[Rob Bridgett, audio director on Prototype 2 issues a rallying cry for the mixing of the audio discipline with the rest of the studio, and opening up the closed studio space to collaboration -- perhaps even suggesting a fundamental change in studio structure.]

Read more at Gamasutra

Rob Bridgett has released a digital ePub version his book “From the Shadows of Film Sound“. It’s available now at $9,99.

As a practitioner in video game development, Rob Bridgett has explored and written about the connective tissue between film sound production and a newly emerging video game audio production culture. This new volume brings together, for the first time, freshly edited writings with many previously unpublished articles, documenting his work and thinking over the past ten years. This book is equally suited to film sound designers intrigued by game sound production as much as those in game sound wishing to further explore the meaning of cinematic sound. A fresh, insightful, and long overdue volume offering nourishment for students of sound as well as ammunition for sound artists working on the front line of development.

Buy it here. Printed version is available at Blurb.

You can also check the interview we did in 2010 when the book was released.

Former DesigningSound.org featured sound designer of the month Rob Bridgett has posted up a healthy summary of considerations faced by game audio professionals during a typical development. Issues of planning, budget, and resource management are discussed at length towards providing solutions to some of the common pitfalls inherent in managing large teams of creative talent.

Arkhive Sound: Budget Implications in Game Audio Production

In this feature, experienced audio director Rob Bridgett (Prototype) explains how the expanded possibilities brought by modern technology have lead sound directors to have to make careful collaborative choices to support a game’s vision.

Sound Friction: Collaborative Challenges in Games

July’s issue of AudioMedia features several articles on game audio, including:

• Martin Stig Andersen on the sound of “Limbo”
• Richard Wentk talks with Valve’s audio team about the sound of “Portal 2″
• Phil Kovats – Sound Matters
• Niklas Hed on the sound and music of “Angry Birds”
• Level Up – Loudness Standards for Games (feat Garry Taylor, Scott Selfon and Rob Bridgett)
• Taking The Middle Ground – Brett Paterson of Firelight Technologies talks about the new look of FMOD

AudioMedia – July 2011

The eighth episode of Game Audio Podcast has been released and features Rob Bridgett (Radical Entertainment) Kristofor Mellroth (Microsoft Game Studios) and David Mollerstedt (DICE).

Listen/Download: Game Audio Podcast #8

Today I’m happy to announce that Rob Bridgett, one of our best friends here at Designing Sound (and who started the monthly special series almost a year ago) is releasing “From the Shadows of Film Sound“, a new must-have book for anyone interested in sound for video games.

As a practitioner in video game development, Rob Bridgett has explored and written about the connective tissue between film sound production and a newly emerging video game audio production culture. This new volume brings together, for the first time, freshly edited writings with many previously unpublished articles, documenting his work and thinking over the past ten years. This book is equally suited to film sound designers intrigued by game sound production as much as those in game sound wishing to further explore the meaning of cinematic sound. A fresh, insightful, and long overdue volume offering nourishment for students of sound as well as ammunition for sound artists working on the front line of development.

“From the Shadows of Film Sound” is available now on blurb.com at US $21.85. Also, below you can find a Q&A session I had with Rob talking about the book.

DS: What made you decide to write this book?

RB: First of all, thanks for taking time to talk with me about the book, I’m really excited about the project and finally getting it out there. As you know, I’ve accumulated a lot of written material over the years – various articles, features and post-mortems – and it was while re-reading many of the older articles for my website that I began to see some common threads that tied the work together in an interesting way. A lot of the articles are hard to find and some only exist as scanned print pages, so it felt like I needed to re-visit them in an archival way too. The main thread, which I wasn’t conscious of at all at the time of writing, was of looking to cinema sound to shed light on production issues found in video game sound. This wasn’t anything I was conscious of doing when I began writing articles, just something that occurred to me a year or so ago, that all of these pieces could be tied together and read, not only as a collection of individual pieces, but also as a reasonably coherent whole.  Since then, it’s been a really exciting process putting the book together and realizing that there really isn’t anything out there already that addresses these topics from a practitioner’s viewpoint. It’s a book I’d have killed for when I was studying sound and trying to break into the industry!

DS: Could you give us a quick overview then of the topics and different ideas we could find in there?

