Waves Audio has published a very cool interview with sound designer Ben Minto. Let’s read:

Ben Minto is an Audio Director/Sound Designer working out of EA DICE’s Stockholm studio. Over his 12 years working in the games audio industry, he has accumulated vast insight and knowledge into all aspects of field recording, sound design, and production. Ben’s credits include audio direction and sound design for video games such as BLACK, Burnout (1,2,3 and Revenge), Battlefield (1943, Heroes, Bad Company), Mirror’s Edge and Medal of Honor. With his commitment to quality audio design which pushes the boundaries of sound, it is no wonder that Waves processors are the “backbone of his rig.” In this interview In this interview, Ben gives us an in-depth look at the world of sound for games.

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Vanity Fair has published an article featuring Mark Stoeckinger, who gives an overview of the sound editing process, step-by-step, by showcasing several clips (Full mix, dialogue only, and sfx only).

If you’ve ever lost money in an Oscar pool, at some point you’ve had to ask, “What exactly is the difference between sound editing and sound mixing?” Although that probably means you’re not winning the pool, a film’s sound design is just as crucial as good lighting or smart editing in creating the movie magic that your recreational Flipcam videos lack. Ever in the service of making you a better Oscar gambler, Little Gold Men asked Unstoppable’s supervising sound editor, Mark Stoeckinger—nominated this year for an Oscar—to break down editing for us. “The sound editor is like the art director, and the sound mixer is like the cinematographer: the art director comes up with everything that’s filmed, and the cinematographer decides how to photograph it,” Stoeckinger says. Specifically, a sound editor assembles all the sound you hear in the final picture, which is gathered from both production sound captured the day of shooting (usually, though not exclusively, dialogue) and Foley/effects captured later (usually including dialogue recorded later to match the picture). A sound editor then selects the right pieces of sound to accompany the picture and manipulates them as needed, a process Stoeckinger compares to sculpting clay: “You start off with one thing, but you can always mold it to something else. You listen to a lion growl and think, If I slow it down, add a lot of reverb and reverse, I can make it this alien thing.” In fact, as sound tools have become more sophisticated, the the desire to enrich a film through its sound has grown exponentially; these days, even a typical romantic comedy has more sound work than an action movie from 30 years ago did.

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Via @soundesignblog

Sound and Music has a fantastic section called Sound on Film, where you can find several interesting articles already published. On of the lasts is a great interview with sound designer Akritchalerm Kalayanmitr, talking about his work on “Uncle Boonmee”.

The predominant sound in the film is that of the natural world: insects, birds, water and weather. While this is in the background of many films, in Uncle Boonmee it is brought to the foreground. Do you have a fascination with nature?

Yes, I do really like to listen to natural sound, it’s such a relief and mysterious at the same time. It is a very subconscious element for me.

For the sound of this film, the first thing was to make it be realistic, then tweak later. I like to make the sound either hidden or abrupt, depending on the feeling and rhythm. Sometimes I just throw the sound in there just to see what happens. It’s like, expect the unexpected! I think the sound of birds, crickets, or even water are loud in the real life – although colder countries don’t have as many crickets as warmer countries. Some people like to mix the nature sound low because it could disrupt the dialogue; I just feel that the loud ambience might make it more realistic. It’s all about people’s perception: it [nature] is around you, but you do not recognize it.

Also, there is one cricket sound which is hidden in the film somewhere and is also in most of Apichatpong’s films since Tropical Malady. That’s a small thing that I like to do on his films.

The remote location in which Uncle Boonmee is shot has a very unique visual and sonic character – was it important to you to capture the sound of this place, and what was the process like of recording it?

A lot of the ambient sounds that were used in this film were recorded on or nearby our location. They were done by my assistant sound editor who was the production sound recordist, Chalermrat Kaweewattana. Normally the sound was recorded by stereo microphone on a digital recorder. Chalermrat told me that some of the sound which he recorded from the location, he didn’t even monitor while recording because when he did it, everyone had left, it was very dark with no light at all and something was moving behind the bush…so he decided to place the microphone where he wanted and then waited inside the van with his boom operator!

I think it’s quite important to have the sound from the real location, but not always necessary. Most of the sound from the jungle scene is from Ratchaburi, in the west of Thailand. The long cricket sound from the cave to the temple scene was accidentally captured. It was the first take of recording on that day. I was very lucky to capture a very clean and clear sound of that kind of cricket. After that, for the second or the third take, the cricket had gone somewhere else and was not that close anymore.

Read more: In the mix: Uncle Boonmee

Via Music of Sound

The SoundWorks Collection team has published another of their great videos, this time about the sound of “Unstoppable”.

Unstoppable is an action thriller film directed by Tony Scott, written by Mark Bomback and starring Denzel Washington and Chris Pine. The film tells the story of a runaway train, and the two men (Washington and Pine) who attempt to stop it. Unstoppable is inspired by the “Crazy Eights” unmanned train incident in 2001.

In this exclusive sound for film profile we talk with Sound Re-Recording Mixer, Beau Borders, sound designer Alan Rankin, Supervising Sound Editor Mark Stoeckinger, Sound Designer Ann Scibelli, and Sound Designer Ken J. Johnson.

