The March issue of Audio Media magazine is available now and, along other interesting stuff, it features an article on voice/dialog recording, ADR, voice acting, etc; and also an insight on the production sound of “127 Hours”.

Audio Media Magazine – March 2011

January’s issue of AudioMedia magazine is available for download now and includes a fantastic article by John Broomhall, who talks with Composer and Music Director Russell Shaw, Audio Director Kristofor Mellroth, Dialogue Director Kate Saxon and Audio Associate Producer Georg Backer.

AudioMedia – January 2011

The december’s issue of AudioMedia is available online now, including an interesting article about the sound of “TRON: Legacy”, featuring conversations with supervising sound editors Addison Teague and Gwen Whittle.

AudioMedia – December 2010 (jump directly to the article)

The CAS Quartely Fall 2010 Edition is available for download now at Cinema Audio Society‘s Website.

FEATURES

• Primetime Emmy Awards
• CAS Career Achievement Award – Jeffrey Wexler, CAS receives highest honor
• A New Honorary CAS Member
• The Possession - Part one of on-set adventures
• Got Sync? - A music video director talks about PluralEyes
• That’s a Game?! - Game sound according to a linear mixer

Download

Via audire fabula

The October’s issue of Developer Magazine is now available in the official website. This time, our beloved “Heard About” section includes an article about the sound of Crackdown 2, with Kristofor Mellroth, who we interviewed some days ago.

When Kristofor Mellroth enrolled at music recording school in 1995, he probably never dreamt that in just a few year’s time he’d be heading up as huge and complex video game audio production employing a plethora of US and UK talent.

Mellroth came to games via boom operating, film sound mixing, working as a temp tech repairing original Xbox devkits and going on the road with Seamus Blackley as demo guy. In fact, an eclectic combination of technical, creative and business experience set him up perfectly for his current audio directorial role at Microsoft within an audio team deadly serious about excellence. No surprise then that his last Crackdown project scooped a BAFTA.

Mellroth’s strong passion and high commitment are self-evident as he enthuses about Crackdown 2’s audio: “I felt we could improve over CD1 making something even more memorable. A special focus was the authoring environment – I wanted ‘best in class’ tools. Using Audiokinetic’s Wwise middleware turned out one of our best early decisions and we pushed it to the max using Soundseed Air and Whoosh a great deal. It’s a big part of why the game sounds the way it does. Competition in the middleware market works to all our benefit and we have no specific mandate about tech but as a concept, audio middleware makes a lot of sense to me – fully featured right out of the box with a solution that would take years to develop from scratch. New features come online as you make your game and your audio programmers can look at game features and not get bogged down in tech support.”

Mellroth’s team used straightforward logic in scripting extensively within the audio tools to achieve a vast amount of detail in replay, with the setting up of switches and real-time parameter controls enabling them to interpret sound triggers accompanied with additional game state/event/character information – all in complex ways using conditional audio choices – and all within the sound designer’s remit and technical control.

Develop 110 – October: Download | Read Online

AudioMedia’s September issue si now available too, featuring an article about the sound of “Scott Pilgrim vs The World”.

The August Issue of Mix Magazine is available for download. It contains a detailed article on the sound of SALT, which you can see online in Mix Online:

There’s been no shortage of action movies over the past couple of decades, with dozens of subgenres proliferating to satisfy the audience’s appetite for war, worldwide destruction, comic books, videogames, legal procedure, historical epic, serial killers, mistaken identity or underdogs fighting the good fight against all odds. But it’s a relatively short list when looking through the legacy of intelligent, character-driven action-thrillers, in the vein of Three Days of the Condor, The French Connection, The Fugitive and the Bourne franchise.

Australian director Phillip Noyce entered the club with his smart, story-driven Jack Ryan films, Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger from the early ’90s. Now he’s back, and he’s hurtling through modern-day spy territory—practically ripped from today’s Soviet spy exchange headlines—with Angelina Jolie on the run in Sony Pictures’ summer blockbuster Salt.

“My first reaction, on seeing an early cut, was, ‘Wow!’” recalls Greg P. Russell, effects re-recording mixer from the Kim Novak Theatre on the Sony lot in mid-July. “It’s exciting, well-paced, authentic and realistic. The action is believable, and it’s a solid story, really solid, with twists and turns that kept me guessing through to the end. And I loved the Salt character. Unique and clever, smart and bold. Angelina Jolie does such a great job with this role, and the film is filled front to back with incredible sound opportunities.”

