What does a Mustang, a parking lot, and ten pounds of ice have in common? They’ve all played starring roles in our journey to capture our own custom sound effects for shows like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and more. In sound design, originality matters. Whether it’s the roar of the Shellraiser or the chilling movement of an Ice Dragon, there’s no substitute for getting your hands dirty and your mic in the middle of it all.
We’ve gathered five of our favorite behind-the-scenes recording sessions that showcase what it takes to build immersive, character-driven sound from scratch. Each one includes real recording footage, final demo clips, and a glimpse into the creative process. Hope you enjoy!
With the Fourth of July quickly approaching, it felt like the perfect opportunity to put together a sound design sketch that captures the magic of this holiday, as I fondly remember it in childhood.
We cannot possibly express enough gratitude to the Motion Picture Sound Editors Guild for interviewing us about our Boom Box Post journey and making the decision to put us on the cover of the latest edition of Wavelength Magazine.
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.
With Spring in full effect and Summer right around the corner, the world is becoming more and more inviting to explore and record! We felt it was the perfect time to revisit some of the field recording blog posts we’ve written over the years that may have been forgotten deep in the blog archives. So here are the top 5 we’ve let resurface for your reading pleasure, to serve as inspiration and a guide for returning to the field!
This past week we chatted with one of our supervising sound editors, Tess Fournier! Tess has shared so much insider knowledge here over the years but we felt it was time to get an update on both a professional and personal level!
For aspiring editors and audio students, I always come across one tip in—to start building up a personal SFX library. So I complied a list of 10 spring inspired sounds, that if you have access to, you should go out and record this refreshing time of year!
How often do you look up at the clock in disbelief that day is already halfway gone? Time is easy to lose track of and there’s nothing worse than feeling behind on your projects. We interviewed our expert mixers and sound editors for their input on how to consistently deliver work in a professional manner: on time!
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.
In the past, we have published multiple blogs that list classic cartoon sound effects and the emotion they convey to the audience. Our hope is that these lists will help those stuck in their sound editorial from having to sift through their entire sound library looking for the perfect sound.
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.
This past week we chatted with one of our supervising sound editors, Tess Fournier! Tess has shared so much insider knowledge here over the years but we felt it was time to get an update on both a professional and personal level!
This month, we focused on one of our sound effects editors, James Yailluo to get a better understanding of who he is and how he started his career.
In the past, we have published multiple blogs that list classic cartoon sound effects and the emotion they convey to the audience. Our hope is that these lists will help those stuck in their sound editorial from having to sift through their entire sound library looking for the perfect sound.
As the Assistant Sound Editor and Background Sound Editor at Boom Box Post, I am always looking out for Pro Tools shortcuts and quick keys to be a more efficient editor. Let’s review the basic Pro Tools shortcuts that you should know before jumping into your session.
I recently sat down with one of our sound effect editors, Vivian Williams to get a better understanding of who she is and how she started her career. Vivian has been at Boom Box Post for 2 years and has been a sound editor for 5 years.
Last year, we published two blogs that listed classic cartoon sound effects and the emotion they convey to the audience. In those posts, we outlined the toony sounds we associate with happiness, anger, sadness, humor, scared, disgust, love, and boredom. Toon sound effects have been provoking emotion for decades. With so many classic toon sounds to choose from, how does one know which to use? Our hope is these blog posts help those stuck in their sound editorial from having to sift through their entire sound library looking for the perfect sound. You can read part one HERE and part two HERE!
I’ve had it on my list to test out some software synths that I had purchased a while back. My week was light so I fired up The Riser by AIR. One of the presets had a really interesting oscillating sound and the functionality of The Riser made it easy for me to play around with pitch and speed. I found myself creating crazy spaceship engine sounds (very likely influenced by having just watched the movie) and thought, “this would be a great blog post!'‘
Creating futuristic anything is fun, but where to start? Here was my process for creating a full compliment of entirely original (and useful!) futuristic spacecraft engine sounds.
On past projects I have received critiques that my wood creaks for various items (doors, wooden chairs, footsteps, etc) sounded pretty weak and ill-fitting for the scene. The sound libraries I had access to at the time really didn’t offer many quality options, so I decided to do some research on how I could capture better creak sounds. I stumbled upon a couple videos online of Foley artists using what is called a creak box. This Foley instrument allows the user to more precisely create and perform creaking sounds quite easily. Below I’ll be going over how I put together a couple different creak boxes of my own and what I learned in the process.