Fable is one of those unique games with features that keep you intrigued all the time. That includes the sound, which is fantastic. I loved the sound work on Fable III, so I interviewed several members of the audio team:

– Kristen Quebe – Sound Design Supervisor
– Kristofor Mellroth – Sound Design Director
– Shannon Potter – Sound Supervisor at Soundelux

DS: Could you guys tell us about your respective roles in the sound of Fable 3? How was your relationship with the rest of dev teams?

KM: I am the Sound Design Director for Fable 3. As a Sr. Audio Director in the central audio team here in MGS it is my job to help both internal and external titles however I can. I’ve worked with Russ Shaw for 3 years now, overseeing the Sound Design teams for both Fable 2 and Fable 3 so he can stay focused on music composition.

SP: I was the sound supervisor and one of many sound designers from the Soundelux DMG team.  Our Creative Director Scott Gershin also creatively supervised the project and added his mixing talents to the cinematics.  We worked on weapons, creatures, spells and cinematics.

KQ: I was acting Sound Design Supervisor at MGS. It was my job to work very closely with the Audio Directors to help understand and establish the creative vision as well as make sure that it was well executed. I worked with the Lionhead team daily, providing feedback on everything from audio system design to feature expansion in the tools. I also worked with them to establish their content needs, provided audio implementation, as well as content creation. When it came to implementation I was extremely combat focused, but I also worked on the ambiences, and creatures.

Sitting overseas from the dev team meant that we had to communicate extremely well to achieve our design goals. The Lionhead team is an amazing bunch to work with and they were always very flexible and willing to meet with our team by any means necessary. We had desktop sharing sessions, play sessions over XBOX LIVE to do walk-throughs, and very regular conference calls. Even though we were across the ocean from them, they did an amazing job to make us feel included and like part of the team.

DS: What were the new challenges/goals in the sound of Fable 3, compared to the previous Fable titles?

KQ: For Fable 3 our main goal was to create a more delicate sound. We wanted to create an experience that a player could play over long periods without fatiguing the ears and without losing any detail in the design. We wanted the overall sound to feel more natural so we tried to record everything while keeping the perspective in mind. We spent a good amount of time in the beginning of the project pulling reference as a style guide to create a general direction and feel. We also spent a lot of time creating a vocabulary that we could use to describe what we were imagining. This helped to keep our sound design consistent and uphold the original vision that we set out to achieve.

KM: The sound design goals for Fable 3 were based around very specific improvements to our previous entry and providing the most complete and immersive world possible. We really did not compromise anything, much to the detriment of our own lives. Every single system from Fable 2 was looked at and analyzed. We had the blessing of having done a lot of hard work on our system design for Fable 2 but we weren’t satisfied with just rolling the previous game forward. We spent a lot of time dissecting our work from the high level vision to the individual asset level and creating a new design. It wasn’t all from scratch, but it very nearly was! We wanted more detail, more fidelity, and an overall lighter sound. The previous game’s sound design we described internally as “superhero and bashy”. The mantra for this one was “light, magical, and airy.”

The challenge of doing any Fable title is always the sheer amount of unique and detailed content necessary to create a believable world and the highly iterative nature of Lionhead’s development process. The unique challenge with Fable 3 was the schedule. This was the first Fable title done in two years. Fable 1 and 2 took three years to develop. This made the overall schedule crunch up at the end, which caused some extreme time pressure for us on the sound design team. When you put that with some late game design changes and a slow pipeline it really caused extreme amounts of work for the sound design team.

We are very very happy with the end result, but there is a lot of skin on this game from all of us.

SP: For our team it was the weapon design.  We had to give each weapon its own personality, and weave them in such a way that gave a subtle tasty hint of that weapons particular characteristic.  There was plenty of experimentation during this phase of the design.  We worked with organic and other worldly elements experimenting with different frequency ranges textures and tones to give each weapon its own sonic identity.  Brad Beaumont one of the main weapon designers did some really cool sounds for the Crystal weapon set using Soundtoy’s Crystallizer plug in.   This was a weapon where tonal content worked pretty well however with most melee and ranged weapons we found that any tonal material that was musical did not fare well.  We recorded several different types of metal on the foley stage and tried to use similar elements across an entire set.  For example, if there was a really nice clean ring to one of the metal elements used for one of the swords we would try to incorporate that element into the dry fire, shot or report of the pistol and rifle.

DS: The gameplay on Fable 3 is very unique for me. The player has a lot of flexibility and opportunities for exploring all kinds of places, discovering new things, etc. How this structure affects the way you structure the sound of the game?

KM: The scripters at Lionhead are ultra-creative. They are also very good at making lots of difficult sound design challenges for us! We love creating the crazy content from giant doors to singing chickens to floating magical metal puzzles. We strive to create a seamless experience for the players and fill the world with so much detail that even on the edges, there are new things to discover. Fable players tend to play these games for a very long time, with multiple play-throughs and exploring every nook and cranny. They can even do it in co op, both on a couch or over Xbox Live. We want to reward that curiosity and passion with a full experience, no matter how many times you’ve played through.

To accomplish this, we try to do a full sound design for every object in the game. What this means is we don’t just say “metal door” and put it on all the metal doors. Each door has full unique sound design broken into layers so it keeps the perspective correct at different radii. We don’t just do this for doors, we try to do it for everything. This extra effort pays off greatly in co-op, as we try not to ever break perspective for the 2nd player, no matter where they are. The big technical challenge is to fit all of this unique content into memory without compressing the hell out of it and ensuring that it gets loaded. We track every asset in the entire game and load it by hand at every region change. It’s a painstaking process but it assures that we can maximize our memory. If we did big lots of generic content this wouldn’t be necessary but we take the pain so we don’t have to compromise the vision.

