Sound Story Network

270 – Listener Field Recording Stories

Timothy Muirhead — Fri, 26 Jul 2024 23:40:24 +0200

We asked our listeners to submit their favourite field recordings and tell us the stories behind how they were captured, and we got some really…

Behind the Spellbinding Sound of ‘Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II’ – with the Ninja Theory Game Audio Team

Jennifer Walden — Thu, 25 Jul 2024 11:05:28 +0200

Ninja Theory audio team members David García Díaz, Daniele Galante, Alessio Mellina, Pablo Cañas Llorente, and Matteo Tummino talk about their creative and technical approach to crafting the mesmerizing sound of 'Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II':

The post Behind the Spellbinding Sound of ‘Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II’ – with the Ninja Theory Game Audio Team appeared first on A Sound Effect.

What’s new in REAPER 7.19 – Better Metronome, mouse position overlay, and more

Admin — Thu, 25 Jul 2024 00:49:02 +0200

Learn the latest features and changes in REAPER.

The post What’s new in REAPER 7.19 – Better Metronome, mouse position overlay, and more first appeared on The REAPER BLOG.

24 great new sound libraries: Energy swords and acoustic light sabers, reindeer, ambiences from Istanbul and Norway, plus military vehicles, archery and much more!

Adriane Kuzminski — Wed, 24 Jul 2024 11:34:59 +0200

Hear the very latest in sound effects with these 24 new sound libraries from the independent community here:

The post 24 great new sound libraries: Energy swords and acoustic light sabers, reindeer, ambiences from Istanbul and Norway, plus military vehicles, archery and much more! appeared first on A Sound Effect.

269 – Remembering Ann Kroeber

Timothy Muirhead — Tue, 23 Jul 2024 18:03:09 +0200

The sound design community lost one of its brightest stars this week, with the passing of Ann Kroeber. Ann was a legendary field recordists and…

268 – Sound Design For Installations

Timothy Muirhead — Fri, 19 Jul 2024 05:42:20 +0200

Creating sound for an installation in a physical space, like a museum or for an art piece, is a whole different world then tackling the…

Crafting the Spirited Sound of ‘The Garfield Movie’

Jennifer Walden — Wed, 17 Jul 2024 14:07:30 +0200

Supervising sound editors Luke Gentry, Ben Meechan, Jeremy Price, Supervising dialogue/ADR editor Tim Siddall, and Re-recording mixer Chris Burdon talk about delivering a fresh sound for the iconic animated cat Garfield in 'The Garfield Movie':

The post Crafting the Spirited Sound of ‘The Garfield Movie’ appeared first on A Sound Effect.

7 great podcast episodes: Spatial Audio, mixing stand-up comedy, Symphonic Ambience’s majestic modularity, Faith Abi-Haydar’s diverse career & much more:

Adriane Kuzminski — Wed, 17 Jul 2024 00:11:42 +0200

Want something great to listen to? Hear these 7 excellent episodes about sound from the members of the Audio Podcast Alliance:

The post 7 great podcast episodes: Spatial Audio, mixing stand-up comedy, Symphonic Ambience’s majestic modularity, Faith Abi-Haydar’s diverse career & much more: appeared first on A Sound Effect.

12 great new sound libraries: Aggressive cicadas, European capitals, recycling centers, drones, EMF recordings, and much more!

Adriane Kuzminski — Fri, 12 Jul 2024 17:37:52 +0200

Hear the very latest in sound effects with these 12 new releases from the independent sound community:

The post 12 great new sound libraries: Aggressive cicadas, European capitals, recycling centers, drones, EMF recordings, and much more! appeared first on A Sound Effect.

How to get field recording commissions

George Vlad — Fri, 05 Jul 2024 11:47:22 +0200

Working for Sennheiser in Nepal

Contrary to popular belief, there are many ways to monetise field recording besides sound effects library creation. Libraries are actually quite challenging to get right because of the amount of work required. Additionally, competition is much more serious since barriers to entry have gotten lower and the market has become saturated.

Few words about myself and what qualifies me to give advice on this topic. I started my career in audio from zero around 15 years ago and I’ve been working as a sound designer, field recordist and composer ever since. I’ve worked as sound recordist on films like Dune Part 2 and Mufasa: The Lion King among others. I’ve recorded and designed audio for Horizon Forbidden West, and my work has been heard in productions such as Planet Earth 3, House of the Dragon and The Territory. I work with brands such as Sennheiser, Sony, Rycote and many others, testing their equipment on my expeditions and advising them on product design. In 2022 I was nominated for Bafta and Golden Reel awards along with the Guerrilla Amsterdam audio team. More about me on my website.

While field recording is not a new discipline (it goes back to John Muir and even earlier), it’s not as popular or well known as photography for example. As a result, it takes a more entrepreneurial and self-starting approach to get work gigs as a field recordist. Especially in the beginning of your career, you will have to chase the jobs before clients start chasing you (a large part of the projects I’ve worked on have been the result of weeks and months of work planning expeditions and preparing pitches). Here are some things that will help you get these projects.

Don’t be a jerk

Listening to Erta Ale volcano in Ethiopia

Regardless of where you are in your career, or life for that matter, these are words to live by. It doesn’t matter who you’re interacting with, whether you feel you’ve been wronged, or if you think you should be acting in a certain way. Being nice goes a long way and costs nothing. Being a person that others want to work and hang out with is huge. Conversely, being self-centred, overly negative or generally a jerk will guarantee that others will avoid you, potential clients or colleagues included.

I’m not saying you should be a pushover or that you should agree with everyone. Opinionated and assertive people can be nice at the same time. There is a lot of room between being easy going and being toxic, and a happy balance shouldn’t be difficult to achieve. This won’t guarantee you a job, but when the opportunity arises it will surely play in your favour.

Market yourself

When I say market yourself, I don’t mean paying for ads on social media or chasing people at conferences while waving your business card. These methods may have worked many years ago, but they’re not going to help much anymore. Luckily we aren’t in finance or politics so we can be creative.

Good marketing isn’t about selling all the time, it’s projecting an image that people want to see and telling stories that people want to hear. Of course these have to be rooted in reality and you can’t just make them up. You also need to be consistent and to steer clear of jumping on the latest algorithm trends.

A good marketing strategy takes years to fine tune and the results won’t materialise immediately. You have to find what your Unique Selling Points are and what niche you want to fill. This raises even more complex and existential questions, like what makes you you, how you became that person, how your journey has influenced your career and mindset etc. At times it will seem like therapy or philosophy rather than boring marketing, but I promise it’s worth the time and energy you spend doing this.

You will need to decide how much of these very personal aspects you want to share, how much it will just be implied and where you draw the line. You will need to come up with keywords, brand guidelines, visual identity etc. You will benefit from hiring professionals for at least some of these aspects. Even so, not all of this information will be accessible right away, but the more of this work you do early on, the better your clients will respond to it.

What are some elements of a good marketing strategy? Solid and consistent web presence, separate showreels for different sides of your work, genuine and thoughtful updates on social media, being open and helpful are a few important ones. Good spoken and written language, storytelling, and visual design are some skills that you will have to develop. It helps if you can solve problems for other people. Being a specialist in your field, and projecting that image will pay dividends.

Show that you can execute and deliver

In my experience as an audio professional, potential clients prefer to have proof that you can do what you say you can do. This doesn’t mean you should work for free or for peanuts (this is a different conversation). Years before I was approached to work on Mufasa The Lion King, I started to organize my own expeditions to Africa so I could record African wildlife. Realistically, the chances of someone hiring me for such a project when I was just starting out were very slim. But years later, my experience in the field on personal projects (and being able to show the results) made me much more attractive when my name came up in the conversation.

Of course, this example is not perfect. Organising expeditions to far away places is costly and risky. I didn’t start my journey in field recording by going to the Congo rainforest. My beginnings were much more humble and limited, taking the bus to a little patch of woodland outside Edinburgh or walking to the forest near my grandparents’ village in Romania to listen to the birds. Every step of the way happened organically and I kept reinvesting part of my profits into my work. I took things very gradually but never lost focus.

Ask for it

On location in the Brazilian Pantanal

As mentioned in the introduction, you might do all of the above and still no one will get in touch with you. That’s no reason to worry - companies and brands have lots going on and you have to have a huge following or to be very well known to attract their attention. If no one is emailing you with offers, you have to approach them instead. Finding the right person to contact is more complicated than it seems though. I suggest attending conferences and trade shows where people are already in business mode. Strike up conversations and show genuine interest rather than saying 3 words and bombarding everyone with business cards. This goes back to not being a jerk as mentioned above.

Getting clients interested can also be complicated. What works with some brands or companies might not work for others. There is no right way to do it, although some companies might have specific workflows for collaborations. You will have to approach lots of potential clients before you get the hang of it. You will also need to get used to hearing a lot of NOs before you get to YES. While emailing someone unresponsive a second time is good practice, I would advise against pestering them with lots of emails and calls.

When pitching to a client or brand, you will need some sort of deck or presentation to show. There’s an art to putting together a great, impactful pitch deck, and storytelling is key here. This is a topic for a different article so I won’t go into too much detail, but one thing that will help immensely is showing that you know what you’re talking about. You don’t have to have done the exact same thing you’re pitching, but a successful smaller scale expedition will go a long way.

