I recently had a chance to sit down with sound designer and sound FX recordist Charles Maynes and chat about his new “LA Underground” sound library, available from Rabbit Ears Audio. Inspired by the gritty and seedy Los Angeles shown in countless films, “LA Underground” is a 10 GB collection of ambiences from all over the city, from the industrial centers near the LA River to … [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...]
(Mis)adventures in Cat Recording
About three years ago, on a whim, I adopted a 6 month old kitten. I had dealt with cats before at friends’ and family’s houses, but had never owned one, and Luna (short for “Lunatic”) was full of surprises. After her initial "moving in” period, in which she hid under the bed for nearly a week, I discovered that Luna was an exceedingly outspoken individual that needed to make … [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...]
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...]
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...]