Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1533995
version fi rst. They did record an English temp voice for this prior to that, and I thought it sounded terrible, and that was when I fi rst spoke up about things outside of music. That kind of snowballed into me helping out with the voiceover work on MGS V, and then later, I became the audio director at Kojima Productions. EM: Wow! I also want to ask about the very dynamic, cinematic choices in terms of the mix of this. I know you didn't yourself mix this cinematic per se, but there's that moment where the ambient sound e ects, backgrounds, everything cuts out right before he clicks the cassette player. How are moments like that chosen by Kojima and your team, and how do you discover the preferences in how you're going to approach a mix like that? LF: That was a pretty early choice, especially when it comes to "Here's to You," since that was Kojima's main idea for the music of this entire scene. He wanted this bit to play here, and for trailers and other choices where Mr. Kojima likes to use licensed music. He likes to drown out all of the ambient sound and just have music playing for at least a bit of it. Re-watching this now, I'm rediscovering some of these choices, and I defi nitely feel like I'd do the same kind of stu• in my own audio mixing. You have the helicopter fl ying overhead bringing back ambient sound as a cue, and you see that style throughout this whole cinematic. Whenever there's a big choice and the mix state changes, there's always a cue leading in or out of that. That's something that I usually try to do, especially for the years I was the audio director and composer at Kojima Productions. I tried to think of that while scoring the music because I did have the pull to be able to make those choices on my own. Usually as the composer, you have to do it back-and-forth and work with the sound designers to make these choices. But I had the opportunity to creatively come up with these ideas at an early stage and then present rough mixes to Mr. Kojima. When I'd gone halfway on something, he'd say, "Let's remove everything just for when the character lands after he jumps down from the helicopter." Stu• like that. Those hard cuts in the audio mix are something that I like to do, and Mr. Kojima likes to lean into that kind of stu• too. That's very much the beauty of this scene in Snake surveys his target in Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes Snake looks on in Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes Soldiers await their commands in Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes M OT I O N P I CTU R E S O U N D E D I TO R S 51