On Sunday, Michael Hopkins died in a rafting accident in New Zealand. Mike's best known work was with Peter Jackson. He and I worked on the Jackson film "The Frighteners." He won Oscars for his work on "Lord Of The Rings" and "King Kong." Mike Hopkins was as kind, generous, and humble a man as you might hope to meet, and a world class sound editor/designer. Everybody who spent … [Read more...]
Analog Worldization
Guest contribution by Cormac Donnelly I am, at heart, a techno-nostalgiast and I’ve worked with tape machines of one kind or other for most of my career. When I sold my 2” multi-track, in 2010, I resolved almost immediately to get myself another tape machine (albeit something a little smaller than the 250kg Otari I had just parted with). A few weeks later, I found myself … [Read more...]
Creating the Spaces of Ambience
Guest contribution by Michael Theiler (Kpow Audio) Situating an Ambience When creating ambiences for games (this applies equally to film), I am striving to make them blend into the background and not mask any important in game sounds. For most ambiences, these are the most important qualities that I am attempting to resolve. In order to achieve this, I need to firstly focus on … [Read more...]
Panning Reverb Returns
Guest contribution by By Douglas Murray OK, here is the ugly truth for film post, or really any surround sound work… Most reverb plug-ins do not sound natural for applications using greater than 1 or 2 speakers. What you don’t want: a reverb that jumps to completely different speakers from the source. What you do want: a reverb that spreads out from the sound and helps localize … [Read more...]
Reverb: The Science And The State-of-the-Art
Guest Contribution by Anish Chandak In the previous article by Ian Palmer on this month’s theme of Reverb, you have already seen various creative uses of Reverb. Here are my two cents to the creative: using reverb to synthesize physics-based sounds for percussion instruments. [youtube]http://youtu.be/i7D_ao-LUBw[/youtube] In rest of this article, we stick to the uncreative, … [Read more...]
Ariel Gross Interview
This is an interview with our guest poster for November - Ariel Gross, Audio Director of game development studio Volition Inc, which produces such PC and console titles as the Saint's Row and Red Faction series. Check out Ariel's introduction post, and his blog 'I Feel Like a Fraud and So Can You!' Can you tell us a little about how you got into audio, and your audio career … [Read more...]
Backgrounds: Sound Design Under the Radar
Guest article by Douglas Murray Remember, all rules are meant to be broken! With that principle in mind, let's scratch the surface of the grammar and possibilities of an aspect of film sound design: backgrounds (also called BGs, atmospheres or ambiences). Backgrounds offer a powerful opportunity to use sound for maximum impact. Movies essentially need to have background … [Read more...]