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On Current Events and the State of Our Industry

A Special Guest Blog Post by Colin Grant

with an introduction By Kate Finan & Jeff Shiffman – Co-Owners’s  BOOM BOX POST

The last few months, and especially the last few weeks, have been a tumultuous time for our sound community, our country, and our world at large. Just when we all thought that our entire existence had already been tipped on its head by COVID-19, we were forced to come to grips with more tragedy and further depth of feeling as protests surged following the death of George Floyd.

As always, we are proud to be part of an online community that has taken these current events seriously and is working to create not just a safe space for open discourse, but a place to ask the difficult question of “how can I help?” We are currently taking a break from posting on social media and our blog about our business in order to give space to more important voices on this topic. However, it seemed like a missed opportunity not to use our platform to try to amplify some of those voices.

After seeing our former star intern, Colin Grant, actively tweeting about current events, we asked him to share a guest blog post with our readers. Colin came to us as a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh with a Bachelor of Arts, Music and Communications Studies, the Berklee Summer Abroad Film/Video Game Scoring Track, and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music with a Professional Studies Degree in Technology and Applied Composition. He had numerous jobs and internships under his belt before joining us, and after graduating from our internship program, has since moved on to do sound for AAA games as well as freelance post-production sound design and music.

Below, Colin shares his point of view on how our sound community can come together to create real and long-lasting change in our industry. Boom Box Post is by no means a perfect workplace. While we pride ourselves on gender diversity and inclusivity, Colin’s words showed us that there is so much more that we could be doing to help give marginalized voices a chance in our industry. We hope that you find Colin’s perspective as enlightening as we have and that you will share it with your friends, co-workers, and community members if you are moved to do so. Together, we believe that we can forge an industry that supports not just diversity, but inclusion; and further, not just inclusion, but justice.

-Kate Finan & Jeff Shiffman

On Current Events and the State of Our Industry

 

With the protests that have erupted after the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and the countless other African Americans that have experienced police brutality, a conversation about general inequality and lack of representation in the entertainment industry has bubbled to the surface once more. It is a sore subject for many and there is no easy solution to tackle the issue, but it is a necessary conversation. When I was approached to write a guest post, I initially considered writing a general post not overly specific to the Sound Community.  However, the more I wrote the more I realized that there are already hundreds of articles and tweets and videos that speak about the state of the world in much more eloquent and powerful words than I could ever hope to express. So, I decided to speak on more specific topics. While I by no means think that I have all of the answers (or even most) and certainly I don’t speak for a monolith, I hope that sharing my thoughts on the subjects can be helpful for some.

What We Can Do Right Now

The first and most pressing thing that we can do is to simply be understanding. Understanding that your African-American employees, contractors, freelancers, and friends are under immense stress right now and are trying to keep it together. Every time something like this occurs, the constant dull fear for our lives and the lives of our loved ones becomes sharp intense pains that must be managed along with everyday life. We must still work, interact with loved ones, go shopping, etc. This is on top of a global pandemic and many are confined to their homes. Some are dealing with the stress of raising kids while others are dealing with intense isolation. Have the same understanding you had when we all started quarantine. Work may be slower than usual and some may need to take some time to themselves. We are being inundated with incredibly brutal images almost constantly via news and social media and unfortunately, most don’t have the freedom nor luxury to simply tune that out.

I’d also encourage you to not just say that you and/or your company support the fight against police brutality but show it. Talk is cheap and donations along with specific and detailed calls to action speak volumes. Now is not the time to be silent or vague.

What We Can Do in the Future 

If you are on social media, you most likely have noticed the outpouring of offers for mentorship and the call for portfolios. This is fantastic and I hope to see this trend continue. However…

  1. For the reasons listed in the previous paragraph, some may not be in the current headspace to actually reach out to a stranger over the internet for mentorship. It’s difficult to put your best foot forward when the world seems to be on fire.
  2. This sudden spotlight brings the need for website, reel, and resume updating and again, the world is on fire.
  3. While people mean well, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen this happen, only to die down just as quickly. This needs to be ingrained in our culture as professionals. This can’t happen only when a life is lost.

Rather than simply reacting, we need to be proactive. Systemic problems require attacking the problem at points, from the branches to the roots. This has to be done on the individual, company, and industry-wide level to be truly effective and long-lasting. I’m not an expert when it comes to large-scale industry organizations, but below are just a few approaches.

School

  1. Are we going into middle schools, high schools and colleges and letting people know that sound is an option, especially lower-income schools? Though we may eat, sleep, and breathe sound, we are all too aware of how many don’t even think about the role of audio-professionals. A good example of this is the community outreach that  Nickelodeon does called the Nickelodeon Community Efforts.
  2. Are we reaching out and talking to schools about visiting our studios? While that certainly presents a totally separate set of challenges, showing kids how to record, what being a sound editor entails, and what a foley pit looks like can go a long way.

Internships/Work

  1. How accessible is your internship program, especially to those coming from a lower-income bracket? If you are only offering a 40+ hour-a-week unpaid internship, you are already culling the pool. If it’s not a paid position, then structuring your internship to allow time to work a job is a necessity. Accessibility also means clearly showing how and where to apply, as well as what to expect (for both points, I’d look at how BBP lists and structures their internship). Most of our industry is word of mouth, which can create an enclosed system. If you find that your interns tend to come from the same exact schools, you might need to be more proactive.
  2. How accessible is your job application process? Everything I mentioned for Internships applies to jobs. If you truly want to see change, you have to be proactive, even if it means a bit more legwork on your part.

Mentorship

  1. How are you fostering mentorship and helping marginalized voices not only break into the industry but grow and flourish? I know it’s easy to think our industry is a meritocracy and those who succeed and rise in the ranks do so on their own strengths alone and those who fail simply “couldn’t hack it,” but that simply is too black and white.

I really want to thank Kate, Jeff, and the whole Boom Box Post Crew for allowing me to voice my opinion on their platform. I know things may seem bleak now, but I have faith in both the sound community and in the world at large that things will change and that things will get better.

Here are some existing resources:

Project Include

POC in Audio

Colin Grant is passionate about making worlds through sound! Whether it’s as a composer, music editor, sound designer, or dialogue editor, Colin loves crafting sounds that enhance the narrative and emotional journey in a story. This is especially true for animation and video games, two mediums that Colin has the most experience in and love for.

More from Boom Box Post and Kate Finan

Post-Production Mid-Pandemic – Boom Box Post

We recently received a request to write a post on how we’ve been dealing with the global pandemic. While I am a bit worried our audience may be exhausted by COVID-19 coverage, I think it’s important to share our experience at this time with one another. With that in mind, I hope this post brings some information your way about work from home workflows as well as our unique perspective as a boutique post-production studio dealing with the crisis. I’m also hoping it may spark some new conversation about how we are all working in a creative, collaborative field while isolated from one another. So let’s dive in!

