Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/691665
SOUND DESIGN www.postmagazine.com 32 POST JUNE 2016 and added dissonant, synthetic element. We had this ability to shade from good to evil and back again," Stateman says. Foley was another important piece to the sound puzzle. Stateman tapped his go-to Foley artist Gary Hecker at Sony Pictures, with whom he's worked with for 25 years. With Foley, they were able to bring the CG-constructed Orcs to life by building a unique set of Foley props that describe the armor, jewelry and other adornments for each Orc. They even re- corded Foley for the Orcs' lip movements, skin touches and breathing embellish- ments. "Everything about the Orc charac- ters we described with sound, using Foley and vocal enhancement," says Stateman. He notes that during the Orc Foley sessions, they sped up the picture by 25 percent. Additionally, they recorded at 96kHz and used mics capable of captur- ing higher frequencies. After recording, they re-clocked the session back to the normal film speed. "We took advantage of the organic pitch shift that occurred just by slowing the recording back down to film speed," says Stateman. And using the high-frequency microphones allowed them to harvest all of the sonic information in the upper register that a standard mic wouldn't have captured. Pitching the recordings down brought that high-frequency information into an audible spectrum. The Orc dialogue — mainly edited using the production tracks, was treated to a complex chain of processing. The aim was to keep the actors' performances imbued with a range of emotion while adding weight and depth to match the magnitude of the Orcs' size. "The original voice and the final voice are just incred- ibly far part. The lines were literally built syllable by syllable, all by Harry [Cohen]," says Stateman. As for what particular plug-ins went into the processing, Stateman feels that doesn't matter nearly as much as the order in which they were used. He says, "The sequence of processing has as much of an effect on the end result as the plug-ins themselves. There were nearly a dozen different plug-ins, but the goal was to impart as few digital artifacts as possible, to make all of the touching of the material invisible in the final result. It's a very delicate brush. We've been hearing human voices for thousands of years. The nuances in the human voice are incredibly important to our brain and the way that we understand intention and emotion." Stateman, recording authentic elements for Warcraft in Warcraft in Warcraft Joshua Tree National Park. The film's Orcs were greatly enhanced via sound design.