From left: Igor Nikolic, first sound assistant; Scott Millan music mixer; Philip Stockton, supervising sound editor; Jeffrey J. Haboush, dialog mixer; Deborah Wallach, ADR supervisor; Phillip Noyce, Director; Greg P. Russell, effects mixer, Paul Hsu, supervising sound Editor; Joe E. Rand, music editor Photo: Tom Burns
Russell was joined at the Harrison MPC by Jeff Haboush on dialog, a mixer he’s teamed with on and off for nearly 27 years, and Scott Millan, a veteran of the Bourne films and a hit man brought in to handle music. In essence, it was a return to the three-person crew that was the norm not so long ago in Hollywood. Noyce called the track the most complex in his career, and his vision was established clearly from the beginning.

“On day one, Phillip laid out the game plan,” Russell recalls. “Story and character were key, and everything we did in the soundtrack had to support her story. She is a CIA agent accused of being a Russian spy, and she’s on the run trying to clear her name. So all the tension that we feel, whether it’s coming from effects and high-octane car chases and bullet whiz-bys, or the group dialog with its precise, story-specific lines, or the music with its big brass and intense rhythms—we need to feel that threat she is experiencing throughout the film. He laid it out in a way that we were on the same page from the first temp dub.”

Continue reading…

Cinema Audio Society has launched the Winter 2010 Edition of CAS Quarterly, including a great interview with sound designer Randy Thom, who talks about his career, his thoughts about film sound, and more.

Download: CAS Quarterly Winter 2010 Edition (PDF)

Randy Thom on Designing Sound

Via: @usoproject / @lydrummet

The last issue of MPEG Magazine has an interesting article about the sound design of “The Book of Eli” with sound editors/sound designers Steven D. Williams, MPSE, and Eric Norris, MPSE. Let’s read:

After tackling survival in urban America in Menace II Society, Dead Presidents and American Pimp, directing team the Hughes brothers—Albert and Allen—have turned their attention to the end of the world.

In their latest, The Book of Eli, due mid-January from Warner Bros., the world as we know it has ended. In this post-apocalyptic landscape, it’s everyone for himself and no-holds-barred in the struggle for survival. Eli (Denzel Washington) fights his way across America bearing a precious book that holds the secrets for the survival of mankind.

Just what does the end of the world sound like? That’s the question that faced supervising sound editors/sound designers Steven D. Williams, MPSE, and Eric Norris, MPSE, as they approached this daunting film. “When I read the script, I saw very exciting sound opportunities,” says Williams. “Everything that ends up on the screen sonically has to fit.” The audio post was done at Universal Studios Sound.

The movie was shot in the desolate desert outside Albuquerque, New Mexico. “There are a lot of wide-open spaces,” explains Norris. “It has an Old West feel to it. A lot of life was damaged and destroyed in this apocalyptic event, so we had to build that into the sound.”

Williams had the benefit of having worked with the Hughes brothers for 17 years, since Menace II Society. He notes that their last movie, From Hell—about Jack the Ripper in 1800s London—also required the creation of another kind of world. “But for The Book of Eli, surviving the environment is a big part of the story,” he says. “Water and all other resources are scarce. Our sound had to make that harsh, unfriendly world more believable.”

The directors put a big emphasis on sound, according to Williams. “They think about it before they start shooting,” he says. “Before they shoot, they let us know what the movie is about; they send us movies to listen to and talk about what they’re thinking. We also had the opportunity to go to the set and get a sense of what they were trying to achieve.”

Williams and Norris also note that their efforts were supported by a strong team, including editor Cindy Mollo, A.C.E.; supervising Foley artist Gary Hecker; and re-recording mixers Chris Jenkins and Frank A. Montaño.

Though a post-apocalyptic world can be quiet, there are gun battles aplenty in The Book of Eli, and that was one of the more challenging aspects of the sound editing/design work. Norris notes that the Hughes brothers mentioned two films—director Michael Mann’s Heat in 1995 and the 2005 Australian film by John Hillcoat, The Proposition—in terms of how they wanted the guns to sound. The opening gun battle in the latter, says Norris, was quite effective. “You don’t hear the guns at all—just the impact, the ricochet and the debris,” he says. “It gave you a visceral feeling.” This was crucial to the movie, in which Eli gets directional cues for where to shoot based upon where he hears the gunshots.

The sound editors also got a good feel for what the directors wanted from the gun battles in Heat. “The brothers aren’t into big Hollywood-sounding guns,” says Norris. “They are more into realistic-sounding guns. Having said that, they wanted it nice and big, but not over-the-top.” Williams agrees. “They’re into realism,” he adds. “Michael Mann [in Heat] is known for using a lot of the production sound captured on set. It has a visceral feel for guns. We wanted to make sure we weren’t Hollywood-izing our guns.”

Easier said than done. One thing they learned right away was how profoundly the environment in which the guns were recorded added to the overall sound. It turns out that most firing ranges are located in canyons, giving a distinctive sound that didn’t match the film’s location. “We didn’t want the canyon tail off the guns,” explains Norris. “The big battle happens at a house in the middle of a desert with wide open spaces.” The team ended up bringing on re-recording mixer John Fasal, who is well known for his wealth of knowledge, for location recording.

