The Boom Box Post blog provides insights into the creative sound design process of Boom Box Post's owners and employees.
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tips
2025 is officially here! One of my New Year’s resolutions is to make a conscious effort to improve my speed and efficiency in my sound work. It’s easy to get stuck in your old ways, especially if you’ve been working with Pro Tools for quite a while. Since there are a million ways to achieve the same result, what better time than now to start exploring other techniques and form new habits in your workflow?
When done right, the music montage is a wonderful thing. The right song or classic bit of score can bring an audience to an entirely new emotional level. If you don’t believe me, go watch the first ten minutes of Pixar’s “Up,” some incredibly devastating filmmaking; a master course in montage.
So how do you approach music montages in your mix? What are some of the basic techniques and rules to follow? Below, I lay out my best practices.
Everyone knows that the key to becoming a quicker editor is learning and utilizing keyboard shortcuts, but Pro Tools is such a powerful piece of software that even the most seasoned editors or mixers might not know all the keyboard shortcuts that can help speed up their workflow. Hopefully after reading this blog. post you can walk away with at least one Pro Tools tip or trick you didn’t know before.
Job interviews are a challenge. As much as you know you deserve the job, those interviewing you do not (yet). A job interview is a sales pitch; the product you are selling is yourself. No worries, you know yourself really well! You just need to bring your story forward in the best way possible.
We have dozens of blog posts on how you can level up your sound editorial game. This post is intended to go beyond the basics - making sure you color code you work, cut for perspective, etc. This isn't about missing deadlines or forgetting to clean up markers in your session before turning in your work. These are mistakes that even seasoned sound editors make all the time. Avoiding these seemingly small mistakes could make a big difference in how you are perceived by your supervisors and those mixing your work.
We are all familiar with the saying, “You learn something new everyday!” Well, in hopes that we can all continue to learn and grow together, I would like to share with you a few super simple workflow “hacks” that had me questioning, “How did I not know this before!?”
One of our most popular blog series is Glossary of Sound Effects, of which we have done 3 parts. On the original post, we get a ton of questions asking what keywords should be used when trying to find very specific sounds. I decided to relay a few of these questions to our editorial team. I’m very curious what buzzwords they will recommend.
2020 may be over, but we aren’t out of the woods yet. After the year we all had, don’t you think it’s important we start taking better care of ourselves? If so, check out these 5 work from home tips to help you start 2021 stress-free!
Can you believe Fall is already here? Autumn is my absolute favorite time of year, so to help us all get into the spirit I thought up a fun list of Fall-themed sounds you should consider recording for your sound library this spooky time of year!
A little over a month ago colleges across the country held virtual commencement ceremonies for the graduating class of 2020. If you were one of the many to graduate during this turbulent time you may be asking yourself, “What do I do now?” Here are some steps you can take right now to prepare yourself and help with your future job search!
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.
We recently said goodbye to another class of interns here at Boom Box Post and the timing seems right to bring up a theme we get from a lot of the talent that complete our program. They want to know how to avoid getting fired when beginning their careers. While this is in fact a very smart question to ask, I thought I’d spin things in a more positive light and collect some ideas not simply avoiding termination but truly impressing on the job.
Looking at the various jobs in the business of Post Production sound, re-recording mixing seems to carry an air of mystique. It’s an intimidating task, even for an experienced sound editor, to make the jump to the console. There seems to be so much that can go wrong. So many small factors that need to be accounted for simply to make the gear work. It’s true, there are hundreds of details to be aware of, but with some basic tips we can pull back the curtain on some of the more daunting technical aspects, allowing you to put aside trepidation and make the gear work for you.
