound and film industry in general?

TN: Since my first job ever in the professional world was at Skywalker, I’m not sure how it changed my way of thinking and working, as much as it forged it. I’ve been lucky to have some great opportunities outside of the ranch as well, Pirates of the Caribbean, Lord of the Rings, Journey 3D, and Prince of Persia were all projects done outside of Skywalker. But certainly my way of working was forged at Skywalker, and I’ve always carried that forward.

Certainly working at Skywalker, where the bar is set so high for all of us, continually reminds me what good film sound can do for a film.

DS: What are your biggest influences inside and outside the world of sound?

TN: I certainly find myself inspired by the work of others in sound. It’s very humbling to hear something and think, “Wow, not only do I wish I had done that, but I wish I was capable of doing that!” When I saw Rango for the first time, which was a film that I was involved with a tiny bit early on, I heard some work in there that I thought was very well done. I find Ren Klyce’s work incredibly inspiring, his tracks have such amazing detail, and all the sounds are just perfect. I remember seeing the film Hero, the Jet Li film, and hearing work in there that I was really in love with at the time. So when I hear inspiring work in other people’s tracks, it certainly inspires me to do better myself.

Outside of sound and film industry, this may sound strange, but I find myself influenced by excellence in general. I tend to really admire people who are just really good at what they do, whatever that may be. I find it inspiring to find people who’s dedication results in something extraordinary, be it a writer, a musician, a scientist. I find it both inspiring and incredibly humbling, since I’m not sure I would ever classify myself as excellent at what I do.

DS: What do you love most about sound design?

TN: First and foremost I love the power of it, and by this I mean sound for picture in general. As much as it’s been said, sound really is one of the most powerful tools available to any filmmaker wise enough to embrace it. And the lower the budget of your movie, the more of a bargain it is. I love the moments when sound can give you goosebumps. I love when a really well executed sound or scene elevates the entire movie. I love when you put a sound to picture, and it just sticks, and you know it’s the right sound. I love the happy accidents that come when you just start throwing sound all over the place. I love the creative freedom of it, although it’s also the part of this job that cause a lot of stress, stumbling around trying to find or make or record the sound that ultimately just works. But while stressful, it’s also the fun of it, the hunt for that right sound. And I suppose selfishly I love that when I do make a sound, or cut a scene, that it’s my work up there, and I know that no one else could or would do exactly the same thing, so I do enjoy that bit of ownership.

We recently screened The Fellowship of the Rings in our theater at Skywalker. I didn’t stay, but as they were doing a sound check, I went in, and it was a scene that I had cut. I jokingly started saying, “I cut that water splash, I cut that door, I cut that….” It was a joke, but I do enjoy that on the projects I’ve been involved with, I get to say ‘Hey, I helped make that’, even if my part is rather small in the grand scheme of things.

DS: How do you deal with writer’s block? What kind of methods you have for getting ideas?

TN: Procrastinate. Put if off as long as you can, and only at the last second, when the deadline is looming and there is no way out, do you pull out all the stops, and just go for it. Some of my best work was done in the last days of a project, or under the time crunch of a looming temp mix. Somehow when you know you can’t let it go anymore, the creative Gods will bless you and it will all work out. But honestly, I do tend to put things off if the creative spark isn’t there yet. When the crunch time comes, then you start just trying anything and everything. You start searching for sounds based on emotion, you start trying sounds that have no business being there, you start mimicking the sound with your own mouth, at least to find that shape, and then fill in with real sounds later. You fire up your recorder, and you just start making noise!

It’s daunting, that first pass creating a sound for something that doesn’t exist. I find that the hardest. If I’m working on a sword fight, maybe I don’t have the right sword sounds, but at least I know in my mind what I want the swords to sound like, and it becomes a scavenger hunt to find the right pieces. Some of the things I’ve been lately are creating sounds that are much more fluid and vague. They could literally sound like anything, as long as it feels right. These are huge challenges. All you can do is find that creative spark of an idea, make a pass, and start getting feedback, and hope that it can steer you to where you need to be.

