If you are just starting your career in post production sound you might have seen the position of Supervising Sound Editor or Sound Supervisor pop up here and there on job sites or in the end credits of TV shows or movies. For many new or aspiring sound editors there is a bit of a misunderstanding over what the roles and responsibilties of the Supervising Sound Editor position consist of. Sound supervisors are more than just people who check the editors work, they wear many hats that they need to switch between at a moments notice. We had a chance this week to chat with Tess and Brad, two of our supervisors, about what their jobs entail and advice they would give editors looking to become sound supervisors.
Often times, we’re faced with the task of designing sounds that track the movements of certain on screen visuals. These sounds need to be continuous, reactive, and dynamically pitched; imagine a car weaving in and out of traffic. It accelerates, then gradually slows down, eventually swerving out of the way of an oncoming semi-truck. Maybe you have a character wielding a magical sword; swinging it through the air at varying speeds and veracity while emitting a sparkly blue glow. These types of scenarios need a convincing sound that coincides with the every movement of the character or prop.
Congratulations to the Boom Box Post team for winning the Golden Reel for Outstanding Achievement in Sound Editing — Non-Theatrical Animation for their work on Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie! We are so honored to have won this award, especially in such a competitive year.
Lunch and Learns are a staple tradition here at Boom Box. These monthly meetings are chances for the team to learn from one another and explore different topics in sound and post production. We have done many Lunch and Learns since Boom Box’s inception ranging from plugin tutorials, to recording techniques, to tips for leading a team of editors.
As many of you know, in 2017, we branched out from our post-production sound business, Boom Box Post, to start Boom Box Library. BBL (as we call it around here) is a sound effect library company which allows us to share our sound design work with other professionals, and also contribute to the creativity of our community members with custom-recorded libraries that we feel fill a void in basic materials. In short, our award-winning sound designers are creating sound libraries that we ourselves want to use.
For many of you who freelance or have unpredictable schedules, adding library creation to your business ventures could be just the thing you need. But, while recording or designing the sounds may be totally in your wheelhouse, there are a lot of other things that go into being able to sell your libraries. And that’s the end goal, right?
Whether you are a newly graduated student or you are a long time picture editor looking to delve more into sound, jumping into the freelance world can be intimidating. You might have some money saved up and are wondering where to allocate it to best help you freelance career. After securing a decent computer and a Pro Tools subscription it can be easy to fall into the mindset that you need the newest shiniest plugin or the fanciest piece of hardware. While plugins and gear are nice to have and can indeed help you, finding quality sound effect libraries to add to your personal sound collection is perhaps a more worthwhile endeavor.
As a total productivity nerd, I’ve tried many different applications to speed up my workflow and day-to-day task management, both at work and at home. I use a mix of Todoist, Spark (email), Google Calendar, and Slack. After constantly jumping back and forth between all of these applications, I decided to look into a way to make them work together more efficiently. After researching different websites, I decided to try out Zapier, an app automation and integration tool.
We are honored to have been nominated for two Motion Picture Sound Editors 2023 Golden Reel awards!
“Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie”
Outstanding Achievement in Sound Editing – Non-theatrical Animation
“Transformers Earthspark” -
Outstanding Achievement in Sound Editing – Broadcast Animation
We thought this would be a great opportunity to share some stories behind the sound editorial on these two fantastic projects via interviews with Supervising Sound Editors Jeff Shiffman and Brad Meyer.
In many of our shows, we often get the exciting opportunity to work on a pirate adventure! I wanted to outline some of the things that are crucial to building a pirate ship that sounds fun, authentic, and thrilling! The kind of ship you are designing may vary, but this is a good guide to give you a place to start. You can always tailor it to whatever special needs your project calls for.
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.
The twenty twenties just keep getting better (it’s hard to go anywhere else but up)! 2022 was a big year for Boom Box Post. Here is a look back at the year and some of the staff’s 2022 retrospectives!
Happy Holidays from Boom Box Post!
From through the holidays, our entire Boom Box Library site it 40% off.
Everything is on sale including our latest releases, Shopping Carts and Futuristic Weapons, and our top sellers like 1966 Ford Mustang and Magic Chimes. Don’t miss out on our biggest sale of the year!
We recently brought on a new Boom Box apprentice. It is our pleasure to introduce Isabel Roney! We had a chance to ask her a few questions to better get to know her. Continue reading to get to know her better.
Weaponiser, a plugin from Krotos, was created to assist in the building of gunshot effects, but with a better understanding of how to use it, Weaponiser can be beneficial to all kinds of builds from customizing a one time effect to providing slight alterations to repeated sound events. Using Weaponiser you can even quickly build a multi character Foley Libraries!
Happy Holidays to all of you editors, mixers, engineers, recordists, professionals, prosumers, students, freelancers, and everyone in between. Whether you want to impress a special sound/post production person in your life or you work in the sound world and are having trouble filling out your holiday wish list we have you covered!
From now through Cyber Monday, you can add our Black Friday/Cyber Monday discount at checkout to snag 25% off your full order. Just use discount code BFCM.
Everything is on sale including our latest releases, Shopping Carts and Futuristic Weapons, and our top sellers like 1966 Ford Mustang and Magic Chimes. Don’t miss out on our biggest sale of the year!
The Futuristic Weapons sound effects library features a wide-sweeping collection of high-tech sci-fi weapon sound effects. Each weapon sound effect has been sound designed from the ground up to match the life, characteristics, and personality of one of our five Robotic Creations robots. Because the robot personalities range from Mimo, the friendly robot buddy, to Firewall, the gigantic mech suit, the range in weapons is extreme. You’ll find sounds like a zip line, boomerang, water gun, laser blaster, futuristic gatling gun, mayhem blasts, and everything in between.
So I’m getting in to work, normal day, pretty routine. Except I see this shopping cart in the corner next to our parking lot. It gives me pause. In my nearly two decades in this business, I’ve always struggled to find good shopping cart sounds.