Pitch ideas

You should already be thinking about these things and coming up with ideas of your own, but the reason I’m including them is to make you aware that these are all valid:

Recording nature ambiences or wildlife for a video game or film
Testing a microphone or recorder in the field in unforgiving conditions
Getting photos and videos of equipment in the field
Writing about equipment
Recording sound for and preparing a museum installation
Recording material for a studio’s internal library
Joining a documentary crew as sound effects recordist
Advising a production studio on how to get good recordings in the field

I hope this has been helpful. These strategies have worked well for me, but times may have changed. I would take this article as a starting point and build on it. If you’d like to thank me you can do so by:

- becoming a patron: https://www.patreon.com/georgevlad

- buying my sound effects libraries: https://mindful-audio.com/sound-effects-libraries

- buying me a coffee: https://ko-fi.com/georgevlad

- buying my soundscape albums: https://wildaesthesia.bandcamp.com

How To Supercharge Your Sound Design With A Stream Deck – an essential guide by David Dumais

Jennifer Walden — Wed, 03 Jul 2024 14:00:05 +0200

Game sound designer and composer David Dumais shares his essential tips for sound designing with an Elgato Stream Deck:

The post How To Supercharge Your Sound Design With A Stream Deck – an essential guide by David Dumais appeared first on A Sound Effect.

How Nicolas Titeux recorded beautiful bell sounds in France

Jennifer Walden — Wed, 03 Jul 2024 00:14:42 +0200

Independent sound engineer/sound designer/composer Nicolas Titeux talks about his fascinating journey of recording bells in France – from his inspiration to the execution of his idea:

The post How Nicolas Titeux recorded beautiful bell sounds in France appeared first on A Sound Effect.

Periodical Cicadas

rick@evocativesound.com — Wed, 03 Jul 2024 00:13:48 +0200

Periodical Cicadas features the sounds of millions of periodical cicadas singing en masse. In this library, there are extended drones and screeches, up-close wing-fluttering pass bys and multiple pharaoh (mating) calls. Two broods, XXII and V, were recorded in 2014 and 2016 respectively. … Read More

The post Periodical Cicadas appeared first on Evocative Sound and Visuals.

Electromagnetic Fields

rick@evocativesound.com — Tue, 02 Jul 2024 20:18:28 +0200

Evocative Sound and Visuals is pleased to release Electromagnetic Fields. This library contains 163 sounds from 68 devices and structures captured in high-quality stereo with a Sony PCM D100 recorder and two small induction coil microphones. Included are hums, drones, beeps, bleeps, buzzes, glitches, pulses, static and more strange sounds I cannot describe. They’re all lovingly recorded and meticulously mastered.… Read More

The post Electromagnetic Fields appeared first on Evocative Sound and Visuals.

11 great new sound libraries: Bells from cathedrals and clock towers, ship ambiences, L.A. subway trains, cicadas, cruisers, and more!

Adriane Kuzminski — Tue, 02 Jul 2024 09:35:36 +0200

Hear the very latest in sound effects with these 11 new releases from the independent sound community:

The post 11 great new sound libraries: Bells from cathedrals and clock towers, ship ambiences, L.A. subway trains, cicadas, cruisers, and more! appeared first on A Sound Effect.

What’s New in REAPER 7.17 –

Admin — Tue, 02 Jul 2024 02:45:19 +0200

Learn all the new features and changes in REAPER version 7.17

The post What’s New in REAPER 7.17 –

267 – Sound Design For Horses

Timothy Muirhead — Fri, 28 Jun 2024 22:22:56 +0200

When working on a project that features horses on screen, the sound design can be broken up into 3 main categories: Their hooves, Saddle/Bridle, and…

Ultimate REAPER UI control with the new Default 7 Theme Adjuster

Admin — Thu, 27 Jun 2024 06:13:43 +0200

Learn about the new Theme Adjuster for customizing the Default 7 REAPER theme.

The post Ultimate REAPER UI control with the new Default 7 Theme Adjuster first appeared on The REAPER BLOG.

SUMMER SALE: Get superb deals on incredible sound effects libraries, plugins and instruments + free sounds with ANY order!

Asbjoern Andersen — Wed, 26 Jun 2024 11:34:48 +0200

Land excellent deals on sound libraries, plugins and instruments here - while you have the chance!

The post SUMMER SALE: Get superb deals on incredible sound effects libraries, plugins and instruments + free sounds with ANY order! appeared first on A Sound Effect.

12 great new sound libraries: Medieval swords, Icelandic winters, country rainfall, cats and dogs, parrots and alpacas, footsteps, lawnmowers, and more!

Adriane Kuzminski — Tue, 25 Jun 2024 13:30:34 +0200

Discover the very latest in sound effects with these 12 new releases from the independent sound community:

The post 12 great new sound libraries: Medieval swords, Icelandic winters, country rainfall, cats and dogs, parrots and alpacas, footsteps, lawnmowers, and more! appeared first on A Sound Effect.

Storm petrels - Shetland

Pete Smith — Sun, 23 Jun 2024 11:36:15 +0200

The Mousa broch from the sea

This was my first ever trip to Shetland and I have two small children, so it was a big ask to head off and leave my wife for a week. After much negotiation she agreed I could go so long as the trip would serve as my 40th birthday present. We also persuaded her parents to come and help out while I was away which was a real bonus. My main goal for the trip was to try a get a good recording of storm petrels. I have heard them before on a wet and windy night on Skokholm Island in Wales but hadn't managed to get a decent recording. I also got the chance to watch them through some night vision goggles on Skokholm. In flight they look almost like bats - quickly fluttering then gliding in short bursts and avoiding obstacles in the pitch black with amazing skill. I was really looking forward to seeing them again and hopefully getting some decent recordings. I am trying get a collection of recordings to make a sea bird SFX library in the near future and decent storm petrel recordings would get me one step closer to finishing the library.

View from the Levenwick Community Hall campsite

I travelled from my home in Edinburgh up to Aberdeen and then took the overnight Northlink ferry from Aberdeen to Lerwick. I stayed in a sleep pod on the ferry which is basically a large comfy, reclining chair, and actually managed to get a decent sleep, arriving in Lerwick at around 7am. Then from Lerwick I travelled 20 minutes south to the Levenwick Community Hall and Campsite (shown right). This is a lovely wee campsite with toilets, showers and a small kitchen with electricity. Having access to electricity was very handy as it allowed me to re-charge batteries between trips .

Coloured buoys on a wall on Mousa

My final destination was the Mousa broch (shown above). The broch is a 10 minute ferry journey from Sandsayre pier and is an absolutely amazing structure. Brochs are circular, iron-age buildings made from stone and can be found all round Scotland. The Mousa broch is the best preserved example of its kind and is thought to be around 2,300 years old. It is even mentioned in some for the viking sagas. You can get to Mousa on a ferry which runs daily at 11.30am from Sandsayre pier. The boat trips are run by Rodney and Darron Smith who also run night time storm petrel trips. On these trips you can go over to the broch at night and watch the storm petrels arriving back at their nests. Rodney and Darron are very knowledgeable about the island's history and its wildlife and are happy to answer any questions you have on the trip over. Rodney also told an amazing story about a shipwreck that happened nearby. There is an article about it on the Mousa boat facebook page that's worth a read or you can book a trip yourself and hear the story from Rodney himself. I took a few trips and left my mics overnight and then did a storm petrel night trip and stayed a night on the Island. Mousa is an Rspb reserve and May is breeding season for a lot of the birds that live there so I made sure to ask permission from the reserve manager.

I collected my mics after their first night setup around the broch and to my horror noticed that they had been knocked over and the dry bags had been moved around. Upon listening back to the recordings I discovered the culprits. Sheep had knocked over my mics and even managed to disconnect the mics from my D100!

I had the most success with my recordings when I went over to the island at night and listened until I identified where the birds were calling from and then carefully setup my mics. They start to sing as it gets dark and often sing for up to 30 mins or so. This gave me a chance to find a singing bird, carefully setup mics, set levels and then hit record. Often I will leave ‘drop rigs’ for long periods in a location I think things will happen but this turned out to not be the best approach for this situation given the limited time I had to get good recordings and the impossibility of guessing exactly where the birds would sing from and which birds would sing.

In Finnish storm petrels are called ‘ulappakeiju’ which translates directly as 'fairy of the open sea'. The sound they make is really amazing but has been described by some as sounding like a 'fairy being sick'. It's a funny image but I think they actually sound really beautiful - more of ‘a fairy singing’ to my ears. But definitely a mischievous sounding and magical fairy - possibly the type of fairy that might carry off a child and leave a changeling substitute in its place or something of that sort.

Trusty Sony D100 and Clippy 172s

My Sennheiser DMS rig

A shag sunning itself on the rocks

I took a range of mics and recorders with me because I wanted to make the most of my trips so I brought my mkh8040 and mkh30 DMS rig (shown above), my trusty Sony D100 and a pair of Usi pro mics which I plugged into my Sound Devices MixPre 6ii. All performed really well and survived a few rain storms. If rain was forecast, I did my best to setup the mics inside the broch, rather than outside facing the walls, to give them some protection from both wind and rain but even when the rigs got a small shower the mics continued working and the dry bags did their job protecting the recorders.

The difference in sound between outside and inside the broch was really notable. The 4m thick stone walls meant that once inside you could hardly hear the sea - even when the wind was blowing with quite some force. This was especially true inside the various chambers and I got some nice ambience recordings from inside the broch as the storm petrels started to arrive.