KQ: We try and create a unique experience for many play-throughs. The Lionhead Audio Programmers created an amazing load on demand system for us that helped us manage our memory while supporting an extremely large amount of content. We hand load into regions, but this system allowed us to not have to carry as much at any given point in time. For environments we tried to make every region sound unique. If you are playing as good, or evil then we try and support this in subtle ways as well. If you get knocked out you might notice the ominous background loops change based on if you are good or evil. We always try and pay attention to choices that are offered to you in game. Are you barefoot? Do you have armor on? We try our best to build out our sound design based on the decisions that the player can make.

DS: Could you guys tell us about how much field recording was needed to give unique elements to the game? What kind of sources you recorded?

KM: We did a ton of Foley, with two different teams in LA and a bunch here in Soundlab. Every weapon, movement, cut-scene, object, and creature had unique Foley performed and edited for it. A lot of nature recording was done for the project. My guiding principles for the ambience on this game was to “idealize nature, create emotion in the city”. Kristen did a lot of work and put a ton of care into the ambiences in the game, making each region and sub-region unique. A lot of it was from original recordings. To be honest the list is almost too big to go into! Each sound in the game has a story to it.

SP: Scott Gershin, myself and a few other recordists recorded wolves at a wild life sanctuary as well as in the studio.  You get different performances and added fidelity when using the studio, but you also run the risk of the animals not wanting to perform because they are in an unfamiliar place.  With recording out in the field you may get a better variety of performances but you are at the mercy of the elements and your surroundings.   I remember recording some really interesting howls from one of the wolves then all of the sudden we heard a pack not too far away respond by howling.  It was a call and response moment that overlapped.  So needless to say it was a little difficult to get a clean recording of the single wolf howl we were going for.  In the studio Scott Gershin set up and elaborate microphone array.  This was designed to catch all the different nuances of each growl, snort howl etc accounting for any direction the wolf might move.  There’s no directing a wolf.

KQ: Our team did a lot of environmental recordings. We set out to create as real of an experience as possible. To achieve this we recorded as many sounds as possible in their natural environments. We went on camping trips, took hikes through forests, and even adventured through a couple caves. The goal was to collect sounds that had a natural sense of diffusion and would translate 1:1 with the environments in the game.

DS: How was your approach on the armory, melee combat and the different abilities of the main character?

KM: Our main drive for the hero in Fable is to have unique sound designs for everything that can change, that way the hero “feels” the change as much as possible. In Fable 2 every weapon the hero used, an NPC could use as well. That way we just sound designed the weapon itself and let whoever wield it perform the moves they were allowed to.

This worked out pretty great, although it was a lot of weapons to sound design. This time around the arsenal from the last game was distributed through the NPCs and an entirely new “morphing” arsenal was added just for the hero(es). The idea of a morphing weapon is that as you complete certain tasks with it, the weapon changes pieces (hilt, blade, FX, etc) of it to reflect the user’s history. This makes it possible for tons of unique versions of the weapons. The design challenge that we had was to determine how the sound of a weapon changes and coming up with a way to fit that in memory and support drop in/drop out co-op. Kristen had an enormous challenge with this system but I think she created something that is incredibly impressive.

KQ: This time around we wanted to create a sound design that would provide us with more distinction between weapon types and would elicit an emotional response from the player. For Fable 3 we decided to go for more iconic versus literal so we decided to give a unique sweetener to every weapon type that would define its personality. If you had a weapon made in the new continent of Aurora, which is a desert area, you might hear an element of sand in the sword swipe or gunshot. We had to sit down with all the weapons and decide what that iconic element was going to be. We worked hard to create a cinematic feeling to combat. We wanted the player to feel the big moments, so we came up with a unique design that was supported across all of the combat finishers. Soundelux did an amazing job collaborating with us on the combat designs and working iteratively until we succeeded in building what we set out to achieve.

DS: There’s a nice dog that helps the character in several moments, doing exploration tasks and playing important roles in several moments. How you developed the sounds of the dog?

KM: The dog is always very difficult. I handled the dog last time, Kristen handled him this time. At the end of Fable 2 we broke down his sound design and Kristen created some all new systems to increase the detail on him. Many of these are very subtle but we love the subtle stuff like how his toenails click on stone.

KQ: We had certain goals in mind of what we wanted to do differently with the dog. 1) We wanted to change the perspective. 2) We wanted the dog to feel more grounded in the environment. 3) We wanted to have a wider personality range in our sound set. To do this we had to expand the dogs sound set. What you hear in game is actually a combination of dogs that were recorded at Soundelux during the production of Fable 2 and some new dogs that were recorded at MGS Soundlab. We recorded 8 dogs this year and focused on pushing the dog’s perspective out in our recordings. Often in game you are hearing barks when the dog is off in the distance trying to get you to come get the treasure that has been found. We wanted to make that feel very natural.

