A COLLABORATIVE POST
WRITTEN BY BOOM BOX POST
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. The Children’s & Family Emmys will take place on the evening of March 15th and can be streamed live from the Emmy’s website!
Baby Shark’s BIG MOVIE!
Sound Mixing and Sound Editing For A Preschool Animated Program
Re-recording Mixers: Jacob Cook, CAS, MPSE, Jeff Shiffman, CAS, MPSE
Supervising Sound Editor : Tess Fournier, MPSE
Sound Effects Editors: Katie Jackson, MPSE, Natalia Saavedra Brychy, MPSE, Tim Vindigni, MPSE, Jayson Niner
Dialogue Editor - Logan Romjue, MPSETransformers: Earthspark
Sound Mixing and Sound Editing For An Animated Program
Re-recording Mixers: Jeff Shiffman, CAS, MPSE, Jacob Cook, CAS, MPSE
Supervising Sound Editor: Brad Meyer, MPSE
Sound Effects Editors: Natalia Saavedra Brychcy, MPSE, Jayson Niner
Foley Editor: Carol Ma, MPSESantiago of the seas
Sound Mixing and Sound Editing For A Preschool Animated Program
Re-recording Mixer: Jacob Cook, CAS, MPSE
Supervising Sound Editor: Brad Meyer, MPSE
Sound Effects Editors: Vivian Williams, MPSE, Jayson Niner
Foley Editor: Carol Ma, MPSE
Dialogue Editor: Logan Romjue, MPSE
We spoke with our talented team to get an inside look at the sound work for our nominees!
BABY SHARK’S BIG MOVIE
A conversation with Supervising Sound Editor / Re-recording mixer, Tess Fournier and sound effects editor Katie Jackson
What was the most challenging sound design aspect in this film?
Our biggest design challenge in the movie was the sound of the Siren Stone. We processed sounds of bowing cymbals, chimes, and otherworldly sounding drones to create a signature evil glow when it is first introduced. To enhance its sinister nature when Stariana utilizes the stone as a weapon, we added low end generators, sci-fi engines, and other “evil” mechanical sounds, which made it sound more threatening and dangerous. When it shoots we added a lot of sci-fi lasers and electrical energy. We were able to strike the perfect balance of threatening yet not gun-like as to not scare our young audience.
how did you approach designing underwater backgrounds & ambiences?
We played the role of world-builders and created a full custom underwater city ambience for Jaw City. We married underwater bubbles and drones, ocean creatures (such as dolphins and whales), submarines with cute propellor engines, and quirky child-like car horns to really immerse the audience into this intense underwater city. We also supported the underwater ambience by adding cute bubbles and water whooshing to pertinent body movements throughout the story.
Could you speak to how you elevated the humor through sound?
We enlivened the humor with our custom created cartoon effects! We combined lots of rubber, balloon and pop sound effects to make our own versions of classic old-school cartoon sounds to enhance the humor and keep the sound pallet fresh and modern.
What does being nominated for a feature like this mean to you?
It’s such an honor to be nominated for an Emmy alongside the rest of the team, and I’m so happy to have another reason to celebrate this awesome project! It has truly been such a collaborative and exciting movie and I am so proud of the final product. Being recognized for our work on a project that was already so fun to design and edit is just the cherry on top!
Transformers: Earthspark
A conversation with supervising sound editor, BRAD MEYER
With a brand as popular as transformers, how do you make the sound feel unique to the series but true to the franchise?
EarthSpark is steeped in Transformers history and lore, so we do our best to include references to older versions of the franchise in our editorial, like the classic sound of the bots transforming, while also creating fresh custom designs for things like vehicles, foley, fight moves, and even subtle transactional foley-type sounds like hand grabs and robot movements. We were fortunate enough to obtain some of the original SFX from Hasbro, used in the first generation Transformers series, and we do our best to either include some of those sounds in our sound design, or design fresh SFX inspired by the originals. The end result is a soundtrack that is new, custom, and has a sense of weight and action, while maintaining a familiarity and staying true to the Transformers universe at large.
How did you approach the robot design in regards to the vocals, footsteps and engine sounds?
A huge part of our prep work on the series included making the bots and characters feel real, especially the sounds for the bots themselves. You won't hear any classic robot cliches in this series. No on-the-nose robotic servo movements for example. Instead, we took a more realistic approach; movements are comprised of real-life car and vehicle components and shifting metal plates. To further the realism, we hardly designed any vehicles from scratch using plugins or design software. Instead, we Frankenstein-ed together real-life vehicles to create the vehicle design for each bot. For example, Bumblebee is a luxury sports car in this show, so his vehicle mode is comprised of real recordings of Ferraris, Lamborghinis, and Porches.
