Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1490686
44 I M PS E . O R G these out and answer any questions that may arise from the development team. CS: I'll be honest, the trust we have built up with our existing clients is such that they send us a brief, along with reference and let us fly!!! Some of the projects we work on have us embedded directly with the audio team so have access to the actual game in development CW: Normally, we do spotting sessions with the director to make sure we find the vocabulary of the project before we start. We try to identify the key scenes that require fresh design and record new things for those. Once we established the basic soundscape, it's generally smooth sailing to the finish line. It's all about keeping up with the VFX and editorial changes. We generally keep it lighthearted and straightforward. We try to figure out what movies/games the clients like, so that we can understand their stylistic approach. Then we share our concepts with them and see if they like our ideas. We always try to make sure that the clients are heard and their needs are met. Basically, we want to make sure it's a smooth collaboration and that everybody walks away happy. CM: How much time do you tend to have for most projects? BM: Three weeks to three years! CW: That varies from project to project. If it's a trailer or an ad, it can be anywhere between one week to four weeks. But when it comes to cinematics, it can be 3-4 months to 1-2 years. SJ: How long is a piece of string! They can vary drastically from the point at which we're bought on. Sometimes studios will ask us to join in pre-production, to assist them in finding the style and signature sound, and those projects can last up to 3-4 years. The other extreme being that we're parachuted in during the last three months to help get projects out the door. CM: How do you typically organize your time between creative design and editorial coverage? Do you typically spend more time doing one than the other when working on game content? SJ: On the interactive side, we are primarily hired to do creative design work, however, when we undertake cinematics, we tend to spend the first few weeks creating content and designs—these designs are either inspired/ based on the in-game/interactive content, or enhance it for cinematics (where things might need to sound larger for cinematics as opposed to in-game, where the listener will hear it multiple times in that context). We will make sure to create as much variation in these designs as possible, as when the cinematics begin to arrive—they usually come thick and fast. Delays in projects will allow us to build out this content further, but it's usually a case of the first third of a project will be creative design and the other two-thirds will be editorial and mix CW: Creating fresh designs on each project is extremely important for us. We try to identify the most important design moments early on, so we can assign the right Ben Minto recording source for Sullust—Star Wars Battlefront. Mývatn Geothermal Field. Iceland, 2015. Ben Minto—Hellissandur longwave radio mast. Iceland, 2015.