SP: The movement sounds were created on the Foley stage at Todd AO.  For the snow footsteps we used real snow.  We mic’d the foley slightly off axis to give the movement a more natural feel.  I also feel that the implementation was really done well on the dog.  You hear just a sprinkling of his footsteps and chain movement.  It’s never overbearing and you always have a sense of his presence.

DS: And what about the process on those great cinematics? (both trailers and in-game stuff)

KM: There were really two parts to this: Pre-rendered movies (FMV) and in-game realtime cutscenes (ACS).

For the FMVs, the intro cinematic, when I saw it, I was incredibly excited. I think it’s one of the best of all time.  I knew that we needed to really do something special with the audio to do the picture justice. Soundelux has been our partner for two games now and they have some really great expertise in this area. It was a natural fit to trust them with the post production for this piece. I did the approvals on the Microsoft side but really it was trusted to Shannon and Scott to oversee and make awesome. Their sound design and mix, paired with Russ’s incredible music, all came together fantastically. I think the hardest thing to get right was the voice of the chicken. Walking that balance between realistic and cartoon was very difficult when dealing with an animal voice.

For the ACSs, we were under an extreme time crunch for these and the pipeline was very, very limited for them. What I ended up doing was booking two days of Foley with Gary Hecker(legend!) at ToddAO and slamming through about an hour’s worth of cutscenes. I knew the score would be handled by Russ and a few big moments like the Coronation scene we could cut the big sounds for. The big challenge was going to be cutting enough unique sounds to sync with all these scenes. Foley is very, very fast in this regard and we got some fantastic material. Some of my favorite details are all the little “hands-on” sounds we have for people interacting with things and the jangle of Sabine’s jewelry.

Really, the Foley went so fast the process bottlenecked on me actually getting the sounds into the game. Because the frames could drift, I couldn’t just create a single multichannel mix, play it on frame 1 and let it play out to the end. Things would get out of sync. What I ended up doing was cutting the Foley into individual parts, looking at a timestamp of where they should play against a rendered video of the scene, creating a trigger and playing it on that frame of the animation of the entity it should play from. This didn’t always work perfectly due to the time drifting so on some I had to capture the output of the game engine, count frames and adjust the animation keys by the amount the output was off. Describing it is about 1000x faster than actually doing it. It took weeks of crunch just to get what we got in the game. Animation changed afterward too, so this portion of the project was a bit of a nightmare to complete! Despite all that, I think there’s some really great stuff in there like Reaver’s cane taps during his speech with the protesters. By doing the sounds in 3d on the entity, the perspective changes as the camera cuts and it works rather well. Coronation sounds awesome.

SP: Under the direction of Kristofor Mellroth, Scott Gershin and I creatively supervised 4 of the cinematics.  We had the most fun working on the Intro Cinematic.  In this Intro you have kind of a comedy of errors.  This poor chicken just wants to fly but ultimately finds himself in the worst of any situation.  It was mission critical to get the chicken vocals to evoke the proper emotion.  Out of the gate, we took a more cartoony approach that just didn’t cut it so we decided to go with realistic chicken recordings using pitch and timing for inflection and I’m pretty happy with how they turned out.  We also had a great team of sound designers helping with the design as well as an amazing foley team.  Scott Gershin did the mixing on all 4 cinematics.  The goal was to let the music carry the emotional content while letting the sound effects add the punctuation.  I think overall a nice balance was achieved between the music, sfx and dialogue.

DS: How you collaborate as an audio team? Could you explain us how is your typical workflow, and also… what kind of software/hardware tools you guys use?

KM: This is an unconventional audio team by most standards. There is a lot of opportunity for disaster when you have stakeholders at Lionhead, MGS Central, Soundelux and with Peter Molyneux all involved. But we all love of the Fable franchise and inherently trust one another. We are all so committed to making this the best game possible. We consider the Fable team more of a family than anything else. We stay in sync through weekly conference calls, email at all hours of the day and night, IM when we cross over in real time. After two full games together we do have a shorthand between everyone. How else could you have a sound in a game called “goop shoot” and no one even laughs about it.

SP: We worked under the direction of Audio Director, Kristofor Mellroth and Sound Supervisor Kristen Quebe.  Having worked on Fable 2 we had already established a rapport with the Microsoft team which prepared us for Fable 3.  Kicking off the project we had a preproduction meeting where a list of assets was studied that contained each category we’d be working on.  This was a full day going through concept art and discussing the sonic landscape of the game.  Once the project got underway we did some concepting, to picture if we had it, then passed it off to the Microsoft team for approval.  If Kristen and Kristofor liked what they’re hearing they would test it in game and then send out a new version of the build to our team so we could have a discussion. Sometimes there would be a few rounds of tweaking after that point to get it just right.  During the project we had weekly conference calls and had instant communication via Skype.  This instant communication was really helpful through the production and if anything allowed for a little comic relief through ridiculous messaging.

Having weekly conference calls with Microsoft and receiving updated builds on a regular basis helped keep the project on track.  After we received a build with the updated material, say weapons for example, we would go through and play each weapon in a variety of circumstances and make notes.  We compared notes and agreed on the best way to move forward. It’s the only way to critically analyze the work.  “How does it feel when I fire this weapon?  How does it sound during a big combat moment with several other weapons firing?”  You have to hear the sounds in context to be able to move forward and Microsoft is really good about keeping us updated.   Working as a third party vendor you don’t always get access to builds so I have worked on games in the past where you feel as though you’re designing in a vacuum because you ship your sounds off and have no idea if they will work or not.  Being able to hear your sounds in context while playing the game is the only way to make a solid critical analysis of the games audio.

