Guest Contribution by Randy Thom During pre-production on a film it's common practice to gather lots and lots of still photographic images, and video as well, that might relate to the story. The stills are often displayed on walls for everyone preparing the film to see and talk about. It's basically an "idea board." The purpose of gathering these images is to stimulate … [Read more...]
Creating a Unified Voice
This article is not what I originally intended. I started it, nearly completed it and then decided to rewrite it from a different angle. It’s core subject remains intact, speaking to our collaborators…the people who hire us to make their pieces of media “sound good.” Whether we work in film, television, games, mobile applications, interactive art installations or any other … [Read more...]
The Voice In…
Michel Chion is a well known voice in film sound theory. A lot of people have heard of, and possibly read, his book Audio Vision. For some reason, The Voice in Cinema is a little less popular. This post isn't really meant to be about Michel Chion or his books though. We're focusing on the idea of "voice" this month, and it's hard to come up with a header image that is relevant. … [Read more...]
The Carpetbagger Blog Talks to Steve Boeddeker and Randy Thom
The Carpetbagger, a New York Times blog dedicated to the film awards season we are now in the flush of, has spoken to Steve Boeddeker and Randy Thom at Skywalker Sound. “Before there was a here here, I was here,” said Randy Thom, the director of sound design at Skywalker Sound, part of George Lucas’s Skywalker Ranch complex outside of San Francisco. “It used to be called … [Read more...]
Whoosh Review
In the last year, we’ve all been happy to see the slow emergence of software tools designed explicitly for sound design. The fine folks over at Tonsturm are the latest to release one such tool under the moniker Melted Sounds. Whoosh is a Reaktor based plug-in for designing, as implied by its name, complex and varied motion elements and pass-bys. The basic idea behind the tool … [Read more...]
Viviana Caro: A Career Working With Animal Sounds
Guest Contribution by Leonard Paul You've worked a lot with animals as a sound engineer, could you give a brief history of how your initial interest in audio restoration of bird sounds has led to being the recordist for the Colombian Mountain Grackle in the mountains of Colombia? My interest on animal sounds started when I worked on my audio engineering undergrad thesis. I … [Read more...]
Capturing Personality in Animal Recordings
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...]