Since starting the studio, Kate and I have tried to have as many editors work in-house as possible. We love having our team interacting with one another every day. Great for creativity, tough in this crisis. We had a challenge on our hands sending everyone home.

When it became very apparent that the COVID-19 crisis was getting serious (around mid-March) Kate and I started to formulate a plan to transform Boom Box Post into a remote studio over multiple phases; each phase triggered by differing levels of danger. Preparing for the worst (full stay at home orders) just in case. Oh what a simpler time!

CREATING A REMOTE STUDIO

Phase 1 – Sending our Editors HOME

I started by visiting every editor to audit what kind of equipment each had at home. Results ranged for fully able to work from home to having no gear at all. With this information, I was able to create an individual checklist for each staff member, down to the cables, of what they would be taking home from the studio.

At this point we decided to send all non-client-facing staff home for their own safety. It was a bit chaotic loading up cars with gear but everyone was in remarkably good spirits.

Phase 2 – Sending Our Client-Facing Staff HOME

Very quickly it became obvious that our clients were no longer going to be able to come by the studio for in-person reviews. In the span of 24 hours, we heard from all the major studios that staff would either be sent home or isolated to only their corporate workspaces. It was at this point we decided to send Brad Meyer, Lead Sound Editor and Tess Fournier, Supervising Sound Editor home as well. We also worked out a VPN remote control system for media management and were able to send Sam Busekrus our Assistant Editor/Office Manager home.

Phase 3 – Everybody Goes Home

On March 19th, California issued the “Safer at Home” order and it was time to send home the last holdouts (myself included). Having been over a decade since I worked from home, I needed to set up shop from scratch. My kids moved together into one room, my son’s former bedroom becoming my home studio. I packed up every piece of gear into my car, even a desk, and chair! The studio was officially empty as of Friday, March 20th.

After almost six years of building Boom Box Post from the ground up, this is something completely different.

Re-Recording mixer Jacob Cook and I still go in about once a week to mix alone on our stage. I have to be honest, going into an empty studio that was so vibrant only a month prior is very odd. With each room stripped of all gear, devoid of our amazing staff, it’s a shell of what it once was. Will we be able to bounce back just a quickly as we sent everyone home? For sure! But for now, it’s still very sad for me.

TECHNICAL SOLUTIONS

Getting everyone working at home was a challenge but even more importantly, we needed solutions that would work well for our clients. After all, we needed to show we could continue to do great work with client direction even in this new setting. After extensive testing, here are some of the strategies and tools we settled on. Note: we are in no way paid to endorse any products.

SyncSketch

The big hero of the pandemic for us has been the remote review platform SyncSketch. With this web-based program, we are able to upload client videos which can then be reviewed either individually or in sync as a team, leaving timecode specific notes tagged with the reviewer’s name. Once complete, notes can be downloaded as a PDF with thumbnails of the shots being referenced. It’s as simple as watching back a Quicktime but without the mess of typing out timecode and organizing them into an email thread. This alternative to attempting ‘live’ reviews over a video conferencing solution has proven to be the most effective since the quality and playback remain rock solid. All it requires is rendering our mixes to quicktime and setting up review timelines and deadlines with our clients. We have used SyncSketch for spotting and previewing sessions, ADR calling and final mix reviews. Best of all, SyncSketch employs the highest level of security, so clients know their data is safe. After introducing SyncSketch to our clients, a number of them implemented it internally for their own production use.

UPS Battery Backups

In the early days of the California “Safer at Home” declaration, I didn’t know what kind of access we would have to the office. Our server is the heart of our business, all media coming and going from this central location. I ran out to Best Buy and bought the two largest battery back up units in stock. Advertised as giving us about two full hours of power backup, I figured this could buy us some time in a power outage for this critical part of our infrastructure.

ETHERNET CABLE

Building CAT-5 cable is a very specific skill. Lucky for me, I wired multiple houses in college with ethernet (it was the early 2ooo’s and rental homes in Bloomington, Indiana weren’t coming pre-wired back then). As it turns out, home wifi isn’t necessarily going to cut it when our editors need the ability to download very large files in short time frames. I spent quite some time on the floor of my office creating very long custom cables (the biggest was 40 feet!) so that our team could wire up directly to their routers.

Zoom Conferencing

Zoom seems to have gotten the lock on conferencing for this crisis. And it’s no wonder why. In my testing, it’s clearly the most stable. When a session has required ‘face to face’ interaction, we’ve turned to Zoom.

Security

While we have the majority of our staff in the office, we did already have a few editors working from home. This proved very beneficial as we had already put in place stringent remote work security protocols which we simply had to apply to our new work from home staff.

In the midst of all our work from home prep, I was so proud of our team’s resilience that I tweeted about it. This caught the attention of Teresa Morrow, co-host of the Tonebenders podcast. They reached out to ask if we could participate in a roundtable discussion on how we were handling the crisis. You can listen to Kate and I recount our experience in detail in this surprisingly fun (given the subject matter) conversation.

COVID-19 has stretched the very idea of adversity in business for us. That said, I’m doing my best to focus on the positive here. Who knows what kind of efficiency changes will come out of this crisis? I’ve been keeping a running list of post-COVID to-dos, a lot of which are going to be improvements. I try very hard to be grateful, but I think this change of pace has still shown me how much we have in this studio and this incredibly talented team of sound pros. It’s easy to get caught up in the day to day operations and lose sight of the amazing work happening around us. I know that when we return to the office, things are going to be quite different. It’s my hope that I’ll appreciate our shared creativity even more once Boom Box Post is under one roof again.

Stay safe out there.

JEFF SHIFFMAN, CO-OWNER OF BOOM BOX POST

Post-Production Mid-Pandemic Part 2: Staying Connected

A couple of weeks ago, Jeff wrote a great post about our journey from an in-studio editorial and mix facility to an entirely work-from-home team with remote client services. He talked about all of the challenges of quickly pivoting our entire business model in the face of COVID, which was no small order. You can also hear more about that time if you listen to the Tonebenders COVID & the Sound Community Round Table that we took part of. They caught us mid-transition, and we were tired, overwhelmed, but so appreciative of our team’s ability to rise to any challenge.

But, now we’ve all moved on to a whole different phase of the pandemic: one where we’re fairly settled into our new normal and just waiting to see how long we stay here.

Our Business During COVID-19

We, at Boom Box Post, are among the lucky ones. Because we work in animation and our clients aren’t on set, our entire Los Angeles client-base was able to transition very quickly to work-from-home, thus keeping our operations alive and well. That is far from the case for our live-action counterparts. But, that doesn’t mean that we haven’t also seen changes in the amount and type of work that has come through our now-virtual door.

