Director David Fincher and sound designer Ren Klyce has worked together for more than 20 years, and their ongoing partnership is one of most acclaimed collaborations in the modern film sound community. Klyce has been nominated for five Oscars – one for Fight Club, one for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, one for The Social Network and two for The Girl with the Dragon … [Read more...]
Watson Wu on Listening
Let's start out with what to listen for in a recording location. Naturally, we're always going to be looking for a space that isn't going to introduce too many environmental and human generated artifacts into the recording, but the physical layout and acoustic properties of a location can contribute as much character to your recordings as microphone selection...sometimes even … [Read more...]
Vehicle Engine design – Project CARS, Forza Motorsport 5 and REV
With this article I really wanted to find out about the nuts and bots of vehicle engine sound design and implementation. So I contacted a few people and got some great responses and a fascinating insight into the process. My thanks to Stephen Baysted, Audio Director and Composer at Slightly Mad Studios, Greg Hill, Sound Designer at Soundwave Concepts, Adam Boyd, Sound Designer … [Read more...]
Interview with Patrick Shen
I've previously talked about the importance of increasing communication between the sound community and our collaborators. This month's topic provided the perfect opportunity to bring an outside voice to the Designing Sound community. Patrick Shen is director of the documentary "In Pursuit of Silence," and I'm happy to be able to bring you his thoughts on the subject! Would … [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...]
In Conversation – Interview with Coll Anderson
Andy Wooding has a new interview with one of our former Featured Sound Designers, Coll Anderson, up over on FilmDoctor.co.uk. I don’t know if there’s a difference. They both involve a certain level of verisimilitude and so you can’t really say there’s a difference. People will say ‘documentaries are real and fictitious films are about telling stories’ but documentaries are … [Read more...]