In 2008, 409.9 million units/games were sold to consumers. This was an 11% rise on sales the year before. Despite a downturn in the economy, the video game industry was still able to expand. I have watched the rise of the gaming industry closly for some years, and in my opinion, its growth mirrors that of Hollywood. We’ll see good and bad games released of course, but more games will be made than ever before, and that means more sound will be needed for them.
I was reading this article in Edge magazine recenetly on the scoring of the soundtrack to Sony Entertainment’s long awaited “Killzone 2″. The article focused on the 28 minutes of music for the games cutscenes. The score by Joris de Man was initially expected to be fleshed out in MIDI by the games sound designers due to time constraints, however Sony wanted “a triple A title to have a triple A soundtrack.” This led the sound design team to Abbey Road, ultimately realising de Man’s score orchestrally over two days. Nowadays the tendency of games designers to use real recorded audio soundtracks is becoming the norm for big titles. MIDI is still a possibility for the in-game sequences however, mainly due to its ease of use, and thus easier to trigger or build in intensity given in-game events. I realised that I already knew this, and in fact had considered it years ago.
Killzone 2 performed in Abbey Road Studio 1
Game music is all about triggers. I realised this playing the original “Halo” on the Xbox some years ago. When you walked into a room, a beat would start. As you walked deeper into the room certain progressions would add more and more instrumentation, gradually building to a climatic score that would never drop… Until you open the door to the next big set-piece. I remember being deeply impressed with the way the music had not only reflected my style of playing, but also how it had seemed to drive me forward, forcing me to advance in the level so that I could hear the next musical progression. In terms of pacing my gaming experience, it could not have worked more effectively. When I spoke about the Wall-E soundtrack in a previous post, I mentioned that music had to lead the actions of the character because of the lack of dialogue. The music in Halo achieved the same effect; it told the viewer/player what was about to happen.
I thought to myself what other game music had had a similar impact on me pacing wise, and one game that stuck in my mind was “Gears of War”. I decided to look into it, and found the sound designers had also used an orchestra to drive the score. There is an interview with the composer here if anyone is interested in reading it. I also came across this video which talks about the sound design on the sequel, “Gears of War 2″ which I think you should watch because it features an interesting approach to coming up with sound effects for games.
Hey everybody. I thought I’d finally put up the post that I half wrote during the xmas period. Mainly this post is the result of watching too many films, but more importantly Wall-E. Most of you have probably seen Wall-E by now, and would probably agree that it’s fantastic in every sense of the word. If you haven’t seen it, you need to go out and buy it right now, and read this post at a later date. On the DVD or BLURAY if you have the capital to invest in such technologies, you will find an interview with Ben Bertt, the four time Academy Award winning sound designer who worked on Star Wars, Indiana Jones, the list goes on…
Wall-E, Disney DVD/Bluray
Filed under: Production and Recording for Musicians
Hey Production people. I’ve posted my task 3 write up as a page. If anyone’s interested in viewing it, it can be accessed from the page menu on the left of this post.
Filed under: Music for Digital Media
Hey people. I thought I’d just show you which painting I’ve chosen to do for the latest task. I’ve chosen “Girl Before a Mirror” by none other than Pablo Picasso. Maybe Picasso was an obvious choice in the cubist stakes, but I dont care. I like the picture and I can see how I can turn it to music. Anyway, here’s the picture.
- Picasso’s “Girl Before a Mirror”
I’ve had a few ideas so far. The picture kind’ve dictates to me what the score should be. We see a beautiful girl, perhaps pregnant, staring into the mirror. However, whilst the left hand side of the image shows us this girl, the right hand side where the reflection is located reveals a darker side of her personality, almost as if the beautiful image is just for show, and within she is a troubled soul. Maybe we all see a troubled soul when we look in the mirror, but then maybe I’m thinking too much about it. Anyway… The score I have decided should reflect this, reading left to right, starting off with a beautiful, almost majestic style, but after reaching the halfway point taking a darker turn. Thinking back to Murch’s score for THX 1138, and subsequently inspired by it, I am going to reverse the first half of the score, as if the music were also reflecting in the mirror, and then compose over the top of the new reversed soundtrack. Once reversed the music will have an eerie feel anyway, and so should be relatively easy to evolve into an overll darker piece.
