Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1470109
m ot ion p ictu re s o u n d e d i to r s I 59 I applied and that was really the start of my gaming career. I did not seek it or think that I could make such a successful career within game audio. A lot of people, especially of my age, fell into it. There were no general school programs for it or anything like that—it was all word-of-mouth. EM: You've worked on game dialogue for a lot of titles over the years. What parts of the process have piqued your interest the most within this field? LR: When we first started, it was… basic. You got the actor in the studio, cut up dialogue and mastered it. Today I find the performance capture process fascinating and that's become a major component in how we capture dialogue. That workflow is very much a throwback to how things work in the film industry. You're on a big sound stage, and the gear is slightly different, but capturing dialogue on our mocap stages is similar to production sound on a film set and it has become a common entity in terms of our workflow. That is a really cool part of our process because it allows multiple actors on the stage to work off of each other, rather than being solo in a voice-over booth. Once we capture the performance, there then is the unique process to get that material placed into the game. We go through the usual process of editorial and mastering of our dialogue, but the integration aspect of our job is very technically driven. We use various tools (middleware like Wwise and/ or proprietary software) to then help us craft what we've recorded to play effectively in the game. The other part that continues to pique my interest and is a process our PlayStation sound team really takes pride in, is how we work and come together for the final mix. Collectively as a sound team, we put together a solid plan about how we're going to approach the overall mix. Our director of Sound Design, Jeremie Voillot, has helped put together a great roadmap for our mixes. Within that roadmap, a dialogue pre-mix is involved and we continue to mix with the sound supervisor and sound designers throughout the length of the game mix, which ideally is a 4-6 week timeframe. We do take pride in creating a beautiful soundscape for all of our titles. It brings all the different disciplines in sound together, and ultimately, our end products have resulted in award- winning titles. Especially with these strong narrative titles, we work in a very similar fashion to linear storytelling for film and TV. Dialogue is an anchor to the mix. It's important to have that known amongst not only each other as the dialogue team, but amongst our peers as well. EM: What are the various roles and departments that make up a game dialogue team, and how are their responsibilities divided up? LR: It is really unique and rare that game teams have a large group of people working on dialogue. My position is a diamond in the rough within the industry. For most titles, there will always be a lead or dialogue supervisor. Dialogue supervisors are very similar to a lot of film and TV supervisors in certain fashions. We do overall management of the project, along with leading a team, but also putting forth a vision of the technical and creative aspects of what the team wants for dialogue. We also collaborate with talent and the motion capture stage, casting and so forth. They're basically leading the overall vision, alongside the sound supervisor and/or the audio director. Senior sound designers and dialogue designers, which we have here, help us execute everything from the technical integration to typical creative aspects, like additional voice design for characters, along with various practical tasks like recordings and editorial and mastering. But the unique part of our job is outside of recordings and the Pro Tools sessions, it is very heavy in terms of technical creativity. We use tools like the Unreal Engine, middleware like Wwise, and proprietary software that we have here at PlayStation. Your brain not only has to be creative, but it has to pivot technically to figure out how everything connects together. Dialogue designers are generally the ones that help us get everything from the ground up to the very end. For my team, I try to make sure that they're exposed to every aspect of the development process. Sometimes that means they sit like a fly on the wall in a meeting about budgets, partake in discussions covering the technical or creative processes. We like to do that so that they have a deeper understanding of those aspects of the development process as they progress in their careers. We also work to ensure that everybody on our team has a basic Leilani Ramirez holding her 2018 MPSE Golden Reel Award for God of War