WRITTEN BY KATIE MAYNARD
SOUND EFFECTS EDITOR, BOOM BOX POST
At Boom Box, we are lucky to get to use so much creativity designing new things for our shows. A lot of times this includes monsters, vehicles, machines etc. I think this one is especially cool because it is an army of monsters with weapons, vocals, and more! Check out the awesome sound design Katie used to create this army build and how she did it below!
What was your brainstorming process?
I was given some great direction when I started creating this army. It was supposed to sound menacing, scary, overwhelmingly large, angry, and most importantly not a human army. It was supposed to sound like they were monsters! This gave me direction at the beginning of my search. I needed to fill the army with creatures and beasts with low menacing voices. I knew the army needed to have weight and size so I added various textures and layers to give it body. I also knew I needed to add physical aspects to the army like armor and weapons, so that would become its own layer.
Could you give the step by step of what you did?
I needed to start by collecting vocals that sounded animalistic and scary, so I created a ‘bed’ of those files meaning I added a bunch of them together and printed it into one file once it sounded like a crowd. It was important to build a bed of vocals and specific callout vocals giving your mixer the freedom to use those spatially wherever they’d like.
Next, I used some existing angry crowd walla. I pitched that down to make it sound more threatening.
After, I printed a bed of both human chanting and other miscellaneous callouts and creature vocals.
Next, I made a bed of armor. These soldiers were meant to sound a little more medieval so I used a combination of both regular metal plated armor and leather. When the crowd was close enough on screen to hear the armor, I made sure it sounded like the army was moving and chanting.
The last elements of my scary monster army were the rumble layers. I utilized these primarily when the army was moving. It needed to sound large - like a massive group charging. I used a general rumble layer I found in our library, as well as a stampede.
Now this is the full army build:
All of the above tracks were used to create the general army sound. In select moments they may cheer or chant, so I would add those elements to the existing build to give them some dimension and emotion. Here’s an example of what I added when they all began to charge:
Did you run into any problems making this?
I think the hardest part of building a crowd or army is to give them the right elements to convey emotion. It’s easy to create a steady, but it’s much harder to find something unique for when the crowd gasps, sighs, laughs, growls, etc. Make sure you have all of the necessary resources to give your army personality before you get to building.
What would you suggest to new editors building something with many different components like this?
I would definitely suggest working in layers. The more time you spend working with each individual layer, the better the full build will sound! I don’t think my army would have sounded like one composed of monsters and beasts if I didn’t create a layer of just those vocals. In this case I could break it down into three layers (which each had their own layers within) which were vocals, armor, and rumble and movement. Make sure your layers are long enough too! Chances are you will have to loop them throughout a scene, and you don’t want to hear the repetition. I like to work with clips that are at least 30 seconds to a minute each.
Do you have any plugins that you recommend?
To get some really amazing monster vocals you can use Dehumaniser by Krotos. Greg wrote a spectacular blog post on it! Other than that, my process did not involve any other processing.
How did you make this army unique?
I needed the army to sound unique by utilizing scary non-human creatures. Everything needed to sound heavy and threatening. This dictated the choices I made for the armor, vocals, and weapons to fit the scene. You can do this with rodents, babies, sea creatures, whatever! I think creating groups and crowds is always a fun challenge.
If you enjoyed this blog post, you should also check out:
CREATING MONSTER VOCALS WITH VOXPA
LUNCH AND LEARN: MONSTER TRANSFORMATION
DRAGON VOCALS