It took a good few attempts but finally I managed to get some really close up recordings I was happy with and I left Shetland slightly bleary eyed and tired but feeling very happy with how the trip had gone. A couple of the recordings are below. If you want to keep up to date with my blog posts please hit the subscribe button at the bottom of this website.

the sound space · BIRDSea Storm Petrel Individual Calling From Rocks On Mousa Broch PS NONE SonyD100 the sound space · BIRDSea Storm Petrels Calling From Rocks On Mousa Broch PS NONE SonyD100

We came across interesting new jobs at Blizzard Entertainment, KRAFTON, EA Vancouver, and Playground Games:

Blizzard Entertainment is hiring a Senior Voice Over Designer to create and maintain engaging VO processes that support the fantasy and gameplay in World of Warcraft (CA, US)
KRAFTON is looking for an Audio Engineer with a high proficiency in Pro Tools, audio post, file management, recording techniques, and VO processing (South Korea)
EA Vancouver is seeking a Senior Audio Artist – VO / Speech Artist to work on the next evolution of the skate.™ franchise as part of the Create Audio team (BC, Canada / QC, Canada)
Playground Games is recruiting an Audio Programmer join their Fable team on a permanent basis – welcoming engineers of all levels to apply (England / Hybrid / Remote)

To learn more about these featured jobs, scroll down to see their full descriptions

266 – Audio Post For Comedy Specials with Vinny Alfano

Timothy Muirhead — Thu, 20 Jun 2024 19:34:54 +0200

Have you ever been watching a stand-up comedy special and felt like you were in the room the day it was recorded? A lot of…

265 – Invincible

Timothy Muirhead — Fri, 14 Jun 2024 00:03:39 +0200

This show hits hard! Invincible may be an animated series, but it is definitely not for young kids. There are real consequences here, characters die,…

19 great new audio jobs at London Video Game Orchestra, Vicious Sound, Platinum Games, Sony Santa Monica, Cloud Imperium, Duality Games, Truck World Studio, Raven, EA Tiburon, LightSpeed Studios, Ubisoft, Ultimate Studio, Psyonix, Soundsright, TrendsUp Me

Adriane Kuzminski — Thu, 13 Jun 2024 19:06:05 +0200

We came across interesting new jobs at Platinum Games, Sony Santa Monica, Cloud Imperium Games, and Film London:

Platinum Games is hiring a Music Composer to create in-game music for their upcoming games (Tokyo, Japan)
Sony Santa Monica is looking for a Contract Audio Producer who understands how upstream teams impact audio throughout game production (CA, US)
Cloud Imperium Games is seeking a Music Designer to focus on implementation and liaising with composers (England)
Duality Games is recruiting a Sound Designer who can take on challenges and responsibility while handling limitations and deadlines (Poland / Remote)

To learn more about these featured jobs, scroll down to see their full descriptions

Recording Foley sound effects for 'Franklin'

A Sound Effect — Wed, 12 Jun 2024 10:43:39 +0200

The Sound of The Deepest Breath

info@resurface.audio — Tue, 11 Jun 2024 16:47:42 +0200

At the Recent Media Production & Technology Show in London, Resurface co-founder Ben Nemes had the opportunity to discuss the sound of The Deepest Breath, Netflix’s much talked-about feature documentary, with the film’s composer Nainita Desai and Re-Recording Mixer Greg Gettens.

A full transcript of their conversation, along with the audio recording, is below.

Resurface · The Sound of The Deepest Breath

Ben Nemes: Well, good afternoon everyone, thanks for being here for the last session of the day here at the Audio Theatre at the Media Production and Technology Show 2024. My name is Ben Nemes, I’m the chair of this session today. So without further ado, let’s get into it. I’m joined today by Greg and Nainita to talk – about the sound specifically – on a really amazing piece of work that many of you may have seen.

Actually, let’s do that. Show of hands: who watched The Deepest Breath on Netflix? Very good. And so you’ll no doubt agree with me then that it was, it’s one of those things that sort of stays with you. It was, it’s a bit of a gut punch at times.

It’s, in equal measure, really quite disturbing and really quite beautiful. And, because of that, we thought we’d talk about the approach to the sound of The Deepest Breath, because the sound on that show does a lot of that work.

Why don’t we start with, particularly for those who haven’t seen it, why don’t we start with a clip. It may be self-explanatory from this clip, but it’s set in the context of an extreme sport called free diving, in which people do insane things.

This is the opening titles, essentially, we’ll be seeing. So one more little announcement I should make is that there are going to be spoilers. I don’t think we can really have some of these conversations without some plot points, but statute of limitations on spoilers has elapsed, right?

Nainita Desai: It’s nearly a year. Coming up a year.

Ben Nemes: So, sorry if you haven’t seen it. But you know what? I watched it again recently, in the run up to this (because I’m a professional!). And actually, even though you know what happens, it still does it. It still kills you.

So I’m unapologetic about that. First things first just to define roles and sort of terms of reference. In what you’ve just seen and in the show overall. Can we talk about, it may seem obvious, but it isn’t to everyone, to talk about your roles. Nainita, why don’t you go first? I mean, composer, I think everyone understands, but just from what we’ve just seen, pick apart your part of that, I suppose.

Nainita Desai: Well, let’s go straight for the jugular with the opening titles. So, I spent about a year working on this film. We were in the edit for about a year before [to Greg] you were on it for a while. Yeah, about 12 months before we got serious. So one of the briefs, well, it’s a love story and I’ve never scored a love story at heart.

The score had to cover a wide emotional dynamic range, a wide range of emotions. You’ve got the stunning seascapes – I’m a very visually inspired composer. So the cinematography, the re-enacted dramatic reconstructions that you’ll have, which are absolutely beautiful, scattered throughout the film that had to have an epic sonic landscape.

It’s the power of, with the opening titles, the power of nature. And so we brought in these big thundering drums to evoke, to mirror that. And alongside that, it’s the story of Stephen and Alessia. So the score had to encapsulate these two parallel stories. And then within that, amongst that, the thrill and the dangers and the perils of freediving itself as a very dangerous sport, without it falling into the cliches of let’s do a Red Bull sports documentary.

Ben Nemes: It’s an extreme sport. But, Yeah. Let’s not go down that road?

Nainita Desai: You’ve got the deeply interior nature of the journey of the free diver, and how do you get across that stillness and the immersive beauty of being inside the diver’s mind under the water, and what they’re going through.

It’s the antithesis of an extreme sport, which is traditionally very adrenaline based. With this sport, you have to be, it’s meditative. You have to be at one with yourself and you’re slowing your heartbeat right down.

Ben Nemes: It’s all about slowing down, not about speeding up.

Nainita Desai: Yes. So the beauty of nature amongst the perils of the deep, that all had to be encapsulated into this score.

Ben Nemes: There’s also some themes, you’ve touched on already, that you need to cover off, that we’ll come back to as well, because there are several themes in the film, that are kind of self evident when you think about it.

On to you, Greg. Your role in this is re-recording mixer.

Greg Gettens: Yeah, so I was head of a massive team that was working on the film from about 12 months before we mixed it. Unusually for this one, because we have a relationship with the editor Julian Hart, he was very into the sound from the word go. So we were watching cuts probably about 12, 11 months before giving them sound ideas and things like that to help them fine-tune the cut.

So unlike Nainita, when I get it, I have people who work and do sound design. We listen to what Laura [McGann, Director] says.

We had Molinare’s foley department doing all the watery sounds because, as you can imagine, not much is able to be recorded in that environment. So when it gets to me, we have to put it all together, and Nainita’s score, it’s about finding how we carve out for the viewer the most important thing – which was trying to immerse them in the incredibly dangerous world of freediving.

And that was important from a sound design point of view, because there’s only maybe 10, 15. Less people have done freediving than have climbed on Everest, so not many people know what it sounds like, so we had to create everything from scratch working with Julian and Laura, and then try and work out how to weave the sound that we had done to Nanita’s wonderful score, and work out which should take precedence: When we should be forward in the sound and when we should be back.

Ben Nemes: I think that’s a big part of it. And one of the reasons why I wanted to have you both on the same stage at the same time is to explore that dynamic.

If we start off separate and then we’ll converge. So if we talk a little bit about, actually, Greg, you just touched on it. The sound design brief for something that’s occurring 104 meters (as it turned out), below the surface of the sea.

That may as well be the moon. As in, as you rightly say, there’s a handful of people that have ever heard what that sounds like, and for many that have, it was the last thing they ever heard, I should imagine. If you are hearing what it sounds like a hundred meters down, you’re in a certain amount of trouble, generally speaking!

So from a sound design point of view, it may as well be science fiction. But then there’s part of it we do know. We do know what the difference between being above and below the water sounds like, we’re all kind of familiar with how sound changes as we’re immediately immersed in water from swimming pools and seas and whatever else. If you can tell us a little bit more about how you approach that, given you don’t have sound effects libraries, other than from about three meters down.

Greg Gettens: Well, the whole thing about what we tried to achieve is that we spoke to Laura at great length, because she does have experience in the freediving community, and she had spoken to the divers and what we try to get across is that at the top, it’s all very nice and sort of sort of bubbly sounds and it feels really good.

It’s underwater, but the opening shot in the film is about six minutes of one diver going down. Now, how do we keep that? The shot was amazing, but how do we make the sound exactly the same brilliance as the shot? So as they dive down, we’ve got millions of layers coming through. At the top, it’s all nice and bubbly.

Then as you go down, as Alessia explains, the sound sort of dissipates, and you get a darker, more tonal and textured sort of sound. And then as you get all the way to the bottom, Laura said it’s important that we feel the pressure. So at the top, we’ve got very high frequency, sort of thin soundscape, but as we go down to the bottom, you’ve got the big rumbles and the sort of whales going on and things like that.

And then the reverse on the way back, but lots of EQs and different techniques to get you right the way down there. And then the reverse on the way coming back up. But it was trial and error, because we would do something and she’s like, no, that you wouldn’t hear that down there. I’m like, okay, well, I thought you’d hear certain things…

Ben Nemes: Who knows?

Greg Gettens: Exactly. But it had to be from the divers perspective, and it had to be as authentic as possible, whilst being entertaining. Because in reality, when they’re down there, Alessia, it was like, it’s silence. There’s nothing, you can’t hear anything! But we can’t do that, so we have to create the silence through very, very low frequency stuff.

Ben Nemes: It seems to be that both of you have a part in this. And, again, we’re going to come to how you intertwine those, but as you go deeper, as you go beyond what any of us can (I almost said ‘fathom’ there, that’d be really bad pun). Beyond what any of us can understand, you have to portray this sense of threat and of jeopardy and of pressure.

The physicality of it is, that at that depth, your lung is the size of your fist, kind of thing. And that comes across really well. Nainita: As a composer, do you get words like that in a brief? Do you say, well, we need to understand how your lung is the size of a fist? How does that manifest in music?

