Few things can positively impact a sound editors workflow like effective and thorough sound effects metadata. Having good metadata in your library will lessen the time needed to find the sounds you are looking for and speed up the process of finding new favorites in a packed library. If you are selling your sound effects, having rock-solid metadata is essential to creating a marketable product.
It's been another busy year here at Boom Box Post!
In February of 2017 we were honored to take home a Golden Reel award for Best Sound and Music Editing for Television Animation for Nickelodeons Animated Television Feature: Albert.
Throughout the year we were excited to share some stellar blog posts such as Top 5 Tips for Recording Sound Effects Like a Pro, 3 Easy Steps to Cutting Classic Cartoon Sound Effects, 5 Characteristics of the Rock Star Sound Editor, and many more, which you can read on our Blog.
We worked on 13 discreet animated series, including Mickey and the Roadster Racers, The Loud House, Penn Zero: Part Time Hero, Danger and Eggs, Future-Worm!, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Duck Tales, The Lion Guard, Stretch Armstrong, Pickle & Peanut and more!
We were also excited to announce the launch of our new sound effects library company: Boom Box Library, and our first sound effects library release: Robotic Creations: Heads Up Display.
Thanks to everyone who has been involved in Boom Box Post in 2017, and here's to another exciting year!
Today is the last day to get the sound design toolkit for FREE!
Are you interested in our sound design toolkits, but aren't sure what they are? Check out this great video demo, Getting Creative with Your Sound Design Toolkit!
Don't forget that from now until 12/25, the sound design toolkit is FREE with your purchase of the Heads Up Display SFX library! That's $20 off! Don't miss out.
Introducing the robots of our Robotic Creations Collection!
Each library within the Robotic Creations Collection contains sound effects designed to match five different robotic personalities with their own unique sonic characteristics.
Our Boom Box Library online store is open!
Boom Box Library proudly presents its first release of the Robotic Creations Collection: The Heads Up Display SFX Library & Sound Design Toolkit!
Go behind the scenes of the Mutant Apocalypse arc of Nickelodeon’s CG Animated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series with this story of how Boom Box Post created the sound of the post apocalyptic Shellraiser vehicle by custom recording Executive Producer Ciro Nieli’s vintage Mustang.
We have a big announcement to make: we are branching out from our post production sound business, Boom Box Post, and have created our own sound effects library company, Boom Box Library. This has been a long-time dream of ours, and we are immensely excited to finally see it making its debut in the coming weeks.
In this Inside Sound Design I wanted to use our interns to explore an early part of the sound editing process: Field Recording. It’s always a blast to capture sounds in the wild, and we try to do so at every opportunity. I sent Ian Howard out with instructions to research and capture two unique and interesting ambiences.
We’ve reached out to our blog readership several times to ask for blog post suggestions. And surprisingly, this blog suggestions has come up every single time. It seems that there’s a lot of confusion about who should be processing what. So, I’m going to attempt to break it down for you. Keep in mind that these are my thoughts on the subject as someone with 12 years of experience as a sound effects editor and supervising sound editor. In writing this, I'm hoping to clarify the general though process behind making the distinction between who should process what. However, if you ever have a specific question on this topic, I would highly encourage you to reach out to your mixer.
Johnathan Lopez recently joined the Boom Box team as our new assistant editor and office manager. Johnathan was a stellar Boom Box intern, and we are thrilled to have him back to work with us again.
Here at Boom Box Post we have an extensive intern curriculum where our interns have to complete several different projects as part of their program. The projects include everything from sound editing basics, to pre-dubbing and from-scratch design work. In the project I teach, we come across many real-world sound editing scenarios, including a small clip in slow motion. Slo-Mo is a storytelling tool that sound editors come across quite often, and it is where I get the most questions regarding, “How do I cut this?”
Because slow motion is more conceptual than it is technical, there is no right way to approach it. However, there are some basics that you are going to want to cover, and I thought this would be a great opportunity to illustrate various sound concepts while editing scenes in slow motion. Every scene and scenario has it’s own set of challenges, but these tips are a great place to start.
In this month's Inside Sound Design, we have a brief chat with sound effects editor Kevin Hart. Kevin is a passionate member of the Boom Box Team who experiments with integrating other DAW's and softwares into his workflow. You can read about his method for creating dynamic fight backgrounds in Ableton Live here. In this post, Kevin shares his ideas and methods for creating the sound of high powered, electricity-based energy skates.
The entertainment industry can be tough. There are many cliche's, such as "It's all about who you know" or "It's all about right place right time." Neither of which are entirely untrue. However, I am a firm believer that anyone with some raw talent and a whole lot of drive can build themselves a career in post production sound - or any entertainment job for that matter.
If I'm making it sound easy, my apologies. It's absolutely a ton of work. Let me repeat that: getting a job in a highly specialized, creative industry where you are in competition with literally thousands of applicants will always be a ton of work. So why do it?
Some things never stop being funny, no matter how much time has passed. This is also true for sound effects. Some classic sound effects and jokes we use have been around for more than half a century! Kate gave an excellent run down of animation sound's origin in her THE HISTORY OF ANIMATION SOUND post, and many sounds devised by Carl Stalling, Treg Brown and Jimmy MacDonald(and the derivatives of their sounds) are still being used by sound editors today! This week, I asked a few of our editors to tell me about their favorite cartoon sound effects.
As Jeff mentioned in his blog post Top Ten Secret Pro Tools Shortcuts, learning Pro Tools shortcuts is a must for new sound editors if they want to be able to compete in our industry. Similarly, knowing the shortcuts to navigate through your OS quickly and efficiently is also really important. This is especially helpful to new editors trying to land their first sound job, as most of us come in at an assistant level, where a big part of the job is organizing files and multi-tasking among several projects. Learning basic navigational and organizational functions is a simple way to speed up your workflow and impress potential employers and clients.
When Plugin Alliance asked me to try out Unfiltered Audio's newest plugin, SpecOps, before it was released to the public, I was excited. I love having the opportunity to try out new sound design tools and maybe even give valuable feedback to the maker pre-release.
So, I began, as I always do, by reading the manual. You may prefer to watch a YouTube user video, or read a blog post (hopefully, like this one!), but I’ve always been a manual gal. I love to know every last detail about how to use a new piece of software before I try it out.
Well, this manual’s first sentence is “SpecOps is the ultimate spectral processor.”
Bold statement, right? I was a bit skeptical. I like my manuals to be fact-based, and this seemed like a pretty hyped up opinion. But, after digging into it, I can honestly say that it stands up to the hype. It is the ultimate!
Creative dialogue processing is a unique and fun challenge that varies from the sound design work we typically encounter on a daily basis. For this month’s Inside Sound Design post, I’m going to walk through one common and simple processing chain we might use for science-fiction themed computer or robot dialogue.
Last week we introduced the first of our fantastic new interns: Ian Howard. This week we check in with the other: Ruben Infante. Ruben attended Full Sail University, and recently worked as a Lead Stage Manager for NASA. We're thrilled to have him with us, and excited to hear about his unique perspective on sound and learning.
Here at Boom Box Post, we take pride in educating our interns and preparing them for the world of audio post-production. We are lucky to have a plethora of excellent candidates each and every time we interview. This week marks the beginning of a brand new class of interns: Ian Howard and Ruben Infante. In today's post I chatted with Ian about his background, expectations and desires for his internship education.