The Boom Box Post blog provides insights into the creative sound design process of Boom Box Post's owners and employees.
For my money, the second I get my hands on a new synthesizer app or program, the first thing I gravitate towards is designing laser blasts and steadys. Some of the most diverse and memorable synthesized elements in TV and film are laser sounds. With that in mind, this week I challenged the team to create a distinct and original laser sound effect.
With the recently released Star Wars: The Force Awakens trailer smashing existing viewing records, and crashing sites like Fandango due to a rush for pre-sale tickets, it is no secret that the hype is strong with this one. On December 18th of this year, hoards of people will be heading to the theaters to witness the newest addition to the Star Wars universe.
Diehard fans know there is a lot to look forward to, but there is a new addition to the Star Wars universe that is easily overlooked: Dolby Atmos. Most theaters still show films in 5.1, but with Atmos becoming increasingly popular as part of a premium film experience, it is worth noting how far technology has come since the first Star Wars film in 1977. Therefore, I would like to focus this week’s blog post on the evolution of mixing formats and how they impact the audience experience.
Ageism is prevalent in Hollywood. Everywhere you look, the emphasis is on the next big thing; younger, faster newer. In our industry, I'm talking about gear. The equipment we use is constantly being overhauled and upgraded. And rightfully so. The demands of our job continue to increase (although this may be a chicken and the egg style scenario because the faster equipment certainly creates higher expectations). Regardless, as a creative professional you have to make choices. You need the gear to learn and practice the trade. Starting out with the top of the line equipment however will simply break most editors financially.
A month back, I wrote and article for the A Sound Effect blog that argued for a powerful Pro Tools setup on a budget. This wasn't intended to be a bible on how to set up the average pro tools rig or even a recommendation for everyone. I aimed the advice at freelance individuals or small studios that want the power to be creative on as little money as possible.
When I was a child, my brother and I would happily forego the majority of our trick-or-treat time in order to put on a free haunted house in our basement for the neighborhood kids. We planned it for weeks and had everything from the quintessential haunted "bowl of brains" (cold spaghetti noodles) to a gauntlet where hidden ghouls grabbed at your ankles.
The key element of this yearly extravaganza was always the cheesy haunted house soundtrack cassette tape that we played on a portable boom box.
So, in the spirit of Halloween, I brought together the whole crew at Boom Box Post, and we recorded some very cheesy and spooky vocals. Then, I recreated that classic spooky cassette tape!
For a team challenge this week, I thought it would be fun to give everyone an onomatopoeia sound as a jumping off point for creative sound design. No rules. Just create a sound inspired by the following phrase:
Wheeeeeeeeee-Sha-BLAWNG
I asked that everyone 'show their work' and type up a few words about how they went about inventing these new sounds. Here are each designer's take and the final sound effects.
As sound designers, we're often drawn to talking and writing about our latest endeavors in creating new and interesting sounds from scratch. We blog about just such occasions all the time here at Boom Box Post, like when we recorded our own alien vocals or I created the sound of a submarine moving through blood vessels with a contact microphone in my bathtub.
But, it's important to remember that sometimes the most successful sound design isn't born of invention, but instead of perfectly matching just the right sound from the real world.
A while back, I was asked to “stretch my creativity” a bit and record some original sounds for a new series here at Boom Box Post. My objective: create a fresh take on the classic “rubber stretch.” We wanted something new and different that still inspired the same feelings of tension and impending release that the classic balloon rubbing/cable twisting has. I ended up working with a recording of my finger running along the sticky side of a strip of packing tape.
Film is a collaborative medium. We all know this. However, when it comes down to the day to day grind of sound editorial it's very easy to get caught up in the time crunch or creative rabbit holes, ignoring where the work is heading; the mix stage. This is a major mistake. As a sound supervisor, I value collaboration just as much as I do the creative output of my team. And there's a lot that can be done every step of the way to support collaboration in the post sound world. That's why I preach one simple philosophy; think like a mixer.
Take this quiz to see if you can guess the original sound used to create these newly designed ones! How do you think we made this dragon snarl: a human fart or a mustard squirt? Can you decipher the origin of each sound? Submit your best guesses to see the real answers.
This week, we brought the entire team together to record alien walla (otherwise known as group vocals) for an upcoming season premiere episode. Jeff is the real performer in the group, but after seeing how much fun he had at the mic, the rest of us were game to jump into the spotlight, too. Check out this fun video montage of our raw performances!
