In this edition of Inside Sound Design, we spoke with Supervising Sound Editor, Brad Meyer about a recent recording session for creature vocals. Hear how he approached the recording and post-processing to design a "monster hellscape."
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So you’ve just recorded the coolest sound out in the field, but it’s buried underneath environmental sounds like distant cars, planes, humans, birds, insects etc… How do we isolate these sounds and minimize that background noise? This is NOT another Izotope RX post. Instead we’re going to talk about a common yet sometimes forgotten audio processor that can help reduce your noise floor and make these recordings more usable.
The 73rd MPSE Golden Reel Awards ceremony is quickly approaching! On March 8th we’ll be gathering with friends and familiar faces to celebrate the work of the most talented in our industry. We’re beyond excited and feeling so honored to have received three nominations this year! In this post we dive into the sound behind our nominated series, hearing directly from the supervising sound editors. Enjoy!
With the competition being stacked this year, we couldn’t be more proud of our team for being nominated for Outstanding Sound Editing and Mixing for an Animated Program for Max & The Midknights!
We hope you all had a wonderful winter holiday break and New Years celebration! As those of you Angelenos already know, we experienced an uncharacteristically long rainy stretch to bring in our New Year here in California. As ready as I am to be on the other side of this rain, it does provide a great opportunity to pull out the field recording gear and add some new rain recordings to my personal library. As I was cleaning up my recordings, I felt compelled to start putting them into context with other layers which progressed into experimenting with some simple but effective rain designs. This blog post will share what I learned in the process!
These past few weeks, I must shamefully admit that I’ve been binging seasons of crappy reality TV…Ink Master in particular. There’s a particular sound the editors use in this show that is impossible to go unnoticed. Even if you’ve never seen a single episode of reality TV, chances are you’ve still heard this sound somewhere. It’s of the dramatic, screeching, tension-building stinger variety, commonly found in the horror/thriller genre.
You’d be surprised just how “quiet” raw gunshot recordings can sound without any processing. When played back dry, the recordings sound like weak little pops, lacking detail and punch. But with some basic processing, we can turn those thin pops into powerful, rich, cinema-ready gunshot sound effects.
As sound editors, it's crucial that we approach our edits with the mixer's needs in mind. In previous posts we’ve covered how to deliver clean, organized edits to help streamline the mixing stage. But what about processing to remove additional steps for our mixer? In this post, I’ll share simple but effective techniques to tidy up your sound editorial without causing a headache for the mixer down the line.
With a seemingly limitless number of plugins at our fingertips today, it's easy for the most rudimentary tools to go under appreciated. Among the Avid stock plugins, one of THE most frequently used, yet lesser discussed is the 'Reverse' AudioSuite. This tool is as simple as they come, but what it lacks in bells and whistles it makes up for in creative potential. Today I thought I'd discuss a few ways I like to use it and demonstrate with examples.
Awards season is here and we are SO honored to have been nominated for three Children’s and Family Emmy Awards for our sound work. We spoke with our talented team to get an inside look at the sound work for our nominees.
Growing up in the Midwest, it seemed like everyone had a basement (not a thing here in LA). A basement is a bonus space the size of your entire floor plan. For adults, this means lots of storage (functional but boring); for kids, a giant playroom! When I was young, my dad bought two used pinball machines from a friend and plunked them down in our basement. These were mid-70’s era classics with all the (literal) bells and whistles. At any time of day you could hear these very specific sounds emanating from our basement, working their way into the consciousness of one young sound designer in the making (me).
Needless to say, these two pinball machines became family treasures. So when it came time for my parents to downsize their house (no room for pinball), I just couldn’t resist keeping one for myself and my family.
It’s been some time since we’ve discussed the art of designing backgrounds here on the blog. Although backgrounds aren’t the sexiest food group in the sound editorial process, they’re absolutely crucial for providing the foundation of storytelling for every scene.
I was recently cutting sound effects on a scene for my apprenticeship project that included a slo-mo sequence. During the spotting session, my supervisor was discussing proven ways to get in and out of slo-mo sequences with different stingers and sub dives as the bread and butter. He referenced this specific sound effect to me and I thought it would be a fun idea to try my hand at recreating it.
By the beginning of this year, Boom Box Post had fully moved into our new facility with three Atmos mix stages, three 5.1 mix suites, eight sound design/editorial suites, and full client amenities. So, when Women’s Audio Mission reached out to revisit the idea of having an in-person workshop focused on sound for television and film that would meet the needs of their Los Angeles membership base, we had the perfect space to accommodate it.
As sound professionals, we always have our ears open for interesting sounds. This isn’t limited to just sound effects I can record but also interesting ways sound can interact with the spaces we inhabit. Over the years, if I find myself in an especially interesting space, I’ve made a point of recording myself clapping once, so that I can later farm that sound as an Impulse Response, recreating the space. This practice carries the same nostalgic feelings as my field recordings, but expands the idea to my mixing. I can put any Impulse Response (the clap) through a reverb plugin that will, like magic, recreate that space. You too can be out there capturing wild and interesting spaces for your work!
Several years ago, we created multiple blogs with keywords to help you search your sound library and find the desired effects. This year, we have combined those blogs into one comprehensive sound effects glossary, adding more key terms to assist with your project. Hopefully, this will make it easier to find all the correct sound effects you need!
We are so proud of our clients who have been nominated for a GLAAD Award! The GLAAD Media Awards is the most visible annual LGBTQ awards show in the world, sending powerful messages of acceptance to audiences globally.
A few weeks ago, Chad Anderson of Filmmaker U invited me to chat with him about sound for animation. Filmmaker U is a website that creates courses for film professionals to deepen and diversify their skillsets. So, as a huge proponent of being a lifelong learner, I was very excited to add the topic of animation sound to that knowledge base for their audience!
Last summer I found myself with a little extra time on my hands and a big idea. Coming on the heels of an original Boom Box Library offering, “Magic Chimes,” which I recorded back in 2021, I wanted to expand on the idea of an all encompassing percussion library. I received classical training as a percussionist at the Indiana University School of Music (now the Jacobs School). We would spend hours in master classes focused on one instrument, perfecting for example, the ideal triangle performance. Hours. On the triangle. Needless to say, I felt qualified for the task. Here’s my chance to revisit those roots and put together something really special.
