“Learning the technology is important, but learning to use your ears is more important.”

-Randy Thom

SoundWorks Collection has released more than 10 videos featuring interviews and exclusive content from the Cinema Audio Society Awards, including Career Achievement Honoree to Randy Thom.

The Cinema Audio Society consists of Sound Mixers and Associates from the Film and Television Industries. The Society was founded to create a proper channel of communication between the related sound crafts and between those instrumental to the production and distribution of film and television soundtracks.

The CAS Awards for Outstanding Achievement in Sound Mixing are presented annually to the winning Re-Recording and Production Mixers in each of four categories: Television Non-Fiction, Variety or Music Series or Special; Television Series; Television Movies or Mini-Series; and Motion Pictures. The competition is open to feature films and television programs released or aired during the calendar year, and the winners are revealed in a sealed envelope ceremony at the Cinema Audio Society Annual Awards Banquet.

For the 2010 CAS Awards the SoundWorks Collection partnered with the CAS to provide exclusive backstage interviews with the winners of this years awards show.

Watch the rest of the videos…

And congratulations, Randy! Keep the amazing work.

“Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. Mistakes are a necessary part of the creative process no matter how long you’ve been at it.”

-Randy Thom

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

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Rob Bridgett:

This is a response, albeit not as eloquent or timely, to Randy Thom’s superb article ‘Designing a Movie for Sound’ which can be found on the film sound website. Much of what Randy talks about in that article can very easily be applied to games production, however I always wanted to read a piece that talked directly to the experience and team structure of game development. In games it is rare to find a single authorial voice, as can be found in film with the director. There are so many different collaborators working from day one on a video game project that it is difficult to know where to begin for a sound designer who is perhaps more used to working long hours at the end of a project. Design is at the heart of video games ‘direction’ and working directly as part of that team is the best place to start. Art direction and technical direction all play heavily into the decision making process. Finding an audio direction that can not only support these other disciplines but can lead and inspire them is the goal for a game sound designer in pre-production. Video game sound development is also different to film sound in that there are often in-house sound personnel (audio director and others) present on a game team right from the beginning concept phase of a project. This presents an opportunity for sound in games rarely found in cinema sound production and this article is really a call to action not to squander and waste that opportunity but to use it fully to make sound an active and full contributor to the game-play.

DESIGNING A GAME FOR SOUND

It appears that game sound designers finally have, more or less, all the technical tools in their arsenal that film sound designers have. We have already seen many fine examples of this on the 360, higher sample rates, more sounds playing etc.

However, this is where games, and indeed many motion-pictures, hit the proverbial brick-wall in terms of sound because story, and more pertinently game-play, must be designed for sound from the ground-up. There is an aesthetic/collaborative issue at the heart of being more like film, and it is something that arguably game sound can do better than film sound.

The movie sound designer Randy Thom has often very lyrically stated that a movie must be designed for sound, rather than the other way around. This essentially means that a sound designer, or a director who cares and allows opportunities for sound to be used well in a film, should be involved as early as possible (meaning the pre-production period) in the story-telling elements of the movie. Although still frustratingly uncommon among movies, game sound can certainly learn, and improve a great deal from this practice as there are often full-time, in-house sound personnel physically sitting in the building at the time of pre-production.

There prevails an attitude among game designers and producers that sound’s job is to work miracles quickly and cheaply at the end of production with little or no collaboration whatsoever. One such core-principle in designing a movie for sound is allowing the characters to listen to their environment and to hear things, essentially to give the characters ‘ears’. This allows the sound designer to exploit more creative opportunities using the point-of-view of a character.

Narrative games certainly have strong characters, and many of them often have very identifiable points-of-view. It is now a real challenge for sound designers to become involved and become more influential in the early story-boarding stages and early game design concepts. In many ways the potential for point-of-view is much stronger in games than in movies. I believe that in order to change this trend it is up to us as sound personnel to be the ones who push for further involvement in pre-production on game titles, after-all it is not just going to happen on its own overnight.

