Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1524863
154 M PS E . O R G "Tell me about the processing on the faux Johnny Carson sequences..." "What was unusual about those were they were actually run through a VHS machine to degrade the visual footage ... we took the audio from that." a video game cinematic—I even got Eric Marks to voice a bad guy! The next day when I got to set, Freddie asked me what I wanted to do for post sound, and I asked if I could do their action scene sound design, and I had the gig. Their pre-existing post sound person, Paul Fonarev, oversaw the rest of sound editorial and mixed the show. He's a great sound editor, and we've since worked together on numerous projects, so I hope we've smoothed over our collision course introduction! Paul and I split production sound duties on Seasons 2 and 3 of Video Game High School (he mixed and I was boom op), and we did post sound as well. My first Golden Reel nomination was for VGHS Season 2 as a sound designer, so I like to think we achieved something of quality with that series, despite the "earbud monitoring and boom into camera" beginnings! Chris: You didn't start in dialogue specifically? Kevin: That's correct, I was an effects editor on VGHS, and then I stayed on with the FreddieW channel after the show, doing their weekly YouTube short films. They were usually three to five minutes long, two to three days for post sound, with evolving cuts and VFX rolling in along the way, and I would do all the sound. Given the guerrilla shoot circumstances, the production audio was consistently pretty bad, so I certainly learned the essentials about dialogue editing, and masking problems in the mix. It was a great way to really push and refine my process, since every week would be a different genre and theme, and it'd have to be done on such tight turnarounds. I learned a lot about where to focus my time, what decisions matter the most, and to always prioritize story and clarity of intent rather than getting lost in less significant details. As the channel had a big following, that obviously liked video games, a lot of the shorts were sponsored by video game companies, and the videos would be themed around upcoming releases. Basically, a softer marketing technique, an ad that wouldn't really feel like an ad. Chris: Is that what gravitated you toward video games? Kevin: I always had the interest because I grew up playing video games, as well as watching movies and TV. In terms of opportunity, it started in YouTube and then as the YouTube market changed, and YouTube's ad revenue systems changed, it became unsustainable to do big-budget content on YouTube. So, a lot of the producers and other people I knew started drifting to other parts of the industry. And then I would get hired onto those jobs, which is how I've kind of ended up in other areas. But one of the people from YouTube started a VR video game company. So my first game experience was just sending over little effects files. That's how I ended up on Immortality specifically. That was the first real big game. The producer called me and he had produced the previous video games' live- action scenes for the same game director. But we met doing, I think, a Lil Nas X music video. We did some advertising music video stuff. There's really no direct connection. He just liked working with me, I guess. So… Chris: There was a nice interview with you and Priscilla Snow on the "A Sound Effect" website. It was very general, I think our readers would like to know specifically your workflow on Immortality. So, what do you get first? Kevin: On Immortality, I created the audio for what was just short of 300 film clips, ranging from a few seconds to around seven minutes on the longer end. Each clip was a single shot with no edits (with the exception of VFX blends in a few cases), and I would get shots delivered one at a time as QuickTime MOVs, with multiple audio tracks embedded, which I would extract in Pro Tools. The production audio was predominantly done with lavalier