The Boom Box Post blog provides insights into the creative sound design process of Boom Box Post's owners and employees.
Cold calling a company can be intimidating and daunting. However, as you look for your first job out of school, or a new job, it is often necessary. As the Boom Box Post Office Administrator, I answer all kinds of phone calls and some leave bigger, better impressions than others. I hope to give you some real world advice to help you move your call past the receptionist and onto the next level by leaving a positive impression.
Our current apprentice, Andrew Shirey, is coming to the end of his 6 months with us. We took the opportunity to sit down with him for a brief Q&A to learn more about his thoughts on the apprenticeship program.
We were recently interviewed by multiple publications about Invincible Season 2 including Post Magazine, Tonebenders Podcast, and SFX Magazine! We are always thrilled when a show that we have worked on gets the light that it deserves and we love to share the behind the scenes post-sound process.
It’s that time of year again! The Primetime Emmy Awards have accepted submissions and voting begins soon! We are thrilled to be submitting Invincible for both the sound editing and sound mixing categories. Check out details and get the inside scoop on our submissions below!
Recently, Boom Box Post co-owner, Jeff Shiffman brought in three different Typewriters for a recording project. We put our apprentice, Andrew Shirey up to the test to get all the sounds possible out of the multiple type writers provided. Let’s see what he was able to capture!
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.
As a mixer of a lot of Disney content, I have years of experience mixing musical numbers (or songs, as we call them). As someone who came into post-production sound mixing from a classical music and music engineering and mixing background, this is one of my favorite parts of the job. It brings me so much joy to have the privilege to integrate amazing Broadway-style musical numbers and carefully crafted pop songs of all genres into the stories that kids consume. A great song can be a wonderful extension of the story–not just adding a little pizzazz, but bringing the entire story to new depths.
One of my favorite aspects of sound mixing is building up the ambient sound in the universe of each show and sculpting it all together into a cohesive sonic world. Diegetic music is one piece of the soundscape puzzle that is often misunderstood by new editors and mixers. Diegetic means that the element exists within the world of the characters, and is able to be heard or seen by them. This contrasts with the non-diegetic musical score, which exists outside of their world and is not heard by them.
As a re-recording mixer, it’s our job to create the final sound balance for a film or TV project. Here at Boom Box Post, we edit and prep both the dialogue and sound effects. The score however comes directly from the composers. The music has been both organized and mixed but it’s now our job to fit it in to the rest of the soundtrack. That’s where this post comes in. For this Music Mixing Basics posts, I’ll be covering the steps we take to work the score into the final mix.
Since opening our doors in 2015, we have had the privilege of teaching 25 interns and 5 apprentices. We reached out to a handful of previous interns and apprentice’s to see what they have been up to.
It’s very rare that a sound editor will cut in a single sound effect to match a visual on screen. Usually, we’re layering multiple effects together to create something new. Why do we do this? Because the result is usually something more rich and interesting than a single effect by itself. But layering can be unnecessary and frustrating for your mixer if you don’t do it with purpose. I’d like to talk about the right and wrong ways to layer sound effects to get the most out of your editorial.
We are so proud of our clients who have been nominated for a GLAAD Award! The GLAAD Media Awards is the most visible annual LGBTQ awards show in the world, sending powerful messages of acceptance to audiences globally.
A few weeks ago, Chad Anderson of Filmmaker U invited me to chat with him about sound for animation. Filmmaker U is a website that creates courses for film professionals to deepen and diversify their skillsets. So, as a huge proponent of being a lifelong learner, I was very excited to add the topic of animation sound to that knowledge base for their audience!
Last summer I found myself with a little extra time on my hands and a big idea. Coming on the heels of an original Boom Box Library offering, “Magic Chimes,” which I recorded back in 2021, I wanted to expand on the idea of an all encompassing percussion library. I received classical training as a percussionist at the Indiana University School of Music (now the Jacobs School). We would spend hours in master classes focused on one instrument, perfecting for example, the ideal triangle performance. Hours. On the triangle. Needless to say, I felt qualified for the task. Here’s my chance to revisit those roots and put together something really special.
We are extremely proud to announce the release of our latest Boom Box Library: The Percussion SFX Bundle!
The Percussion Bundle includes all four sound effect libraries in the Percussion Collection: Cymbals & Gongs, Magic Chimes, Hand Drums, and Auxiliary Percussion. All libraries contain high-quality recordings of professionally played percussion instruments. Various sticks and mallets were employed at numerous tempos and volumes.
Let’s discuss distinct winter sounds to capture and enhance your sound library!
We are extremely proud to announce the release of our latest Boom Box Library: The Auxiliary Percussion SFX Library!
The Auxiliary Percussion SFX Library is the latest member of our Percussion Collection and contains a wide variety of professional percussion sound effect recordings. Instruments include a bamboo horn, various tambourines, cabasa, castanets, claves, cowbell, various maracas and shakers, flexatone, toy glockenspiel, guiro, harmonica, kalimba, triangle, rainstick, sleigh bells, spoons, train whistle, and wood blocks. Each instrument is played at numerous tempos and employing various techniques.
We recently brought on a new Boom Box Post apprentice. It is our pleasure to introduce Andrew Shirey! We had a chance to ask him a few questions to better get to know him.
We are extremely proud to announce the release of our latest Boom Box Library: The Hand Drums SFX Library!
The Hand Drums SFX Library is the latest member of our Percussion Collection and contains a wide variety of professional percussion sound effect recordings. Instruments include the den den, djembe, doumbek, frame drum, and udu drum played at numerous tempos and employing various techniques.
For this library, all drums were played by our co-owner and classically trained orchestral percussionist, Jeff Shiffman, to achieve an incredibly high standard of quality.
Earlier this year, I sat down with GirltalkHQ, the digital publication which describes itself as “an inclusive digital feminist magazine amplifying diverse voices + stories,” for an interview. But, I wanted to be sure that the article they released wasn’t just going to appeal to women or feminists. Instead, I hoped to give an interesting look inside a post-production sound studio that happens to be co-owned by a woman and which maintains a 50% female and gender-expansive staff (something unique in a world where Women’s Audio Mission is still citing that only 5% of those employed in audio are women) without giving gender any weight during hiring decisions.
