Spectrasonics has uploaded the full sound design panel that Eric Persing, Diego Stocco, Richard Devine and Scott Gershin gave at the 2011 Moogfest in Asheville, North Carolina. Maybe you remember that we shared several video recordings from the panel a couple of weeks ago, but this one has much better quality and contains more stuff, almost an hour. Inspiring!

(via synthtopia)

Full Sail has uploaded the recording of a panel called “Beyond 5.1: The Future of Sound for Picture”, with sound designers Harry Cohen and David Farmer, and re-recording mixers Marc Fishman and Gary Rizzo.

Livestream embed code doesn’t work properly, so go to this page for watching the video.

Walter Murch will be talking about sound at Chicago Humanities Fest 2011. The event is scheduled for Nov 13. Price is $10 in general admission and $5 for students.

As a film editor and sound designer, Walter Murch has worked on classic films of our time, includingApocalypse Now, The Godfather, and The English Patient, among many more. The winner of multiple Academy Awards, Murch, with his technological know-how, has helped to elevate the art and impact of film sound to a new level. His latest projects, which include editing Phil Kaufman’s Hemingway & Gellhorn and directing an episode of Lucasfilm’s animated Clone Wars, are quintessential Murch: eclectic, distinctive, and visionary. In conversation with Lawrence Weschler, CHF artistic director emeritus, Murch discusses the evolution of film technology from the creation of the 5.1 sound format to today’s Final Cut Pro.

via @pulsetrain

Michael Semanick is a two-time Academy Award winner and has been nominated six other times for Achievement in Sound Mixing. He was nominated for all three Lord of The Rings films and won for Return of the King in 2004. He received his second Academy Award for Peter Jackson’s King Kong. Semanick has been nominated twice for his work with Pixar on Ratatouille and Wall-E, and for his efforts on The Curious Case of Benjamin Button in 2008. His nominations for both Wall-E and Benjamin Button were given in the same year. Semanick was recently nominated this year for his work on The Social Network. Michael is excited to be joining our Ex’pression family to speak with the students, faculty, and staff upon the completion of Cars 2 for Pixar.

Ex’pert Series with Michael Semanick hosted at Ex’pression College for Digital Arts in Emeryville, CA on June 23, 2011.

SoundWorks Collection

Ben Burtt will give a lecture called “The Sound Behind The Image” at the 129th AES Convention.

Much has been documented about the technical history of motion picture sound. We know a lot about the story of microphones, loudspeakers, and optical, magnetic, or digital recording processes. Very little has been said about the aesthetic history: Why do sound people do what we do? What have been the creative achievements? The great ideas? How has sound been used to enhance the image and give vast dramatic power to the feature film?

“The Sound Behind The Image” will walk us through cinema history from the silent film to 1977 when Burtt designed sounds for Star Wars. He will talk more about the ART of film sound than the SCIENCE. He will pinpoint and show the moments in American film history that inspired and allowed him to learn his craft in sound design. Burtt believes a Language of Sound developed in the classic era that is still the basis for all our creative sound work today. Let us study, learn, speak, and enjoy that language together.

For more information about this lecture and the rest of the activities of the event, please visit the official AES website.

Via @RandyCoppinger

Detailed analysis on the beginning of cinema. The possibilities of film-making as a languaje, exposed from the perspective of the great editor (and first to be referred as “Sound Designer”).

Vía: U.S.O Project

There is a nice article at The Kartel, providing some notes and ideas given by Akira Yamaoka on his lecture at GDC 2010. Check:

Surival-horror fanatics, despite their differences, can all agree that the Silent Hill series was revolutionary for creating both an immersive and creepy environment. Through the use of haunting sound effects, and an original soundtrack, sound designer Akira Yamaoka was able to create a terrifying world that stood out to gamers for years to come. Attending GDC for the first time this year Yamaoka spoke on the power of sound, his theories on composing music, and his plans for the future.

Akira first introduced his culture, stating that the Japanese have a meticulous attention to detail, and are constantly seeking perfection. He explains that the recent advancements in technology have presented the opportunity to get much better results for sound design. He also expressed hope that future videogames will incorporate all five senses, to fully immerse the player (Can you imagine tasting a videogame? Yuck…Donkey Kong). Akira discussed his different opinions on music design, and some little known sound illusions below [...]