Nainita Desai: Well, I was just going to say, Greg talking about the low frequencies, I think one of my pet sonic hates in my career is doing films and shows set in underwater landscapes, because it’s such a technical challenge. So, as well as having to score while thinking about the sound palette, I had to think about the frequency ranges that I could sit comfortably with.

So there is a scene towards the end of the film, we call it the fatal dive…

Ben Nemes: Whoah, whoah! Spoilers!

Nainita Desai: We just called it the fatal dive! You don’t know what’s going to happen. But there’s a very complicated series of events, that happen in this 12 minute sequence, and it’s very difficult to see visually as well. And when you watch it, you won’t realise that there’s music all the way through it.

But, it’s scored in sympathy, knowing that the priority has to be the sound design, and also where these two characters are on the screen, and what’s going on, and the time is also very important. You’re racing against the clock, and what’s happening time wise.

Ben Nemes: Time is a big theme of that fatal dive.

Nainita Desai: So just to help with driving the story forward and the narrative forward, I had to signpost things. This was a challenge in the edit. We spent months editing this scene where we go, well, what is going on?

We don’t know. And it’s like working out a big action sequence where you don’t know who’s fighting who, where is everyone in the choreography of the scene. So that’s something that I had to help signpost musically using specially constructed sounds, knowing that I needed to stand out against the bubbly stuff that was going on.

Ben Nemes: I think it’s maybe time for another clip because, for those who’ve seen it, and those who haven’t (spoilers): It’s fundamentally a love story set in the context of an extreme sport. The two central characters, Alessia and Stephen, have their own backstory they come to this with, and they ultimately fall in love and come together. And then there’s a dive at the end where their fate is intertwined…and something happens.

There’s a point where they meet, where Alessia has got to a certain level at this sport, but is kind of thwarted in her efforts to be the best, and needs to raise her game a little bit. And she enlists the help of Stephen to get her to the next level. And so their relationship begins as they start training together.

Their training involves holding your breath and going a hundred meters down, and not dying, which is kind of all you can do. I think this kind of brings us a lot into the sound design that we’ve just been talking about – about depth and breath and air – and the music works as they go deeper and then they emerge.

NOTE: Scene being discussed is not available outside of Netflix. This is an alternative scene which is demonstrative of Greg’s sound design approach

Nainita Desai’s score from the scene “Stephen Trains Alessia”

I think that clip’s really demonstrative of what we’ve talked about so far, and everything we’ve chatted about is in there. I don’t know what to go with first. Well, Greg, let’s talk about it, because it’s more of a pragmatic level, which is talking about the sound design of depth, and as you get shallower and then emerge, because we talked about themes that are in this, there’s love, there’s danger, there’s death, and it sounds kind of obvious because of the title of the piece, but there’s breath, there’s air.

And that’s really apparent in that, because there’s that moment when you breathe again. From a sound design and a mix point of view, and then from a musical point of view. And then we’re going to get into how you two interact.

Greg Gettens: From a sound point of view that’s a great clip you’ve shown, because there’s three bits that are original sound in there.

And that is when Alessia just talked to Steve and says, “Oh, I did it”.

Ben Nemes: This is archive. This is production sound from there.

Greg Gettens: Everything else in that two minute clip: The sound was being created through sound design, through foley, the splashes on the sea. Lots of raindrops, that was all created in post because that was 99 percent mute.

So as you’re going down, that’s all created by the sound, for the surface sound of a nice splashy sound, we had a couple of people in a hot tub over a weekend, making all those sounds. So you can kind of see the challenge we were up against, because the film is an hour and 50 minutes, and it’s all like that.

And as you say, at the very top, all nice and bubbly. But, hopefully as you saw from the clip, as you go down, the high frequency sounds dissipate. It’s mixed in Dolby Atmos, so it makes a lot more sense when it’s all around your head. But you get down to the bottom and there’s a pulsing sort of sound, and there’s a lovely pulsing in the music as well which is there, but it’s just about making you feel that in those 15 seconds, she’s actually doing 104 meters and then coming back up.

And trying to keep you always feeling that there’s a danger, a lot of danger there, they’re not just diving to the bottom of the swimming pool, they’re going all the way down to the bottom of the ocean of at that point.

So we had that and, from that clip, you can see where the music takes over from the sound. We’ll start off with the sound on the surface. Everybody’s in the shot. Everybody’s listening. Everyone’s talking. And then we go underneath. All the frequencies go out a bit. We’re with sound for the first sort of 20, 30 seconds and then the majesty of the score takes over.

Ben N

None more grey – “The Anti-Theme” for REAPER 7

Admin — Thu, 06 Jun 2024 19:14:15 +0200

WhiteTie has just shared a dark and grey, extremely neutral theme for REAPER 7, and I think it's worth trying.
The post None more grey – “The Anti-Theme” for REAPER 7 first appeared on The REAPER BLOG.

20 great new audio jobs at Expression Games, Reality Labs, Avid, ProbablyMonsters, Gravity Well, Sedleo, Lichtund, NPR, Epic Games Cary, Bucks Music Group, One Line, Wargaming, Scimitar Sound, BDG, IO Interactive, Hachette, Meta Platforms, Spectrum Audio,

Adriane Kuzminski — Thu, 06 Jun 2024 15:03:17 +0200

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We came across interesting new jobs at Expression Games, ProbablyMonsters, Gravity Well, and Sedleo:

Expression Games is hiring an Audio Designer to work on a variety of systems and features to create and implement immersive and compelling audio (Remote / England)

ProbablyMonsters is looking for a Technical Sound Designer who is experienced in implementation and has a strong mind for systemic thinking (WA, US)

Gravity Well is seeking a Senior Technical Sound Designer to work on tasks related to audio implementation, scripting, and audio pipeline efficiency (Remote)

Sedleo is recruiting a Sound Designer to join their small team of veterans on an ambitious AA third person action/adventure game (Remote / Italy)

To learn more about these featured jobs, scroll down to see their full descriptions

Real ROOM TONE Sound Effects Library - with 5+ hours of atmospheric, everyday ambience recordings

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The effect behind Halo season 2's space movement sounds

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264 – The Curse

Timothy Muirhead — Wed, 05 Jun 2024 13:28:52 +0200
How do you use sound to amplify feelings of awkwardness and discomfort? In The Curse the sound design is tasked with making the viewers skin…

The Sound of Netflix’s World War II: From The Frontlines

info@resurface.audio — Tue, 04 Jun 2024 14:46:22 +0200

At the recent Media Production & Technology Show in London, Resurface co-founder Ben Nemes had the opportunity to speak to Sophie-Alice Davies and Luke Hatfield of Vaudeville Sound about their sound work on the ground-breaking recent Netflix documentary series World War II: From the Frontlines.

A recording, along with a full transcription, of that conversation is below.

Resurface · The Sound of Netflix’s World War II: From The Frontlines

Ben Nemes: Well, good morning, everyone. And welcome to session one of day two of the Media Production & Technology show, 2024 here at the Audio Theatre.

So without further ado it’s my pleasure to introduce you to two people and a piece of work this morning.

Before we even get going, quick show of hands. In the audience, how many of you watched, on Netflix, World War II: From the Frontlines? Good. A few. Excellent. We’ll get to that in a second.

So, I’d like to introduce you to two people very much involved in the sound of that show, which is remarkable in a number of ways. So Sophie and Luke from Vaudeville Sound. Welcome to MPTS.

Sophie-Alice Davies & Luke Hatfield: Thank you. Hi.

Ben Nemes: We’ll show a clip in a minute or two, but before we do: One thing I wanted to establish from the get-go is what’s unique about this show.

So on the face of it, you might be forgiven for, on Netflix, browsing through, seeing a six-part documentary series about the entirety of World War II. And it’s lots of archive footage of things, and lots of interviews of people who were there, lots of witness testimony and people as they are now talking about how it was then.

And it seems – on a really superficial level, to be a very good World War II documentary series.

What’s fundamentally different about it, is that everything you see is archive from footage captured in World War II. But everything you hear is completely brand new.

Maybe I’ll let you guys pick up the story on how that process came to be. A very atypical way of approaching something like this as a project. And then when you’ve done that, just to kind of illustrate the point a bit, we’ll show a clip which is from the Battle of Stalingrad, I believe.

But if you can just give us a kind of overview of what you were doing in this show, and how it came to be that you worked with the producers to come up with this way of tackling a World War II documentary series.

Luke Hatfield: Sure. So to start with, when we found out about this project – Because we’ve done a lot of World War II documentaries before – we were expecting to see a lot of the footage you’ve seen before in these World War II documentaries.

And actually, when we started seeing this stuff, it was stuff we’ve never seen before. It was footage they found from people’s attics. It had all been collated and it was it was really unique footage. And then the way it was given to us to be made and put together was very much from soldiers’ and civilians’ perspectives.

So it was a really interesting take on a World War II documentary, which is normally just very factual: This happened, then this happened. And it was very much more of a human story. Very story driven, and the human element of it.

So that was really great and exciting for us to do, because it’s very different to the usual documentaries. I mean, I grew up with the Laurence Olivier ones that were just very stark and factual. And so it was very exciting to have this blank canvas to create these stories.

Sophie-Alice Davies: We wanted the sound to basically put you in that scene. It was important to make you feel like you’re on the tanks. Getting all those sounds, just making you feel like you’re there. It was a different way of thinking.

Ben Nemes: That immersive quality.

Luke Hatfield: Those were the really early discussions with Rob Coldstream, the director.

Ben Nemes: That was my next question. Who said, right, you know what? start from scratch!

Luke Hatfield: So, we went into the edit and they had some temp sound effects and all those sort of things. We sort of made a decision early on that because we are bringing colour and life to these images: Not just using archive sounds, any sort of sounds recorded back then, which are thin and normally full of noise, and all the ‘optical’ sort of sounds.

