We all work in creative fields doing creative work with creative people. Along with that creativity is some semblance, great or small, of technology and the requirement for us to guesstimate the length each task we do will take. Making an entertainment product, no matter the medium, has elements of reinventing the wheel and huge swaths of unknown creative territory. The … [Read more...]
The Feels of Interactive Audio
[Author’s note: much of what I describe below could be construed as “reactive audio,” not “interactive” because sound is most often reacting to other systems and world parameters rather than directly affecting them in a feedback loop. For the sake of brevity and sanity I will refer to both reactive and interactive sounds below using the widely accepted and used term of … [Read more...]
Sound Design for Theater: Another Medium for Our Craft
Guest post by James Richter In 2007, I was invited to join Mutineer Theatre Company in Los Angeles, a new enterprise one of my colleagues was founding. Though I hadn’t participated in theater since high school, I jumped at the chance. I wasn’t getting many opportunities to use my composition training in film, and I was growing bored with mixing mono news pieces for public … [Read more...]
Dealing with external production issues
Let's consider (for the next 178 words) the production process as a river, and we are a drop of water flowing from the beginning of the project to the end. Like every other drop of water, we have a goal: to make it to the end of the river. And as a single drop of water, there are numerous challenges we face as we hurtle down the river, many of which are the result of our own … [Read more...]
Evoking emotion in pure sound design
When we discuss what makes the sound in any medium: film, music, video game, theater, etc. effective, it usually boils down to one of four aspects, and often all four: the detail in the design, the emotion conveyed, the way the sound meshes with the visuals, and the mix of the sonic elements. When sound design exists on its own, with visuals and voiceover removed or … [Read more...]
Using Queries in Wwise
The Query Editor is a powerful tool within Wwise, yet most people I talk to either aren't aware of it or never use it. With the Query editor, you can run searches in your project to easily make multi-edits, tag items, and even troubleshoot bugs. This post aims to lift the curtain on the Query editor to give users a better sense of how to wrap your head around this tool … [Read more...]