We use Pro Tools at DMG and a number of plugins to aid in the process.  My personal favorite plugins at the moment are those from the Soundtoy and Ozone packages.  Aside from plugins, we really enjoy going out and recording new material for each project.  This includes the foley stage.  I really enjoy the process of creating sound to picture organically.

KQ: Initially our team creates design docs for every audio system in the game. We worked with the Lionhead team to ensure that we had the tool functionality and code support needed to achieve the design for each system. We had 2 audio implementers (Jordan Stock and LN Lurie) sitting on site with me of whom I supervised. We all had different systems that we owned and were in charge of overseeing. I really like this approach as it creates a sense of ownership on projects for each contributing individual. Each person would create an asset list for their systems once a design was signed off on or prototyped out in the tool. We also created content ourselves, but primarily focused on implementation and systems. If we were working with Soundelux we would have a conference call before starting an asset list. Shannon and the MGS team would discuss how the system would function and general direction for the content. We used a 1st party tool created by Lionhead for getting sounds in the game. In terms of audio tools, we tend to jump between Pro Tools and Adobe Audition on the MGS side. Most of the Soundlab crew runs Pro Tools HD systems. Each morning the MGS audio team would meet for morning stand ups to discuss what we planned on working on for the day. This is also the time we used to prioritize tasks and make sure that all of our focus was in line with the schedule. We also do a lot of review and critique sessions. This is where we would always pull Kristofor in and get feedback and expertise.

DS: Could you tell us about the mix and implementation process of the game? What kind of system did you use and how was your work there?

KM: Mix on Fable was an interesting process. Since we were in different countries and in the final stages of production, it was impossible to get us all together like we did on Fable 2. Instead, we did a distributed mix. We focused all our efforts during the same week but in different locations. Georg mixed VO, Russ mixed music, and my team mixed the sound design. Soundelux mixed the FMVs and matched the VO levels to the in-game VO levels. We don’t have a very nimble tool for mixing so every piece of data must be touched individually.

Our mix process goes like this: Isolation sandbox pass (each feature separately against itself), category sandbox pass (each feature against others in the same category), core game (real playthrough), then optional quests. During the entire process, every mix change is tested against both single player, single screen co-op, and online co-op. It takes a long time. 12-14 hour days for 5 days straight. Then during the final phase of development we keep playing and playing and refining until we get locked out. We try to sanity check everything. The game is so massive, honestly it’s extremely hard to see it all during a condensed mix. We did make some mistakes but overall it sounds like the game we wanted it to and we’re very, very proud of it. We hope everyone likes it.

KQ: We build everything in layers. From far away you only hear distant elements but up close you get additive layers that add detail. We use this approach on everything from a door in the game to weapons. We also like to support dedicated LFE content. Having worked with Kris for many years he has instilled his methodology in me of rewarding the user for having a hi-end audio system. To combat this when playing on different systems we use a Wave Arts limiter on our signal chain and support setting changes from the in game menu. From here you can switch what type of environment you are playing on. Are you on a 5.1 system? Are you playing on a TV? We have different compression settings on each so that we are not punishing anyone for their listening environment. In TV mode you will get 10 to 12dB of compression so that we bring in our dynamic range and hopefully the user is still able to hear the things that they need to hear. We also balance this using the analog outputs of the Xbox 360. Many games clip the output of the console when running in analog because of volume boost that occurs in the 5.1 fold down. We do captures and monitor our analog outputs during mix time to ensure this doesn’t happen.

DS: There’s a lot of physical interaction and social activities between different characters in the game. How you dealt with this? Any key aspect on de dialogue or the sound system to achieve good results in that aspect?

KM: The expression system is something that is really cool and went through a lot of iteration. I challenged LN Lurie to make it a special feature and she did a great job of iterating on the design. She worked with the team at Lionhead to get a lot of detail into it. It’s a very difficult challenge to execute on. It’s a combination of physical Foley, what we call “vocal Foley” and vocal performances that range from funny to serious. Getting actors to perform these types of things while adhering to the technical limitations necessary to make the system work is very challenging. The Expression system alone is about 10000 lines, which is more than what most games have for all their dialog combined. The sounds for it are a combination of dialog called via code and sounds effects called through animation keys. The whole thing is so complex it’s kind of a beast unto itself. When you combine expressions with the entire cast available and every script, you get about 65000 lines or something like that for F3. It’s no wonder Georg only slept 2 hours a night for about 9 months.

KQ: We went through several iterations of how to design the touch expression system for the game. LN was in charge of supervising that system and working with the VO team in the UK to make sure that we achieved what we were after. At first we prototyped out a system that was very foley rich with grunts and groans, but as the decision was made to give the hero in Fable a voice that opened up a world of opportunity. We quickly realized that we needed to move this into the speech system. The VO and writing team did a stellar job in coming up with some very great and comedic lines for all of the characters in the game for this system.

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.”