Unlike live-action, animation is often done overseas and then shipped back to an LA-based production company. A number of our television series are animated in China, India, Israel, and other countries that have undergone various degrees of government-mandated quarantines. Some of these companies were able to set up part of their staff to work effectively from home. But in most cases, workers do have the means to work from home, and schedules were delayed for as long as those closures persisted. In this way, our business is being greatly affected not just by US legislation, but by health concerns and political action across the world.

Additionally, on our series, all dialogue is recorded in a voice-over booth here in LA. With Safer at Home in place, currently, all sessions have been canceled. Some productions were able to quickly gear up to get all of their talent recording effectively at home–a very tall order considering that some of that talent consists of child actors who are not as tech-savvy as an adult professional voice actor. But others are making do with sub-par home recordings done in whatever fashion is possible, considering them scratch, and planning to record the real lines when we are all allowed back in the studio again (whenever that may be). Some series are mixing with scratch in place and planning to punch in at a later date. Others are holding off on mixing all together until all materials are available to avoid confusion in the post-COVID aftermath.

Whatever each crew has decided, none of it is simple, and none of it is consistent from series to series. So while we have been able to adapt amazingly well and continue our business in a way that few are lucky enough to do, it has been a struggle to keep up with all of the different needs, demands, and concerns depending on each unique client situation.

Great Things that Have Happened

On the upside, some amazing things have happened. Number one, I’m typing this blog post while sitting in my backyard, sipping iced tea, on a beautiful Los Angeles day. So really, how could I possibly complain about this? We’ve all had more time with family lately (um…. for better or worse. You know what I mean, fellow parents!!!). I haven’t eaten this many home-cooked meals for at least ten years. Maybe twenty, if we’re honest.

And we’ve proven yet again that we, at Boom Box Post, have the best staff in the biz. We have not received one single complaint through this whole transition–even a good-natured gripe during one of our Zoom Tipsy Tuesdays! So while I’m sure that everyone is tired of learning all this new technology (I feel like my head will explode if I’m asked to figure out one more remote playback solution or video conferencing platform), I think we’ve also learned so much in a very short time that will benefit our workflow in the future.

How We Are Staying Connected

Meet Roger, Tess’s new pup!

It’s hard to feel like we’re all part of a cohesive team while working in isolation. So, we’ve been trying hard to continue our usual team-building and social engagements. But, we’ve had to get creative in order to keep things fun!

We’re still organizing virtual team lunches from time to time when we watch each other slurp spaghetti and spoon leftover chili into our mouths while oohing and ahhing over how cute everyone’s cats and dogs are. I have to admit, the pets are a great addition.

We started a #recipes channel on Slack so we can share easy recipes that require few or very easily modified ingredient lists since grocery shopping can be hit or miss these days.

We goaded Tess into adopting a dog. The pressure was real. But she’s going to be an awesome dog mom, and I think we can all agree that those dog walks are clutch right now.

And, we’re still doing our Lunch & Learns and Tipsy Tuesdays via Zoom! They’re incredibly chaotic, but it’s cool to see everyone in their natural habitat. And it always reminds me how much I miss having a big, vibrant, talented team surrounding me all day.

Tips from Our Team in a Time of Turmoil

 

Because, as I mentioned, our team has been so amazing about not saying a peep about how COVID is affecting them, I decided to reach out to ask what their experience has been so far and if they have any tips on how to stay sane during this tough time. Here’s what they had to say!

What do you miss the most about the office?

Tim: I feel like everyone is going to say the thing they miss most about the office are the people. Which is true, I do miss seeing everyone’s face every day. But I think what I miss the most is our server. At-home internet just isn’t it and I miss being able to download large sessions in 2 seconds. I also miss the act of actually going into the office. My commute always turns into a karaoke session…

Jacob: I miss seeing my coworkers and eating lunch with them. I miss hearing about what is happening in all my friends’ lives and taking a relaxing break with them during the day.

Brad: I miss my full 5.1 rig. I currently only have the capabilities for stereo. However, I’m no stranger to cutting shows that get mixed in 5.1 in stereo, so it hasn’t been too hard to adapt.

Tess: I miss seeing everyone every day and catching up! Both coworkers and clients.

Sam: I would just say being around the whole team. Working at home can get lonely and boring not having others to talk to. I would say being able to socialize and going to other people’s rooms for a question or for whatever reason makes the time go by a lot faster. Another aspect is that it’s a change of scenery. Working from home is just the same thing over and over again. I hardly even know what day of the week it is anymore.

For you, what’s the best part of working from home? 

Kirsty: For me, the best part of WFH is I don’t need to deal with traffic anymore. It’s great that there are only 20 feet from my working desk to my couch. But I also miss being able to communicate with people in the office. Now we have to type in Slack. I’d love to congratulate people in person for their promotion or pet adoption.

Natalia: Being able to have home-cooked meals! I like to cook so that’s a good thing about working from home, also I’m fostering so I get to spend much more time with the dog!

Tim: I adopted a cat a few months ago, so it’s been nice to spend all day with her. She is almost always on my lap or by my feet while I work. It’s also nice to be able to keep an eye on her and tell her to STOP SCRATCHING THE COUCH!

Tess: Honestly, not a huge fan of working from home. But I’m glad we’re all being safe!

Jacob: It is awesome to lose my commute. While I enjoy listening to my podcasts on the way to work, I enjoy using the extra time to cook breakfast and tidy up the house before I start working in the morning, not to mention the extra time with my wife after work.

Brad: Having my wife as a coworker!

Sam: There are a few major pros of working from home that I love. The first one being that I get to be around my dog all day so he does keep me somewhat entertained. The second one is not having to drive to work. Everyone knows LA traffic sucks so not having to deal with that is amazing. One other bonus is being able to wake up later. All I have to do is walk from my bed to the computer!

Do you have any hot WFH tips? 

Natalia: Be organized, especially if you have different work projects going on. And also, have a dedicated space for work and don’t bring it into your personal space of the house. You need to create boundaries between work and downtime within the same home. Also, set a strict schedule for when to work, pretty much keep the same schedule as if you were going into the studio. If not, you’ll end up losing track of time that way. But also, don’t forget to stand up and take breaks from time to time!

Tim: I have made multiple quarantine playlists. Jamming out while I work helps keep my mind off the fact that I haven’t left the house in weeks. So if you’re someone who can focus while listening to music, I definitely recommend putting on some tunes!

Jacob: I like to set hourly benchmarks for myself when editing sound effects. I sort of did that before WFH, but I find it to be extra important now that I have all the distractions of my home close at hand. This way I always know where I am and where I should be in my work, and I’m never surprised if I am running behind at the end of the day.

