Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1538144
M OT I O N P I CTU R E S O U N D E D I TO R S 65 At Soundelux Media Labs, I started out by working on the marketing side to bring in game clients, then later shifted to sound editing, which was more of my passion. I became very interested in using sound to help tell the story in the game worlds. I was trained in film audio post- editing and mixing techniques and learned how to edit and design sounds for games while working at Soundelux Media Labs. The focus on high-quality audio for film motivated our game audio team to experiment with creative ways to squeeze every last bit of fidelity out of an 11kHz/8-bit audio file! Working within early game hardware limitations was a major challenge. On the SNES, we were limited to just 64KB of RAM for sound—forcing us to creatively re-use and pitch existing audio to simulate variety. Hearing your carefully designed 44kHz sound turn into noisy mush at game resolution was always disappointing. We were very excited when technology advanced to allow for more game memory so that we could design audio at 22kHz/16-bit! I also learned the importance of asking: What is the story or character trying to say emotionally? Then, figuring out how to use sound to enhance the story. Even by the time I was working at Naughty Dog on Jak and Daxter for the PS2, each level had under 2MB of memory for audio, and the music had to be streamed from disk. Thankfully, once the PlayStation 3 arrived, audio memory increased significantly, marking a real turning point for in-game audio quality. I learned the hard way that layering 30 different audio elements together does not necessarily make one single in-game sound better and often creates an unfocused mess unless each sound occupies a different aspect of the sound frequency spectrum and has a beginning, middle, and end. The Foley Philosophy "We recorded four separate tracks for Cal's suit armor—leather, cloth, gear belt, and lightsaber gear jingle." In games like Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, how do you adapt traditional Foley techniques to accommodate the nonlinear and interactive nature of gameplay? Caron: I have had the good fortune of working with many talented game Foley teams in Los Angeles who primarily work in film and TV, and who have honed their craft by working in multiple Playstation 2 vintage game console from 2001 era (2013). L-R: Alan Rankin, Caron Weidner, Scott Gershin, Mark Lanza, Mike Reagan. Soundelux Media Labs (1993). Atari 2600 vintage game console in living room–'70s style (2013). genres—from dramas, action, sci-fi, horror, and everything in between. The vast array of Foley props and variety of microphones, in addition to the talented performances by the Foley artists, are what make the Foley come to life and become an extension of the