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Mix has published an article about the sound mixing of  Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood. Check:

“It’s going to need a lot of work,” acknowledges dialog/music re-recording mixer Paul Massey, as he turns from the screen in the Cary Grant Theater on Sony Pictures’ Culver City lot to face other members of the sound and picture crew. Massey has just rolled a faders-up mix of the re-conformed Reel 8 for Robin Hood, directed by Ridley Scott, and there are several dialog elements that sound at odds with some new tracks that have been synched to picture following a re-sequencing of the film’s final battle scene. There are also places where the music ends or transitions too early, and sound effects require sweetening.

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Stay tuned for the next week for an interview we had with sound designer Ann Scibelli talking about her work on Robin Hood.

SFGate has published an article talking about the Dolby Surround 7.1 Mix on Toy Story 3, the future of sound for 3D films, and how the people could take this new sonic adventure.

Walt Disney Co.’s Pixar made the latest installment of its “Toy Story” franchise in 3-D to satisfy the growing appetite for immersive visual effects.

Its next challenge: getting the sound effects to match.

The current setup in most theaters, known as 5.1, couldn’t direct sounds precisely enough to specific parts of the theater, says Paul Cichocki, post-production supervisor at Pixar. The audio didn’t feel like it was putting the viewer in the middle of the action, he says.

“We really wanted to take sound to the next level, and we just weren’t able to do much in 5.1,” Cichocki said. “If we could put sound in the right places, it helps your brain look in the right place.”

That’s why Pixar urged Dolby Laboratories Inc. to develop a new version of its sound system, the dominant audio technology in theaters. The resulting Dolby Surround 7.1 standard lets movies deliver sounds through seven speakers, plus one subwoofer, which handles bass. For Dolby, the technology helps the company keep pace with other cinema improvements — from crisper digital images to reclining seats — and give audiences a reason to keep coming back.

Sound technology alone doesn’t compel people to see a movie, says Paul Dergarabedian, president of Hollywood.com’s box-office tracking division. It’s just a subtle part of improving the experience, he says.

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Some days ago, I asked to Paul Ottoson for an interview on the sound of “The Hurt Locker”. That was days before the Oscars night, so he becomes very busy, but he made an effort and sent me the answers to all the questions I did. Many thanks, Paul!

Designing Sound: Tell us… How did you get involved with “The Hurt Locker”?

Paul Ottosson: I got a call from one of the producers and the post supervisor. They had this great script they wanted me to read and the director wanted to meet with me if I liked the script. I loved the script and went to meet with Kathryn and Mark, the writer.

We sat and talked for a bit at her office and got along really well. They liked that I had a military background. Kathryn also mentioned she had not intentions to have any music beyond something over the credit roll. It would be up to me to design the entire thing. I liked the idea even though I knew it would be hard.

DS: How was your relationship with Kathryn Bigelow on the film? How was the importance she gives to the sound of the film?

PO: I loved working with Kathryn. We talked a lot about the overall sound of the film. It had to be very organic and yet have a design to it. We always needed to be there and most of the time in some kind of danger even though we might not see it most of the time. We ended up playing the perspective of every person in the scene a bit differently.

DS: When you started to work on the sound of “The Hurt Locker”? How long the process took?

PO: Well I think I was the first one that got hired, this is way before they shot a frame and you start thinking about it already then. I re-read the script take notes etc. I think all and all I was on the movie with a crew for perhaps 4 months.

DS: What was the most you enjoyed from the film? A favorite scene. perhaps?

PO: It was a rare movie to be on, I really love the movie, the entire movie. I’m very proud to have been a part of it, I think a big part of it. The crew did a fantastic job. The big set pieces are all really good scenes. I honestly can’t say I have a favorite scene. I think because I don’t think of the sound as much as a separate element but a part of the movie in it’s entirety.

DS: What were your main tools to work with sound on the film? Any interesting technique or specific process to talk about?

PO: The trick was to always stay organic it was important to not through off the audience with some “cool” over the top sound design or sfx. It had to kind of melt into the fabric of the movie. Of course we try to push it but without going over the limit. I used a lot of band compressing. I use MacDSP plug-ins a lot. I love how their plug-ins sound. It makes me stuff sound better and they’re so easy to use.

DS: How was the approach on the foley and field recording processes?

PO: All we tried to do was to always get it to sound real. Get the perspective right was important. Every cut was played and mixed of the perspective of the person we were with.

DS: And the mixing? What were the main goals on the mix?

PO: The mix was a bit tricky, I mixed it perhaps in a different way then most traditional mixers would have. Also perhaps because I have not mixed as much as most mixers out there. I think that also helped, we needed a
out of the box thinking mix. Had to make the mix sound like you would not expect it to.

It all came from that the sound would have to carry a lot of the scenes when not to much happened. I paned a lot of the dialog in the hectic scenes. It might not seem like a big deal but for those who knows it is. Usually we mix foley and dialog up the center cone.

When you pan dialog, now the air drone that the dialog is married to paned to the left which would leave a hole in the center so then I had to sneak in another fill in the center. I also needed to fill in with bg’s to fill in all sides otherwise the right side would seem empty. Then the foley needed to follow as well. Which mean I needed to shoot more foley other wise there would be nothing in the center or where ever the other character were on screen. I also did not really let anything sit still in the mix. I swiped EQ’s, rode the fader volume up even with simple bg’s to get a more dynamic and changing mix.

