Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1512183
M OT I O N P I CTU R E S O U N D E D I TO R S 27 it would drop frames and stall. So we had this incessant back-and- forth of actually getting an in-sync representation of what the runtime sync would be. The way that we solved it was complicated, but we worked it out over time. We would chop it up into little bits, and we would trigger the 5.1 mix at certain frame points, and I don't think they ever went beyond three or four seconds actually. So in the scene that we just watched, when the tentacle hits the ground, you can hear some phasing. I hear it now as clear as day, but back then I didn't hear it, but that was when the tail end of the previous segment was cross-fading into the new segment. EM: So, if you were to export a mix of an entire cinematic, it wouldn't be one long file. You're saying it would be chopped up into three- to four-second pieces that were all supposed to play in sequence, to make sure that you weren't losing sync as the scene went along? JS: That's exactly how we did it. It wasn't ideal, but when you're cramming things in at the end of the game cycle, you just gotta make it work. And that was the solution we came up with for the time. EM: Okay, let's keep playing. So how about Foley? There are all these little character movements in quiet scenes like this. Were you performing your own Foley? Were you outsourcing for Foley? JS: Yeah, I recorded 100 percent of the Foley in my studio and we did packages. We all of a sudden had this wonderful wealth of storage compared to the Playstation 2, so Marcus Fenix leads the charge in Gears of War. Photo: Microsoft Game Studios Marcus Fenix and Dominic San- tiago survey the road ahead in Gears of War. Photo: Microsoft Game Studios