Back in the day when I first started recording cars, we were using small DAT machines, the Sony TCD7 and back in those days DAT machines were very expensive, so we had maybe 2 DAT machines. We had to record sounds for this movie called The Chase, and it was all a car chase movie. So Greg and I set out to figure out how we could make big hollywood sounding cars and between the 2 … [Read more...]
Bruce Tanis Special: Cutting Crowd Effects
Hello again. Over the years I've worked on several films and TV shows that required editing crowds for different sorts of sports, both indoors and outdoors, concerts, and, my personal favorite, panic, battles, and riots. Umm, just kidding there. Mostly. Crowds are actually a bit more difficult to cut than they might seem on the surface. There are two obvious problems to be … [Read more...]
Bruce Tanis Special: Editing Hand to Hand Fight Sound Effects
Fight sequences are a common event in many action films and they are often fairly straight forward to edit. See a punch, hear a punch. Unlike fantasy or horror scenes where you're trying to create a mood that isn't necessarily supported by visuals, for fight scenes, the action you see on screen pretty much determines what you need to cut. As usual, though, I tend to go a … [Read more...]
Charles Maynes Special: Weapons SFX Recording and Design
Here's another interesting article published some years ago by Charles Maynes, this time on Gamasutra, talking about his approach on weapon sound effects recording and design. Some things have changed in Charles' process, but it's a worth reading anyway. Check: The romantic notion of sound design is what gets a lot people into film and game sound; that idea of creating sounds … [Read more...]
DIY Guide to Create Custom Cables for Field Recording
Nick Meade has published a very detailed tutorial on his blog about creating custom cables for a microphone setup that he uses for MS stereo recording. Of course the tutorial works for any cable and any job. One of the lessons I have learned in my career is that good gear is hard to find. Great purchases always require a decent amount of research and even then you may not … [Read more...]
Sounddogs.com Blog Featuring Field Recording Experiences, Guides, Tips, Examples, and More
Sounddogs.com, one of the biggest SFX companies of the whole world, has launched his own blog, where they feature lots of interesting stuff from its president Rob Nokes, a very talented sound recordist and designer. In the blog you can find everything related to Sounddogs, and also recording stories, tips for recording specific kind of sounds, interviews and special features … [Read more...]
Chuck Russom Special: Gun Recording Guide
Introduction Of all the things that I have done in my career, I get more questions about gun recording than anything else. Recording guns is an exciting experience and it takes a lot of planning and quite a bit of money to pull off correctly. Often I am asked why someone should consider recording guns for ªa project. Here are my feelings on gun recording: Libraries don’t … [Read more...]