"Ideally, for me, the perfect sound film has zero tracks. You try to get the audience to a point, somehow, where they can imagine the sound. They hear the sound in their minds, and it really isn't on the track at all. That's the ideal sound, the one that exists totally in the mind, because it's the most intimate. It deals with each person's experience, and it's obviously of … [Read more...]
Remembering Alan Splet
One of the main reasons to start this site back in 2008 and also one of the things that keeps me motivated to do this is the impact that some people had in my life; curiously, people who I haven't met in person, but I've deeply met with my ears. I'm talking about those sound designers who created initial routes for all of us and started to develop a truly amazing way of … [Read more...]
The Dickson Experimental Sound Film
Broken wax cylinder containing the 'first' film soundtrack circa 1894-1895 In 'broken' month I wanted to find out a little more about what's being done to fix (and preserve) some of the broken pieces of film history. The story of the Dickson Experimental Sound Film (link to view at the end of the article) seemed to be a good way into the subject and I am indebted to Ken … [Read more...]
Don’t Panic and Carry A Towel: When Things Go Horribly, Horribly Wrong
As April comes to an end and we wrap up our topic for the month, “broken”, I wanted to take a moment and share something that I learned when I was first starting out, and something that I find myself having to remember quite often: how to react when everything starts to break. We depend on a lot of complex technologies in our day-to-day lives, some more intricate and … [Read more...]
The Sound of ‘Under The Skin’
In anticipation of the UK release of Under The Skin, style and culture portal Dazed Digital had a Under The Skin Day takeover, covering all aspects of Jonathan Glazer's new extraterrestrial epic. It included the film's Supervising Sound Designer Johnnie Burn and Music Supervisor Pete Raeburn revealing a few of the techniques and considerations that went into creating Under … [Read more...]
LA Underground – An Interview with Charles Maynes
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...]
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...]