We wanted to sensationalise it, but bring what you’d expect from a Hollywood type of soundscape. We’re used to hearing Private Ryan and Band of Brothers and all that sort of thing and because the images are going to be so vivid and so new, we wanted to bring an element of the sound to be not jarring against the new pictures.

So again, we’re like, well, so we need to base it in reality. So Sophie did loads of research on the actual tanks, the actual guns, all the ‘actuals’. So we have source material from then, but then we layer it in with modern sound effects, modern techniques. To try and get that balance of reality and entertainment, essentially, as well.

Ben Nemes: It’s an interesting point you make, when you think about your approach to this, because we as an audience have kind of been spoiled now. I mean, opening scene of Saving Private Ryan, it’s kind of seminal. Then look at things like Hacksaw Ridge that won Kevin O’Connell an Oscar, primarily because of the kind of immersive, real, harrowing nature of some of the battle elements of that.

So you have that kind of benchmark now, everyone’s got that burnt in.

But then, the stories you’re telling aren’t all ricochets and flypasts. It’s, as you say, there’s human stories. People getting married, things you didn’t know were happening. The way that the Japanese pilots were being talked to prior to going on Kamikaze missions and things you didn’t know happened because it’s footage we haven’t seen before. It’s not all D-Day.

So there’s that really high bar now in terms of entertainment. But there’s also stories to tell. I think a really good thing to do right now would be to show a clip to kind of demonstrate the point.

So this is, I also want to stress it again (because I don’t think Netflix did a good enough job, quite frankly, of explaining to people, to the audience), everything you’re seeing is archive. A lot of it recolourised, a lot of it treated. A lot of it found in attics, as you say, but there’s precisely zero sound on any of this show until you guys get involved.

So if we could show a clip, this is Episode 3, and it’s the Battle of Stalingrad and the stories around that.

If you come at it with the notion in one’s head, that everything you’re hearing, none of it came from archive.

Ben Nemes: I chose that clip, and thank you to Netflix for very kindly allowing us to show it, because there’s something of everything in there. We talked a little bit about human stories and Alexandra’s story is kind of through there.

And there’s the explosions and the firearms and all that sort of stuff. But there’s also all those other layers.

Perhaps this would be a good moment, Sophie, to go into your role in it, because oftentimes you have editorial, you have a separate re-recording mixer role, whether it’s effects, dialogues, foley – and talk about your role in it, and let’s try and maybe pick out some of those food groups within what we just saw.

Sophie-Alice Davies: So my role essentially was to start from scratch and to rebuild all the sound. So normally you would get, or we did actually have a foley artist, but we normally get foley, atmospheres, sound design groups, people that deal with actual sound effects, you know, like opening doors, but my role was to do all of it.

I had about four or five months, on my own, rebuilding all the sounds.

Ben Nemes: And this is six by one hour?

Sophie-Alice Davies: Six part, forty-two to, I think, the last one was fifty-two. So, bar the music being composed and the foley being done for us, I did all the sound effects and sound design and all the dialogue restorations and the voiceover record, and then I mixed all of it together.

So yeah, it was a lot of work, but really good fun actually. And it involved a lot of research on how engines sound… If we can’t get those elements, if we can’t get those sounds because some of the planes were discontinued quite early on in the war, so it’s really difficult finding decent recordings of all of these engines and stuff.

Ben Nemes: You’re something of a Messerschmidt expert now?

Sophie-Alice Davies: Well, it took a lot of research and, you know, you had to kind of bend the rules a bit and go “Right if I don’t have that, then what do I have, and what are people gonna believe?”

It needs to be believable. If it’s not real then it needs to be believable and then that’s when you have to start layering up stuff and manipulating them and making them sound as they should.

Luke Hatfield: And that’s where the director was really great.

‘Cos he was like, I don’t mind if it’s not the exact sound, but it needs to sell that moment. And so that gave us the ability to not use the exact sound but build around similar sound because, ultimately, the purpose is not to be totally accurate. As long as we have some basis in accuracy, we can then build on it.

Sophie-Alice Davies: I mean, planes in films don’t always rev the way they sound, but it fits for the excitement of the scene. And you believe it when you watch it. Important thing is you believe it.

Ben Nemes: I’m curious about your approach in terms of your process. Do you work in those food groups across all episodes? So, do you start with atmospheres for everything, or do you work show-to-show?

Sophie-Alice Davies: It depends. For this one, I wouldn’t say I would strictly do an atmos pass. I’d probably do it by scene. Because the scenes were so intense, and what were we going to focus on, you know? Were we going to focus on the atmospheres? No, we’re going to focus on the plane fight.

Ben Nemes: What’s most important.

Sophie-Alice Davies: What’s most important. So you start building in that way. You start spotting stuff visually: Right – That’s there, that’s there. And then you go over again and then you’re like, OK, those planes need to be bigger. Let’s layer up some bass whooshes, you know to kind of bring them to life, you know. And then it’s kind of a working layer.

I’ll keep going over over so I didn’t do an atmos pass, but we did have atmos groups, so you could essentially pull them down or treat them differently depending on scenes. Or you had bullet passes, swooshes on one bus and explosions on the other, foley on one, all sort of separated.

So when it came to it, you could push different elements up. So there were kind of stems, as you were, or busses.

Ben Nemes: I’m fascinated by: There’s the things that your eye is drawn to, whether it’s tank tracks or revolvers being fired. And there’s things that you’re not so immediately, obviously drawn to, that I think are actually kinda more fascinating – which is the walla, if you like.

Because it’s so authentic to archive, you’re going to have this noise of people talking… but they’re Russian. So how does one approach that?

Luke Hatfield: So quite early on, when we got some rough cuts through, we’re doing a little bit of initial sound design, we were like, Ooh, it’s really missing something.

And it wasn’t originally planned for that. We would go down the route of actors and walla and loop groups. We thought actually with all the music, the voiceover, sound effects – that would be enough to sort of tell the story.

But whether it’s because it was colourised, whether it was because of the way it’s cut, and to be more humanistic, it just was really lacking in believability, because there’s no voices and battles aren’t silent of voices.
The horror of war is actually the human sounds.

Ben Nemes: And also the people in the background, in this example, are more important. Because it’s about them. It’s often about that machine gun or that plane and that dogfight, but this is more about those people. They kind of have to be in it.

Luke Hatfield: Exactly. And it became very clear. So we managed to get, and Netflix and 72 Films were great, going “Right. Well, then can we carve out a budget to cover exactly what we need?” So Sophie had another spotting session, basically through the whole series going, right, we might need some people here. We definitely need this, this, and this. And we came up with an ideal amount, and then budgeted to try and get as many actors in as possible.

And we kind of worked out that we could cover (if we doubled up on takes), we’d get six actors would be the minimum.

Ben Nemes: You’re finding language, authentic Russian people?

Luke Hatfield: Yeah. So we had an amazing loop group director called Harry McIntyre, who was brilliant and was really great at being sensitive about the material. ‘Cos these actors would normally do films. So they’re doing scripted things, but actually what they’re seeing is real.

So there was a kind of sensitivity about it, but Harry was great. And he got a great performance out of these guys. And Sophie actually had to script these things, essentially, because it wasn’t just “Have walla on this section”. Script them. It’s not all lip sync, but some of it needs to be.

And so Sophie did an amazing job of basically scripting six episodes.

Sophie-Alice Davies: Just sort of scripting them in a way so you’d put them in the scene and say, right, someone’s being arrested here. Look at this scene, what would you be saying? And then get them to act it out.

And occasionally the contributor would be saying, “We saw planes overhead”. So I’d be getting people shouting planes overhead to put them in the background. So it’s not too much in the forefront, but it’s just enough to give you that feeling, to help the story go along.

Ben Nemes: There’s a scene where, it may have been in this episode, where they’re storming a town and there’s a sniper in a nest. And there’s lots of shouting and talk between the soldiers about where the sniper might be and how to approach, which, I think it was German?

Sophie-Alice Davies: They were shouting abuse at each other!

Sophie-Alice Davies: So the Americans were shouting, holler, come out, give up, and then the Germans…

Ben Nemes: It’s fabulous. Going back to the sourcing of source sounds, so you’re right, there’s quite a bit of Spitfire and B 17 effects that one can source.

But if you’re working in Atmos, and what you can source is all stereo, how useful is it, or how much do you have to start again with that? If you’re putting it in a different three dimensional space than that in which it was captured, how do you deal with that?

Sophie-Alice Davies: Lots of layers. Lots and lots of layers!

Ben Nemes: Because being Netflix, being high budget, being a tentpole show, it has to be Atmos and you have to be immersed in it. You’ve got to use the space?

Sophie-Alice Davies: Yeah. It was one of my challenges, actually. One of my challenges to get because (with the engine sound), it’s quite difficult to make the sound of a plane come at you.

But with lots of layers, as I think I mentioned before, with various heavy bass passes and kind of stylised sound effects, to help you feel like the plane’s moving above you or moving beside you.

Ben Nemes: So it’s kind of handy that archive exists of these machines, but only to a point. It kind of creates its own problems?

Luke Hatfield: I mean, you were talking about one pass that you were spending ages on, which was: We had a guy who’d captured some Merlin engines that are static in a unit, so you could rev it up. So we had a few just solo revved Merlin engines. So then that’s that’s a basis point. Then you had deep whooshes, you had metal rattles..

Sophie-Alice Davies: Oh yeah, metal rattles!

Luke Hatfield: Those things that create weight. Whereas archive recordings, you don’t have any weight behind it. So yeah, all that stuff, to layer up, and then place it in the sound field.

Ben Nemes: Fantastic. We’ll show another clip because we haven’t talked about music yet. I want to bring that in.

Part of the reason I’m showing this clip is because it’s quite zeitgeist-y with having just watched Masters of the Air. We all know a lot more about the 100th and Bomber Command and the American crews than we did, you know, three months ago before we saw that third instalment of Band of Brothers, really.