Tess: Best WFH tip I have is to keep your regular schedule! I’ve found that to be tricky, but if I drift out for a day I’m much less productive than when I’m strict about my schedule.

Brad: Be conscious of the work time/home time divide. When there’s no clear cut end to your workday and you don’t have to leave work to go home, it’s hard to know when to stop for the day, which can lead to fatigue on your ears, eyes, and mind.

Sam: I think the most important thing for me is taking breaks away from the computer to not lose sanity. Exercising on my lunch break and going outside for a few minutes at a time throughout the day really does help me personally.

Do you want to share any fun internet time-wasters to brighten everyone’s day?

Greg: I play sudoku, solitaire, Tripeaks solitaire, and wordscapes. For websites, addictinggames.com is a classic for a multitude of quickplay games, mix.com is the updated version of stumbleupon. It’s now a browser add-on that you can just click the button and it takes you to a random page of your selected interests. Everything from games to photography, science and technology articles, comedic/satiric articles, etc. etc.

Also there’s this classic for a good throwback game every once in a while https://gold-miner-games.com/classic-gold-miner.htm

Tim: My friends and I have been playing skribbl.io over Facetime a lot. It’s basically Pictionary without the teams. I don’t like to share my wins.

Kate: If you’re having a hard time with the utter silence of working from home, you can use this office noise generator! Move the sliders to make just the right mix of chatty colleagues, aggressive typer next door, room tone, and that solidly 90’s printer technology that can screech louder than any banshee.

Jacob: I love the Youtube Channel Kittisaurus. Watching the cats get up to shenanigans is always a good laugh.

 

Part One of this Blog was written by JEFF SHIFFMAN, CO-OWNER OF BOOM BOX POST

 

Women in Audio Engineering

During the first week of November, my alma mater, the DePaul University School of Music, held an 11-day music festival with numerous masterclasses, panel discussions, and concerts to commemorate the unveiling of its new Holtschneider Performance Center.  I was asked to take part in the panel discussion sponsored by the Sound Recording Technology department titled Women in Audio Engineering. The panel sought to bring to light the fact that although women are a minority in music production and audio engineering (according to Women’s Audio Mission, women make up five percent of all audio professions), there are many notable women contributing in these fields. In addition to highlighting the professional hurdles and triumphs faced by the all-female panel, the moderator, Tom Miller, Director of Sound Recording Technology at DePaul, also posed several important questions regarding how we, as an audio community, can strive to achieve parity in the future.

Highlighting a Few Amazing Women

Although women from every generation continue to forge ahead in our field, the hard reality of being only five percent of the industry means that women rarely have the privilege of meeting one another.  My hope with this post is that the accomplishments of the women I recently met at this panel can inspire and invigorate fellow female (as well as male and non-binary!) audio professionals from afar.

The women listed below are not affiliated with Boom Box Post or the opinions expressed in this blog post. The following bios were supplied to DePaul University by the panelists themselves:

Christine Schyvinck

Chris Schyvinck is Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer at Shure Incorporated, the world’s leading manufacturer of microphones and audio electronics. As the highest-ranking officer at the Company, she is one of a few women to hold an executive position in the pro audio industry. Her leadership has been integral to the steady growth and profitability of Shure.

During her tenure, Chris has led critical initiatives for the Company, including reducing material costs without sacrificing product quality, dramatically improving on-time delivery, and globalizing manufacturing operations. She joined Shure in 1989 as Quality Control Engineer. After several promotions, she moved into Process Engineering, becoming manager in 1997. In 1998, she was made Vice President of Corporate Quality.

Two years later, Chris was named Vice President of Operations, responsible for Corporate Quality, Procurement, Supply Chain, and the Company’s manufacturing facilities in Mexico and China. She was promoted to Executive Vice President in 2004 and directed the opening of Shure’s first manufacturing facility in China one year later.

In 2006, Chris was tapped to head the Global Marketing and Sales Division, assuming management of the Company’s Business Units in the Americas, Europe, Middle East/Africa, and Asia/Pacific regions as well as the strategic integration, marketing, sales, artist and public relations, technical support, and customer service functions. Sales increased by more than 78 percent during her ten-year period as Executive Vice President of GMS.

In 2015, she was designated Chief Operating Officer, and, in 2016, was appointed Shure President and CEO, becoming only the fourth such officer in the Company’s 90-year history.

Currently, Chris leads the Company’s eight divisions: Administration, Finance, Global Legal Services, Global Marketing and Sales, Human Resources, Information Technology, Operations, and Product Development.

She has a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is the former Chairman of the Industrial Advisory Board for the School of Mechanical Engineering at UW-Madison. Chris recognized Shure as the perfect blend of her two passions (music and engineering) and rejected employment offers from larger manufacturers. While working at Shure, she completed her Master’s degree in Engineering Management from the McCormick School of Engineering at Northwestern University and is currently seated on the Board of Industrial Advisors for that program.

Mary Mazurek

Mary Mazurek is an audio engineer, interdisciplinary artist, educator, and PhD candidate. Her audio broadcasts and recordings are regularly heard on WFMT, Chicago. She has worked with: the European Broadcast Union, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Steward Copland of the Police, and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to name a few. She is a practicing media artist whose works have been exhibited in the U.S., Mexico, and Europe. She is also a sought-after educator and is currently writing her Ph.D. dissertation, which concerns developing an epistemology of noise in music and art.

You may also read more about Mary’s journey in this adaptation of a speech she gave on September 12, 2018 at the Recording Academy Task Force On Diversity and Inclusion at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.

Marina Killion

Marina Killion is an accomplished audio engineer based in Chicago. She is currently the Senior Audio Engineer at Optimus, where she has worked since 2009. She does everything from sound design, dialog editing, Foley, ADR, to final mix. Marina has a background in classical music performance, and studied Sound Recording Technology at DePaul University. She has worked on many notable campaigns such as Chicago Blackhawks, UPS, Reebok, Always, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Invesco, and Olive Garden. She is currently mixing her third feature length independent film, and has previously mixed three documentaries, two web series, a television pilot, and many short films in addition to her commercial projects. Her work has been shown at the Chicago International Film Festival, Chicago Comedy Festival, Midwest Independent Film Festival, and many more. She also won a Silver Addy Award in 2014 for her work with the Eastern Board of Cherokee Indians.

Kate Finan

You all know me!  But, if you don’t, feel free to check out my bio here on our website.

Starting the Conversation

Because I found the panel’s questions to be incredibly thought-provoking, I wanted to share them with all of you so that you might think about your own answers and possibly engage with your peers on this important topic:

What can we do to attract women to the audio profession?