The lines throughout the picture, such as those on the girls closes and the diamond wallpaper should dictate the way the instruments swell in and out of the composition. I’ve made a simple flash video of the painting with a line that scrolls across the painting like a playhead, so this should enableme to follow the lines more accurately than if I were to simply imagine a scrolling bar.
I’ll post the results/video up as soon as I’ve got a rough demo together of how it all sounds.
Peace.x
True believers… I finally got round to getting hold of THX 1138 on DVD. I’m a big Star Wars fan, and I’ve wanted to see it for years. I have to say, after watching it last night, it’s a great movie.
THX 1138 4EB
I of course watched it primarily for the sound design aspect which in my opinion is first rate. The DVD release has obviously been given Lucas’ Star Wars treatment i.e. The film has been re-mastered with a few new effects shots, but largely the visuals are untouched. The sound I imagine was also re-mastered, but I would imagine it largely resembles the original cut.
One thing I did notice whilst watching THX 1138 was that whilst the score reflects the atmosphere and mood of the scenes, the sound effects did not entirely match the actions depicted. There were several shots in which actions on screen has no audio counterpart (for example a cupboard door being closed would not slam shut). This I found quite interesting, especially after doing the foley work on the Jurassic Park clip, in which I matched every action to at least one or more sounds. I can only deduce that this was intentional in THX 1138 in order to expand the feeling of well oiled non intrusive dystopian furniture. With this in mind I decided to watch the original sound to my Jurassic Park clip. Again I noticed that not every action was mimicked with a sound. I’m sure this was not the case during production, but it seems that only key hit points have been accentuated during the mixing stages, perhaps not to overcrowd the soundscape of the kitchen.
Another thing related to the sound in THX 1138. After comparing the escape sequences in the original 15min student movie and the full 85min feature film, I personally think that, although un-refined, the soundtrack to the student film is more ‘on the money’. A real sense of disorder is felt as the dystopic administration panics to bring THX-1138 to justice. In the full length movie it feels relatively calm by comparison. As a whole though, the full length movie provides much richer soundscapes, and the dialogue spoken by the funeral director for the robots is spot-on, eerie and oddly calming.
Blessings be on you. Buy. Buy more. Buy and be happy.
Filed under: Music for Digital Media
VELOCIRAPTORS
FOLEY WORK
MOVEMENT
MIXING
Overall I had four separate audio tracks for the overall sfx. 1/ Velociraptor vocal track, 2/ Children moving and breathing, 3/ Velociraptor foot steps, 4/ Pots and pans smashing. I synced up each one separately, so it was not until I had finished each one and put them all together that I found out how it actually sounded. I do think that this gave me greater control over the whole environment and as Julio said in the lecture, that’s how it would be done professionally.
When I have finished the music track and mixed everything properly I’ll upload another version and explain the process etc.
Peace. x
Filed under: Music for Digital Media
Seeing as most people seem intent on wasting their degrees, and we ran out of lesson time, I thought I’d upload the rough version of my advert for everyone to see. I’ve chosen the Smirnoff “Sea” vodka advert from a year or so ago.
I didn’t really have a direction at first for the music in the ad, other than that it should sound vaguely Russian like the product. I remembered the phrase “good composers borrow, great composers steal” which Julio has mentioned a few times in our seminars. With this in mind I decided to re-work an old song of mine from a few years back. Thus I wanted my song to morph from the rock genre into an epic orchestral march. I simply replaced the guitar line from the song with strings and slowed it down. It instantly took on the epic feel that I desired.