This is from Episode 4, it’s American bomber crews and their daylight missions deep into enemy territory, which was a very expensive endeavour in terms of lives. Pay particular attention, if you will, to the talk between the various members of the bomber crew. A fair

How STILL WAKES THE DEEP's Disturbing Game Audio is Created - with Daan Hendriks & Francesco Del Pia

A Sound Effect — Mon, 03 Jun 2024 12:42:27 +0200

263 – Masters of The Air

Timothy Muirhead — Thu, 30 May 2024 22:45:06 +0200
How much Fun would it be to have the opportunity to record one of the few working B17 “Flying Fortress” planes that are still operational?…

20 great new audio jobs at Tsugi, Ubisoft Reflections, Native Instruments, Netflix Blue, Mass Audio Post, Skeleton Key, Apple, Fitzrovia, EA Create Audio, Goalhanger Podcasts, San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Independent Artist Group, CCP, Unfold Game

Adriane Kuzminski — Thu, 30 May 2024 14:43:46 +0200

Job Subscription

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We came across interesting new jobs at Ubisoft Reflections, Netflix Blue, Tsugi, and Mass Audio Post:

Ubisoft Reflections is hiring a Lead Audio Designer to be accountable for the audio content and improve the gameplay experience of their new AAA IP (England)

Netflix Blue is looking for a Senior Technical Sound Designer to help bring a brand-new AAA multi-platform game to fruition for one of Netflix’s first generation of original games (Remote)

Tsugi is seeking a Sound Designer to build innovative tools for creators and design audio assets for their major game and animation studio clients (Japan)

Mass Audio Post is recruiting a Freelance Sound Editor with experience in linear audio editing for trailers, cinematic media or commercial ads (Remote)

To learn more about these featured jobs, scroll down to see their full descriptions

Phase Plant for sound design, Maestro's masterful sound + 18 sound libraries, 20 jobs & 10 podcasts!

A Sound Effect — Mon, 27 May 2024 11:57:05 +0200

What’s New in REAPER 7.16

Admin — Sat, 25 May 2024 00:04:51 +0200

Learn about all the latest features in changes added in REAPER 7.16
The post What’s New in REAPER 7.16 first appeared on The REAPER BLOG.

262 – Mad Max: Fury Road with Oliver Machin (Re-Podcast)

Timothy Muirhead — Fri, 24 May 2024 23:19:27 +0200
Today marks the opening weekend for Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, a prequel for the character first introduced in MadMax: Fury Road. So it seemed…

20 great new audio jobs at Inflexion, Amazon, Defacto Sound, Rumble Studios, NBCUniversal, Datascope, Cloud Chamber, Dragons Lake, Light & Wonder, Learning Yogi, SWR, Koffeecup, Brafton, Level Two Music, Jellyvision, Forever Audio, Treble Technologies, AP

Adriane Kuzminski — Thu, 23 May 2024 15:07:35 +0200

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We came across interesting new jobs at Inflexion Games, Datascope, Defacto Sound, and Cloud Chamber:

Inflexion Games is hiring an Audio Designer to help shape and hone the player experience by solving cutting-edge audio challenges for their open-world survival-crafting game (Remote / UK)

Datascope is looking for a Lead Audio Designer with experience in AAA gamedev, Wwise, Unreal Engine, and in-studio recording (Norway / Hybrid)

Defacto Sound is seeking an Associate Sound Designer/Mixer to edit, design, and mix their podcast, Twenty Thousand Hertz (Remote / US)

Cloud Chamber requires a Leader Sound Designer (Narrative) to manage a team to plan, organize, create, implement, and maintain sound design-related content (CA, US)

To learn more about these featured jobs, scroll down to see their full descriptions

Lavalier microphones for field recording

George Vlad — Thu, 23 May 2024 09:56:09 +0200

What lav microphones are there on the market in 2024? Are they good for recording nature and wildlife in the field? Let’s have a look.
Quick note here: lavaliers (or lapel mics) are of course intended to be worn close to the body so they can pick up voice in most cases. While their intended purpose has nothing to do with nature or wildlife sound recording, they are surprisingly good at it because of their diminutive size.
Back when I started my journey in field recording, some 15 years ago, I had to spend more than $10k on a selection of equipment that worked well and also made me look like a professional. In those days, if you showed up to a gig with cheap equipment, you would not be called again. A lot has changed since then, and the barrier to entry is much lower. Someone who is just starting out will not have to get a business loan to get a foot in the door. That is encouraging and I’m very happy with this new status quo.

Unfortunately Leafhoppers don’t make great windjammers for lavs

As with everything, there are some disadvantages as well. One of them is the potential paralysis of choice. As field recording has become a much larger niche, many manufacturers have started to make affordable yet decent quality equipment. Lavalier microphones are some of these, and there are many options on the market. With so many options to choose from, it can be a bit difficult to decide and there can always be a lingering fear of missing out by not buying something else. Let’s have a look at what the options are.
Disclaimer time! Before I start talking about these microphones I have to mention that I’ve worked with some of these brands in the past. I have received free equipment and some of them have sponsored my expeditions. They did not pay me to say good things about their products. Every time I work with brands the agreement is that I get paid in exchange for testing equipment in harsh conditions and getting photos, videos and sound recordings for them. Sometimes I also write about my use case and talk about my experiences online or in person. What is attractive to these brands is the fact that I’m brand-agnostic, and will use whatever kit does the job. If a microphone works well and sounds great, it will keep surfacing in my trip reports and expedition updates. If it’s not, I will be very clear about why that is and won’t bring it along on my trips again.

How to set up a lav drop rig

1. Lom mikroUsi regular and Pro versions
If you’ve been following me online for a while, you probably know how much I love these tiny mics. They’re not the first little lavs I’ve ever tried (that would be the DPA 4060 below) but they’re the first boutique/indie mic manufacturer I’ve heard of. Lom has a peculiar business model. It doesn’t seem like they’ve ever been in the industry to make money or to expand rapidly. They release small batches of their products whenever suits them, and as they grew in popularity their microphones have become somewhat of a prized commodity. They routinely sell out their entire stock within minutes of releasing it. I agree there’s a lot of hype around these mics (some of which I’m probably responsible for) but it’s all warranted.
I’ve probably owned hundreds of their mics over the years and lost most of them to humidity or wildlife. They’re quite affordable and they sound great, reaching high in the frequency spectrum. They’re tiny and can very easily be hidden in tree cracks, among rocks or in bushes. They don’t use a lot of power which means they are ideal for long-form drop rig sessions. What is important is that these mics allowed me to record quality material for films such as Dune part 2 and Mufasa the Lion King.
Lom have recently revamped the mikroUsi lineup with a new form factor and material/texture. According to them the electronics are the same as the old version and the new ones should not sound too different, but I have a feeling the new shape does affect the sound of the mics somewhat. I’ve used these on several expeditions though and I love how they sound as much as I loved the old versions. The new design feels nicer in the hand and should make it easier to use tiny windjammers though.

Lemur sounds recorded with the Lom mikroUsi Pro microphones

2. DPA 4060, 6060, D-screet, Core and HD
I first had a chance to try the DPA 4060s on a trip to Norfolk with Chris Watson. He kindly lent me a pair and I managed to capture some decent seabird activity, although there were lots of boats and aircraft around. Up to that point I had thought the only good mics for field recording would be small pencil-style ones like the Sennheiser MKH 8000 series or Schoeps CMC 1u with MK2 or MK4 capsules. Chris Watson famously used a wire hanger to set up the 4060s in trees and other creative/unexpected locations. It was a very interesting experience to observe this and to realise that a lot of the strict rules we have in the studio don’t translate to field work very well, or at all.
As soon as I returned from that trip I ordered a pair of second hand 4060s that have been used in theater productions as head-mounted mics. The great thing about these lavs is they’re somewhat humidity-resistant as they need to perform well in sweaty or spitty situations like that. As a result, they are equally great at performing in light rain or thick fog. They are slightly noisier than the mikroUsis but they can take slightly higher SPL without distorting. As everything in the field of audio, they come with their own advantages and drawbacks.

Setting up a lav drop rig out of the reach of big mammals in Zimbabwe

Over the years DPA have renamed these mics and offered so many variations that it has become difficult to keep track of them all. For a while they had the Heavy Duty versions, of which I got a couple of pairs and had great results with. Then they changed the name to Core, without changing anything else (unless I’m mistaken). More recently they’ve released the 6060, an even smaller lav that is completely waterproof. I’ve got 5 pairs of 6060s and have submerged them without any problem. The sound is not very different to the 4060.
Other variants to mention are the 4061/4062 and 6061/6062. These are even higher SPL versions that come with more noise but can deal with louder sound sources such as explosions or engines close up. I have a few pairs of these as well but rarely use them these days as I focus more on subtle nature sounds.
The big downside of DPA mics is that they aren’t terminated in XLR so you will need to use a microdot to XLR adapter which costs as much as a pair of Clippy or Lom mics. I’ve got loads of these but if you’re just starting out and building your mic collection this could be a problem. The price of the mics is also rather high, some of these costing as much as 4 pairs of clippies. These mics are worth their asking price though.

Ant sounds recorded with the DPA 6060 microphones

3. Clippy EM172, EM272, EM272Z1 and Ultra
Clippy mics (made by Micbooster in the UK) could be called the poor person’s mikroUsis. They’re chunkier than Lom lavaliers, don’t reach as high in the HF realm and sound a little less nice to my ears, but they are a decent replacement if you can’t get your hands on the Lom lavs. I first got some of these when I ran out of mikroUsis, but I found them a worthy replacement and kept buying them over the years.
They are more or less the same price as the mikroUsi counterparts and I won’t think twice before putting them in risky situations. Of course this is all relative, but for the results you can get with them they are definitely on the affordable side.
I’ve recently noticed they released an Ultra version that captured ultrasonic material better. I used a few pairs briefly on my trip to India and they are indeed capable of reaching higher, but the frequency response curve is a bit all over the place. There’s also heavy variation between capsules, but that’s completely expected at this price point and doesn’t mean you should not buy them.

