What do you get when you add five sound designers, a handful of audio plugins and one amazingly unique sounding ape? This week we decided to get the entire crew involved with a fun sound design challenge. On a recent visit to the Los Angeles Zoo, my wife got a fantastic recording of Gibbons on her iPhone. If you're not familiar with the gibbon (I wasn't until we heard them from clear across the zoo), they are a species of Ape with a large throat sack that makes incredibly unusual (and loud) sounds. This recording captured a bunch of different tones and seemed like the perfect jumping off point for creative sound design. Each member of the crew was tasked with creating an original sound effect from this recording.
With the new demands of our expanding business, we have had the pleasure of bringing another talented editor on as part of our team, Jessey Drake. She comes to us with both a master's degree in sound design from The State University of New York at Fredonia, but also years of experience in animation sound editorial. To get to know her a little better, we asked her a few fun questions.
One challenge any modern business owner will inevitably face is data sharing and storage. It's not sexy. In fact, it's super unsexy. However big data is a fact of life and in post-production we collect A LOT of data. So I'm going to throw caution to the wind and dive right in. At Boom Box Post we've gone through a few iterations. Here's how (through trial and error) we solved our big data issues.
This was Boom Box Post's first time attending Comic-Con International: San Diego, and it was spectacular! Jeff and I reveled in the cosplay (and crossplay) photo ops, met amazing visual artists on the floor, attended panels for Disney's Penn Zero: Part-Time Hero and Star vs the Forces of Evil and Nickelodeon's TMNT, saw Nickelodeon's The Loud House screened for an audience of insanely enthusiastic children, and schmoozed with all of our favorite clients and friends from the past ten years. It was an incredibly overwhelming, fantastically fast-paced, whirlwind of a weekend. Check out some photo highlights below, and don't forget to read the captions to get the full experience. We'll see you all again next year!
Unlike in the past, degrees in audio engineering are now quite common, and many universities have added bachelor's as well as master’s degree programs for the specific professional niche of sound design. However, while these programs may teach the latest software and philosophize masterfully about the effects of sound on the human subconscious, surprisingly few degree tracks include the necessary knowledge of how to acquire actual work upon graduation.
In order to best understand the business of getting a job in sound design, you must first understand the types of employment available to you. Although these opportunities may be divided into two categories for tax purposes (independent contractor vs employee), I would like to further divide them into three in order to make important distinctions in business responsibilities in addition to the financial ones.
I've been proselytizing about the wonders of working with an iPad in my sound design career for years. More than just an excuse to get a new Apple product every few years (which admittedly it is), my creativite output and productivity have increased 10 fold with this device. As a tool in the studio, an iPad isn't necessarily cheap, but thes apps all clock in under $30. Compared to stand alone soft synths and plugins, all of these are a steal. Here are my favorite apps and some ways I like to utilize them.
In today's digital age, what better place to look for professional resources than the internet? Not only is the internet probably the most abundant collection of useful information, it is also the most accessible given the fact that we already spend nearly all day tethered to a computer, smartphone, or tablet. Why not take a quick break from your work and learn something of use rather than perusing the latest cat vids (although I am by no means against wonderfully indulgent cat videos)? Below are my absolute favorite online resources for sound designers. They span the breadth of online content from sound effects library downloads, technical support forums, mixing videos, and even mini documentaries to keep you current on the latest movie sound design trends. Enjoy, and internet away!
I often find myself creating custom effects as well as discovering hidden gems deep within my library. Sometimes I will go to look for a specific sound and stumble upon an awesome sound which is so randomly labeled, I know I will never be able to find it again. Now maybe you have a photographic memory or an astounding talent for remembering trivial file names. If so, this post probably isn’t for you. But if you’re like me, and memory just isn’t what it used to be, here’s a bit of advice on how I handle labeling my library.
With the new demands of our expanding business, we have had the pleasure of bringing another talented editor onto our team. Her name is Tess Fournier, and she comes to us with a great amount of technical knowledge from her previous employment and a passion for animation sound. To get to know her a little better, we asked her a few fun questions.
You may have heard the exciting news that Boom Box Post owner Jeff Shiffman and his wife, Corey, have welcomed a new baby boy into their family. Theodore "Teddy" Shiffman was born on May 29th, and Jeff has spent the last few days getting him settled in at home and starting to enjoy his new family of four.
So, in the spirit of new babies, below is a re-post of one of Jeff's personal sound blogs from just after his first child, Eloise, was born. You can find the original on Sounds Like Jeff or continue reading for a full re-post. Here's to growing families and sleep-filled nights! Enjoy!
Last week, I was tasked with designing the sound of a new character for a show. She is a fast-moving wild cat, and the spotting session called for her to sound incredibly speedy, but also fairly natural. She needed to be able to race past the other characters with astonishing velocity, leaving them in a trail of her dust.
My inspiration: jet bys! I wanted to create something from scratch that had the same effect of super speed as a jet by but was made from different sonic elements. I played around with different ideas of what sound her quickly cycling legs would make as they rushed past, thinking that focusing on this aspect would give an added level of interest to the sound. I considered using multi-swishes, speeding up her footfalls, etc. But, in the end, I settled on using a helicopter blade wop to express this idea. It had the perfect amount of high-frequency overtones to really cut through a mix, and also had the repetitive whooshing nature that I was looking for.
Jennifer Walden from POST Magazine (@post_magazine) contacted me a month ago interested in interviewing me for a feature on the use of commercial sound libraries in daily practice. As it turned out, I was working on the perfect scene to illustrate how I like to utilize library sounds; as musical building blocks to score a scene with sound design.
