THE EPIC SOUND BLOG

Our collection of bite-size, audio related stories from around the web.

15 Songs That Defined the Sound of Apple Marketing


October 19, 2011

Over at Mashable, Max Blau takes an interesting look at the 15 songs that accompanied the launches of their now-iconic products:

 

Apple’s marketing has changed the career trajectories of musicians around the world. A 30-second music clip in an Apple commercial often heralds instant fame and heaps of MP3 downloads for artists.
 

How did Steve Jobs and Apple do this? Apple has managed to tie its products into our personal culture. The company designed its products with our songs, films and ideas in mind. Apple’s soundtrack is our soundtrack.

 

 

1. iPod 1G: The Propellerheads — “Take California”
 
In October 2001, Apple debuted its first commercial for a portable MP3 player called the iPod. The ad predated the dark silhouettes featured in their later campaigns. The Propellerheads did not latch onto Apple’s increasing popularity, however, as they never released an album after the ad aired.

 

Well worth checking out – have a look at the full list here.

 





  Posted by Asbjoern Andersen, Epic Sound - Contact

Category music Tags , , , , , , , , —

The Sound of ‘The Thing’


October 17, 2011

Check out this great feature on the sound design of ‘The Thing’, the just-released prequel to the 1982 John Carpenter classic:

 

“The wind was a design element,” says Koretz.  “It is not a standard background.  It was incredibly important for us to help convey emotional content in key scenes.  Whether it is isolation, loneliness, paranoia or whatever, we definitely used different frequencies to help sell the emotions that we wanted to convey.  We did a tremendous amount of layering from our existing sound effects libraries, and a lot of processing and sound design.

Nothing just fits out of the box any more; most of the sounds in the film are processed in one way or another.  This film required the full arsenal of all our plug-ins to help in our quest for these emotional wind sounds.”

 

 

“For the creature vocals, everything went to the stage as virtual elements,” Hecker adds.  “We presented virtual 5.1 pre-dubs so that if we were happy with the plug-in reverbs we had used, then we went with it.  If we wanted to adjust or enhance them, we could do that by opening up the ProTools session.”  “We wanted to give the mixers that flexibility,” Koretz confirms, “so they could unwind things or move them around.”

 

 
Read the full feature on the sound for The Thing here, and watch the trailer below:
 
 
 





  Posted by Asbjoern Andersen, Epic Sound - Contact

Category film sound,sound design Tags , , , , , , —

Colin’s exclusive Fringe sound design interview


July 5, 2010

Colin Hart over at Colin Hart’s Sound Kitchen has an excellent, in-depth interview up with Bruce Tanis, sound designer on Fringe.

CH: “Fringe” has a unique library of effects, often dealing with subjects that we would have no knowledge of how they sound, yet the show remains very organic sounding. What is your approach to designing sound for these things?


BT: I usually try to use ordinary sounds and work on them through plugins and other devices to make them sound interesting. I use a lot of animals and natural events like wind and water to build different effects. Dry ice is my friend! At least as a starting point anyway but they don’t stay there long! Some of the effects, like the weapons or devices usually start from various machines but however big or small they start out, I try to keep their final scale appropriate to what we see on the screen so hopefully that makes them sound a bit more organic as well.



Read the full interview with Fringe sound designer Bruce Tanis here.






  Posted by Asbjoern Andersen, Epic Sound - Contact

Category television sound Tags , , , , , —

Creating the sound for Toy Story 3


June 19, 2010

The Soundworks Collection takes a look at the sound for Toy Story 3 in this excellent feature – check it out!


Join Skywalker Sound’s Re-Recording Mixer and Sound Designer Tom Myers, Sound Re-Recording Mixer Michael Semanick, Director Lee Unkrich, and Stuart Bowling, Technical Marketing Manager at Dolby Laboratories as they take you behind-the-scenes and discuss the sound of Toy Story 3.



Speaking of Toy Story 3, Tracksounds has reviewed Randy Newman’s score for the film – read all about it here.







  Posted by Asbjoern Andersen, Epic Sound - Contact

Category film sound Tags , , , , , , , —

The sound of Bioshock 2


April 5, 2010

Miguel Isaza from Designing Sound has an exclusive interview with Michael Kamper, audio lead on the award-winning Bioshock 2:


DS: How did the art concept and the story of the game influence you and the team to create and lead the sound?

MK: Certainly, the fact that the game was going to be set 10 years after the first BioShock established the atmosphere of BioShock 2. I really wanted the ambience to sell the fact that Rapture was constantly falling apart around the player. We put a lot of creaking and groaning throughout the backgrounds. As you progress, you are also getting closer and closer to Lamb’s (the main antagonist of the game) domain. The audio in that level has a lot of weird non-diegetic sounds that really play off the insanity of the Splicers. We took those elements and stretched them backwards through the game so the player slowly encounters more and more of those elements, illustrating how “infected” the world around the player is becoming.


Read the full interview with Michael Kamper here.





  Posted by Asbjoern Andersen, Epic Sound - Contact

Category game audio Tags , , , —