The Boom Box Post blog provides insights into the creative sound design process of Boom Box Post's owners and employees.
Hi all! Today I’m going to be discussing the DeHumaniser II plugin by Krotos. It’s an excellent plugin for creature vocal sound design that’s really fun to use. There is also the Simple Monsters plugin which is a simpler, less customizable version of the same plugin, but at a more affordable price tag ($99 vs $399 for DeHumaniser II).
The day-to-day tasks of a Studio Manager are vast and encompass a handful of responsibilities. Although the job is likely to vary depending on the studio, I want to provide some insight to what I do as Boom Box Post’s Studio Manager.
It’s easy to get caught up in the hustle of the daily grind. Emails, texts, Slack messages, reminders and more are constantly competing for my attention during the workday (and often in the evening or or weekends). Are we truly meant to be on call this much? That’s a topic for another day! But what I do know is that in the race to pivot from one task to another, often times mistakes can be made, which leads to time wasted, not gained.
My main reason in writing this post is to give some insight to college students/new graduates on what being an assistant editor looks like because I was in that spot not too long ago. If you don’t fall into this category, well, I hope you still want to know what my job is like! After interning at Boom Box in the summer of 2018, I knew that I wanted to work here. I was so excited to take over the roll of the person who was supervising me as an intern! I’ve now been in this position for over a year and feel like I can give you all there is to know about my job.
A few weeks ago one of our editors, Peter, wrote a blog about a software called Sound Particles. You can check his blog out here to get an in depth look at how the software works. We thought it would be fun to get our whole team in on trying out this awesome software. Check out below a few renders of audio our editors created and how they did it!
With the changing of the seasons comes a whole new world of sound. So, let’s discuss some key summertime sounds to keep an ear out for and record to bulk up your SFX library this time of year!
With the protests that have erupted after the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and the countless other African Americans that have experienced police brutality, a conversation about general inequality and lack of representation in the entertainment industry has bubbled to the surface once more. It is a sore subject for many and there is no easy solution to tackle the issue, but it is a necessary conversation.
One of the things I've noticed working in animation is that you have a world of possibilities to create all kinds of sound design of monsters, spaceships, crazy rides, or even the sound of a giant squishy ball rolling out of control! A lot of the times, these sounds have to feel heavy and at the same time have movement to them. But, how to you get something to feel heavy and big, and also make it feel that it can go fast? Check out my process below!
We are very excited to announce that we were nominated for THREE Daytime Emmy Awards this year! A large number of our team members were part of these nominations, and we are ecstatic to share their good news with the world!
As a sound editor, having a well rounded library is very important. Some of you might be lucky enough to have a library provided to you by your company and others might be wondering where the heck you even start. There are plenty of great libraries out there on the web that you can purchase or download for free with no effort of recording at all but there are going to be things that you will need to record yourself. A good place to start is by recording small hand held props. Recently we came across needing these type of recordings for a new series. Check out some helpful tips below!
We, at Boom Box Post, are among the lucky ones. Because we work in animation and our clients aren’t on set, our entire Los Angeles client-base was able to transition very quickly to work-from-home, thus keeping our operations alive and well. That is far from the case for our live-action counterparts. But, that doesn’t mean that we haven’t also seen changes in the amount and type of work that has come through our now-virtual door.
Let’s play a game! Listen to the 6 mystery sounds and then take our quiz to guess what each sound is! Can you get all 6 correct?
We recently received a request to write a post on how we’ve been dealing with the global pandemic. While I am a bit worried our audience may be exhausted by COVID-19 coverage, I think it’s important to share our experience in this time with one another. With that in mind, I hope this post brings some information your way about work from home workflows as well as our unique perspective as a boutique post production studio dealing with the crisis. I’m also hoping it may spark some new conversation about how we are all dealing with this creative field while isolated from one another. So let’s dive in!
If you’re anything like me, music can be a useful tool to help keep you motivated and focused during times like these. So for today’s post, I have put together a playlist of songs that contain sound effects. My hope is that this list will lift your spirits and bring some fun to your day.
Happy Tuesday everyone! I hope you are all staying safe during this crazy time of quarantine. We sure do miss being at Boom Box! We hope to get your mind off all the madness with this bug zapper transformation build. Most people know that bugs are drawn to lights at night (it’s rather gross to watch… and makes me mad just thinking about how many bugs have swarmed my face at night near any sort of light). Well, this build showcases that kind of sequence. It is pretty epic so check out the creative process and listen to how it came together!
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!
Sound Particles is a 3D audio software that uses particles. Each particle corresponds to a 3D audio object which is then captured using a virtual microphone. This allows for very interesting and creative sound design as we can place the audio source anywhere in a 3D virtual space. Instead of working on a linear workflow, Sound Particles allows us to visualize and place each sound in a 3D space. Check out a few cool designs we did below!
A few years ago our team was challenged to capture a singular sound that provides insight to their everyday life. I thought it’d be fun for our editors to take on this challenge again, but this time it's quarantine edition!
Recently we decided that our library was lacking in non-english dialogue. Not only do our mixers constantly need them on the stage, our editors in their day to day editorial also noticed we could use them. We took a whole day recording everyone around the office and it was a bunch of fun to act out the long list of ideas we had. We hope you enjoy the funny faces we made!
There are many different ways to be a great leader and a lot of different philosophies that can get you there. But this post isn’t to cover the theoretical side of leadership. This is a nuts and bolts how-to with specific tips regarding software, meetings, organization, and communication specifically pertaining to being a supervising sound editor. Obviously, there are many approaches on this front as well, but here’s what we do here at Boom Box Post with much success.