I find just listening to raw recordings inspiring too, it’s a real treat for me on the project I’m on now to have an assistant, Nia Hansen, who has done a lot of really fantastic recording for the show. I love to listen through to things I didn’t record, and let it trigger ideas.

DS: How has been the evolution of you as an artist of sound? How is the balance between your craft and art in your career?

TN: Well certainly with the years comes confidence. At first you never want to play anything for anyone, you second guess everything you cut, you go through periods of hating it, and thinking, “Well I guess it’ll have to do.” Now I’m more comfortable making sounds, cutting them, preparing them and presenting them. Which isn’t to say I don’t get plenty of notes and direction, we all do. And I still hate playing things for anyone else, but I’m getting better at it. But I suppose that’s the main thing, as you do it more and more, your own taste gets refined, you realize what your taste is, and you embrace it more, you’re comfortable with it.

As for the balance between art and craft, I wish I could say that Art reigns supreme, but the truth is, Craft is becoming increasingly important. And by craft I would say the ability to cut fast, manage huge amounts of sounds and tracks through edits and rebalances, continuing visual effects changes, etc. Art sometimes feels like it has to take a back seat. What I hope for these days is to have enough time on the front end of the project to have some fun with Art, and then let Craft take over, carry the project through to completion and make sure it’s all done on time. But to be good in this line of work, you absolutely need both. The best technical abilities will do you well, and you’ll need them, but beyond that, you need some creativity of your own as well.

Train Recording for Polar Express

DS: I know that you’re doing a lot of sound effects recording. Any special tricks, tips or methods?

TN: Nothing that probably hasn’t been said a lot before, but I’ll say it again. Record a lot. Record a huge variety of things as well. And nothing will teach you more about recording than having to edit your own sounds. I’ve had people record for me before, let’s say doors, I get back four door opens, and four door closes, and they all sound exactly the same. I want to take them back to that door, and show them, ‘Look, first soft, then loud, then rattle it, then kick it, then pound on it, then slam it, then just the handle by itself’. Never stop listening for great sounds just because what you thought you needed from something, you got. The best sounds will almost always be accidents, or things you weren’t looking for, so after you’ve recorded whatever it is you’re recording, immediately start thinking, ‘Now, what else could I do with it.’

I’ll give one example that yielded one of my favorite sounds. I was recording for a show, recording a variety of simple sounds on the foley stage. One of the things we needed was an electric razor, just normal shaving sounds. And another was the sound of an organ (a Kidney) being dropped into a metal bowl. So I recorded both. And then for some reason, I touched the electric razor to the bottom of this cheap aluminum bowl. And it started to sing. And it made the most amazing complex music. And I’ve used that sound a lot, it’s in Lord of the Rings when the Ring Wraiths are entering the tavern in Bree. It’s this haunting, spooky ethereal sound, but it was ultimately a complete accident.

So open your mind to those accidents, and actively search them out!

DS: What would be your advice for any sound designer out there?

TN: Have fun, and experiment a lot. Learn early on that the simplest solution is almost always the best. Be judicious with plugins and processing and mucking around, especially as you get started. That stuff certainly has its place, but these days I think nearly everything I’m hearing has been processed too much. Great recordings are way better than great processing chains or great outboard gear in my opinion. If you’re just getting started, it’s paramount that you get a recording rig and start building your library. Nothing will prepare you better for your career than a sound library of your own creation that you know well. And having your own library will help you develop your own style, and your own sound.

And then learn when to stop. This has been my hardest lesson learned. I’ve always had a problem with over cutting and over thinking, and certainly I did my own fair share of over processing. Almost always, when a path I’ve put myself on doesn’t pan out, starting over, and starting with something much simpler, almost always turns out better. Some creatures I’ve been working on for the project I’m on now turned out more powerful, interesting, dynamic with much less ‘mucking’. We have some amazing new animal recordings on the show, and truthfully the recordings didn’t need a whole lot, they yielded what I was needing with some gently manipulation on my part, but very little processing.