How can we support women in our industry?

What can we do to break down the “good old boy” perception of recording?

Resources

Finally, I am supplying a list of my favorite resources for women in the audio industry or for those who would like to support their female or non-binary peers.  Most of my suggestions are geared toward women in STEM, post-production, or animation since those are the areas in which I work. So please feel free to comment with any of your own suggestions for other areas of the audio industry.  Here they are in no particular order.

And don’t forget to join your professional organizations so that your voice can be heard at the highest levels of our industry!

 

How to Push your Sound Design to the Max

While Not Stepping on your Mixer’s Toes

We get a lot of questions about how much you should do in your sound design pass versus how much to leave to your mixer. So, although I’ve written a few posts on this topic (such as Whose Job Is It: When Plugin Effects Sound Design vs Mix Choices and Five Things I’ve Learned about Editing from Mixing), I thought it was time for another brush-up.

As some of you may know, I’m a long-time sound designer and supervising sound editor, but I just started mixing a few years ago. While attending mixes as a supervisor definitely gave me a window into best practices for sound design success (aka how to make sure your work actually gets played…audibly), I got a whole new vantage point for what to do (and not do) once I started having to dig through sound design sessions myself! So, while I am a fledgling mixer and you should always speak directly to the mixer working on your project before making decisions or altering your workflow, I feel that I am qualified to share my personal preferences and experiences. Take this as the starting point for a conversation—a window into one mixer’s mind, and hopefully, it will spark great communication with your own mixer.

Below, I’m sharing a few key concepts that there seems to be confusion surrounding in the “who does what” debate. I’ve personally come across these questions or situations, and I’m hoping to spare you the headache of doing any work over due to a lack of communication. Here they are!

EQ

What Not to Do

I was recently the supervisor and mixer on an episode that was almost entirely underwater. My sound effects editor EQ’ed every single water movement, splash, drip, etc. that occurred underwater with a very aggressive low-pass filter. While this made total sense from a realistic sound point of view, it completely demolished any clarity that we might have had and muddied up the entire episode. It was very hard to locate the sound effects in the space and even harder to get them to cut through the dialogue, more or less the music! Unfortunately, this was done destructively with audio-suite on every single file (and there were thousands of them probably). Every single one had to be recut by hand from the library, which was an insanely arduous task.

What to Do Instead

I’m going to say this once, and then please just assume that this is step one for everything below (I’ll spare you the boredom of reading it over and over): STEP ONE IS ALWAYS ASK YOUR MIXER BEFORE YOU START APPLYING ANY EQ.

I think you can safely assume that there’s, at best, an 80% chance that your mixer does not want you to EQ anything. Ever. So always ask before you destructively alter your work. With EQ’ing it’s especially important that the right amount is added given what else is happening in the scene, and clients often have opinions about how much is too much for their sense of clarity in the mix.

The better way to approach EQ is to ask your mixer (again, asking because this may require a change to their mix template which requires their approval) if it would work to place any FX that you think should be EQ’ed on a separate food group with no other FX mixed in. Having all underwater movements on one set of tracks clearly labeled UNDERWATER FX gives your mixer the ability to quickly EQ all of them with just a few keystrokes and knob turns. And then he or she can also very easily change that EQ to mesh well with the music and dialogue or to satisfy a client note. It also means that he or she can put all of those lovely water effects on one VCA and ride that if the clients ask for any global changes to the volume of water FX. Win-win!

The same is true for any batch EQ’ing of FX. I like the “split onto a separate food group of clearly labeled tracks” method for other things, too, like: action happening on the other side of a door or wall, sound effects coming from a TV or radio, or any other time that you would imagine EQ should be applied to a large selection of files. So yes, split it out to make it easy and obvious for your mixer, but no, don’t do it yourself.

Reverb

What Not to Do

Don’t add any environmental reverb. Just don’t do it. Keep in mind that your sound design doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It’s layered on top of dialogue, music, BGs, ambiances, and probably more! What sounds right as a reverb setting to you while working only on your FX definitely won’t be the right choice once everything else has been placed in the mix.

What to Do Instead

Let your mixer decide. If you do it as an effect for one singular moment (I’m thinking something like a hawk screech to establish distance), only process individual files and also provide a clearly marked clean version in the track below. That way, your mixer has the option to use your version, or take it as an indication of what the clients like and redo it with the clean one. But before you go ahead and use reverb as an effect in your sound design, always check in with your supervisor first. He or she will be able to draw on all of their experience on the mix stage, and will be able to let you know if it’s a good idea or not. From my experience, the answer is that it’s almost always NOT a good idea.

Trippy FX

What Not to Do

Say you’re designing the sound for a super trippy sequence like the POV shot for a drugged up character. You may be tempted to add a phaser, some crazy modulation, or any other trippy overall effect to the whole sequence. Don’t do it! That takes all of the fun out of your mixer’s job, and furthermore really ties his or her hands. They need the ability to adjust any effects to also achieve mix clarity when the music and dialogue are added. So it’s always best to let them choose any overall effects!

What to Do Instead

Go for it with weird ambiences, off-the-wall sound choices, and totally different BGs to make it feel like you’re really inside the character’s head. Feel free to process individual files if you think it really adds something—just be sure to also supply the original muted below and named something obvious like “unprocessed.”

Panning

What Not to Do

Don’t spend hours panning all of your work without first speaking to your mixer. Your understanding of panning may be wildly different from what he or she can actually use in the mix. I’ve seen a lot of editors pan things 100% off-screen to the right or left, and I just have to redo all of it. Panning isn’t too difficult or complicated, but it’s really best to be on the same page as your mixer before you start.

What to Do Instead

Some mixers love it if you help out with panning, especially if they’re really under the gun time-wise. Others prefer you leave it to them—so always ask first. If you want to be sure that your spaceship chase sequence zooms in and around your clients during your FX preview, just make sure to ask your mixer first about his/her panning preferences. How far to the L/R do they prefer that you pan things? What about how much into the rears? Do they mind if you do it with the panning bars, or will they only keep it if you use the 5.1 panner/stereo pot?

LFE Tracks

What Not to Do

Don’t cut your LFE tracks while listening on headphones. You may not realize that what you’re putting in the LFE should actually go in our SFX track because it is low in pitch, but not in that rumble-only range. It’s nearly impossible to cut your LFE track without a subwoofer, since true LFE sweeteners in your library will look like they have a standard-sized waveform, but will sound like almost nothing in headphones!

What to Do Instead

Keep in mind that any files that live on the LFE tracks are going to be bused directly to the low-frequency effects generator which can output approximately 3- 120 Hz. That is super low!  So only cut sound effects that have only that frequency information in them, or that you only care to hear that part. Any other mid-range “meat” to the sound will be lost in the mix.