Read more…

There’s another interesting article at GameSpot featuring Yamaoka’s lecture…

Who Was There: Akira Yamaoka, who is best known for his music in the Silent Hill series, leveraged his 20 years of experience in video game production to discuss audio design in games from a producer’s perspective. He has worked not only as a composer, but also as a sound designer, sound director, and producer. Having recently left longtime employer Konami, Yamaoka is currently working with Suda51 on a new game at Grasshopper Manufacture that will be published by EA Partners.

What They Talked About: Yamaoka’s 2010 Game Developers Conference session began with a few slides that highlighted some facts of Japan, including the number of islands (6,852) and coastal line (comparable to that of Australia). Yamaoka wanted go over his background and heritage because the attention to detail that is part of the Japanese culture ties in closely to what he ultimately strives for: perfection.

Read more…

Here is an interesting video from an event called “Games Meet Films” with a panel discussion and Q&A at Pienwood Studios on 16th February and hosted by Dennis Weinreich (MD of Film and TV Post Production at Pinewood Studios Group).

They talk about the audio production process on games and films and discuss what the two industries can learn from each other and what are the challenges there.

Panelists

Films Side

• Nigel Bennett - Re-recording Mixer / Post Production Operations Manager, Pinewood
• Brendan Nicholson – Re-recording Mixer, Pinewood; Glen Gathard, Mixer/editor, Pinewood
• Mike Wabro – Sound Designer, Reelsound
• Alex Joseph – Freelance Sound Designer

Games Side

• Richard Jacques – Celebrated composer
• James Hannigan – Celebrated composer
• Jerry Ibbotson – Creative Manager, Media Mill
• Jon Vincent – Audio Director, Ubisoft and Dan Bardino, Creative Services Manager, Sony

Video Highlights

• 00:00 – Why are we here?
• 02:00 – Pinewood Studios Promo
• 06:46 – Panel Introductions
• 10:00 – Games Audio Workflow
• 14:45 – Film Audio Workflow
• 30:10 – How Games make car sound effects
• 39:45 – How Games use music – Richard Jacques
• 48:18 – Harry Potter – blowing up a piano example
• 53:00 – Slumdog Millionaire – creating emotion with sound
• 66:45 – Film – old school rules still apply

Via: @rbridgett | TIGA

SoundWorks Collection has a new surprise!

More than 47 minutes of video featuring Director James Cameron, Producer Jon Landau and the “Avatar” Sound Team (Supervising Sound Editor / Sound Designer / Sound Re-Recording Mixer Christopher Boyes, Sound Re-Recording Mixer Gary Summers, Sound Re-Recording Mixer Andy Nelson) on the Avatar Sound Panel conducted at the Fox Studios, Zanuck Theater on February 3rd, 2010.

The following article is an excerpt from “The future of sound design” lectures done during GDC, VFS and DFF between the periods of 2006-2007 by Charles Deenen. Rewritten for “DesigningSound.org”.

The Future of Sound Design in Video Games, Part 2

Every day in our life, sounds occur. Our brain thinks about virtually every sound we hear, and depending on how we’re connected with that sound, either (unknowing) react, translate, notice or feel something. On each sound we hear, we connect a space, event or happening to it, thereby learning how or when these sounds occur. Each human experiences sound every day, and learn about them, just like we learn a language. Some sounds are artificial, yet we connect a certain “moment” to them (i.e. computer graphic beeps in movies)

Now, you probably think “blah blah, yeah, yeah, where the heck are you going with this”. As a sound designer our job is to learn that language, transcribe it, understand it, and enhance it. You can easily make use of the human learned language of “experienced” sound. Fundamentals in sounds can be used together to form a combined emotion.

As an example, I’m sure you sometimes hear a distant fighter jet come by. By hearing it’s fantastic air-distorted rippling effect you instantly know it’s going incredibly fast without seeing it. When you hear a wasp buzzing, your instinct probably says “holy crap, swat it!”, all due to your brain associating a previous reaction/learning to that sound.

