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26 Post • June 2014 www.postmagazine.com sound, and knowing the sound design is tell- ing a story and helping to convey emotion, can make the experience so much better, says Boeddeker. He's had a similar remote collaboration experience on the upcoming I Origins film with director Mike Cahill. "There was a lot of back and forth, and by the time Mike came to Skywalker Sound for the final mix, we already knew where we were and what it was going to sound like. We knew that things were working." PAULA FAIRFIELD — GAME OF THRONES SEASON 4 Paula Fairfield, MPSE, is a Los Angeles- based multi-award winning freelance sound designer and owner of Eargasm, Inc. (paula@ paulafairfield.com). She actively seeks out new audio tools to create interesting and varied sound design. Fairfield embraces tech- nology. Part of what she loves about her job, she says, is experimenting with new software and plug-ins. "It's like getting a new toy," Fair- field says. "There is an explosion of plug-ins and really powerful tools, like Pro Tools 11 with the new HDX cards and all the new capabilities that come with that. The AAX 64-bit plug-ins are out. It's an incredible time to be working." The flipside to improved technology, notes Fairfield, is that producers can have a miscon- ception about what those tools can really do, and what it takes to make incredible sound design. "The fact is, it's a constant game of catch-up," she says. "I'm constantly learning how to use new technologies that become available. I'm also working and creating at the same time. And everything has to happen at lightning speed. Producers think our comput- ers have a conform button, and an edit but- ton, and a design button, and a creature button, and I have to tell them, 'Hey guys, that's not how it works.'" It takes time to record or find all the bits and pieces of sound that go into creating something new. The creative process takes time. Learning how to use new audio tools, and learning new tech- nology takes time. "Everybody wants the sound to be interesting, astonishing, and something they haven't heard before, and they want me to do it in about five seconds," remarks Fairfield. Fairfield has a great interest in the Avid Everywhere technology. Being able to work anywhere in the world, and collaborate with other audio post studios and picture editing facilities, would be a liberating experience for Fairfield, who spends many hours working in her home studio. "If I want to travel and record and work at the same time, then Avid Everywhere could really open up new horizons for me," she says. Fairfield lives in California, but has clients in Europe, Canada, South America, and across the US. Global connectivity is an amazing idea, she says, "You can be off doing your own thing, and creating in your own space, and still be working as a team. That's a great thing for a sound designer." Recently, Fairfield designed crea- ture sounds, and other fantastical sounds, for Season 4 of HBO's Game of Thrones. This is her second season designing dragon sounds. "That's been a unique experience for me. I've never had to make my sound design grow up," she jokes. The dragons in Game of Thrones look and sound real. They express emotions. Their sound evolves. Fairfield tries to get inside the dragons' heads to figure out what sounds will reflect their emotions. The dragons use sounds from Season 3, which involved eight different animals, in combination with six new animal sounds for this season. Those pieces are edited together and manipulated to create brand new sounds. "Part of that comes from using the latest technology to make things interesting, and make my work invisible, ironically. To hear the statement, 'I can't believe the dragons aren't real,' for the visual effects and sound design, that's the big- gest compliment we can get. It's our job to make people forget that these things are constructed, and that they aren't real." ERIC A. NORRIS — THE AMAZ- ING SPIDER-MAN 2 Award-winning freelance super vising sound editor/sound designer Eric A. Norris (about.me/ericnorris), based in Los Angeles, has been busy creating sound design for The Amazing Spider-Man 2, 300: Rise of an Empire, and Man of Steel. Over the past 23 years of Norris's career, the biggest technological impact for him was switching to a digital audio workstation. Norris admits his busy schedule doesn't always allow time to research the latest tech- nology, so he relies on tried and true tech- nologies that have worked well for him over the years. After all, he says, sound design is more about creativity than the latest toys. However, he does acknowledge the impor- tance of new technology to the process. One tool that's lacking for sound design- ers, Norris feels, is a high-quality program that can easily morph or combine sounds, without sounding processed. For example, while Norris was creating zombie sounds for Dawn of the Dead, he layered vocalizations created by creature voice actors with animal noises. The challenge was to blend the sounds in a natural way, so they didn't sound like a Frankensteiny mash-up. "One of the Paula Fairfield designed the dragon sounds featured in the latest season of Game of Thrones. LA-based sound designer Eric A. Norris at work.