Re-Recording Mixer Presentation
Michael Semanick is a two-time Academy Award winner and has been nominated six other times for Achievement in Sound Mixing. He was nominated for all three Lord of The Rings films and won for Return of the King in 2004. He received his second Academy Award for Peter Jackson’s King Kong. Semanick has been nominated twice for his work with Pixar on Ratatouille and Wall-E, and for his efforts on The Curious Case of Benjamin Button in 2008. His nominations for both Wall-E and Benjamin Button were given in the same year. Semanick was recently nominated this year for his work on The Social Network. Michael is excited to be joining our Ex’pression family to speak with the students, faculty, and staff upon the completion of Cars 2 for Pixar.
Ex’pert Series with Michael Semanick hosted at Ex’pression College for Digital Arts in Emeryville, CA on June 23, 2011.
The Sound of Transformers
Director Michael Bay and Producer Steven Speilberg return this summer for the third film in the Transformers franchise, Tranformers: Dark of the Moon. The amazing visual effects in this film are complimented by the talented efforts of the sound team including Re-recording Mixers Greg Russell and Jeff Haboush, and Supervising Sound Editor and Sound Designers Ethan Van der Ryn, and Erik Aadahl.
This is the first 3D film of the series and will also be presented in regular 2D, Real D 3D and IMAX, featuring Dolby Surround 7.1 sound.
Sound Designer and Mixer Gary Rydstrom Talks About Cinema Sound
Check out this interview with sound designer and mixer Gary Rydstrom, who talks with Dolby about the field itself, as well as the perils of recording sound effects in the real world.
Background:
Rydstrom graduated from the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts in 1981.[1] He began his career at Skywalker Sound, Northern California in 1983. Offered the job by a college professor, Gary received the opportunity to work with his mentor, Star Wars sound designer Ben Burtt. After gaining invaluable experience as a sound technician in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, he went on to do sound design for the comedy Spaceballs. The sound design for Backdraft, prepared from scratch, would become the precursor for his sound for Terminator 2: Judgment Day. The original sound effects from Backdraft are constantly referenced and have been used for numerous other films including the The Lord of the Rings film trilogy and Shrek.
Gary Rydstrom’s work on Terminator 2: Judgment Day is arguably his career crowning achievement where he pioneered original techniques still used to this day for creating realistic sound effects. Even to this day Terminator 2 is considered the benchmark for high-end motion picture sound design and Gary went on to win an Academy Award for his groundbreaking achievement. Gary’s sound work on Jurassic Park was a milestone in terms of innovation as he and his team set out to create dinosaur sounds by mixing together numerous different animal vocalizations to make the audience feel as though giant bellowing prehistoric beasts surrounded them. The Oscar-winning film took a giant leap in being the very first motion picture to be presented in DTS.
He subsequently went on to work on sound for numerous films including Titanic, Saving Private Ryan, Minority Report and Finding Nemo. He won an MPSE lifetime achievement award for his stunning career and regularly speaks at various sound design forums sharing his extensive knowledge and enthusiasm with aspiring sound design artists.
He has recently made his directorial debut with the Pixar animated short, Lifted, for which he received his fourteenth Academy Award nomination. It was included in the Animation Show of Shows in 2006. His debut feature film for the studio, Newt, has been put on indefinite hold.
Pendulum sound machine
Kyouei design is a Japanese design and manufacturing company of lighting and products, established in 2006.
Kouichi Okamoto, product designer / sound producer. Born in 1970 in Shizuoka City. Under the name “bekkou” Okamoto released the sound source work “hi light” from Dutch techno label X-trax in 1997 and has done music work for Dutch “re-run” and British labels since. He started product deign work in 2004 and in 2006 began Kyouei Design. He has been introducing to the world new designs from Shizuoka. Kyouei design also participates in exhibitions and interior product events around the world.
In this video:
Created as an instrument, this device subverts a record player’s rotation to make noise with 16 plate-hitting pendulums.