 

The History of Sound Design

 

Although the term “sound design” has been around for nearly four decades–and the practice has been pursued much longer–its use has only recently become nearly ubiquitous.  A day cannot go by that I do not see #sounddesign appended onto the end of a multitude of tweets from around the world.  We now have the invaluable website DesigningSound.org, which distributes information about our community’s adventures, musings, and technical inquiries.  And our Boom Box Post blog often touts titles such as Creature Speech Sound Design Challenge or Smoke and Mirrors: Unexpected Sound Design Sources.

Why this sudden renaissance of the term “sound design”?  This week, I decided to take a closer look at the history of the term, the differences in how it is used across the film and television, interactive and immersive media, and theater industries, and its use and abuse.

Sound Design: A History

The term “sound designer” was used for the first time in film in 1979.  Francis Ford Coppola granted Walter Murch the title of Sound Designer for his work on Apocalypse Now, marking the first use of the term as a credit in film.  Until that point in time, the usual credit, Supervising Sound Editor or Sound Editor, was generally accepted as a purely technical role on a film crew. Coppola felt that this new title encompassed his feeling that Murch had been a key creative team member who added to the artistry and overall creative intention of the film.  It was also to be understood that Murch oversaw the overall sound concept of the film, including dialogue, sound effects, foley, and the final mix, just as a supervising sound editor would normally do.

Walter Murch’s creative storytelling through sound and his integration into the Apocalypse Now team as early as pre-production surely earned him this extra accolade.  I would love to wax poetic about the sound of Apocalypse Now, but that certainly deserves its very own blog post.  Instead, please read this interview with Murch himself regarding the sound of the film.

Surely, the sound design on Apocalypse Now was of the highest quality and extremely innovative for its time.  However, it is important to note that this was not the first time that an inventive sound editor played a critical role in a film’s sound.  Instead, this was the first time that the title Sound Designer was used to describe that work, thereby expressing the beginning of a shift in the industry’s attitude toward sound editorial.  The same job would have previously been listed as Supervising Sound Editor or Re-Recording Mixer.  Case in point: we can all agree that Ben Burtt’s work in Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope, released in 1977, was sound design. Afterall, he designed the sound of the lightsaber! Yet, he was originally credited with Special Dialogue and Sound Effects.  In the 1997 and 2004 re-released editions, his credit was changed to Sound Designer.

Sound Design Across Industries

One of the aspects that makes the title Sound Designer so interesting is that it is not controlled by any labor unions or industry organizations except in the arena of theater.  So, unlike many other roles which have been established and then held to the same set of standards over the years, the idea of what makes someone a sound designer is free to evolve.  Thus, every industry has taken this idea and slowly crafted a meaning that fits its own needs, resulting in a varied and sometimes confusing use of the term.

Film & Television

In the television and film industry, the Motion Picture Editor’s Guild, MPEG (local IATSE chapter 700) controls the titles which are used within union sound houses.  Each particular role on a sound team is segmented into specific job titles such as supervising sound editor (the person who oversees all other members of the team and advances an overall creative concept for the project’s sound), dialogue editor, sound effects editor, foley editor, foley mixer, foley walker, recordist, etc.  Ordinarily, a person’s film/TV credit will match his or her job title on a project.  However, there are several reasons why the title Sound Designer may be used in credits in lieu of these standard union titles.

One reason may be the traditional use of the term as it was established by Coppola and Murch: the individual has overseen all sound team members and has had an active, creative role in concepts that contributed to the storytelling of the film.  In this way, someone is given special commendation by the use of the title Sound Designer rather than Supervising Sound Editor.  In essence, they mean the same thing in terms of responsibility.  But, Sound Designer has a connotation of creative respect.  Another reason would be that the individual played multiple roles in the project (such as supervising sound editor and mixer), and as the term sound designer is outside the purview of the union, this can a convenient way to credit such a person. Keep in mind that in any large studio or union house, an individual may be credited as Sound Designer, but his or her official job title will be one of the union-specified roles.  Thus, sound designer is a colloquial term of respect and reverence toward the creative aspect of the work, but it is not an actual job.

Video Games

In interactive and immersive media (video games, VR, etc.), the title of Sound Designer is often used as a catch-all title for each member on the sound team.  In general, there will be a bevy of sound designers on each project, who are lead by the Audio Lead.  This person, in turn, is supervised by the Audio Director who works closely with the game design department.  On large projects, sound designers may be specialized in different areas such as technical sound designers who work closely with programmers, or integrators who specialize in fitting sound into the pipeline of the game.  They may also specialize in foley, dialogue, or sound effects.  However, on small projects, a sound designer may be required to cover all sound jobs as well as understand its technical integration into the media.  This use of the term as a broad descriptor of all sound personnel differs greatly from the use in television and film.

Theater

Theater sound design is a very different animal, indeed, and for that reason, I have left its history to this section.  Sound design for theater refers to the choice of music and sounds for a stage production, and the subsequent choice, setup, and use of live audio technology to play those sounds during a performance.  This implies an intimate familiarity with the work, and a close alliance with the director and possibly playwright to create an overall soundscape that enhances the work.

The first use of the term Sound Designer was in the 1968-1969 theatrical season of the American Conservatory Theater and was bestowed upon Dan Dugan who worked three stereo tape decks routed to ten loudspeakers.  As technology has advanced over the years and directors have become more accustomed to lush sound design in film and television, this role has become increasingly complex, and in many ways is linked to the role of Sound Artist within the fine arts community.

 

Creating Monster Vocals with Voxpat

People often ask us why we choose to work in such a niche market, sound for animation, and for us, the answer is simple.  Live-action sound design has its own challenges and rewards, but more often than not, you’re recreating the sounds of the real world.  While working in the animated realm, week after week we get to work inside imagined worlds, create sounds for unknown creatures, and image futuristic technology conceived in the minds of the world’s most fantastic artists.  These new worlds give us the opportunity to use ever-evolving sound design techniques to breathe life into them.

We found such a technique when the software developers from Digital Brain Instruments approached us with the opportunity to create new presets for their stand-alone application, Voxpat, which is a sound design tool for creating monsters, creatures, and robot vocals.

The Software

In the past we’ve used our usual suite of plugins as well as Dehumanizer for this task, so we were interested to try out a new creative avenue.  It turns out that Voxpat is a sound designer’s dream if a slightly complex one.  It combines all of the different vocal processing plugins you might want to use into one massively powerful application: convolution, sample player, ring modulation, harmonizer, FM synthesis, spectral pitch shifting, delays.  And the list goes on, and on, and on.

