The Boom Box Post blog provides insights into the creative sound design process of Boom Box Post's owners and employees.
Comedy is alive and well in both live action and animation. And as any sound designer worth their salt knows, our job is to support the script which often means supporting comedy. The best sound design can highlight what is already great about the picture and elevate it further by helping the audience to focus on it. So, how do we support a funny moment without dipping into our toony toolbox?
On occasion, a sound editor’s musical skills are put to the test when they are asked to recreate a tune or song for a specific sound effect. For example, in the second episode of Yuki 7, the alarm clock that goes off matches the theme song of the show, which you can listen to starting at 1:11 in the video below. For sound editors with no musical training, this task can be particularly challenging. So for this blog, I’m going to teach you how to recreate a melody to use with any sound effect just by listening to it!
As I’m building upon my sound editing skills, a critique I often receive is that my sound effects build is not utilizing a fuller frequency range, so it’s not as impactful during previews. Developing a dynamic frequency range into my builds isn’t just important for having powerful sound moments, it’s also essential for ensuring that the sound effects translate on all possible listening platforms, like a huge Dolby Atmos theatre and tiny pair of ear buds. In order to tackle this challenge, I asked two of our supervising sound editors, Brad Meyer, MPSE, and Tess Fournier, MPSE, to play a frequency-association game. I named some commonly referenced frequency ranges, and they followed up with sound effects that come to mind, and why these particular ranges are valuable for creating effective sound effects builds.
January has been a very exciting month for the Boom Box Post team. Following the holiday break, the team began to move into our new 520 S Verdugo location! Check out some recent updates, as well as pictures from move in day!
Constructing a portfolio reel for the first time can be daunting, but it’s an effective method to show recruiters and potential employers your skill set in post-production audio editing. I noticed in my own job search that many employers encourage and even require them. While many audio-post production internships or college programs can offer helpful guidance for building portfolio reels, not everyone has these resources. So, here are four tips for making your portfolio reel.
As an animation dialogue editor, I usually work with clean and high quality recording files. However, in the past two years, the pandemic changed a big amount of my work routine. The files I received are mostly recorded by voice actors themselves at home from Zoom meetings. Some files are recorded from a bad microphone position, some are recorded in a reverberant space, and some have frequency humming in the background. I spend a lot of time cleaning up the recording files as best as I can, so I’m always on the lookout for a good noise reduction plug-in. DNS One from Cedar has a good reputation from a lot of mixers and dialogue editors, so I gave it a try.
We had so many exciting project releases and accomplishments in 2021, including new TV shows, fresh features, and awards nominations! We started new ventures, ranging from moving into our new office building at 520 S Verdugo Drive, to working on our first Dolby Atmos mixes. Last year, we accumulated two Daytime Emmy nominations for Outstanding Sound Mixing and Sound Editing for a Preschool Animated Program for Mickey Mouse Mixed-Up Adventures and Muppet Babies.
2020 was a year unlike any other. So much so that it was hard to put into words how we felt about it. For that reason, at the end of the year I asked our Boom Box Post team to pick a sound effect that they felt best described 2020. We had so much fun with that post that we thought we would do it again this year. So again I asked the BBP team, “If 2021 was a sound effect, what would it be?”
2021 was a year full of adaption and learning a new hybrid form of remote and in-person work and life. Here at Boom Box Post, we began to master the new work flow as we focused on editorial on new shows and honed in on our skills. See some reflections from the team below!
I have come across a few free Chrome extensions that I have incorporated into my day-to-day workflow. These extensions have made a big difference in my productivity and I would love to share them with all of you.
As the holidays creep closer and the end of 2021 is in sight, finding the perfect gift can become increasingly daunting. Worry no more - we’ve got you covered with plenty of great gift ideas for all your closest audio friends. From the post-production pros, to the curious minds, to the creative designers, here is our list of gift recommendations!
Over at our other company, Boom Box Library, we recently released “Magic Chimes,” a library of mark tree and bell tree recordings for sound design and music applications. The library has been a big success thus far, clearly filling a need in the sound library community. Creating it from scratch was very fun, so I thought it would be interesting to share the process with you.
Data management in audio post-production can impact productivity and is a vital skill for many reasons. Most of the materials we accept and send out can take up a lot of space on a hard drive, there are assets coming in from multiple sources, and especially with TV shows, there are influxes of files coming in constantly. Without a solid structure for organizing locked pictures, sound effects edit sessions, music exports, mixes, and deliverables, wading through data can turn from a tide pool into a tidal wave. Whether working as a freelancer, editing or mixing in post-production, or at a company like Boom Box Post, here are five data management tips to consider.
We released two new custom libraries this week: Magic Chimes & the Editor Toolbox: Construction Edition. To celebrate, we made our entire Boom Box Library store 25% off. From now through Cyber Monday, you can add our Black Friday/Cyber Monday discount to your order to snag an EXTRA 15% off on top of that. Just add BFCM during checkout.
The Construction SFX Library contains essential sound effect recordings of manual and power tools as well as construction site ambiences. Included are the sound effects for items such as a circular saw, cordless drill, chainsaw, shop light, nail gun, hammer, hand saw, toolbox foley, large and small construction site ambiences, and more.
This highly curated and easy-to-use library is perfect for a video editor or sound effects editor working on a project involving tools or construction.
We are extremely proud to announce the release of our latest Boom Box Library: The Magic Chimes SFX Library!
The Magic Chimes SFX Library contains a wide variety of professional mark tree (the professional name for wind chimes) and bell tree sound effect recordings. These include glissandos, scales, single notes, steadies, shaking, and more.
Creature vocals or monster vocals, if you will, are one of the more conceptually challenging elements to telling a story through sound. I always struggle with, “Is it real enough?” or “Is this vocal believable for this creature on screen?” Of course, that’s a matter of personal opinion and experience, but there are some approaches that make the design process of these vocals a little more palpable and easier to arrive at the “finished” product.
October was a very busy month for us here at Boom Box Post, as we finished packing up our 211 W Palm Ave office. The final goodbye was on November 1st; and while 211 W Palm Ave has been a homebase for our Boom Box Post team these past 7 years, we are beyond excited to move into our new location and create more memories together.
If you missed Jeff’s big announcement in his blog post Introducing Boom Box Post Verdugo, we are currently building a new facility that will be all our own! We are in the home stretch of construction of our new studio which will feature three Atmos-ready mix stages. We are hoping to complete construction in about a month, and then we will move on to fabric, wiring, and gear installation on the stages. Because this process has been fascinating to us as first-time mix stage builders, I thought I would share our progress thus far with all of you.
