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 71 they did in the original movies, as the person playing the game is listening to those lightsaber sounds for hundreds of hours. The lightsabers also have more of a "game edge" to help them cut through the many different types of sounds, dialogue, and music. The Respawn audio team did a fantastic job maintaining the style of the original Star Wars lightsaber sounds and expanded upon them. Expanding the Tool kit Do you use synths in your sound design? Caron: I have not used traditional synths directly, but I have used plug-ins that are synth-based, such as Manipulator by Polyverse, and Soundtoys plug-ins like FilterFreak and Tremolator, to name a few. Creature & Vehicle Design "I'm not satisfied with the creature's vocals until it feels like the voice is actually coming from inside the creature itself." For creature design, do you start with organic material? Use your own voice? Start with animal sounds? Caron: For creature vocals, I usually use mostly organic material—starting with some ideas for the vocal direction and building other animal and goo layers around that after finding the best voice elements as a starting point. I've had the good fortune of working with some very talented sound designers who do great creature voices, and voice actors like Dee Bradley Baker, Fred Tatasciore, and Frank Welker—who all deliver fantastic creature vocals. I've found that it takes a lot of experimenting and going back-and- forth recording more source material until something works—both for the specific creature and within the game, alongside the other sounds playing around it. There are tools out there like Krotos Dehumanizer that can make some of the vocal creation process easier. However, I prefer to record raw sounds and process them afterward to allow for more flexibility. I'm not satisfied with the creature's vocals until it feels like the voice is coming from inside the creature itself— and not just a sound layered on top, which is not easy to do. I find creatures to be a huge challenge! What kind of field recording equipment do you prefer? Have you done a lot of vehicle recording and what kind of crew do you use? Caron: I have done some vehicle recording, and due to having a AAA budget, I have hired some of the best recordists out there—like John Fasal and Bryan Watkins. They have their own recording rigs and an array of mics that are best suited for the particular project. It takes a lot of planning and coordination to develop a list of what needs to be recorded, arrange the location and crew, and acquire all the vehicles for a specific recording session. My involvement has been at the audio director level—coordinating the recording session for the game company, as well as being there on the day of the recording to help make sure we capture everything we need. Process and Innovation "We recorded gooey Jell-O, yogurt, celery, and various vegetables to enhance the eeriness factor." Can you recount a time when you had to devise an innovative solution for a particularly challenging sound effect in a game? Caron: While working on the game Evolve for Turtle Rock Studios, sound designer Michael Schapiro and I were hired to design hundreds of wildlife creature vocal sounds and a lot of ambiences for the main areas in the game. It was a big challenge to come up with enough variety for all the different kinds of creatures. We recorded a lot of voice source material at the studio, with Michael Schapiro being the main voice talent for hundreds of the wildlife creature sounds. We also rounded up audio director Craig Duman and as many Turtle Rock employees as we could— anyone willing to jump into the booth and record their voices—to add to the palette of source material. Oscar-winning sound designer Dane Davis was also hired to lend his vocal performances for a few of the most challenging creatures, like the Venom Hound. We also utilized various food-based props to enhance the eeriness factor for the voices of the larger, scarier creatures. This involved recording gooey Jell-O, yogurt, celery, and other vegetables to be used as separate elements to enhance the base vocal—which was a fun mess to clean up! We also used a high-frequency mic to capture the upper frequencies and harmonic overtones so they would be retained when the sounds were pitched and slowed down. We found through the process of designing and integrating the ambiences that as more sounds were being added into the game, the layers of wind started to stack up and sound like "white noise." The solution to this was going back into the Pro Tools sessions and removing some of the wind layers entirely from the individual ambiences. We also EQ'd out the low and high end that wasn't needed and mixed the winds down again. Instead of having all the individual tracks combined into a stereo mix, I split out the ambiences into separate layers (like pre-dubs) for wind, insects, and tonal layers to allow for greater control in-game. We also used de- noising tools to further reduce the noisy aspects and carve out more bandwidth, so the ambiences didn't take up so much of the frequency spectrum and compete with other sounds.