Oh and I’ll give up one tip when working on animal or creature vocals, take your work file of sounds, and then erase out all the loud one. Then take what’s left and normalize it. The best sounds are likely to be the very quiet ones that you might otherwise have discarded. When an animal vocalizes, the loud ones actually tend to all sound the same, but the very quiet ones will have much more variety.

DS: Which are your favorite tools?

TN: I’m a bit of a microphone junkie, but truth be told, today $250 can buy you a recorder that will yield completely usable sounds. I’m in the Philippines for a month at the moment, and am carrying around a little Zoom H1, a $99 recorder that sounds surprisingly decent. That’s where these small pocket recorders are really fantastic, they enable you to get sounds that otherwise you might miss. And even if it’s not the most pristine recording, at least you’ll have it. They’re also great for sending out to other people to record for you. We’ve sent a couple out on the project I’m on now, and gotten fantastic sounds from people that we couldn’t afford to fly out to ourselves. And I truly believe you often get better sounds letting people record for themselves. First they’ll have more time to get interesting things. Second if they’re recording their own animals, those animals will almost always vocalize more and more interestingly than they will with you standing there, pushing a large microphone into their space.

I have a handful of plugins that I find useful, and samplers from time to time I find useful, although honestly these days I’m doing a lot less with both plugins and samplers. I’ve built up a pretty silly microphone collection over the years now, and it’s fun to go back and start recording again. I often think I should quit working in film, just so I can go and record sounds. That would be pretty much my dream job. Maybe one of these years…

DS: What’s your favorite films for sound?

TN: Well certainly I grew up with some of the classics, Star Wars, Raiders, a lot of Ben Burtt’s work. And also of course Gary Rydstrom’s work including Jurassic Park, Toy Story, etc. So of course those are all influential and remain some of my favorites. But some others I really enjoyed as I mentioned before, the film Hero, has some brilliant sound. Almost all of Peter Weir’s films I think tend to sound fantastic, in no small part to the fact that his films have so little music. I suppose though, my favorite films for sound are simply films that have a place for sound in them, where sound is really an integral part of the films themselves. This excites me, when a director thinks ahead about sound long before we’re sitting on a mix stage.

This is not in any way, shape or form designed to take anything away from Gary Rydstrom’s genius, but when I think about some of his more amazing and iconic work, the T-Rex attack of course, the opening and closing battles of Saving Private Ryan. In those Spielberg films, in those scenes there is no music. Which means that Spielberg had the foresight to trust sound in a very early stage. I wish that happened more. There is simply too much music in most Hollywood films these days. Master and Commander sounds fantastic, in part due to the amazing recordings they made for that film, but more in part to the fact that Peter Weir chose not to score the majority of the film. That opened up the track, and the sound in that film really elevated the entire experience of living at sea.

I just did some work on War Horse as an effects editor, and it was the most fun I’ve ever had cutting, getting to cut a long intense battle scene that we knew was going to have no music. That was a real treat.

DS: You’ve worked in several different genres – drama, comedy, sci-fi, horror, adventure, animation, computer games – have you got any favorites to work in?

TN: I don’t really have a favorite. I tend to end up working on a lot of fantasy movies, I’m not exactly sure how that happened. Strangely enough, one of my favorite jobs was working on There Will be Blood, which is a drama. But I was asked in pretty short order to recut all the backgrounds on that show. I was living in Vancouver, working on a project there, and had a small break when a friend from Skywalker called. I think I had about two and a half weeks, but had such a blast on that one. Anyone who knows me knows that backgrounds are my absolute favorite thing to cut. Ken Fischer, tied with Brent Burge for the title of World’s Greatest Effects Editor, he and I joke that all we want to do is cut backgrounds. So anyway, the genre doesn’t matter as long as I get to cut the backgrounds. Nia Hansen, our recordist on John Carter, promised me that someday she’s going to make an entire movie set in the rain, just so I can cut it.

DS: What has been your most challenging project and why?

