Guest Contribution by Pierce O'Toole Writer/Director Pierce O'Toole shares his thoughts on music and sound design, and how they play into his creative process. As a writer and director, my biggest concern on any project is the story. Every project has a story that you are trying to tell. When I approach sound, the lens I view it through - or the speaker I hear it through, I … [Read more...]
Sounding Real: Directing VO for Games
Guest Contribution by DB Cooper For our collaboration month, some tips from a voice actor...on working with voice actors. Actors are, for the most part, eager to please. And they know that games need to be recorded fast— there's so much script and so little time. Actors are keen to help get the work done quickly, and often approach lines of script as elements that … [Read more...]
Interview: David Hendy, author of “Noise: A Human History”
David Hendy is part media historian, part writer/broadcaster, and completely passionate about sound. Most recently, he created the excellent 30-part radio series on BBC Radio 4 Noise: A Human History, also available as a book under it's slightly longer title Noise: A Human History of Sound and Listening. While most sound designers preoccupy themselves with the quality of the … [Read more...]
Expectations of Noise
(This one fell through the cracks for our noise feature last month, we bring it to you now...better late than never. ;) SF) I’ve spent most of my engineering career (the last 13 years or so) doing my best to eradicate noise from my work. Working to tape as a music engineer I became well acquainted with noise gates and expanders (equipment I haven’t made any serious use of in … [Read more...]
Voices of Collaboration
The start of September. The start of a new topic! We're going out on a limb this month and doing something really different. "No one is an island." "You don't work in a vacuum." "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts." We are but one small piece in a complex system that builds art. I know many sound professionals who are happy to talk about becoming story … [Read more...]
Perspectives on Sound Design
Guest contribution by Andy Farnell This article is the second of two part series on two sound symposia that recently happened in the UK. Part one is here. Perspectives on Sound Design Symposium 5 July 2013 The second of our featured symposiums took place on Friday 5 July 2013 at York University Department of Theatre, Film, and Television. Like the South Bank setting for the … [Read more...]
Separating Your Signal from the Noise: The Intersection Between Bit Depth and Branding
As a sound designer, there are many different thoughts that come to mind when considering a topic such as noise. Everything from using tone generated noise, like white noise in the designing of sound effects, to a technical discussion on different types of dither algorithms, but when I kept thinking about noise, one slightly different viewpoint of the word "noise" kept coming … [Read more...]