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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Focus on the Creative
It can be both an exciting and terrifying feeling being a new editor. On one hand, you are thrilled to start editing on a project! On the other hand, you don’t know where to begin…I interviewed a few editors on our team who know exactly how you’re feeling and can give you some insight on their editorial approach.
One of the best parts about sound for animation is being able to completely start from scratch designing something. That’s why we love showing you our creative process on fun things we get to design! For this focus on the creative blog, we are going to dive right into showing you a cute little flying machine we designed. Check it out below!
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!
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!
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!
At Boom Box Post, we primarily work on animated television series, which means that much of our design work is linear and lives within the context of the story. However, every once in a while we’re thrown a fantastic curveball and are asked to design for something outside of our usual sound-for-picture role.
Recently, one of our television series came to us with a design mission: to create the sounds which would be integrated into a toy based on a train which would appear in a future season of the series.
In 2016, we did two very popular Glossary of Sound Effects posts. Learning keywords to use for your library can save you a ton of time. I thought it would be helpful to do a third post with a ton of new terms!
We’ve all heard the old adage: be the change you want to see in the world. Jeff and I take this responsibility extremely seriously. We may only be one small studio in Burbank, CA, but we are doing our best to aid in the visibility of women as smart, capable, and creative audio professionals. We sleep well at night knowing that we are giving opportunities to deserving individuals and we’re doing it in an environment of respect and appreciation.
So you can see that taking part of WAMCon was a natural extension of our company ethos. We could not be more proud that they asked us to be part of it.
One of the most challenging sequences a sound editor can face is a car chase. Vehicles are tough. Even the most experienced designer can hit a wall when trying to make them work. This is by no means a complete guide, however, this primer should prove helpful for those looking to dip their toes into the wild world of vehicle sound editorial.
Sound effects editor Brad Meyer is always designing amazing effects with unique builds and altering plugins. This week, well chat with him about a steady and pass by effect he created for a super fast running animal.
The SiFi genre offers up so much creativity from a visual aspect but also opens up a lot of potential for cool sound design. This week, we will chat with sound editor Tess Fournier about a futuristic disintegration design she created.
You may recall that I’ve written about creating signature sounds in the past. So, why write another post on the same topic? First of all, creating signature sounds is a skill that is absolutely essential to to setting yourself up as a high-quality professional sound designer. Second, that post covered a practical approach to designing signature sounds such as working on one sound at a time and designing in context. Here, I’d like to walk you through my actual creative process on a particular project.
Our sound effects editor Jessey Drake has been working on a lot of fun and creative things for us lately so for this months Focus on the Creative post, Jessey is going to break down how she created a unique sound for mind control.
Earlier this week we orchestrated a mini monster-fest, recording an insane amount of monster vocalizations for a new series. We recorded almost everyone in the office performing a variety of sounds , giving direction as to the type of creature each person would be voicing and instructions on the types of sounds we needed. Not only was this a total blast, but it reminded me how powerful our own voices are as a tool for sound design. As a result, these are my top tips for creating and designing great monster vocal material!
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.
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.
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.
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.
As sound people, sometimes we hear something so unique we just have to capture it. A lot of sound designers (myself included) carry around mini recorders for just such an occasion. But we can't always be prepared. There are moments when you need to capture a sound in an instant. Like if a bird with a crazy call lands on an open window. We don't always have professional recording gear at hand. Most of us however do have a cell phone nearby.
For this month's interview post I sat down with Brad Meyer, a sound effects editor here at Boom Box Post. Brad spends a lot of his time designing exciting, signature sound effects for his shows, especially vehicle sound effects, using both custom recordings and sound library material. Brad sat down with me to talk about his process for creating the signature sound effects for a demonic race car that is possessed by monsters.
