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 93 Higgs, there's going to be a big robot," but there was nothing there at that time. Most of the things that we worked on in the beginning were done in order to convey the peaks of the narrative for the cinematics that KJP really wanted to see come to life. There were other cinematics we got that were at earlier stages, but by then, we already understood the main beats of the sound design moments. For example, the notes would read, "There's going to be a tar wall here," and we would already know what that was going to look like and sound like. So as the project went on what was expected of sound became clearer, which allowed the sound design team to pick up steam even when things came in empty visually. Like any project, there's always going to be things that come in at the last minute. EM: Justin, what were some of the unique differences working on the dialogue for this project compared to other story-driven games you've worked on before? JW: It was a really fun creative challenge. We knew from the beginning that music was going to be a big focus, so we had to pay close attention to how dialogue would live alongside it. That became one of the exciting parts of the process, finding ways for the voice design, music, and sound design to all feel connected. We had a recording session with Woodkid (co-composer) and Elle Fanning in London to record their duet for one of the title's main songs. I got to meet him and get a sense of his sonic style, which was really helpful. One thing he wanted to do was to record some vocals with Elle, and he chose a Neumann U 87 microphone for it. I did a little more research afterward and noticed that some of his songs had a similar U 87 texture. The game starts with Woodkid's song "Minus Sixty One," with Léa Seydoux (Fragile) speaking in voiceover. We chose the same style of microphone for Léa, so her voice over would feel connected to Woodkid's voice and transition into it as seamlessly as possible. That really became part of the approach—making sure dialogue fit like a glove with the music and sound design. The approach to voice processing was also very unique. Dollman was a character where, at first, I was not totally sure what direction to take with his voice. I knew we wanted him to sound different, so we threw a few ideas over to KJP. We ultimately landed on wanting Dollman to sound small and different from the rest of the cast, but not overly processed. So we recorded the cast with DPA 6060s, but for Dollman we went with a Neumann U 87 and TLM 103 and applied more compression, along with some light plugins to give his voice a subtle plastic resonance with limited dynamics. Instead of heavy pitch processing or simply making the volume lower, we wanted to give the character a different texture. We did not want it to feel too heavy-handed. It was Fragile (portrayed by Léa Seydoux) Tomorrow (portrayed by Elle Fanning) and Higgs (portrayed by Troy Baker) Sound engineer Adam Wollach creating motor sounds with a drill revving through an electric bass