Countryside ambience recorded with Clippy EM272 microphones.

4. Sonorous Objects SO.2
Sonorous Objects is a newer player in the field of boutique mics and lavs. I’d only heard of them last year before my expedition to Botswana and Zimbabwe so I ordered a few pairs to see if they’re worth recommending. I like their website and branding, and the design of the mics is nice as well. There was a bit of a hiccup with my order as it seemed late with no comms, but it was solved quickly once I reached out to them.
Price-wise they’re on par with others in this list, but if you order them from the UK you will have to pay import taxes on top. The mics themselves sound nice to my ears. I will need to use them for longer before I can get a good opinion but so far they’ve not given me any reason to not like them. I’ve even used them in light rain and high humidity in Zimbabwe and they did not skip a beat. Hear them in action below.

Capybara sounds recorded with Sonorous Objects SO.2 microphones

5. Deity WLav Pro
Deity has been making mics for a while, and while they’re at the lower end of the price spectrum, I don’t think they can be called a boutique mic maker as they’re part of a bigger conglomerate. I’ve only used them on one expedition and while they are advertised as waterproof, they seem to suffer from humidity more than others (DPA 6060 comes to mind). I left these mics in pouring rain several times and it took them 5 to 6 hours to recover after they became wet, while the DPAs only take a few minutes.
It’s also worth noting that the two mics I got have a very different frequency response, with one of them capturing a lot more HF content than the other. This could be due to a manufacturing or Quality Control defect and my sample size was too low to account for this.
One other downside of these lavs is that they come wired for microdot connectors so you will need a DPA DAD adaptor to use them with XLR inputs. While they are fairly cheap, the additional cost of these adaptors makes them more expensive than other options.

African savanna ambience recorded with the Deity WLav Pro microphones

6. O-Mini P48 by Chris Trevino
I’ve been friends with Chris for years and it was great to hear that he started making microphones last year. He recently paid me a visit in Brighton and offered me a few pairs of his O-Mini P48 lavs. They look very similar to the old mikroUsis, with all the design advantages I mentioned above. Their price is also in the ballpark of clippies and mikroUsis. I’ve only used them briefly in my garden and I can’t share any examples yet, but I like them so far. I will take them along on my upcoming expedition to China and will update this article with more thoughts and examples soon.
Others
Of course there are many others I’ve left out. Sanken, Rode, Countryman, Sennheiser, Shure etc also make lavs but in many cases they’re not ideal for work in the field. I might try and get some samples but I can’t promise anything - I’ve got loads of work and I do all the reviews and blog posts in my already non-existent spare time. Please consider buying me a coffee or supporting me on Patreon if you want me to dedicate more time to my blog and Youtube channel.
Additional info
Of course picking a lav is just the start. If you aren’t careful you could lose it in a few hours like I’ve done so many times. The two biggest hazards I’ve encountered are wildlife and weather. With drop rigs it’s very difficult to protect your rig 100% since they equipment is unattended for extended time, but you can make sure the chances are in your favour by making it as inconspicuous as possible and by protecting it from humidity as much as you can. I will go into more details about these two aspects in a different blog post or video, but suffice it to say that the more you do it, the easier it gets.

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Johnnie Burn and The Sound of The Zone of Interest

info@resurface.audio — Mon, 20 May 2024 22:12:07 +0200

At the recent Media Production & Technology Show in London, Resurface co-founder Ben Nemes had the opportunity to speak to 2024 BAFTA and Oscar-winning Sound Designer Johnnie Burn about his career, craft and approach to the sound of The Zone of Interest.

A recording, along with a full transcription, of that conversation is below.

Well, good morning, everyone, and welcome to this Session 1, Day 1 of the Media Production & Technology Show 2024, here at the Audio Theatre. My name is Ben Nemes. I’ll be your host for this and a few of the other sessions across the next two days. We’ve got some incredible stuff here at the Audio Theatre.

Catch as many as you can. Some really great work, some really interesting people. Not least of which this session, we’re starting with a bang, more of which in a second. Couple of announcements to make. First of all, you should all be on the blue channel on your Bluetooth headphones. Those that have them… I think you all are.

If you’re not, you can’t hear me say that anyway. OK, Good. And secondly, questions: For each of the sessions here today and tomorrow we are going to have the ability to take questions for our guests. We do that with a platform called Slido, which is www.slido.com. If you go there, you’ll see a place to put in the hashtag MPTS2024, pick the audio theatre, pose your question, and then whoever the host is of any given session can look through the questions and put those questions to the guests.

So that’s questions. There’s also a radio mic being thrown around towards the end when we have our questions. If you want anything asked then, that radio mic, your Bluetooth headphones, the clips you’re going to hear, all thanks to Alex, who’s doing our sound today and tomorrow. And here at the Audio Theatre, we acknowledge and thank sound people because it’s just the right thing to do, isn’t it?

Ben Nemes: And so, without further ado, our first guest this morning.

He is the current holder of the BAFTA award for best sound. He’s the current holder of the AMPS award (AMPS are just down there on the left, if you want to go and see them). He’s the current holder of the American Academy Oscar for best sound.

The European Film Award for best sound, the London Critics Circle, Los Angeles Film Critics Association. North Carolina, North Dakota, San Diego Film Critics Associations, the International Cinephile Online Film and TV Association. The What Car best midsize SUV, and he’s nailed on for the men’s 110 metre hurdles this summer at the Paris Olympics!

We’re immensely lucky that he could be joining us today, for two reasons really. One is that he’s a very busy guy. Second is that today is, in fact, his birthday!

And so, If we could give a big Media Production & Technology Show, Birthday Boy welcome to Mr. Johnnie Burn.

Johnnie Burn: Thank you very much.

Origin Stories

BN: Johnnie, thank you for being with us this morning, and quite a year that you’re having. We’re going to get to a very particular piece of work called The Zone of Interest, which a lot of those awards I’ve just mentioned were attached to.

But before that, we will get there. Before that, I wanted to kind of chart your journey to that particular summit, because it’s not the not the age-old route from the foothills of feature film sound to the top of that hill. You’ve kind of already scaled a peak or two ahead of that. You’ve come sideways to the long form, feature film world.

So, if we could go back a little way, and I’ve known you since, I don’t know, ’99, 2000? When you opened Wave Studios here in London. But before that, of course, there’s always an origin story, always a moment or a chapter, where you realise that sound design, one, is a thing – and two, is the thing for you.

How far back does that go with you? Is it kind of taping stuff off the radio at home?

JB: Yeah. I mean, as a teen in the eighties, I had a bedroom full of everything I could get from the back page of New Musical Express and the classifieds: Old samplers and DJ equipment, all that sort of stuff.

And yeah, a bedroom full of wires. And then, I actually went and did a business degree, but I realised through kind of a weird event:

I had this thing where I wedged a plastic bottle of Evian under a tap in my kitchen. And I left the tap on full blast.

I came back an hour later, having forgotten about it, and when I touched it, it blew up. And it must have been under London ring-main pressure or whatever, but it covered me in water and plastic, and I was profoundly deaf.

And I went back upstairs to my bedroom and played Public Enemy at full blast, all the speakers – couldn’t hear a thing, felt them moving, and I was like, wow, I’ve killed the thing I love.

And that, that was sort of the “Oh, that’s what I like!” moment.

BN: So nearly over before it began!

JB: Yeah, pretty much. And so I did a term at university, a business degree, And then and then found a job as a runner, working in a recording studio in a commercials post house in London.

BN: Right, so that was, I guess we’re talking mid 90s, early 90s?

JB: 90s, yeah, 1990. Valentine’s Day 1990 was my first day of work in the industry.

BN: And then presumably you, as was customary then and still now really, you’d have started that work as a runner.

JB: That’s right, yeah.

BN: The story generally goes that one day, through a set of circumstances, you were thrust into the big chair.

JB: That did happen to me. I was the tea boy and I was bringing in cups of tea for the clients. And there was this actor there who was waiting to record an Abbey National voiceover for the Abbey National Building Society. And the engineer, the sound engineer, hadn’t turned up for work that day.

No one knew where he was (pre mobile phones), where is he? And the client from the advertising agency was saying, “How do we, you know, what, what can we do? Who, you know, how can we record this person?”

And I said “Well, I know how the buttons work if you want to give me a go!” And they were so grateful. That went very well, they then insisted to the boss of the company that I did all their future work.

BN: Right, so you became their asked-for engineer, therefore your name is on their account.

JB: Yeah, so I did a super-quick leap from runner to hairdresser-with-chair kind of thing, man with studio.

BN: And did you know what the buttons did? Or was that a blag?

JB: Oh, I did. Yeah I did. I was actually really lucky. I got viciously dumped by a girlfriend, so that made me stay at work, to occupy my time, for a whole year. Learning how the Synclavier works. So I was really lucky.

It was the dawn of digital music tech. My first few weeks of work were still editing on tape and playing sound off cart machines. But we then spent 300,000 each, on a few of these machines. And it was, you know, what Michael Jackson wrote the Thriller album on and it was an incredible piece of musical equipment that was also really good at sound audio post for commercials.

BN: So you put the time in off your own back…

JB: Well, every night, once the clients had left at 6pm, it was mine. So, yeah, I knew exactly how it all worked.

BN: So, when the time came, you were ready!

JB: Essentially. Yeah. I think it’s really important to get the technical side of things, motor muscle memory sorted, and then you can be creative.

BN: And this is all short form, this is all commercial spots.

JB: Yeah, commercial spots. And then I met Jonathan Glazer, who got me doing music videos as well.

BN: I think he’s our through-line into the second part of this conversation, isn’t he? John Glazer was a big client of yours. Because that pathway, it seems to me that for directors and maybe cinematographers, that pathway from short form to features is quite well trodden.