Like a very quiet scene when the get ambushed, after the gun fight is over it seems like there is not that much going on but mixing wise there is tons. Every perspective was cut and mixed different to make it feel a bit more stressful laying there in wait. After a gun fired I would even mix the tails with different eq and compression.

I would even sit and mix the attack on guns on the compressors to get the kick of the gun then maybe I wanted to compress and push the swell of the gun echoing around the mountain range. It was a really deep mix and I think the mix succeeded with helping to tell the story and keep you more in the movie then perhaps as an audience.

DS: Let’s talk about the first scene. I love every bomb-deactivation scene, but the first one is awesome. When the first bomb explodes, everything get slow down and you get a detailed vision of the moment, feeling the ground shaking, the wave expanding, etc. Great moment to make a great sound. How were your sound decisions on that scene?

PO: I drew from my time in the military. I was in a volunteer army when I was perhaps 15.

Then I was a ranking officer in the army when I was around 19-20. I remember the first time we blew up explosives. We had to “guess” how much plastics we would need to cut a railroad track in half. We truly just guessed and piled on a bunch. We then went underground in a bunker and detonated. It was insane, the pressure wave made the air in front tremble. I will never forget how it felt, it wasn’t that it was loud, it just shocked the entire body. When a bomb blows up and you’re really close you don’t die from the shrapnel but ahead of it is a shockwave expanding very fast. Your lungs can handle around 7lbs per sq inch. The shock wave expands in your nose and mouth and blows out your lungs at 100lbs per sq inch. It pops every capillary in your body.

So playing it from the EODs perspective he would never hear it. He would feel it and he would be dead before sound would get there. Thats how I played it and I came back to real sounds after his dead, then I played the scene as a viewer, like the others heard it.

I used insane amount of low end for the slow mo stuff to emulate what I felt when I blew up that bomb some 25 years ago.

DS: I really enjoy the way you manage the POV of each character, specially when the guys have the anti-bomb suit. You can feel what he feels, listen to his breathing, hear what he hear, it’s really great. What where the main concept used on the sound to give that feeling? There’s something special on the editing and the mix there?

PO: Kathryn liked it, it was kind of like an astronaut walking by himself in space. I felt that hearing his breath we would get his mindset. That he was focused and it put us in his space. I played it all around us, I even cheated it and played it a bit around us even when we were close to him.

DS: For James, war is an addiction and he see everything like a challenge. For the others is different, for example with Owens, his vision is more dramatic and he feels the pain and fear to death. How the sound design helps to expand the vision of each character of the film? Any special work for each character?

PO: Each character was treated different, James had a more solid walk and his movements were more deliberate. Eldridge being more scared did not have the same confidence in his walk and his gear made a bit more sound. I tried to use more of his scared breathing.

Ray Beckett, the production mixer did a fantastic job capturing all that live stuff from the set.

DS: One thing I loved was the helicopters. They come in the best moments and reminds you that you are in a “serious war”. In the tense scenes, in the calm, great details. For example when James is talking with his baby, you start to listening the helicopters and then start the final scene with the contrast of the end. How the audio team deal with the helicopters? How was the mix on those cut-scenes?

PO: We needed to maintain the war and where we were, we could not forget that there is still a war going on. I used the helicopters as well as jets to drive in and out of cuts as well as building tension in scenes. Even to escalate shots and dialog in a scene.

Like when the man comes up to Sanborn and ask if he’s from California. Sanborn gets angry he doesnt know if he is going to kill him and he start to yell at him and poke with the gun. I pushed two jets going by at supersonic speed with tons of sub info and kind of gave the scene a crescendo.

DS: I think tension is a key factor on THL. Sound design and music helps a lot there. How was the approach of the sound to make that hard-tension moments?

PO: To always keep you on your toes, sometimes to play foley louder then I would have in a regular movie. I would start out with a real environment sound then morph it into something a bit strange, still real but strange. I think the audience did not hear the change but they felt that it was un natural or strange and it helped with the tension.

Also as a final note, these things I have mentioned is easier to do when you’re working on a fantastic movie. When the script, acting, picture editing, the score, photography, the practical visual fx when it all is done in the best way possible and when you have a fantastic director like Kathryn making it all come to life.

DS: This is your third film working with director Tim Burton, how does he embrace the dubbing process?

TJ: Tim is very much into the sound mixing process. He is incredibly attentive and precise in his desires. He is very much into the rhythm or tempo of the soundtrack. This is true of all of the elements (Music, effects and dialogue). For Tim, all of the elements have to work in terms of timing or beat. Just like the picture itself has a certain rhythmic pace, so to does the soundtrack as a whole. Often notes are given based on this feeling more than anything else.

DS: Has it changed since your first collaboration of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”?

TJ: Tim is just as concerned about sound as he has always been, meaning he is very focused. Sound is as important to him as anything else in the film. I would say that for Tim, all aspects of the film are equal in importance because he sees them as fitting together to make the whole piece. In terms of sound, all elements are also equally important to him. In the case of “Alice”, Tim wanted a very rich and detailed track full of texture and rhythmic precision.

DS: How did the sound team on “Alice” establish the sonic differences between London and Wonderland?

TJ: The above ground scenes (or the “London” scenes) are meant to sound “normal,” meaning rather bland and uninteresting. This is supported by the picture too, in that it is rather colorless and two dimensional. When we get to “Underland,” or “Wonderland,” the world sounds and looks colorful, exotic, and very deep or three dimensional. Strange birds, insects, frogs, and other animals were used to sonically convey this idea of Wonderland.