TN: Each film you do presents challenges, they’re just always changing. At first, the films present plenty of craft challenges. I’ll never forget at the end of Liberty Heights, my first show, as we got ready for the print master, when the mixer Tom Johnson turned to me and asked “Are the pull-ups ready.” I’m sure the blank stare that I presented him with didn’t win over any confidence, but honestly, no one had told me what a pull-up was, let alone that someone should have cut them. I remember seeing an Avid change note for the first time and suspecting I was looking at something devised in the deep dark basement of NASA. Later the challenges become facing your own self-doubt, then later learning to juggle egos, especially your own, and later the challenge of running a crew, and learning what to do when people come to you and actually want you to tell them what to do! Politics can always be challenging on any show too.

Fellowship of the Ring was probably one of the most challenging, but for all good reasons. The scope of it, that we did that first film with a relatively small crew. That some of us found ourselves in a different country, with a group of people who didn’t necessarily work like we did. That at the time technically what we were trying to do taxed the equipment and hard drive space and everything else to the point of near collapse. But of course that film will always have a special place in my heart for many reasons, getting to live in New Zealand, being a part of something that so many people enjoyed. And most importantly meeting David Farmer, who would become one of my best friends. Friendships that come out of projects like that more than make up for any challenges.

DS: What exciting things do you see happening in our line of work at the moment?

TN: There are two things I find exciting. The first, I mentioned already, is the amazing variety of good quality and low cost recording equipment. There just isn’t excuse now for someone starting out not to be building their own library right from the start.

The second is the proliferation of what I’d term ‘micro libraries’. I had thought of doing it years ago, and I will still probably enter the market myself at some point, but Tim Prebble is the one I remember starting it off first. I think it’s a brilliant idea, small cost effective targeted libraries. I just was a funding partner on www.kickstarter.com for a Tolley recording in Texas, and I think ideas like this are brilliant. For $50 or so, you’ll get a small but hopefully high quality library. I’ve found some great stuff there, and I know this site has been a big help for a lot of people to find those libraries. I’m sure we’ll see more and more of this, and I think it’s fantastic.

DS: What are you currently working on? And what’s next for Tim Nielsen?

TN: At the moment I’m working on a film called John Carter that Disney is making, and Andrew Stanton of Pixar fame is directing. It’s a blast, and is turning into a long project for me. As for what’s next, at the moment I’m looking for a show, so let me know if you hear of anything! I’ll probably take off a bit of time after this one is done, regroup and hopefully something interesting will come along. It always seems to. Or maybe I’ll just go spend a year recording!

Among many award winning documentaries, Coll has worked on Restrepo (2010), Catfish (2010) and the Academy Award winning The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara (2003). For this interview, he shares some thoughts on all these films and about the general collaboration with documentary filmmakers.

Designing Sound: In the interview earlier this month, you mentioned how you really love documentary filmmaking. Could you elaborate on that?

Coll Anderson: I became interested in making films through the School of Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard (I knew a girl who went there, go figure…). VES has really strong roots in documentary film making and through the people who I met there I fell in love with these films that studied life, real life… Sure we can all understand that having a film crew around affects the life of any subject and thus “document” is a bit of a misnomer, but the work of people like Dick Rogers, Robb Moss, Ross McElwee, not to mention the filmmakers of that community, naturally has an affect on you, and regardless of its ultimate truth, I started to love creating that seamless believability of documentary film in its most Wisemanesque form.

DS: It seems like there’s generally way more focus on documentaries now than, say, 15 years ago. Do you feel the focus on documentary sound has changed during that period, as well?

CA: Sure, ever have to deliver a fully filled M&E for a doc…?  Viewers become more sophisticated, more aware, every year.  That just naturally feeds into the stories documentaries tell. It becomes so important to keep the interaction between viewer and film on a subconscious level and sound is to me the plane where that connection happens.

DS: How is your usual workflow on a documentary? What’s your typical schedule?  And do you have any specific sound design philosophy for documentaries?

CA: Find me a typical doc and I will try to answer that one…  Really, they are all different shapes and sizes.