This plethora of sound design tools all packed into one application means that you need to read the manual to use it to its full potential.  But, once you do, the sky is the limit in what this application can do.  What Voxpat lacks in intuitiveness (and it is somewhat lacking here), it certainly makes up for with power.

Recording the Samples

This month, we used our creative team meeting to have a mini masterclass on how to use Voxpat.  Then we opened up a mic to record raw new monster vocals to use for processing. The team had a blast coming up with interesting types of creatures so that we could play with the full harmonic spectrum in Voxpat.  We recorded ourselves as a screeching monster, a giant serpent, an ogre, and even a gargle monster (our intern almost choked, but we assured her it was worth it. Anything for a great sound!).

 

 

Eric and Tess applaud Jessey for her awesome squealing alien sounds. Here are a few of the raw samples:

 

You can listen to their samples

Creating New Voxpat Presets

You can download a demo version of Voxpat here, and check out the Boom Box Post preset pack.

 

Creative Self-Marketing Ideas for the Audio Professional

As studio owners, Jeff and I get tons of requests for advice regarding how audio professionals can either kick start or amp up their careers. In an industry that doesn’t necessarily post jobs on a website, use recruiters, or have a standard interviewing process, how are talented creative people supposed to get their foot in the door? There are so many different ways to answer these questions, but at least one large chunk of this is personal marketing.

I read a lot in my spare time, and I love to get my brain working with business books of all kinds. Unfortunately, I’ve found personal marketing books tend to be, in my opinion, relatively useless for those of us in the sound field. They seem to be full of tips either so obvious that they’re painful (Make a website! Write an amazing resume!) or filled to the brim with antiquated business advice (Make sure you have professional business cards!).

So, I thought that I would put together a few interesting ideas that I’ve seen people use to creatively market themselves in the field of audio. Here they are!

Offer to write member interviews for your industry guild’s publication.

I know a mixer who did this years ago when she still lived on the east coast and was attempting to jump-start her career. She interviewed tons of top mixers in a thoughtful and engaging way. Then, when she decided to take the plunge and move to Los Angeles, she already had a bevy of contacts who had personally interacted with her. She never would have gotten to know all of those top industry professionals if she hadn’t volunteered her time for her industry magazine. To this day, whenever I’ve heard her name mentioned in passing, everyone is always quick to say, “Oh, you know her, too? Everyone knows so-and-so! She’s so amazing!” She put in the hard work upfront and it paid out tenfold in the long run.

Offer to write articles for an online professional magazine.

In this case, you can really present yourself as an industry influencer and/or technical expert. I mean, how amazing would it be if a potential employer googled your name, and fifteen plugin reviews from a top online audio magazine came up with your headshot and byline? You would definitely appear to be a cut above the rest. This is a great way to absolutely crush your SEO. If you go this route, you may want to prepare a spec piece to give them a sample of the kinds of things you would like to produce. Also (added bonus!), don’t be surprised if writing interesting product reviews also results in offers to try out new plugins for free! This is a great way to build your audio arsenal and your online brand.

Engage with your community on social media.

Follow sound professionals you admire on Twitter and comment on their tweets. Join some audio Facebook pages (I love Game Audio Denizens, Sound Girls Private, and Professional Freelance Sound Mixers) and comment on posts. Like your favorite studios’ Instagram pics. People love to feel connected, and it’s easier than you might imagine to feel like you “know” someone after you’ve interacted a few times on social media. This is the virtual version of hanging out in the right room. If you’re there long enough and you make your presence known (in a non-annoying way), you will inherently be seen as belonging. I would caution you to start small with commenting and liking, then move on to posting when you’re more confident. Definitely, don’t just jump in and post every day. That’s like crashing a wedding and then hopping on stage to give a speech.

Volunteer at a non-profit that involves your prospective clients or co-workers.

I’m a member of the non-profit group Women in Animation whose mission is to advance women in the field of animation. Their current goal is to reach 50/50 (men-to-women ratio) by the year 2020, which is absolutely amazing! You might ask why I’m into Women in Animation rather than SoundGirls, which has a similar goal but for the audio field. I’m actually in both, but the distinction is extremely important: I’m involved in the animation group for my personal/business marketing and the sound group for my own enjoyment.

That’s because when your aim is personal marketing, you want to put yourself in the “right room.” And that means a room with the people who can get you work, which is very different than a room filled with your peers. Boom Box Post does sound for animation, and we’re hired by animation studios. So that means that the main place I need to network is with animation professionals. For freelance sound editors, that might mean going to guild events to connect with new supervising sound editors. For mixers, it might mean attending a charity golf tournament sponsored by the post department of one of the big studios. The most important thing is to write down the top three people/job titles that could help you to find work, and then brainstorm places that those people might be.

Start your own professional networking group.

I know a few people who have done this. This can mean putting together speakers for a quarterly professional panel discussion, or maybe just setting up drinks at a local bar for like-minded audio professionals.  Whatever it is, you can put yourself on the map and meet a lot of amazing people along the way. If you’re facilitating networking and/or learning opportunities for others, chances are that one day they will want to reciprocate the investment you made and help you out. Plus, you’ll get to have a fantastic time along the way!

Start a Lunch & Learn club.

Jeff and I came up with the idea of holding monthly “Lunch and Learn” sessions a few years back, and we’ve been blogging about it ever since! Every month, we get our team together for lunch, and then one person gives a demonstration of anything at all at which they consider themselves an expert. This can mean using a certain plugin, cutting a slo-mo sequence properly, using Soundminer to the max, etc. It’s a great way to keep everyone both learning and teaching, and also gives the team a go-to person should they ever have questions on the topic in the future.

Since beginning to blog about this, we’ve had numerous people tell us that they’ve started their own Lunch and Learn at work. We absolutely love this! Keep the good karma going and share your knowledge.  Lunch and Learns not only show everyone involved in the best light as creative professionals, but they also give everyone a chance to invest their time and energy in helping those around them. And an investment in others is always something that can pay dividends down the line when those same people are in a place to hire you, recommend you, or even just walk your dog when you’re on vacation!

Start a virtual freelancers club.

If I had to guess, I would say that the number one group of people Googling “self-marketing” are freelancers. It’s hard to know where to start in making connections and positioning yourself correctly for a fab career in the future when you work from home and rarely interact with others. If you don’t get a lot of time with peers, starting a freelancers club is a great jumping-off point in marketing yourself!

For most professions, a freelancers club usually means meeting up once a week with other freelancers at someone’s home or a coffee shop and working in the same space so that you can be a little more accountable regarding how you spend your time and also get to feel like you have co-workers. Obviously, the need for a desk full of audio gear doesn’t exactly make this practical, at least in its usual incarnation.

