No matter how deep your interest in animal husbandry may be, you're probably never going to figure out what the spawn of a camel and a mollusk might sound like. Or will you? Interested sound designers still have a little more than a week left to enter the Hybrid Animal Sound Design Competition, where the creation from scratch of a brand new animal call could net a share of … [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...]
Journalism Beyond Words: Dirty Wars
As the documentary format moves further into the 21st century, audio is playing an ever increasing role in helping directors communicate their thoughts and ideas to the viewer. In a recent article posted to doxmagazine.com, Peter Albrechtsen goes in depth with Christopher Barnett, the sound designer for this year's MPSE documentary sound design award winning film, Dirty Wars. … [Read more...]
(Mis)adventures in Cat Recording
About three years ago, on a whim, I adopted a 6 month old kitten. I had dealt with cats before at friends’ and family’s houses, but had never owned one, and Luna (short for “Lunatic”) was full of surprises. After her initial "moving in” period, in which she hid under the bed for nearly a week, I discovered that Luna was an exceedingly outspoken individual that needed to make … [Read more...]
SFX Independence – Welcome to 2014
The year is still fresh, but 2014's already brought us a number of great new SFX libraries. Go back to analog times and the earliest days of digital with new collections from New Sound Labs and Dynamic Interference. Monkey around with HISS and a ROAR's latest offering. Or just blow the whole thing up with help from Blastwave FX. … [Read more...]
An Interview with John Roesch
In over 30 years working in sound, Foley artist John Roesch has amassed an impressive list of credits, including major films like "Inception" and "The Matrix" and games like "Final Fantasy X" and "Dead Space." With over 400 credits to his name, John was awarded the MPSE's Career Achievement Award earlier this year. I recently had the opportunity to sit down with John on his … [Read more...]
The Dialog Re-Assign Workflow
My first exposure to noise reduction processing was with Waves X-Noise, working clip-by-clip, finding a snippet of noise in the clear, setting the noise profile, then processing the clip before moving to the next one. This offline processing method, while effective, would end up taking a lot of time, especially on long-form projects. Similarly, if you had a processed clip that … [Read more...]