A Journey in Sound Design
IAN BODDY is one of the UK´s most celebrated synthesists and sound designer and has been creating award-winning sample libraries since 1992. In this enormous compendium Zero-G has collated his last EIGHT sound libraries into one stupendously large library of sublime sound design which has been made available in all the most popular audio formats.
This collecion is packed full of ambiences, soundscapes, drones, loops, single hits and FX and is the perfect tool for any professional movie soundtrack or dance producer looking for some extra creativity and imagination.
Here Ian Boddy tells us about his background, the libraries in this collection and how the sounds were created.
SoundWorks Collection: “The Lost Thing”
The story of “The Lost Thing” is about a boy who discovers a bizarre looking creature while out collecting bottle tops at the beach. Having guessed it is lost, he tries to find out who owns it or where it belongs, but is met with mute indifference from everyone else, who barely notice its presence, each unwilling to entertain this uninvited interruption to their day to day lives. For reasons he does not explain, the boy empathises with the creature, and sets out to find a ‘place’ for it.
Supervising Sound Editor and Sound Designer John Kassab discusses his extensive work on this animated masterpiece bringing to life the world of the Lost Thing.
Directors Shaun Tan and Andrew Ruhemann were also winners for Best Animated Short Film for “The Lost Thing” at the 83rd Academy Awards in 2011.
For more exclusive videos check out SoundWorksCollection.com
Join the SoundWorks Collection Vimeo Channel: vimeo.com/channels/soundworkscollection
New version release: Ultra Swamp (2011) – Sound demo
Ultra Swamp (2011) – A completely reworked version of Swamp so there are a quite a few differences to the prior versions and a hugely increased sonic potential! Just listen.
Patches featured in this video:
Albedo KJ
Endless Dune KJ
Berliner Schule KJ
End of Toys DS
Danger Zone KJ
Chinese Diaspora KJ
Microcosmos KJ
Bhodans Kingdom KJ
Storm at Night KJ
One of these Days DS
Castaway Dream KJ
Circle KJ
Phaedra Choir KJ
There is only one TimbreModulator but with selectable input source: Osc 1, Osc2 or even both! Instead of the 2nd Timbremodulator there is a ‘real’ Ringmodulator, yes, the real deal as far as software can do it! The mod Oscillator for RingMod ranges from approx. 7Hz to 100Hz, so the typical 50Hz AC is possible. As RingMod generates the sum and difference of the input signals it can give quite a low punch. This one is with selectable input source: Osc 1, Osc2, plus the output of TimbreMod too! As both of these soundshapers have great capabilities to transform the signal of the oscillators they have both independant outputs and are treated as secondary soundsources.
Thus the new Swamp has quite increased sonic capabilities at this stage already. Anyway the SF2 oscilators come with 256 carefully selected waves though some maybe suited better for RingMod while others are better suited for TimbreMod.
Of course there is the wellknown resonant 24dB LowPass filter with a 4 channel adaptive mod mixer so 4 source can be mixed to modulate Cutoff. This is great to create new mixes of LFO modulations.
The output sections has increased a lot. Besides the delay there is a stereo Flanger and Stereo Reverb with PreDelay and LowCutoff to remove lower frequencies for an optimized Reverb response (use this if the rev ‘shatters’ in low range.
As Modsources there are 3 LFO, 1 S&H, 1 Double LFO with Phase shifting for one which is best useful for the flanger. Also there is a new Gator which effect can be mixed (w. optionaö modulation) on the output level so you can adjust the amount of gating on the output, with enhanced routings including modulating pan of the delayed signal. Also Aftertouch and Modwheel are used extensively as optional modsources.
The Sonopedia 2 released
Blastwave FX has announced the release of Sonopedia 2.0, a new version of this huge library, loaded with more than 30.000 sounds, including both designed sounds and also a lot of source/production elements for your sound design.
