Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1524863
M OT I O N P I CTU R E S O U N D E D I TO R S 119 we systemize even more, tracking speed, amount, and direction of movement with great results and game-wide wins, attaching sounds to props and VFX, including sound immediately that these appear in the game. The complexity of the soundscape has increased significantly, and the mix approach has grown equally to handle the complexity. For Until Dawn, we were just starting to venture into active (rather than passive) side-chain ducking leading to the undesired 'pumpy' effect, but for the later games, we have built complex multiband ducking maintaining the complexity while focus-pulling the mix to the most important and engaging sounds. With multiple projects often running simultaneously, how do you manage overlapping schedules to ensure each game receives the attention it deserves without compromising quality? BP: Every project overlap has been quite unique. Thankfully, we have core systems and cinematic audio DNA to rely on, can assess how much time we have between projects to iterate on those core systems, whether we need to create entirely new systems to suit new features, time for location recordings and research. Projects are always in varying stages of readiness, from 'still using storyboards' to 'full production' and we can be flexible in focus accordingly. We often work with a big brush on a small section of the next game to develop the broad style, music mood boards, previs/ preonics, or a specific creature sound; anything that we consider a critical path to elevating the next project. Music composition has the longest lead time coming into a new project and thus needs focus before the previous game has shipped. Jason Graves has been our composer of choice since Until Dawn and throughout the Dark Pictures. He knows how we work, what we like and can work with whatever material we might have ready for him from a game director story brief, through previs with temp music to spreadsheets and beat maps. What are the most significant technological advancements that have driven the quality of audio in your games? How have these innovations transformed your audio process? BP: From a wider industry perspective, I immediately think of environmental audio, spatial with a small 's,' not to be confused with spatial or 3D audio. Natural- sounding audio propagation through multiple environments improves immersion 10x. We adopted this tech approach for House of Ashes, 80% of which was based in an underground cave system, long The Dark Pictures #1, Man of Medan