For the footsteps, the source material is almost strictly scrap metal, purposely avoiding anything too thin and flimsy. In addition to metallic elements, we needed to create several different surfaces for the bots to walk on, including dirt, grass, and wood. It was also really important that each bot's Foley have a true sense of weight. For the surface elements, rather than using the sound of a real footfall on the surface we needed, we used human bodyfalls for that heft. In addition to weighty source material recordings, every single footstep in the show has an LFE sweetener that accompanies it. Lastly, each bot has leg servos for each leg movement. In an effort to avoid cheesy servos, most of the leg servos we designed are hydraulic and metal based. Each and every bot footstep has elements of scrap metal, a human bodyfall (depending on the surface), an LFE sweetener, and a leg servo.
Another example of favoring realism over cliche was our treatment of the robot voices. The cliche with robot voices is to use a vocoder, doubling all speech with a droning synthetic tone. For Earthspark the producers asked that we have a lighter touch. Our mixer Jeff Shiffman went through a handful of iterations all based on Impulse Response Reverbs (click here for an IR primer) paired with speaker simulation. The impulse responses were metal chambers, giving the effect that the robot voice isn’t being “processed,” but rather it is emanating from the metal chest cavity of each bot. The speaker simulation was used to particular effect on the older “legacy” bots, emparting a touch of distortion and EQ to convey their aging nature. This served as a rough template for all the robot processing in the series. The results were something entirely new for a Transformers television franchise. So successful we even received direct feedback from Hasbro on how happy they were with the update.
what were the biggest sound design challenges with this episode?
The Transformers: EarthSpark episode “Judgement Day Part 1 & 2” was a massive sound challenge in terms of sheer size and action. This caps off a thrilling season, with the awakening of Terratronus (a powerful ancient bot the size of a city) and the conflict between the AutoBots and Decepticons finally coming to an end. The designs for Terratronus were challenging due to the size and scope of the character, and our sound team had to balance making her sound enormous while also using a wide frequency range. The approach was to design the sound of her body movement utilizing deep metal wronking and groaning, metallic synth sound effects, and pitching sustained musical horns combined with construction elements, boulders cracking, and earthquake rumbling.
Santiago of the Seas
A conversation with Re-recording mixer, jacob Cook & Supervising Sound Editor, BRAD MEYER
What sets apart the sound in this episode compared to others?
This episode, “Golden Guitar,” is a phenomenal example of the fast paced, action packed, sonic storytelling of Santiago of the Seas. From evil gadgets to magical music battles, this episode called for a bigger, scarier, more exhilarating soundscape that forced our team to push the boundaries of what preschool sound can be.
what was the biggest sound design challenge?
For this episode, our team had to think more musically. Creating a magical music battle, without interfering with music/score, was quite difficult. We created custom magic elements for the electric and acoustic guitars. With the electric guitar, we built electric shock/spark sounds to accompany each burst of magic, giving the electric guitar a more gnarly “evil” quality. To contrast, the acoustic guitar is brighter, lighter, and a bit angelic, to give it a “good”quality. All our hard work paid off to create a unique, musically magnificent soundscape that was dangerous, yet light-hearted, for our adventurous pre-school audience.
Tell us about one of your favorite designs in this episode.
Enrique accidentally creates a “sound net” due to his lack of guitar knowledge. To convey that, this net is the result of “bad guitar playing”, we used some malfunctioning, feedback-heavy, grating electric guitar sounds.
What does being nominated for a series like this mean to you?
Santiago of the Seas is more than just a show about the adventures of young pirates. It's about the power of teamwork and friendship. The characters in the show regularly play off of each other's strengths to accomplish a common goal, and they always have each other's backs. If you look at the characters in the show, as well as the people behind the scenes that make the show, you'll notice a breadth of races, genders, sexual orientations, and life experiences. Any good team, on or off screen, knows that diversity is a superpower and not a weakness. I think that is what makes Santiago of the Seas so special. It's important for children around the world to see, and for organizations like The Academy to recognize, especially now.
Congratulations to everyone who was nominated! We hope to see you at this year’s Children’s and Family Emmys!
Which series are you watching right now with emmy worthy sound editing?
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