They spent several trips doing test shoots, bringing the sounds back to Norris’ cutting room and comparing them to get exactly what they wanted. “Finding the ideal location is a science project,” says Williams. “You have to go out there physically and once you get there, you have to really spend time going into different areas in that location. You have to do that before you bring the whole team out there.” The two winning locations ended up being the Burbank Police firing range and the Ojai Valley Gun Club.

Continue reading…

Sound Designer Ben Burtt talks about the elements of the original Star Trek TV show that he tried to emulate in the new movie…

Two things in the original Star Trek effects were revolutionary: Roddenberry had his team create lots of detail. Every room in the ship sounded different. Every button made a noise, when you pressed a lever or a switch. Not only were there sounds articulating all these things to make them sound like they were real, but they were very musical sounds. Somebody pressed a button, there was a little melody. That was not in the movie at the point I came on: you’d just hear a little beep. If it was Star Trek, it needed to sing a little bit and feel like it was alive. You really felt there was a complex operation going on and it was fun to listen to. The ships and the weapons and the ambiences of the places they went to were a form of music. When they went to planets there was always a tone going on, like a ringing bell, or chimes in echo. I tried to create sounds in that style.

The other thing that was used a lot in the original show a lot was shortwave radio recordings and sounds off of transmissions and Morse code, things you can pick up in-between the dials on a shortwave radio.

I love that sort of thing and I’ve collected it for years. There’s some of that in the original Star Trek television show – and the whole beginning of the movie, that first minute or two where the Kelvin is coming into view, is all short wave radio sounds. It reads to the audience that you’re way the heck out at the edge of the universe, barely in contact. Things are far away: there’s these disembodied sounds that are being transmitted back and forth. That’s not the way the sound was, but I wanted to make it seem like the ships were way out there. They’re supposed to be encountering something new so I tried to capitalize on this legacy in science fiction of using radio.

Motion Pictures Editors Guild published an interesting terview with Ben Burtt, called “More Sound Trekking: Ben Burtt’s Further Explorations of Audio Frontiers“. Let’s see:

You’ve been a sound designer, picture editor, mixer, writer, producer and director. How did that career path evolve?

I think it was the constantly evolving filmmaker in me, which started when I was a child adding sound to my family’s home movies. When I began my career, I was recording sounds and said, “Now, if I was also the sound editor, I could control what sounds were used.”

So I became a sound editor; but that wasn’t good enough. I then figured that if I was the sound mixer, I could really completely control what the movie sounds like. Well, that still wasn’t good enough, so I then looked at the influence that the picture editor had, and thought that if I could do that, I could inject a lot of ideas about how to use sound correctly in the first cut of a picture. Then I felt that if I was a director, I could tell everybody what to do, including the editor, and get it exactly my way [...]

We’ve talked about the library of sounds you created for J.J. Abrams’ upcoming Star Trek. Can you talk about how you re-created some of the iconic effects for the movie? Let’s start with the hand phaser.

In the original series, the steady blast of the phaser was derived from the hovering sound of the Martian war machines made for the 1953 version of Paramount’s War of the Worlds. The original was made with tape feedback of an electric guitar and a harp. You can achieve a very similar sound on a Moog synthesizer by modulating a steady sine wave with pink noise. The phasers in the new movie are more like the blasters in Star Wars in the sense that they are flying bolts or tracer bullets, rather than a steady beam. The steady sound just wasn’t the right way to go because the visuals are so different, so I made something that recalls it, but features a Doppler effect and is shorter and sharper. My sounds were added to those that had already been supplied by Mark P. Stoeckinger and Alan Rankin.

Which recent films do you admire for their sound design work?

I loved Saving Private Ryan; I think it was one of the best sound design jobs ever. It was a film with quiet and loud segments and left plenty of space for music and sound effects to have their turns. Steven Spielberg and Gary Rydstrom made excellent choices as to when to let sound tell the story. For much the same reason, I loved Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. Richard King did a sensational job of recreating the 18th-century world of great ships, starting out with all those great ambiences. I also thought Gladiator, Cars, and The Matrix were outstanding.

Are there still new worlds for you to conquer?

I’ve always been associated with big tentpole sci-fi and action films, which I love. But I yearn for challenging new assignments, such as Munich (2005). WALL-E (2008) was a sound designer’s dream. I would like to have a few projects with more realism and historic or social significance. However, I am delighted to be at Pixar because I know they are committed to entertainment that is both wholesome and hopeful. I’m always looking for ways to create voices and sounds for things that have never been heard before—to entertain, to escape and to give life to the magic of the moving image. There is always a new audio frontier for me to explore.

Read the full interview…

Star Trek Ofiicial Website

Star Trek at IMDb