There’s something I’ve noticed about recording animals over the years. Even if the animal is being cooperative, it can be damned difficult to really catch an individual’s personality. If the animal is trained, that’s wonderful. You may be able to get a variety of sounds out of them with the handler’s help…BUT…vocalizations recorded from trained animals can often sound rote. … [Read more...]
SFX Independence – Welcome to 2014
The year is still fresh, but 2014's already brought us a number of great new SFX libraries. Go back to analog times and the earliest days of digital with new collections from New Sound Labs and Dynamic Interference. Monkey around with HISS and a ROAR's latest offering. Or just blow the whole thing up with help from Blastwave FX. … [Read more...]
Event: The Two Ways of Listening (Workshop)
The Royal School of Arts in Gent, Belgium, is holding six full days of listening technique and research this February and March. Elias Vervecken (sound recordist and foley artist) and Els Viaene (sound artist and field recordist) will each lead a three day workshop on listening, focusing on different relationships to the environment. Starting from the point of silence, Elias … [Read more...]
As Bobby Darin said, “If I Could Talk to the Animals…”
Might want to be careful if you're going to try recording this critter! We use animal sounds all the time in sound design. Whether it be the twenty some-odd creatures that went into the sound of the Velociraptor in Jurassic Park, or the Elephant bray used in the destruction of the Titanic, they seem to find their way into every situation...sooner or later. This month, we've … [Read more...]
Diego Stocco Introduces Sound Design Video Series
Diego Stocco introduces Feedforward Sound a series of advanced sound design technique videos. These videos are primarily designed for producers, artists and audio professionals who wish to enrich their workflow in unique ways. Rhythmic Processing is a technique that allows the creation of multiple rhythmic elements, in real-time, from a single instrumental part. The … [Read more...]
Designing Sound Discussion Group: SFX and Freelancing in Game Audio
Our panel is about to start. Recording Now Available! The live stream is embedded below, but you'll want to head over to our Google+ page if you want to ask our panelists any questions at the end of the presentation. As a reminder, our panelists include: Gordon Hempton - Nature sound effects recordist and activist, also know as The Soundtracker Douglas Price - Founder … [Read more...]
Dialogue on the move – panning in Gravity, Cars and Strange Days
When I saw/heard Gravity last year it set me of on an exploration of dialogue panning to such an extent that I experimented with some fairly extreme panning in the film I was working on at the time. My experiment proved to be, well, inconclusive at best. So I went back to Gravity to see just how the panning worked within the context of the film, then decided to look beyond it … [Read more...]