Usually I try to watch the film on my own, and then again with the director…  I have been doing this long enough that most directors let me go off on my own.  I try to get a few weeks to find bg’s and efx that fit the story while giving it additional depth.  I like to deal with the film on two distinct levels.  First the surface reality, that which is so “real” it is just assumed it is fact…  If you have no idea what I have done or who I even am, then I am doing a big part of my job well.  Then I also like to try and explore some more emotional and subconscious aspects of the story…  To sort of find and make sounds that might be in your dreams if you were to re-live the film in that state of mind… For instance, imagine you watched a film and had dreams about it.  Then if you told someone about those dreams, with all the emotion and flow that dreams imbibe, what kind of dreams would that person have about what you told them…  Well that is what I imagine I want to hear, that third person’s imagined experience.  It is a sort of way of finding sonic irony in extending the real…

DS: Realism, authenticity and location or time specific sound effects can be quite important to documentaries, I guess. Do you do a lot of research about the sonic palette of the film?

CA: I used to do more… Yes, authenticity is fantastic but we are still telling stories and that means what works for the story is often the most authentic thing.  People go crazy over two and three axle trains or the right motorcycle sound… but in the end, in real life, guns just go pop really loud.  Rather what I love is when you have no idea I did anything.  Seamless interaction between sound and story will always be the most authentic thing we can so.

DS: How do you prefer to work with directors? How early are you usually involved in documentary projects?

CA: This often comes down to trust…  Most of the directors I work with trust me enough to give me their thoughts and notes and then let me go to work.  That usually gives us enough to do before the mix.  Really when the cut is right we all know what the film needs… The road map is there, sometimes I just have to open my eyes and follow it and the directors that I like most, know that and let me do it.  I like to get through a pre on my own and then have them chime in.  That seems to work.  Plus it keeps them from having to bring up all sorts of little things that I am in the process of working on…  Like a scriptwriter, I need a little of my own edit time, a small draft or two before it is ready for peoples notes.  Which is not to say the notes are not super important and an essential part of the process, but I would rather help the director keep focused on the big stuff.  I think we sometimes forget that is an essential element of the job.

DS: You’ve worked with Errol Morris several times, both on the TV series First Person and on the Academy Award winner The Fog of War. How would you describe Morris? Is he very focused on sound?

CA: It has been a little while but what I remember is Errol loved irony.  I enjoyed that about his sense of what worked. Always finding sounds that were more than what was on the screen and never what was expected…  He always encouraged me to design, make and find things that went past predictable.  No hits or tones or “trailer” sounds.  Instead, he let me get into more “evolveative” things.  I remember I found this child’s toy…  Mr. Microphone.  I got it to do this wonderful feedback loop thing that when you pitched down became really measured in tempo like a dream click track…  Whop whop whop whop…  Very dark but not at all what you would think would work for dropping napalm.  He was always good with letting me paint with sound what I was hearing in my head.

DS: You also did the sound for Catfish. Whereas Fog of War is quite stylized, Catfish is much more rough around edges but also quite emotional. How did you approach that film? Please share some stories…

CA: I love Catfish.  I mean love…  First of all, great crew, one of the best.  Zac is a great editor.  Henry and Ariel are amazing and their sincerity is so refreshing.  We actually did a lot of design for Catfish you just don’t know it… We went to great lengths to make sure that the process was never too fluid.  It is already very hard to believe the story and because they are so understated with the drama and how they handle it, my crew had to go to great lengths to do the opposite and actually keep reminding you that the story is real.  We made sure you noticed cuts in the BG’s, made sure the phone conversations sounded gritty, made sure that the cars were loud enough or there was enough noise on the track.  Zac set up cuts that we could augment as being rough…  There are even places where using wireless hits and noise, really helped us feel the filmmakers process, how far away, the characters were from us, making us all the more aware of how much closer “they” were to the unknown elements of the story.

DS: Another recent documentary you did was Restrepo which was nominated for an Oscar. The film is portraying a US Platoon in Afghanistan for 14 months. What was it like doing a war documentary?