There are now so many ways of manipulating sound available to game sound designers, all they need is a game that really welcomes and relies on sound to form 33% and often up to 90% of the game play. There certainly isn’t the game equivalent of a movie like Apocalypse Now out there right now, which was a movie that arguably allowed the most opportunities of any 20th century cinema for sound to come in and tell at least half of the story.

Perhaps the biggest area of challenge for audio on next generation cinematic titles, and indeed for all development disciplines, is to become much more interweaved with one another from the earliest planning stages of game design both technically and aesthetically.

PROACTIVE SOUND DESIGN

Pre-production is typically a very quiet time for sound personnel on a video game project, perhaps being involved in some ‘look and feel’ movie material for green-light meetings is the extent of the workload. However, try to re-conceive of this as potentially your most productive and collaborative time on a project. My advice is:

1. Ensure that sound is clearly represented at all the pre-production game design meetings, particularly early story concepts. Think about how sound will change over the course of the story, and how to deliver these changes in terms of game play.

2. Ensure sound is represented at all early technical meetings in terms of art pipelines such as animation. Sound should be considered not only aesthetically but also technically as an integral part of any art asset or any animation. In dialogue, consider driving character animation from sound, rather than having to retro-fit sounds to match the animations. The direction for how a character looks, sounds and feels should be a collaborative direction invested in by everyone involved in it’s creation.

3. Be present at story board meetings in order to have input on how scenes play-out, work closely with the DP in allowing opportunities for dialogue to feel natural and also allow for the characters to ‘hear’ things and interact with sounds within cinematic scenes.

4. Be in as many game design meetings as possible, in essence, at this stage it would be most beneficial to be considered part of the design team by the designers. Consider sound as part of any game play device or feature, and how it functions. Always allow for, and state the case for, sound to lead the game play.

5. Be pro-active! Get out of the studio. Remember it is very rare for game designers, animation artists etc to come to you looking for your input on the design of a feature, they usually only manage to find your studio when they need something from you, i.e. when they have finished the art or design and now need to make it sound good, at which point it is often too late. Take a laptop and sit among the game designers or artists for a few weeks, be visible on the team and a vocal sounding board for ideas.

6. Collaboration. Most importantly, remember this is not about your ego! As a sound artist you are collaborating with artists, designers and producers in getting what is best for the game, be prepared to listen to other’s opinions as well as expecting others to listen to yours. It is collaboration that is often the key missing ingredient from sound, game design and art pipelines in the current development environment.

Also read: Designing a Movie for Sound by Randy Thom

]]> http://designingsound.org/2009/11/rob-bridgett-special-designing-a-game-for-sound/feed/ 0 http://designingsound.org/2009/09/cinema-audio-society-to-honor-randy-thom/ http://designingsound.org/2009/09/cinema-audio-society-to-honor-randy-thom/#comments Thu, 10 Sep 2009 14:41:54 +0000 Miguel Isaza http://designingsound.noisepages.com/?p=606 Re-recording mixer/sound designer Randy Thom will receive the Cinema Audio Society’s Career Achievement Award at the 46th CAS Awards on Feb. 27 at the the Millennium-Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles.

He has shared in 14 Academy Award nominations, winning for best sound editing for “The Incredibles” and best sound for “The Right Stuff.”

He’s been nominated four times by CAS and took top honors in 1995 for “Forrest Gump.”

“The Cinema Audio Society’s Career Achievement Award honors the best of the best, and Randy Thom’s career spanning more than 30 years and over 75 films and numerous awards certainly warrants being honored,” said CAS president Edward L. Moskowitz.

Thom began his career in film 30 years ago working for “Apocalypse Now.” He is currently the director of Sound Design at Skywalker Sound.

Congratulations, Randy!!

Vía Hollywood Reporter / USO Twitter

Randy Thom @ Designing Sound

Randy Thom spoke yesterday in the first keynote at the Siggraph Conference. Let’s read some notes and ideas delivered by Thom:

“creative use of sound is key to making a long-remembered film.”