I recently began work on a new show, and luckily it has already presented tons of new challenges. At Boom Box Post, we like to consider sound design challenges as creative opportunities. So, when I spotted an episode in which the characters travel via microscopic submarine through a human body, I was excited. Each exterior shot of the submarine illustrated it moving through a viscous plasma-like liquid. I wanted to call upon the tried and true sounds of a submarine for the vehicle itself, but I wanted to do something unique for the sound of it moving through the plasma. This was the perfect opportunity to get creative with some recording!
This presented an immediate challenge: we do not own a hydrophone. I looked into buying one, but they are somewhat expensive and our underwater recording needs are pretty slim. It didn't seem worth the investment. I considered using one of my current mics and wrapping it in a water-proof casing, but that struck me as a pretty risky. So, I settled on buying a couple of inexpensive contact mics, a pack of condoms to act as water-proofing, and some heavy duty duct tape to put it together.
A few months back, Asbjoern Andersen contacted me asking if I'd be interested in writing a guest post about animation sound for his fantastic A Sound Effect blog. The following post was written over many weeks and a bunch of train rides (I like to write on the train, it makes me feel intrepid and vagabond-like). It's been such a blast to read/see/hear all the amazing comments from the sound community and to see it reprinted by Designing Sound and Pro Tools Expert.
I decided to reprint the post here with a bonus section I had originally cut from the piece (As if it wasn't long enough already). I hope you enjoy this personal story about my discovery of the power of creative sound design.
I was recently asked to give a guest lecture on sound design. This caused me to ask myself: if I could impart just a few kernels of advice about our world of sound design, what would I say? After much consideration, I realized that the whole process boiled down to one key moment: the sound spotting session.
Whenever a new pilot, episode, or series comes in, the first thing that I do is meet with the creator, director, and/or executive producer to "spot" the material. This means that we watch it together and discuss what they would like the sound to be both generally and at specific moments.
After being at the helm of these spotting sessions for ten years, I can honestly say that the spot is the moment which decides whether the project will culminate in a final product that surprises and delights or ultimately disappoints.
From the subtle to the bombastic and the all out weird, sound design approaches to robots have taken many forms over the years. With this month’s release of Ex Machina (which has some pretty amazing android sound design) here are my ten favorite takes on robot sounds.
At Boom Box Post, we try to take the time to meet with nearly everyone who asks: be it for an interview or a to give career advice to a young editor. Among the most inspiring parts of interacting with those who are new to the profession are the questions they pose that cause us to look again at our job with fresh eyes (and ears!). One of these questions which was posed to me by a recent audio school graduate was, "What should I do to prepare myself to be an editor?" My answer, "Start listening."
Unlike visuals of which we take constant notice, sound is often an unnoticed undercurrent in our lives. Ask yourself: when you tell a story to a friend, do you describe what you saw or what you heard? Most likely, you focus on the visuals. Now think about how hearing a sound from your childhood can suddenly thrust you back to the emotions from that time in your life. Sound can be an incredibly powerful storytelling device.
Yesterday I came across a sound design challenge I've faced a handful of times. I needed electrical crackling/humming sounds (think Tesla coil). The sequence required both a steady sound as well as some fast whooshing of these sounds by the camera. I have needed these sounds enough times that I decided it was time to try and create them from scratch instead of using some old standbys.
To start, I needed a really great warm humming sound. My first thought was to get up and see what kind of sounds my light bulbs were making. Trying to find this in my lamps proved fruitless because as it turns out, we have gone through a handful of lightbulbs (requiring a number of trips to Home Depot by our Boom Box Post interns) to avoid just such a noise in our editorial rooms. As I headed to our storage room to try and dig up some of the noisier light bulbs we had rejected, I heard a loud noise coming from the kitchen. As luck would have it the compressor for our water cooler was freaking out and making quite a racket. I grabbed my Sony PCM-M10 portable recorder and ran to the kitchen.
Last September, I stumbled upon an IndieGoGo page asking for donations to “Send WAM to the 137th AES Convention!” Their plea for funds was told by an endearing indie music video with lyrics like:
Help send WAM to the the AES Convention,
Where we’ll see the latest audio inventions.
The largest expo of audio professionals,
WAM’s booth will make AES more accessible.
WAM stands for Women's Audio Mission, and it is “a San Francisco-based non-profit organization dedicated to the advancement of women in music production and the recording arts.” Their page explains that “in a field where women are critically under-represented (less than 5%), WAM seeks to ‘change the face of sound’ by providing hands-on training, experience, career counseling and job placement to women and girls in media technology for music, radio, film, television and the internet. WAM believes that women's mastery of music technology and inclusion in the production process will expand the vision and voice of media and popular culture.”
Now, this was something that I could get behind.
A recent challenge had me wanting to create some new writhing/wriggling/squishing sounds. I dug up some very old recordings I had done of my mouth when it was really dry. They were decent recordings, but by themselves they really only work for exactly what they are, a character opening and closing a very dry mouth. I knew there was a lot of good texture and variance in there, but the performance was all spread out. I could spend my time chopping it up and trying to make something of it in editorial, but I decided to break out a new tool in my arsenal.
Samplr is an app for the iPad that I recently discovered. It's a multi-mode sampler that you can record directly into (useful for on the fly recordings) or import directly into from a variety of sources (I'm using dropbox). As an iPad app, Samplr is inherently touch based, which is what makes it so powerful.