RB: I’ve really tried to cover everything that I have come across, or been challenged with, as a video game audio director, and that’s a very wide scope. That goes from music implementation and communication with composers, to sfx & dialogue production and processes. I spend a significant part of the book discussing post-production techniques, including sound effects replacement and interactive mixing techniques that occur very late in the production cycle of a game, but also practical ideas about sound personnel embedding themselves in the earliest production opportunities on any project in order to leverage as much artistic and technical collaborative influence as possible on the project. So, lots of detail yet also plenty of broad, higher level examples.

DS: As you mentioned, the book contains some articles already found on the internet, yet in a re-edited form, could you talk a little about these?

RB: Previously published articles form the heart of this book for sure. Every single article though has been re-edited and updated significantly in order to give it more relevance. I’ve also given new contextual introductions and summaries, which help these articles actually feel more like a book with a single central themes.

DS: ‘From the Shadows of Film Sound’ is an interesting title for a book about video game sound. Is there a particular reason behind this title?

RB: Yeah, I guess it’s a very different title for a game audio book! The main idea behind the title is that, for me, video game sound is bound up in the history and culture of cinema sound, whether consciously trying to emulate it, or to reject it. I see game audio as being something that is emerging from this culture and history and, that over the next few decades, will very much evolve a distinctive style of its own. Video games really used to sound like video games twenty years ago, but now it’s getting very difficult to differentiate games from films.

DS: In the book you often refer back to a relationship between film and game audio production. Do you consider this book also important for someone working on sound for film?

RB: Definitely. All of the film sound people I’ve met and worked with are incredibly curious about how sound is implemented in video games. If you work in another medium, you often perceive a ‘grass is greener’ situation, and, from a film sound perspective, us game audio folks have a lot of things easy, such as being on a project from day one during the pre-production and concept phase. I believe there is a great deal that both film and game sound can learn from one another about production and creative process – it is definitely a two way street.

DS: You have chosen to go for a self-published book, rather than through an established publisher, could you talk a little about the reasons behind this?

RB: Several practical reasons really. I didn’t want to work with any time constraints or deadlines, this book has taken a long time to write and edit and I definitely didn’t want to feel rushed or pressured into getting something out that was unfinished, or wasn’t 100% something I was happy with. This is an important factor for me while working in game development, as I don’t have the time to spend dedicated full-time on a book project. Control over the whole process has also been really important, in terms of how the text looks on the page right down to the cover design and detail, this may sound like a fickle point, but the cover art for almost all game audio books so far published kinda sucks! Finally, I always wanted to put out a book that would be priced reasonably and therefore accessible, as a lot of the books on audio for games that I’ve purchased over the years have been in the $40 – $50 range, and some even higher, which, for me anyways, feels like a lot.

DS: What’s next for you Rob? Can we expect new publications soon?

RB: At the moment I’m gearing up into full production on an awesome unannounced project with Radical, which is really exciting, so there is little time to delve too deeply into new articles. I’m also more fully involved with the GANG IESD group as a co-chair, along with Kenny Young and Scott Selfon, so this may focus a lot of my writing efforts in that direction in the future.

More information can be found at Arkhive Sound.

Rob Bridgett has published a very interesting article on Gamasutra called “Getting Game Audio Right: The Big Picture”. Let’s read!

This feature takes a brief look at how to tie audio production dates into the overall delivery schedule of a large-scale video game — including the key dependencies you should be fully aware of.

During production, it is often the case for each component of game audio to be either dependent on some other area of work to be completed, or some other area of the game is dependent on audio finishing a particular piece of work. Understanding how all these pieces are inter dependant is the key to not only locking-in and delivering on-time, but also to staying agile and having a production schedule that is simple to read and aides communication across groups.

The working practice behind scheduling for video game production is an increasingly complicated one and boils down to an approach that embraces locking-in tightly and firmly committing, yet being ready and prepared for changes at any time.

At the same time, you must also fully understand that any changes will have implications elsewhere in the production.

Continue Reading…

Via: aandersen

“Be prepared to listen to other’s opinions as well as expecting others to listen to yours.”

-Rob Bridgett

[Veteran audio designer Rob Bridgett (Scarface, Prototype) here outlines how audio designers can avoid creative fatigue and deliver the most compelling audio while collaborating on large studio projects.]

There are a great many reasons why gathering critical input from trusted colleagues and other sources is of a huge benefit to improving the sound on a video game production. Feedback comes in many different ways and at many different times, but not always of our choosing and not always articulated in a way that is easy to understand.
Advertisement

In this feature I’ll explore some of the ways that feedback can present itself, when it is useful, and some methods by which this essential process can be leveraged in order to acquire some truly valuable criticism during development.

Continue reading…