It’s kind of normal that, I don’t know, Ridley Scott does a pop promo, then a film? But in sound, it’s really quite rare. I mean, I don’t know many people that have made the journey you’ve made from 90 seconds to 90 minutes. You met John Glazer as you were setting up Wave, or before that?

JB: So I met John Glazer, started working with him about three years before I set up Wave. So I worked at a company for 10 years. And in the last three years of that, I started doing commercials with John.

The first thing we did together was the Unkle Rabbit In Your Headlights music video. And then we did some Stella Artois commercials and A few Guinness commercials. And then I left, set up my own company, and the first piece of work that John asked me to do there was the Guinness Surfer Ad.

BN [to audience]: People all know that, right? The Guinness Surfer ad?

JB: And that was our opening gambit as a company. That was job one, so things really flew from that point. We were fine.

BN: Because your relationship with him takes you through a couple of stages, I think. One of the things about short form, about commercials particularly, is there’s no credit roll, and there’s no IMDB. So you kind of don’t know – unless you need to know – who worked on what.

JB: Yeah It’s very ‘inside the industry’ knowledge.

BN: I mean, I guess in a lot of ways that’s all you care about, right? – clients know! But there’s no kind of glory in the same way as there is where you can go through the end credits and say you did that.

When you started it up with the Guinness Surfer, some of the Honda stuff (Honda Cog) and everyone remembers the Dairy Milk drumming gorilla, right? That’s you guys. That’s Wave.

JB: Yeah, that’s that’s me making the grunting noise!

BN: You were the gorilla?
JB: I was the gorilla.

BN: There you go And that’s kind of the top end, most known sound-design-wise commercials were all coming out of Wave for that period.

You then, by that point, met John Glazer, and he’s starting to get into feature films?

JB: Yeah, so he did Sexy Beast, and that was his first film, and I didn’t work on that – He didn’t ask me! – But when he did his second film, Birth, he said, please will you be the head of sound on this? And I had a jolly good go! I did the first temp mix of it.

BN: ..and presumably it was great!

JB: I actually got fired after. TV commercials used to be, sound wise, get the needle up to the top and park it there and compress the hell out of it, and then deal with the QC issues and make it tonally perfect to come out of a TV speaker. Which is very different to now.

BN: Make it louder than the thing before and the thing after.

JB: Exactly. And I was like, well, that must be how you mix a feature film! So, I did a temp mix to which Barbara Broccoli (of the Bond franchise) was invited down to view the nascent cut of the film, halfway through the sound edit. She stood up halfway through and said “Stop, I can’t listen to this. Who mixed this? It’s terrible”.

And I realised then that I didn’t know much about film sound. I then didn’t continue working on that project.

BN: Were you invited not to continue working on that project?

JB: I was invited not to continue! I went back to commercials, licked my wounds and thought, I just don’t want to, I don’t like films!

It was a raw experience. And about six years later, John Glazer, still having worked with him on many commercials in that period, came back to me again and said, “I’m doing another film. It’s called Under the Skin. Please find out what it is you didn’t understand because you are great, you’ve got this, and I really want you to, you’re gonna do it. You’re my dude!”.

And I was like, OK. So I found three really cheap films that just needed someone, to do for virtually nothing. And I spent a couple of years understanding exactly how to mix a film and how to do something that I, you know, all sorts of knowledge that I really should have had before starting on New Line Cinema’s, 50 million dollar movie.

BN: Second chance almost. Second chance saloon?

JB: I got another chance!

Under The Skin

BN: Well, Under the Skin we should talk about. In fact, I’ve got a clip to show in a second. So Under the Skin was the first successful collaboration with John Glazer! And it’s widely regarded as something of a cult classic, I think, as well.

It’s one of those films that if you know : you know, I suppose as well. For those who don’t know Under The Skin – I need to explain this because the clip will make more sense. Scarlett Johansson plays an alien (and jump in if I get this wrong). Scarlett Johansson plays an alien who comes to modern day Glasgow and entices men into a van and then harvests them.

JB: Yeah, that’s the premise.

BN: In the clip we’re about to see, Scarlett Johansson’s character, who’s called The Female, is on a beach, and she’s met a character called The Swimmer, who’s out there swimming, and there’s a family. A dog who’s in the sea, and a young girl who’s gone to try and rescue her dog from being dashed on the rocks, and then the father, fully clothed, who’s gone into the sea, presumably to try and rescue – ideally – the girl, maybe the dog, but anything will do at that point.

Swimmer sees this happening and goes in to rescue the dad, has dragged him out of the sea, and the dad’s gone straight back in, presumably to his death. All this being observed by Scarlett Johansson’s character, The Female.

And we’ll play the clip because there’s something that happens in it that I think foretells of The Zone of Interest.

I meant to say the following clip contains scenes of violence. I knew there was something, I forgot.

JB: Everyone’s still here!

BN: So, at the end: The bit about that, that I think made me think of Zone of Interest is the baby. When we realise that, oh crap, there’s a baby in the family as well, and the dad’s drowned, everyone’s dead, presumably the baby’s going to die, but the baby’s presence is only felt through sound.

Which kind of brings us on to the sound of The Zone of Interest, if I may.

Well actually, before that, talking about Under the Skin as a kind of cult classic, it has its fans as well within the industry: Directors.

JB: Yeah, I mean, I would say pretty much every director I’ve ever worked with since Under the Skin has said – in the first 60 seconds – I loved Under the Skin. And that’s been my calling card.

BN: Because in all that stuff I said about Zone of Interest and its success this year, one other thing that you had out this year – that we didn’t even mention so far is Poor Things. Another one of this year’s stand-out pieces of work. Director of that is Yorgos Lanthimos. Who’s an Under the Skin fan?

JB: He’s a big Under the Skin fan. So I first met him about six months after Under the Skin came out and he said “I’m doing a film called The Lobster. Will you work on that?” Actually, we all went out to the set in Ireland, I went along for the shoot as well.

And the night before filming began, he hired a coach and took all the cast and crew to the local cinema to watch Under the Skin and said, “That’s the bar. it needs to be as good as that”. So yeah, he was that much of a fan of it.

BN: That’s amazing. I just wanted not to go through this whole time and not mention Poor Things. Just wanted to make sure we got that in.

JB: It was a very funny movie.

The Sound of The Zone of Interest

BN: Let’s get into The Zone of Interest then.

So, we just talked about having something you can’t see, being the point. And that’s kind of what we get to with The Zone of Interest. [to audience] So quick show of hands, just so I know, before saying stuff everyone knows: Who has seen The Zone of Interest?

There you go, box office right there!

OK, so, for those who haven’t: It’s the story of a German family in World War II who live in a lovely house, over the fence adjacent to Auschwitz. The patriarch, the father of the family, is the Commandant. And – I think I’m right in saying – it’s originally based on an Amis novel?

And for many years John Glazer, the director, didn’t know how to make it?

I’ve heard him say in interviews that he was going back and forth with it. Because he didn’t want to do a ‘barbed wire and striped pyjamas’ Auschwitz film.

JB: He said he had no interest in showing people the images that they already have in their head

19 great new audio jobs at Nintendo Retro Studios, ESPN, Larian Studios, Sony, Headspace, Apple, Ubisoft Montréal, Shameless Product Placement, PTW, Unity, Hi-Rez, Ubisoft Singapore, 1047 Games, One Line, PitStop, TechnoSystems, Shake, and Arcana Audio

Adriane Kuzminski — Thu, 16 May 2024 17:59:47 +0200

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We came across interesting new jobs at Nintendo Retro Studios, Ubisoft Montréal, Larian Studios, and Shameless Product Placement:

Nintendo Retro Studios is hiring a Technical Sound Designer with a solid technical grasp of interactive game audio to contribute to Metroid Prime 4 (TX, US / Hybrid)

Ubisoft Montréal is looking for a Senior Voice Designer to implement the artistic vision pertaining to voice in all game production phases (QC, Canada)

Larian Studios is seeking an Audio Director to establish and execute the creative sound design vision (England)

Shameless Product Placement is recruiting a Video Game Sound Design Intern with strong foundation in sound design and game development (VT, US)

To learn more about these featured jobs, scroll down to see their full descriptions

6 Sound Facts about the Fallout series on Amazon Prime

A Sound Effect — Thu, 16 May 2024 10:32:55 +0200

18 great new audio jobs at Boom Post, Vox Media, Firesprite, Turtle Rock, Lighthouse Games, Meta CWX, Maxis, King, Criterion, Raven Software, Grinding Gears, Climax Studios, IO Interactive, Q&A Media, Midlands Arts Centre, Freakonomics, No Brakes Games, a

Adriane Kuzminski — Thu, 09 May 2024 13:59:58 +0200

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We came across interesting new jobs at Boom Post, Meta Creative Audio, Firesprite, and Turtle Rock Studios:

Boom Post is hiring a Foley Trainee to assist in the day-to-day Foley recording across various projects (England)

~~Meta Creative Audio~~ ~~is looking for a Voice Designer Lead to drive AI voice and Assistant product work across Meta (CA, US)~~

Firesprite is seeking an Audio Lead to oversee aspects of audio content creation, from conceptualization to implementation (England)

Turtle Rock Studios requires a Senior Audio Programmer to author major audio features and evaluate audio technology packages (CA, US)

To learn more about these featured jobs, scroll down to see their full descriptions

Wind and Metal

rick@evocativesound.com — Mon, 06 May 2024 19:50:10 +0200

Wind and Metal explores the awesome ways metal responds sonically under the influence of wind. Large objects like wind turbines, windmills, a geodesic dome, an overhead power line transmission tower, a fire tower, flag poles and a giant crucifix, were recorded under varying wind speeds from airy breezes to howling gusts. Each structure produces resonant tones unique to its design, location and weather affecting it. There's the sound of wire fences too.… Read More

The post Wind and Metal appeared first on Evocative Sound and Visuals.