Post Magazine

March 2013

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approaches and improve on the existing sounds. For music, Larson chose to move away from using the Gears of War theme as the basis for the game score in favor of having an edgier, more electronic sound that fit the darker feel of the game. "In the past, we really tried to reinforce the theme of Gears, and we would rework that theme to fit into all aspects of the score. For Judgment, we abandoned that approach. The theme was starting to get a little tired and old sounding; we were looking for something fresh and different." He worked with composer Steve Jablonsky, who worked on the previous two Gears games, as well as composer Jacob Shea. They used industrial pounding drums, guitar power chords and aggressive electronic elements mixed with an orchestra and strings to create an edgy and in-your-face score. The Judgment soundtrack, on Sumthing Else Music Works comes out as a simultaneous release with the game. For ambient sound design, Epic and PCF created an "ambient battle system" that makes the player feel as if the battles with the Locust army are always going on around them. They took battle sounds and created distant perspective versions, as well as composited new battle sequences that would trigger as a player walked past a window or door. "No matter where you are, it sounds like there is a battle just outside to keep up the tension and intensity throughout game play," explains Larson. When an actual battle occurs, the ambient battle sounds are lowered so that they don't interfere with the music, weapons, and other sounds from the actual battle. Another way they made the environments feel more alive was by using "embedded storytelling." They added ambient dialogue to make the player feel as if there is activity around them, and people around them, in the game. According to Larson, "This consists of PA announcements that happen on the streets. In a building you'll hear conversations that people are having on the other side of walls. In the sewers you might hear people being tortured, or conversations, or people crying out for help. You'll hear these things through the air vents, or air ducts and the shafts. We also added some computer announcements that come over speakers and computer screens." Jamey Scott, sound designer/owner of Dramatic Audio Post (www.dramaticaudio.com) in San Diego, has worked on all four Gears of War releases. For Judgment, he created the vocal effects for the ambient dialogue. One of the more complex dialogue treatments he created was for the pilot's radio. He started with the dry dialogue, and compressed it using the Waves CLA-76, which has the plug-in version of an 1176 compressor. "With radio dialogue I really scrub it up and make sure that there is almost no dynamics in it," he says. Next, he did a band-pass with an INA GRM plug-in to limit the frequency bands. He then ran it through the SoundToys Phase Mistress plug-in for modulation, and the Pro Tools Lo-Fi plugin to dirty it up. He used the Pro Tools Q-10 EQ and a De-Esser to limit the high frequencies. "I used the Q-10 because it has this sort of low-tech sound to it." The pilot's radio also required the addition of in and out chirps. Instead of batch processing those sounds, "I line up everything in Pro Tools 10 and then I do quick keys that run through the track and drop the in' chirp on top of the region that I'm targeting. When you do that with quick keys, it's about a 10-step process, and it just runs through the session. It goes really quick. It takes two minutes for about a thousand files. So that is one of my little tricks." Scott also reworked the sound of the Hammerburst assault rifle, one of the main weapons used throughout the Gears of War series. He enhanced the existing sound to make it feel closer, bigger and more exciting. "I added some metallic Foley, like a trigger pull, to give it more of a visceral feel. The problem with the original sound is that it sounded too distant. If you're using it as a first-person weapon, it just didn't have that tactile sound to it." He also added a rocket launch sound mid-way through to add air and traction, and beefed up the tail by using a thunderclap, which he ran through Audio Ease's Altiverb plug-in. "That air disruption type of sound really makes for a great tail on a big weapon." Scott then added a metal rattle layer and a hammer impact sound because "it's the Hammerburst. It definitely sounds like the same weapon, but there is more excitement to it. People won't think it's different; it just sounds better." Epic approached the dialogue for the in-game cinematics as ADR sessions, as opposed to typical voice-over sessions. They wanted the actors' performances to fit better with the characters on screen. "We actually sent the video mocap sessions to Technicolor in Hollywood, who records our VO for the game," explains Larson. "The actors could actually see what's happening, and see the reactions and the body language. This really helped to better integrate the VO and the picture. It improved the believability of the performances." Since there is serious, dramatic content in Judgment, including court room scenes, it was important to make the characters' emotions resonate with players. "In film, even if the tonality of the voice isn't perfect, you still make a connection because you can see the person, you can see their mouth moving, you can see their body language," explains Larson. "In games, you are seeing a CG character, and you know it's not real. There is always a disconnect between the character and the voice actor, and that's a very difficult thing to merge together in a way that sounds convincing and believable. We thought that going with more of an ADR approach would help bridge that gap." www.postmagazine.com Post0313_034-37-AudioRAV5FINALREAD.indd 35 Judgment: Epic Games' Mike Larson opted for an edgier, more electronic sound for this iteration of Gears of War. Post • March 2013 35 3/1/13 2:13 PM

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