So, lets put this in practice by listening to some examples. The following is an example of standalone sweetners which would be used to add to parts of a car-by sound. It’s various ways of adding a “scream”, “howl”, “pain” or other sense of emotion to a car-by sound. Something probably that most of you have done, but why you did this is really the question:

As sound designers, we often try to emulate a certain sensation we’ve heard in real-life. Instead of using the real thing, we can reproduce the same effect by mimicking the feeling we want to chase. In this case we’re after alternate ways to add a sensation of speed to a car by. First sound is a regular Jet-by, followed by the pictured sounds, finished off by the car-by with the added ‘speed’ layers (example contains sounds from various sources)

To quickly grab a sound “feeling” in the future, one of the things I did a long time ago is make a list of various sounds which moved me somehow. Then I wrote down the feeling they impressed on me, and some ideas on how to use them.
Every time when I was in a rush, with little time to think about sound design and feelings, I pull up the list and scan it for my previous thoughts. Usually I find some ideas in it, especially in relationship to expressing a certain (combo) emotion.

• Make a list of “experienced” sounds and the emotion you feel when you hear them, with possible ideas on how to use them

“Fighter Jet fast By” – Speed sensation – Car by Sweetners

“Jail Cell Door close” – “Closed off feeling” – Logo slam

• Create some new sounds by using the character of what defines the “experienced” sound, in combo with some “plain” sounds.

S(t)imulating Learned Ear Deficiencies


The ear is an odd looking piece of human isn’t it? On some, it sticks out like a TV dish, shaped like a weird alien disformed growth, freezes when you’re in Montreal during the winter and oh yeah, does this awesome thing with sound. The ear behaves in weird ways sometimes. Now, this is not scientific in any way, so please don’t rant to me about it. It’s purely my own speculation on what happens.

Have you ever noticed that your ear seems to “compress” or partially shut-down the high-frequencies when it hears an instant loud sound? Or how it seems to “warble” when there’s a lot of low frequency build-up in the real world?

There’s a few tricks you can use (and maybe use already), which mimmic this ear behaviour, thereby tricking the listener into believing they are really hearing something much “bigger”

• ‘Low frequency Distortion’ is read as “loud” by the ear. It mimics the high frequency compression that’s happening when you’re listening to very loud sounds, and at the same time adds to the air distortion that happens between the source and your ear. The first sound in the below example is an indication of this (that sound btw was simply made by boosting the low-end by an incredible amount, running it through a crappy (behringer) compressor which freaked out about this low end, and then reducing the low-end back down.
• I believe your ear and brain have learned to translate spiked high-frequency sounds going into mid-range/low-end as “loud”. It’s a similar scenario that happens on guns & explosions. You can easily mimic these sounds by simulating an ear “shutdown” where it rejects higher frequencies after a brief moment. Lets call this the “Hi/Lo offset technique”; offsetting high frequency sounds, followed by a mid/low frequency sound. Try it out, and realize why does this sound “loud” to you?

Example: ear_def.mp3

Build-ups… ok, no rocket science here :) Any sound rises can be used to create a build-up of tension. There is a large variety of ways to do “rises”. Many of these techniques are used in Film Trailers daily. Not all are commonly used in gaming though;

• Music rises (the most obvious one)
• Building Rhythmic sound effect (i.e. pulse growing in size over time). Very effective to draw attention.
• Pitch / Frequency increase, effective in denser layers as you’ll certainly notice these through a dense layer of “noise”.
• Volume increasing over time
• Repetition frequency increase (i.e. pulse speeding up). The most overused sound attached to this is probably the heartbeat (yikes ! :)

In gaming I’m usually only hearing music used as a way to build intensity over time, yet the combo of delayed animation spawning combined with the above can create such a nice build-up of tension.
Now the cool thing is that the opposite (the descend), creates the opposite feeling. The feeling of calming down, loosing, “letting go” etc. can all be enhanced or created in that way.

Example of some “pitch” and “Volume” rises back to back. Some of these have been used in games. Starting with the most known “rise”.

rise.mp3

Hopefully some of this was useful or interesting to you. My hopes for this article are that you consciously use these “experienced sounds” in your daily sound design, and hopefully better understand why we actually use them, or shape certain sounds to begin with. Shoot me any comments you might have.

All movies and sound contained in this article are (c) Charles Deenen and cannot be distributed or used in any way without prior written consent.