Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1546054
M OT I O N P I CTU R E S O U N D E D I TO R S 73 first-person perspective. I think it always starts with the source material. We don't want to heavily process the voices; they are treated like all other sound effects. When you watch real helmet camera footage or first-person extreme sports videos, the voice has a very specific sound to it. That's the difference I wanted us to capture. Back on Battlefield 1, we had experimented with chest-mounted microphones to capture that raw and believable first- person perspective. For Battlefield 6, we embraced that technique and expanded it. We didn't have any harnesses, so our senior technical sound designer Gonçalo Tavares and senior voice over designer Nick Friedemann designed a microphone harness that all the actors wore during the recording sessions. We created several iterations to prioritize comfortable, natural movement during the recording sessions. Movement is a key part of the voice direction. We wanted the actors to move naturally because that's where the physicality comes from. Only then do the performances start to feel believable. Gonçalo actually 3D-printed the parts for the harness in his flat and Nick shipped them to recording studios around the world. Looking back at it now, it's quite an amazing effort. We were also recording a huge amount of dialogue and wanted to make the sessions more efficient. Gonçalo developed a Reaper extension that we use when we record soldier lines that helped automate file naming and significantly sped up the editing process. Together with our VO editor, it's been iterated on to make it even more efficient. I love seeing that kind of creativity from the team. People identify a problem and find a solution. Whether that's building a microphone harness, writing a tool, or finding a new way to record something. It's that curiosity and willingness to experiment that keeps pushing the sound in our games forward. Drew Elder: During our recording shoot, I decided to play around with a sort of mid-side approach when it came to recording large interior spaces. The team was recording weapons outside one of our facilities in a courtyard, to capture weapon tails that were half- urban and half-open field. Looking at everyone's mic positions, there were a lot of similar perspectives in that one space, so I decided to do something a little different and experiment. I had an ORTF stereo rig at this spot and decided to go indoors behind the shooter. I placed myself right at the doorway, and instead of placing the mics in their respective ORTF formation, I instead separated them to point 180 degrees in the opposite direction, where one mic was facing directly at the outdoor shooter through the doorway, and one mic was facing inside a large hall-style room that was connected to the courtyard. The result was to be implemented instead into a M/S format, where the center perspective was a sharp and focused semi-urban courtyard, and the sides were this super-saturated, soft, large indoor room that bloomed after the initial transient. I had no idea if the experiment would work, but I was curious enough to try. Later, while designing weapon sounds for large interior spaces, I struggled to get a focused center channel in the mix. I remembered my earlier test, manually processed the recording into mid-side, and it worked perfectly! How early do you think about gameplay perspective during recording, especially the difference between first-person intensity, third-person/world perspectives, and distant battlefield scale? David Jegutidse: Distance, and especially the separation between first person and third person, even if it might also be very close, are always on our minds for recording. Generally, the assumption has to be that trying to sell proximity through DSP is never going to be as good as bespoke recordings, so we try to get as much as possible. Mari S. Minto: I think you always have to embrace the boots-on-the-ground perspective and imagine yourself listening through the ears of a soldier. Whether you're prone on a hill with a sniper rifle, far away from the action. Driving a jet across the map. Or running and ducking for cover in the middle of a firefight. It's always from the soldier's perspective. I think about it all the time. Not just the source itself, but how that sound is experienced from different positions and at different distances. How it changes as you move through the world. What details stand out and which ones disappear. Understanding those perspectives influences what we record, how we record it, and ultimately how we design the soundscape. And it all starts with the raw material we bring back from our recording sessions. The more perspectives we can capture and understand out in the field, the better foundation we have when it comes to designing the final experience. BREAKING THE WORLD APART DESTRUCTION, DEBRIS, AND ENVIRONMENTAL DETAIL Real-world destruction and debris are such a big part of the Battlefield sound. How did the team approach capturing impacts, collapses, crumbling materials, rubble, and smaller debris movement? Jeff Wilson: During pre-production, we put a lot of effort into capturing destruction source. For one of our sessions here in Southern California, we spent three days doing large and small destruction sounds.