CA: That is a tough one, as you must know one of the directors, Tim Hetherington, was killed in Libya this year and that was a huge loss.  Tim touched so many people and his loss is a great weight… You know this thing, going about documenting some of the world’s darker issues, is a calling that for the betterment of the greater good, some people have to do… We as a society need people to do this for us.  The problem is that to report the world’s truths, not to over dramatize or sensationalize, but to tell of events with the most honesty that humans can muster, is a very dangerous position for any reporter/filmmaker to submit to.  With that in mind, the goal with Restrepo was really to be true to the film Tim and Sebastian made. They did not get into the political issues of war, but instead told the story of what happens when simple men fight.  What the reality of that mix between mindless boredom and pure violent chaos does to people. I think we wanted to use sound to help you the viewer understand the serenity of the quiet moments, to hear nature and the world continuing on, and then at the drop of a hat, hear the chaos and distortion of total violence…We tried to make sure you could understand the geography of what was going on, where shots were coming from or going to… Even as simple as where the soldiers were at every particular moment. I have to say, I think the real good stuff is in the Ambiences Matt Snedecor cut. I think he did a great job of connecting the war to the physical place and that for me makes it so much more of an experience.

DS: Do you have any advice to sound designers working on documentaries?

CA: Write, read, love what you do, love people around you…  In the film industry it is hard to have a life…  Make sure you don’t make that mistake.  No one ever said when greeting Death, “golly I wish I worked more…”  We enrich ourselves and our work when our lives are deeply filled with experience and understanding…  Go and make some shit, break some shit, record some shit and laugh doing all three. Promise it will do more for you than any plug–in on the planet.

Tim Prebble has released Blow Holes on HISS and a ROAR, opening a new catalog of ambience libraries.

Ambiences play a crucial role in every film: literally, emotionally and physically they define the world that the film exists in. Accordingly we endeavor to provide characterful multichannel recordings of dramatically interesting locations.

The ocean has an infinite range of moods, but when the power of an incoming tide becomes constricted it can lead to some awe-inspiring sounds. This library was recorded on a Sound Devices 744 recorder using a Sanken CSS5 stereo mic along with Sennheiser MKH70 and MKH816 mics. Four locations were chosen specifically for their unique sonic properties:

• Punakaiki Blow Holes – West Coast, South Island, New Zealand
• Alofaaga Blow Holes – Taga, Savai’i, Samoa
• CastlePoint The Gap – East Coast, North Island, New Zealand
• Muriwai The Gap – West Coast, North Island, New Zealand

Blow Holes Library | 24bit 96kHz | 1.52GB download | 2.17GB uncompressed

Here’s a Q&A with Tim, talking about the library and his projects.

DS: What was the inspiration behind this library?

TP: Ever since I first started working as a sound effects editor I’ve loved recording and editing ambiences for films. Its such a lovely subtle area to be working in, and is also somehow personal as you tend to draw from your own experiences and memories of how specific locations sound, how they affect you and how you can recreate them, while also retaining control so as to impart meaning and emotion to them. So it was inevitable I would start releasing ambience libraries. Living in a small island nation I guess it was also inevitable my first ambience libraries would be of the ocean. I’m not going to wax lyrical about the ocean but I love its many moods; there is nothing more relaxing than the gentle rhythm of a calm beach, nor more terrifying and life threatening than a storm at sea. The BLOW HOLES library is the first part of a trilogy of ocean ambience libraries that I am working on, the second library will be STORMY SEAS and the third CALM BEACHES, so that between these three libraries a vast range of situations can be catered for, with really unique & dramatic character.

DS: Tell us about the locations.