Backgrounds. Ambiences, the rarely heard but most definitely felt, unsung heroes of the post-production sound world. Without ambiences, scenes and designs feel empty. I could have went with a discussion about the design of some next level insectoid-servo-monster-hybrid-machine, but I feel like in order to get to that level of creativity you need a solid foundation. Not only in your skills as a sound editor or designer but in the overall build of your production. And that foundation, my sound design brethren, are backgrounds or BGs for short.
Vocal processing is one of my favorite challenges. It's always a delicate balancing act to add enough treatment to shine through onscreen without covering up the nuances of the performance. Inventing new ways to treat dialogue is a blast but I also take great pleasure in trying to ape a classic vocal effect.
In an effort to recreate the treatment applied to C-3PO (from Star Wars you guys) my first thoughts were to apply a vocoding effect paired with a reverb based on a small space impulse response. I assumed it was a vocoder making the voice robotic and a reverb placing the voice inside the robot itself. In listening closely and experimenting, it turns out I was half right.
When asked by Plugin Alliance to test their newest noise reduction/reverb removal plug-in, accusonus ERA-D, my first thought was that de-noise/de-reverb is possibly the least sexy category of plug-in on the market.
However, I have to say that after putting accusonus ERA-D through its paces, it is, in fact, quite sexy.
What do you get when you add five sound designers, a handful of audio plugins and one amazingly unique sounding ape? This week we decided to get the entire crew involved with a fun sound design challenge. On a recent visit to the Los Angeles Zoo, my wife got a fantastic recording of Gibbons on her iPhone. If you're not familiar with the gibbon (I wasn't until we heard them from clear across the zoo), they are a species of Ape with a large throat sack that makes incredibly unusual (and loud) sounds. This recording captured a bunch of different tones and seemed like the perfect jumping off point for creative sound design. Each member of the crew was tasked with creating an original sound effect from this recording.
With the new demands of our expanding business, we have had the pleasure of bringing another talented editor on as part of our team, Jessey Drake. She comes to us with both a master's degree in sound design from The State University of New York at Fredonia, but also years of experience in animation sound editorial. To get to know her a little better, we asked her a few fun questions.
One challenge any modern business owner will inevitably face is data sharing and storage. It's not sexy. In fact, it's super unsexy. However big data is a fact of life and in post-production we collect A LOT of data. So I'm going to throw caution to the wind and dive right in. At Boom Box Post we've gone through a few iterations. Here's how (through trial and error) we solved our big data issues.
This was Boom Box Post's first time attending Comic-Con International: San Diego, and it was spectacular! Jeff and I reveled in the cosplay (and crossplay) photo ops, met amazing visual artists on the floor, attended panels for Disney's Penn Zero: Part-Time Hero and Star vs the Forces of Evil and Nickelodeon's TMNT, saw Nickelodeon's The Loud House screened for an audience of insanely enthusiastic children, and schmoozed with all of our favorite clients and friends from the past ten years. It was an incredibly overwhelming, fantastically fast-paced, whirlwind of a weekend. Check out some photo highlights below, and don't forget to read the captions to get the full experience. We'll see you all again next year!
Unlike in the past, degrees in audio engineering are now quite common, and many universities have added bachelor's as well as master’s degree programs for the specific professional niche of sound design. However, while these programs may teach the latest software and philosophize masterfully about the effects of sound on the human subconscious, surprisingly few degree tracks include the necessary knowledge of how to acquire actual work upon graduation.
In order to best understand the business of getting a job in sound design, you must first understand the types of employment available to you. Although these opportunities may be divided into two categories for tax purposes (independent contractor vs employee), I would like to further divide them into three in order to make important distinctions in business responsibilities in addition to the financial ones.
I've been proselytizing about the wonders of working with an iPad in my sound design career for years. More than just an excuse to get a new Apple product every few years (which admittedly it is), my creativite output and productivity have increased 10 fold with this device. As a tool in the studio, an iPad isn't necessarily cheap, but thes apps all clock in under $30. Compared to stand alone soft synths and plugins, all of these are a steal. Here are my favorite apps and some ways I like to utilize them.
In today's digital age, what better place to look for professional resources than the internet? Not only is the internet probably the most abundant collection of useful information, it is also the most accessible given the fact that we already spend nearly all day tethered to a computer, smartphone, or tablet. Why not take a quick break from your work and learn something of use rather than perusing the latest cat vids (although I am by no means against wonderfully indulgent cat videos)? Below are my absolute favorite online resources for sound designers. They span the breadth of online content from sound effects library downloads, technical support forums, mixing videos, and even mini documentaries to keep you current on the latest movie sound design trends. Enjoy, and internet away!
