THE EPIC SOUND BLOG

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

The Sound and Music of ‘The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo’


January 17, 2012

Another great feature from – this time on the sound for ‘The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo’:
 

In this SoundWorks Collection exclusive we talk with Composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, Sound Re-recording Mixer Michael Semanick, and Re-recording Mixer, Sound Designer, and Supervising Sound Editor Ren Klyce.
 
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a 2011 English-language drama/thriller film. It is the second film to be adapted from the Swedish novel of the same name by Stieg Larsson. The first was a 2009 Swedish-language/English dubbed film. The 2011 film was written by Steven Zaillian and directed by David Fincher. Daniel Craig stars as Mikael Blomkvist, and Rooney Mara stars as Lisbeth Salander. In essence, the film follows a man’s mission to find out what has happened to a girl who has been missing for 36 years, and may have been murdered.

 

 





  Posted by Asbjoern Andersen, Epic Sound - Contact

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

Exclusive interview with the Alan Wake audio team


December 26, 2011

Alan Wake was one of the games that impressed me the most in 2010, and now Miguel Isaza has a great interview up with the audio team for the game.


Check out Miguel’s interview here.







  Posted by Asbjoern Andersen, Epic Sound - Contact

Category game audio Tags , , , , , —

The role of sound in video games




Aaron Trammel shares his thoughts and observations on how sound and music work in video games, looking at Limbo and other titles.


The soundtrack of Limbo says a lot about the game, which in turn says a lot about our culture.Video games are rarely the object of analysis for sound culture studies, this is fairly counterintuitive considering both their social impact and technological nature.

Should sound studies take a closer look at video games – where would it start?


Read Aarons full post here.





  Posted by Asbjoern Andersen, Epic Sound - Contact

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Interview with sound designer Gary Rydstrom


December 21, 2011

Over at the Unidentified Sound Object blog, Matteo Milani and Federico Placidi have a fine interview up with Academy Award-winning sound designer Gary Rydstrom:
 

USO: What does it mean for you to associate a particular sound to a visual event (identifying it in a vast catalogue as big as the sound library of SkySound)? What are the mental or purely instinctive paths competing in making the choice?
 
GR: Something magical happens when a sound effect is added to picture – and it’s not predictable. After all my years of doing it, I still depend on experimenting, putting sounds against image and seeing what happens. First time I did this, as a film student, it amazed me how sound could “open up” a movie, how the combination of sound and visual could create something greater than the sum parts. Having a great sound library is essential, but the real secret is how one uses it.
 

 
Read the full interview with Gary Rydstrom here.





  Posted by Asbjoern Andersen, Epic Sound - Contact

Category film sound,sound design Tags , , , —

The Sound and Music of Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol


December 19, 2011

Another excellent sound feature from Michael Coleman – this time on the sound and music for ‘Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol’. Check it out:
 

 





  Posted by Asbjoern Andersen, Epic Sound - Contact

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

Meet the audio director of Battlefield 3


October 23, 2011

Here’s Sophia Tong’s interview with DICE audio director Stefan Strandberg:

 

GS: What kind of research needs to be done before approaching a big project like Battlefield?

 

SS: I believe we, as in the sound team at DICE, are quite scientific in the initial stages of the production of a game. We listen and we analyze, and I have said this before, but I really believe in keeping identities from the real world. And we are very careful and aware when breaking those rules. The rules of real-world sounds. Especially in the case of a game that portrays something real. Real hardware, real worlds, real people. Personally, I like to exaggerate things, but it is not always needed since the real world provides so many layers of legibility and recognizable sounds. Once you start manipulating what we as humans know to be true in sounds, you cater to a second layer that only exists within your “made-up universe.” And it is much trickier to stay true to that “new reality” once you’ve established it. We always try [to] create a consistent audio world when we go about making a Battlefield game.

 
Read the full interview with Battlefield 3 audio director Stefan Strandberg here.





  Posted by Asbjoern Andersen, Epic Sound - Contact

Category game audio 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 , , , , , , —

Music, sound design and voices for One.com’s Cloud Drive


October 10, 2011

We delivered music, sound design and voice acting for this presentation from One.com, launching their new Cloud Drive solution.
 
One.com is a market leading web hosting provider with more than 850.000 customers in 149 countries. The presentation was developed by leading Scandinavian visual effect studio Ghost,
who have also done visuals on movies such as ‘Cowboys and Aliens’, ‘Hellboy 2′, ‘Harry Potter 5′ and many more.
 
Have a peek to see why you really want to be using a Cloud Drive :)

 

 





  Posted by Asbjoern Andersen, Epic Sound - Contact

Category Epic Sound,music,sound design,voice-over Tags , , , , , , , , , —

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