As the advert plays on and events unfold, I felt that the piece should increase in tempo to heighten the tention. The good thing from the workshop today is that I definitely feel my score has good form. There is a clear beginning, middle and end to the piece. A slow start, which speeds up during the middle, and then slows back down at the end. This speed change was something I was weary of as I remembered the original advert doing the same thing, but after listening to the original soundtrack again, it doesn’t gain speed, it gains in instrumentation.
With regard to branding, outside of the march theme to the score, I was quite pleased with the ‘logo’ in the final sequence. It has a slightly eerie feel to it, but matches the on screen text in that is is very clear. The whole point of the ad campaign was to point out Smirnoff’s purity. The logo I felt should reflect this, and so I kept instrumentation and sound effects to a minimum whilst the logo sounds.
This is not the finished product as of yet, the sound effects on the hit points need to be added. The water sound that is there at the minute is merely to give an impression of the final product.
Let me know what you think. Also, if anyone is interested in hearing the original song that I wrote years ago, let me know and I’ll put it up here on the blog.
Enjoy.
Filed under: Interesting Stuff
Hey everybody. I’ve been looking for ways to achieve some new sounds for my Wile E Coyote cartoon and have stumbled across this website at epicsound.com. It has a list of loads of different sound effects, and how to re-create and record them. For anyone interested in Foley it’s a great resource. I thought I’d post it to the blog just in case anyone was interested.
Here’s the link…
http://www.epicsound.com/sfx/
I’ll add it to my web links as well for future use by your good selves.
Anyway, I’m off to steal some wood from the pile of rubbish the builders have left next door so I can record my cliff cracking sound.
Ciao. x
Filed under: Production and Recording for Musicians
Having recorded the voiceover for task 2 in the studio a few days ago, I thought I should reflect on the experience, and the various problems I encountered during the recording. First of all, positioning the microphones was important to me in order to maximise the quality of the recordings. I faced the microphones away from each other so that the voice actors would not be able to talk directly into each others microphone. The only problem with positioning the microphones was the stands, and the fact that they wouldn’t stay still for more than a few seconds; a problem I solved using the XLR cable ties to hold the stands in place.
Microphone position in the studio
After experimenting with the different types of microphones I opted for the cardioid mic. The other types of microphone provided similar quality results but the nature of the cardioid mic complemented my mic positioning more than the others as it would pick up the sounds in front of the microphones. This would minimise cross bleed during recording when the actors were speaking.
The recording of the script was fairly straight forward, I set the input level to about 3/4 of the way for both microphones. This gave the actors enough leeway that they could deliver certain sections of the script with greater enthusiasm without peaking the levels. After recording the actors, I found that the signal only peaked whenever there was a mistake, and the frustration of the actor came through in the mic. Once these mistakes are edited out, the level will be consistant, and won’t peak. Overall the recording was a success and the voices were recorded clearly and should stand out against the backing track once it has been added.
Filed under: Music for Digital Media
Over the weekend I watched Steven Spielberg’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”, and Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining.” The two films had a very similar score; high pitched strings with no particular melody line. In Close Encounters, Williams has used these strings to convey the tension in scenes where there is extra-terrestrial involvement, but said beings are not actually displayed to the viewer. In the same way as Williams score to “Jaws”, the viewer experiences the tension aurally, and to see the alien visitors/shark is not neccessary. Ultimately though, in Close Encounters, Williams is simply highlighting on screen stimuli provided by flashing bright lights. The Shining’s soundtrack by Krzysztof Penderecki, is very similar aurally, but is used in a totally different way. It forces the film into periods of extreme tension in scenes where very little is happening. An innocent conversation becomes a stressful event. The score alone has transformed the mood of the scene.
I thought back to my Persona video and how I could use this technique to add to the video. Originally I had used mostly low frequency sounds to provide a tense atmosphere that was building to something. Having seen the two films at the weekend, I think it would be a good idea to add some high strings. The lack of a melody would increase the tension in the clip tenfold. Previously, I had quite a weak melody line towards the back end of the clip and I realise that if anything, the strings I had added, might as well not be there; They add very little to the clip, emotionally or aurally.