Also, we wanted each of the places to have their own particular sound. For instance, the White Queen’s Castle, which is near huge waterfalls and lots of vegetation, needed to have a fuller, lusher sound than the Red Queen’s Castle which is in a desolate environment. Also, the area where the final conflict takes place is very empty, with only a stark, lonely wind playing.

The idea was to make Underland sound very site specific and interesting; while the real world of “London” was to sound boringly normal.

DS: What sounds were you able to embellish while the film was “down the rabbit hole”, which wouldn’t work in England’s realistic setting?

TJ: In terms of Backgrounds, we were able to use things like exotic birds that would never be found in England. Plus we were able to use crickets and frogs that would never be found in the cooler climates of Great Britain, either. And, of course, there were all the creature specific voices of the Bandersnatch, Jub-Jub Bird, Jabberwocky, etc.

We were also able to layer sounds on top of each other in such a way that Underland becomes deeper, more three dimensional sounding than the two dimensional world of England.

While surround channel usage is usually dictated practically, by someone of something’s movement passing by the POV of the camera, what creative reasons did you guys utilize the rear speakers in the film? How do you know when to avoid using them? (i.e., panning takes away from the action).

We used the surround channels a lot to enhance the three dimensional world of Underland. We tried to give a sense of things coming off the screen by often putting them slightly (or often even more than slightly) into the surround speakers. We did this with the music and effects a lot, but also with the dialogue as well. For instance, at one point Alice tells the Caterpillar that she wouldn’t fight the Jabberwocky even if her life depended on it. He responds, “It will!” We put that line in the Center speaker AND the center surround speaker to give it a bit of emphasis as his head comes out into the theater. This kind of treatment does not work at all in the 2D version of the film; it was really distracting and we found ourselves looking around the room because we were really aware of the surround speakers (especially when it was dialogue we were putting there). But when we ran the 3D version of the film, this technique really seemed to work pretty well.

We also did a lot more panning of the dialogue in the 3D version of the film. In fact, when we were in Underland we were pretty consistent at trying to pan the dialogue to wherever the person was speaking was in the frame. There is much less panning of the dialogue in the 2D version.

DS: I always get a kick out of the smallest sonic details in a film, like in “Alice,” I loved the sound of the door mouse pacing while she’s locked up in the metal birdcage. What character had your favorite sounds to mix in the film?

TJ: In terms of the dialogue mix, I have to say that I enjoy the White Rabbit a lot. Once you realize that all of the “animated creatures” in the film were wholly created after their voices were recorded, it is truly amazing how fantastic their performances really are. For me, I never tire of watching the White Rabbit. His facial and body movements are a perfect match for his vocal performance. And once you realize that it was a wonderfully talented group of animators that made that character come alive frame by incredibly detailed frame, the whole performance is quite an amazing feat of creativity and collaboration between animators and actor.

And this is true of all the animated creatures in the film. It was quite exciting watching them come to life over the course of the film making process.

DS: Alice frequently and dramatically changes height in the film; how did you guys play with her aural perspective while she was small versus when she was normal sized or tall?

TJ: We discussed this pretty early on. The first thing we decided was to NOT change Alice’s voice quality when she was small or big. We felt that this would be really distracting, and would also take away from the basic performance and interaction between the different characters. We did do some subtle thi
ngs with reverb when she was in the round room towards the beginning of the film. When she is big the reverb is fairly tight and small because the room is now smaller compared to her body size. And when she was small we used a larger reverberant space because the room is now bigger and more alive compared to her body size.

We also used a deeper sound for some of her feet when she was larger. But in the rest of the film we really let the visuals tell most of the story.

I suppose if one was to theorize about this, the idea is that in the case of Alice’s size changes we felt that the visual elements were so strong that if we tried to be equally bold with the sound, it would most likely diminish the impact that the picture was having on us.

We did find that we could do things with backgrounds that would help. For instance, when she was small the sound of the grass would become important because the blades of grass were as big as she was.

DS: What was your first gig like?

TJ: I would say that many of my first jobs were pretty intimidating. I remember a film called The Hot Spot, directed by Dennis Hopper. It was one of the first times Gary Rydstrom and I were really on our own. I mixed dialogue and music, and it was really very scary for me. Here you have Dennis Hopper directing; a great score by Jack Nitzsche, performed by the likes of John Lee Hooker, Taj Mahal and Miles Davis; and me a virtual newbie! The first day of the final we do a run through of our predubs for Dennis. During the whole rundown I am sweating bullets. I mean this is Dennis Hopper, man! At the end of the first reel he tells Gary how much he loves the sound effects work he has done (and it was and is a really nice job; definitely a film worth checking out). Then he turns to me and says, “The dialogue sounds kinda weird. Why is that?” This has got to be the worse comment anyone can ever make about a dialogue premix. And it is truly my worst fear to this day. He then says, “Can we play the first scene again?” And so we do. There is silence at the end of it. It seems like days before Dennis says anything. Then he says, “I guess it is just that it sounds so much cleaner than I’m used to, is that it?”

I think the whole room sighed with relief (or probably it was just me, but it certainly felt like the whole room, or world, suddenly was feeling better). And from that moment on we had a really fun time…..