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 75 I have also been an advocate for supporting women and minorities entering the field, as they are underrepresented in game audio. Currently, only about 15% of game composers and sound designers are female or non-binary. I would like to continue to serve as a mentor and coach, guiding future generations and underrepresented groups. It is harder to break into the game audio industry than ever before, amidst all the industry layoffs, studio closures, and economic uncertainty. What advice would you offer to emerging sound designers aiming to specialize in game audio? Caron: I would recommend focusing on technical skills by learning Wwise and Unreal, while also building your creative sound design abilities. There are a lot of free tutorials and courses available online for both Wwise and Unreal—the two most popular game implementation engines. You can also do sound redesigns of available game cutscenes and post them to your social media as a way to get feedback. I think this new era with AI will require all of us to learn more tools and become less specialized. I wouldn't recommend focusing solely on one area, such as Foley. Fairly soon, one person may be able to do much of the Foley editing work that previously required a team of four to six people— as we had on the Star Wars Jedi games, for instance. I see the growth opportunities in game audio leaning more toward the technical and programming side. There's a lot of AI development happening under the hood at game companies that hasn't been released yet. Of course, it's also very important to get out and network with people. There are many game audio events worth attending. One great audio conference is GameSoundCon, held every October in Burbank, CA. It's a jam-packed, two- day event full of talks and panels, and you can attend either in-person or online. GameSoundCon has become the annual gathering where thousands of game audio professionals—especially from the U.S.—connect and learn from each other. There are also MPSE Presents screening events, which are increasingly attended by members of the game audio community. There are so many great ways to stay connected, including game audio Discord channels and online sound design groups. What was your coolest recording session? What was the craziest thing that happened during a recording session? Caron: Recording the car engine sounds for Jak X: Combat Racing for Naughty Dog was a very fun and memorable experience. I was tasked with sourcing the cars for the session and finding the location, recordist, and best method to achieve the sounds we needed for the game. Since we were on a limited audio budget, we weren't able to use street- modded cars (which sound better when recorded) and instead relied on vehicles loaned by Naughty Dog employees. The cool part was that one of the company's founders, Jason Rubin, actually owned an original Shelby Cobra with this awesome-sounding V8 engine. I informed the dynamometer operator in advance that we'd be bringing a Cobra, along with other cars, and thought we were good to go. (Sidenote: We needed to use a dynamometer to record the car engines because we had GDC Conference panel L-R: Peter Drescher, Guy Whitmore, Caron Weidner, Wilbert Roget II, Damian Kastbauer. 2018 Caron – GDC Conference Microtalk 2018