Thom, who won sound editing Oscars for “The Incredibles” and “The Right Stuff,” said he is often asked about the difference between designing sound for animation and live action. “One emerging difference that’s very important … is the directors of animation more and more often are asking me and other sound designers to get involved very, very early in the process, and do speculative sounds to help animators get inspired,” he said, adding that this sort of interactive process rarely happens in live-action films.

Afterwards, Thom told Daily Variety, “This idea that sound is something you do at the end of the process — that it’s sort of a decoration you apply at the end of the movie — is false. I think it’s bound to make a better movie if you start thinking about sound and start experimenting with sound as soon as you start the project.”

Thom presented the openings of two movies he worked on, “Apocalypse Now” and “Wall-E,” along with video interviews with their filmmakers and his sound collaborators: Francis Ford Coppola and Walter Murch on the former film, Andrew Stanton and Ben Burtt on the latter. He urged the assembled graphics designers and animators to remember, “When you’re writing the story, think about what your characters might hear that could tell the audience something about who the characters are. Create moments to feature those sounds.”

He also warned that if the characters are always talking, “neither they nor the audience will get a chance to hear the objects, places and events that will make your film more cinematic.”

Vía Variety | U.S.O

“Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs” Sound for Film Profile from Michael Coleman on Vimeo.

Here is the info about the sound of Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, a 3D-Animation Movie directed by Carlos Saldanha and distributed by 20th Century Fox.

Staff

• Sound Designer: Randy Thom
• Sound Effect Editor: Kyrsten Mate Comoglio
• Sound Mixers: Nathan Vance and James Spencer
• Sound Mix: DTS | Dolby
• Rerecording Mixers: Colette Dahanne and Lora Hirschberg
• Foley Artists: Dennis Thorpe and Jana Vance
• Foley Editors: Suzanne Fox and E Larry Oatfield
• Foley Mixer: frank Rinella
• Foley Recordist: Sean England
• ADR Editor: Marshall Winn
• Music: John Powell

Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs Official Website
Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs at IMDB

Ends June, and the Randy Thom Special too. Let’s see some interesing interviews and articles by Randy talking about his work, his techniques, and special sound development for several movies and games.

What is Sound Design?

You may assume that it’s about fabricating neat sound effects. But that doesn’t describe very accurately what Ben Burtt and Walter Murch, who invented the term, did on “Star Wars” and “Apocalypse Now” respectively. On those films they found themselves working with Directors who were not just looking for powerful sound effects to attach to a structure that was already in place. By experimenting with sound, playing with sound (and not just sound effects, but music and dialog as well) all through production and post production what Francis Coppola, Walter Murch, George Lucas, and Ben Burtt found is that sound began to shape the picture sometimes as much as the picture shaped the sound. The result was very different from anything we had heard before. The films are legends, and their soundtracks changed forever the way we think about film sound.

What passes for “great sound” in films today is too often merely loud sound. High fidelity recordings of gunshots and explosions, and well fabricated alien creature vocalizations do not constitute great sound design. A well-orchestrated and recorded piece of musical score has minimal value if it hasn’t been integrated into the film as a whole. Giving the actors plenty of things to say in every scene isn’t necessarily doing them, their characters, or the movie a favor. Sound, musical and otherwise, has value when it is part of a continuum, when it changes over time, has dynamics, and resonates with other sound and with other sensory experiences.

That is only a part of an entire article called “Designing A Movie For Sound” written by Randy Thom for Filmsound.org. (link below)

Articles

• Designing a Movie for Sound
• The Machinery Aimed At The Ear
• Confessions Of An Occasional Sound Designer
• More Confessions Of A Sound Designer
• A Few notes on “FORREST GUMP”
• Are Movies Getting Too Loud?
• On Being Creative
• A Few Notes On Music In The Final Mix

Interviews

• Buskin, Richard: Making Contact
• Shatkin, Elina: Randy Thom, Sound Designer,  ‘What Lies Beneath’
• Harnessing The Elements On Cast Away
• Cast Away
• Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Here ends the Randy Thom Special of June.

For July I prepared an amazing featured Sound Designer. Names like Finding Nemo, Peter Pan, Minority Report, Hulk, Monsters Inc sounds familiar? Wait for more info about the July’s featured coming soon ;)