SONOPEDIA 2.0 is a 300 GB sound effects encyclopedia that comes pre-installed on a premium Glyph hard drive. SONOPEDIA 2.0 also includes a sound effects Search Engine and continues to grow with Free Sound Effects Updates, making for a Comprehensive Lifetime Sound Design Solution.
Every sound in SONOPEDIA 2.0 was pristinely recorded and mastered at 24/96 with multi-format delivery as 24/96, 24/48, and 16/44.1 broadcast .WAV files, as well as mp3 reference files. SONOPEDIA 2.0 is cataloged with rich embedded metadata that provides instant, accurate search results on any system and is compatible with Pro Tools, Soundminer, NetMix, iTunes, and other popular sound library search engines. All SONOPEDIA 2.0 sound effects are descriptively named and intuitively categorized for easy browsing.
New features in v2.0
- 10,000 New Sound Effects!
- Over 400 5.1 Surround Sound Effects
- Sound Effects Loops!
- More variety in takes (Distance, Velocity, Duration)
- The only General HD Sound Effects Library to include a suite of Production Elements
- A new category: Textures – featuring sound effects design elements!
Sonopedia 2.0 is available now at $3.999.
SoX – Swiss Army Knife of Sound Processing Programs
SoX is a cross-platform (Windows, Linux, MacOS X, etc.) command line utility that can convert various formats of computer audio files in to other formats. It can also apply various effects to these sound files, and, as an added bonus, SoX can play and record audio files on most platforms. The screen-shot to the below shows an example of SoX first being used to process some audio, then being used to play some audio files. SoX 14.3.2 was released on February 27, 2011. Download it for free at http://sox.sourceforge.net/
Bird Imitation Experiment
Background information:
Equipment: W5 Secret Bird Oscillator; Zoom H4; Panasonic Lumix GF1
Participants: Professor Waffel, Professor Fokuda-san, Doktor Døv
Site: Ruagerkilen Nature Reserve, Fevik, Norway
The Australian Lyre-bird (Menura superba), the Nightingale (Luscinia megarhynchos) and the Sky Lark (Alauda arvensis ) remain among the most inventive song birds in the natural fauna. The former is known to perform a ritual in which it clears a small circle in the forest and mimics all the other song birds in its’ region. Furthermore, it also interpolates imitations of human-related activities such as snapping photo-apparatuses, growling chain-saws and falling trees. In many respects, the Lyre bird resembles the famous CASIO SK-1 6 bit sampler, but it is not as circuit-bendable.
Professor Waffel constructed his W5 Secret Bird Oscillator from a cannibalized walkie talkie and other circuits which were placed inside a Test Oscillator from the 1950’s. Installing a hand-crank and joystick on the device, he found that it was capable of producing expressive sounds which could mimic local bird species. The current study was conducted during Hemmelig Tempo’s Skjærgårdsseminar 2010, and had two main objectives. 1) To examine whether the device was able to attract other song-birds. 2) To examine whether individual performance styles had an impact on the result.
A suitable location was selected within Ruagerkilen Nature Reserve. The W5 Secret Bird Oscillator was placed on a rock below a bird house which had been put up by Professor Waffel some time ago. Recording the performance with a Zoom H4 portable recorder and a Panasonic Lumix GF1 HD video camera, each performer was given 5,3 minutes to manipulate the bird imitation device using his own idiosyncratic methods.
The study remains inconclusive. It must be considered a major methodological flaw that local bird behaviour was not systematically monitored. Although Doktor Døv claimed to have established communication with a Northern Lapwing (Vanellus Vanellus), listening eagerly for reactions is hardly scientifically valid. Furthermore, there is evidence to suggest that Professor Fokuda-san’s aggressive performance may have scared away several species from the nature reserve, making the entire study ethically questionable. How Professor Waffel will ever be able to communicate with his neighbours should be the focus of a future study.
DATAMASKIN
