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 75 achieve this? What strategies did you use to maintain audio continuity and immersion? Csaba Wagner: Our team at Sweet Justice was continuously in touch with the team from Insomniac via Slack. So, whenever we had any questions, we always had a hotline to Hayden, Dwight, Emile, and the others. On top of this, we had weekly Zoom meetings where we could dial in expectations and needs and talk about everything we needed to make the flow from gameplay to cinematics work seamlessly. To achieve the perfect transition from gameplay to cine and vice versa, we agreed early on which scenes would have ambience created by Sweet Justice and which ones would carry over the ambience from in-game. In some cases, we used a combination of both. The Insomniac mixers at the end did an amazing mix in-engine to make sure it all comes together as one cohesive and coherent piece. Our collaboration and the excellent results all came down to great communication and working together as one team. If they needed a last-second tweak during the game audio mix, we were there for them to do modifications to ensure it all works according to the expectations. To preserve the audio continuity, we made sure to use a lot of the game assets made by the talented folks at Insomniac. We also had the chance to add our own flair/twist to some of the sounds, especially if they were a "one-off." Even then, we wanted to make sure we remain in the style of the game and what was already established by the Insomniac crew. Overall, it was a very rewarding and fun process with a wonderful joint team. Hayden was especially on top of everything and made sure nothing slipped through the cracks. I spent close to 30 hours having a blast playing and completing this game, and I still have a lot of side missions to do. There must have been 6-7 hours of cinematic cutscenes alone. That's incredible! This is comparable to an "action-heavy" miniseries. Can you talk about the similarities and differences in your approach to sound design for these extensive cutscenes compared to traditional gameplay? Csaba Wagner: I'd say the experience is closer to a really long feature movie as opposed to a miniseries. We had a healthy amount of time to do several passes on some scenes and then do final polishes as the VFX came in. Just like in the movie world, we started with scenes in rough shape, without finalized textures or details, we then moved on to other scenes and when the picture got updated, we revisited those previous scenes and completed a new update pass on them. On top of the "regular" cinematics, we had the chance to do quite a few of the QTE multi- choice gameplay moments, which had their own challenges. In those situations, we devised a very elaborate process to print several FX layers, separate from the ambience and music. We also had to make loops of several sounds in order to cover those moments where the player is hesitating. These looked challenging at first but with great communication and iteration, we came to a solid solution for all of them. In general, the process remains very similar to how we'd normally do things for movies; it's toward the mix and prints when it deviates from the "usual" approach. If both teams are on the same page, it's not too complicated. So, in the end, it all comes down to tight collaboration and us working as an embedded extension alongside the Insomniac team; effectively working as one team. How closely did the sound design team collaborate with the music team to ensure a cohesive audio experience? Can you describe the process of integrating sound effects and music to enhance the overall atmosphere and storytelling? Johannes Hammers: A great question! One example of this type of collaboration happened during the development of the Sandman mission. I saw an opportunity to craft a previs that could become the roadmap for dialogue, music, and sound effects pacing. It was for the finale, and the sequence started as Pete falls and opens his Web Wings for the first time. I contacted Rob Goodman, our music editor and integrator from Sony. Since composer John Paesano hadn't written any cues for this sequence yet, I described what I thought would be the perfect direction for the finale. Rob jumped in and edited Paesano's stems from a different mission in the Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales game. I used those and created a three-minute linear previs from a playthrough capture. Adding sound effects and dialogue from narrative to really lay out the pacing was the last step. After presenting the previs to the leads, I