TP: Well the first location, Punikaiki I have been to literally dozens of times. It is on the West Coast of the South Island, only a couple of hours drive from Christchurch, where I grew up and went to University and then Film School. Punikaiki is always visually stunning, but sonically you need some local knowledge. Years ago I went there with friends during the day and it was impressive but the tide was out and it was calm, and I think my friends wondered what I had been so excited about. We were staying only a half hour way walk away so after dinner & a few drinks that night, we wandered back – I distinctly remember the full moon and the subsonic rumble as we approached the area. But the sound I will never forget is the first vented blow hole. This vent is maybe 200m from the sea, so there is no water, just a large hole in the ground surrounded by flax. You hear a distant boom and then a huge rush of air. The Maori of New Zealand have a term ‘Taniwha’ which refers to beings that live in deep pools or in the sea. Some taniwha are considered protective guardians while others are predatory. When we came across this vent, in the middle of the night, I could easily see how you might think only an angry sea monster could be creating such a sound! When we finally got out to the viewing area, the blow holes were blasting spray 20m into the air! It really is equal parts awe inspiring and scary! I’ve recorded at Punikaiki a few times, but I figured it was worth another visit armed with the tools I now have.

The second location was a side trip when I was in Samoa, recording ambiences for the film O Le Tulafale (The Orator) – I stayed an extra weekend & took my rental car on the ferry over to the larger island of Savaii. I had read of the Taga blow holes at Alofaaga, but again describing them is nothing like experiencing them. There were a few times when I had to really quell a surge of andrenalyn caused by being so close to such a powerful and unpredictable force of nature. As you can see in the video a local guy appeared out of nowhere and took a bag of old coconut husks, and would throw them in the blowhole just before the wave surged in, and the husk would fly like a cannonball such was the pressure (I had to ask him to stop shrieking with laughter every time he did it!)

The third location, Castlepoint, is a lovely summer resort for swimming and surfing, but also has a treacherous reef that has claimed the lives of a number of fishermen. I wasn’t quite aware of how dangerous it was until I went there to record a few months ago, and driving from Wellington I only got there an hour or two before high tide. I started to walk across the reef to the gap that I wanted to record and could instantly see how evil that sea was. It literally rose and fell three or four metres in a few seconds, a wave could easily sweep me & my gear off into the open sea in the blink of an eye. A little shaken I went home and planned to return, and when I did I rented a nearby holiday house for a weekend so I could stay and easily track the tide and choose my moment to record.

The fourth location was Muriwai, a vast open beach, on the west coast from Auckland. Muriwai is well known for its surf but also for its treacherous fishing spot: The Gap. The waves pound into a narrow rocky inlet and the containment really amplifies and focuses the powerful relentless sound of the ocean.

All in all, many fun and scary days at the beach were involved! And best of all, using a boom I could put the mic where it was completely unsafe to be… and listen.

DS: What’s next for HISSandaROAR?

TP: I’m half way through recording TORTURED PIANO which involves the total destruction of an old bora-ridden upright piano, along with some rather strange manipulation of my baby grand piano. Its going to be a multi channel library as I am recording with two contact mics as well as condensor mics. But it is not a music library – I am specifically after sound design elements: strange textures, resonant scrapes, cracks, hits, metal creaks & groans. While it is kind of sad to see a musical instrument destroyed, this piano was long beyond saving before I got it, so in a way I am paying tribute to its life by immortalizing its final sounds. After that will be a new creature vocal library – the SEAL VOCALS have been so well received that I am going to follow it up with a smaller, nastier creature, capable of some truly viscous sounds.

DS: How about THE DOORS library?

TP: Its definitely in the schedule, but the drives are literally still traveling around the world to all of the contributors. So it will be another month or so before I am able to release it. Its a little frustrating, we really need the speed and data limits of the Internet to catch up with our use for it, to make this concept more efficient.

DS: How are the film projects going?

TP: Great but very, very busy. We started predubs at Park Road Post for the Cirque De Soilel 3D film this week. So in 4 weeks time it will be finished, and then I start back into O Le Tulafale (The Orator) with another field trip to Samoa. After we mix it in July I’m taking a long overdue break and will head to Japan and hopefully South Korea. I’ve also started planning a field trip to Papua New Guinea for a film (Mister Pip by Andrew Adamson) that I’m starting near the end of the year. No rest for the wicked!