But, I love the idea of starting a Slack channel or using other e-workplace software to create a virtual freelancers’ club. We all need other people to bounce ideas off of, get tech support from, bullshit with, and (most importantly) share stupid .gifs about things like our bad lunch habits and Golden Girls obsession. So go ahead a get e-out there! Having a set small group that you always interact with will make your workday much more enjoyable, eventful, and help you to bond with others who could help to vouch for you in the future.

Five Things I’ve Learned About Editing from Mixing

I have been a sound effects editor and supervising sound editor for a long time now.  But, I have recently begun mixing a television series here at Boom Box Post.  I am enjoying how much I learn each and every time that I sit down at the board, and I am by no means ready to start spouting mixing advice to anyone.  But, I can say that I’ve come to appreciate certain editorial practices (and absolutely abhor others!) through my new vantage point as a mixer.  Things that I thought of like a nice way to make your mixer happy have turned into practices that are essential to me being able to start my mixing day right.  Seriously, these five things can be the difference of hours added to my predub day.  So, here are five editorial practices that I’ve realized are absolutely essential to a smooth mix.

#1: Stick to the template.

In short, don’t add tracks!  Adding tracks to an established template causes numerous headaches for your mixer during the setup, and it’s easy for issues to crop up later without him or her realizing it.  Every time a track is added, your mixer needs to adjust his or her inserts, sends, groups, VCAs, markers, and more.  That is a ton of extra work, and if one of those hasn’t been checked and adjusted before beginning to mix, issues can crop up along the way.

Adding more tracks to your session to squeeze in those 18 dirt debris sound effects that you added to a car peel out is a huge no-no.  I am especially annoyed when I see that tracks were added just to put one or two sound files on them in the entire session.  Your mixer or supervising sound editor has thoroughly thought through the needs of the project before creating your template.  So, if you feel that you need more space to spread out, you probably need to re-think the way you’re approaching your builds (see number four below…).  But, if having more tracks seems absolutely essential to you, make sure that you reach out to your mixer ahead of time and clear the change with him or her.

#2: Cut foley in perspective.

Foley is often one of the things that makes a project really come to life.  It truly helps the action to feel more real.  But, it’s also something that is often mixed so that we feel it instead of truly recognizing it with our ears.  Your mixer probably won’t be using the footsteps to make a sonic statement during a big monologue or music montage.  But, it does often make sense to feature them when characters are moving in or out of a scene.  It helps the audience to track where they are located in the story and aids the flow between shots.

In these instances, the panning is often at least as important than the volume.  And in order to pan people walking, for instance, off screen-right and then immediately into the next shot from screen-left, the foley needs to have been cut for perspective!  I’ve had numerous foley editors say that they’re uncomfortable cutting in perspective because they want to give the mixer options.  But, you’re truly not giving your mixer options.  Instead, you’re tying his or her hands (or, rather, making them need to scoot over to the computer and recut it themselves when they’d rather focus on mixing)!

But perspective cutting for foley can be a bit confusing.   So, let me break it down for you: you should cut your foley in perspective if there is a drastic change in volume necessary, or if characters need to be panned in our out of a shot.  Panning within a shot does not require perspective changes (e.g., a character walks around a room during the same shot).  Zooming in does not require a perspective change (this can be done with a fader move and is not a change between shots).  Here are some examples that would require perspective changes:

  • Perspective change for volume: We start on a long shot of a character dancing on stage, shot from deep in the audience.  Then, we cut into an extreme close-up on his feet.  Bam!  Perspective change!
  • Perspective change for panning: Two characters and standing around talking, and they realize they’re late for an important meeting.  They run off screen-right.  Then, we immediately cut to them running into a different room from screen left.  Give that sucker a perspective change!

#3: Color code your builds.

This is not by any means an industry standard, but I seriously appreciate it. I see it!  Want your mixer to love you now and forever?  Then color-code your builds!  I would recommend color-coding the regions that make up each BG location the same color each time that location is used as well as color-coding the regions within each FX build.

For BGs this is helpful to your mixer because he or she can easily copy and paste the volume automation onto each instance of the same location in just minutes!  This is such a great time-saver for getting to a reasonable starting point on BG balance.

For FX, make sure to color-code your regions according to what the build is covering on-screen rather than the kind of elements they are.  That way, it’s easy for your mixer to identify what to adjust by just glancing at your session (without necessarily soloing every single file).  For example, when cutting a door open, you may have a handle turn, a wood door open, and a long creak.  Color-code all three of those suckers brown!  Extra points go to color-coding something that makes sense for the thing you’re covering (blue for water, brown for a wooden door, yellow for a yellow remote-control truck, etc.).  And make sure that each time that same door opens happens, you color code it the same way.  By doing that, your mixer can easily find a balance he or she likes and then paste it onto every instance.  That makes adjusting it to work in a specific scene so much easier.

#4: Choose fewer, better FX.

Let me say this: more is not better.  Not by a long shot.  Yes, in a lot of cases, you should cut more than one layer to get a textured and full sound without tying the hands of your mixer.  But, you also don’t want to veer too far in the opposite direction and cut way too many elements.  Sound effects editorial is an art-form, and like any true art, it takes forethought and vision to do it well.  That means deciding which layers you want before you start digging through your library, and then editing yourself to create the most robust but clear and simple build possible.  I never start pulling sounds without a game plan, no matter how simple the build might seem.

In general, I like to stick with a rule of three: choose three files max that cover three frequency ranges (low, medium, and high) and also three different sonic textures.  For example, when cutting a steady forest fire, I would choose a low-end rumble element to give it size, a mid-range thick whooshy element (maybe with a little phase for motion) for fullness, and a high-frequency steady crackle to give it motion, life, and to help it poke through the mix without needing to turn the volume way up.  Without a game plan, I might be left throwing in a dozen elements because they seem like good choices.  But with a little forethought, I can easily cut down the number of elements I use and make each one count.  Honestly, it also makes things sound a lot better.

Sticking with the rule of three also helps your mixer!  After all, he or she can easily grab up to four faders (three is even easier!) and adjust the volume without needing to create a group and then disable it after making the adjustment.  So, there’s basically no reason not to cut like this.  It helps you and your mixer to work better, smarter, and faster!

#5: Use clip gain instead of volume automation to balance FX builds.

So, you’ve toiled over creating the perfect balance between your elements in a single build.  And mixers love it when you do some of the work for them!  They’ll definitely want to adjust that balance to make it work within the mix, but having a solid starting point is key.  The problem with adjusting your balance during editorial with volume automation is that as soon as your mixer grabs the faders, that balance is completely erased and replace with whatever his or her fingers do.  So, do yourself and your mixer a favor and balance within builds using clip gain.  That lets your mixer have all faders sitting at zero (and not popping up and down all over the place during playback), and thus each adjustment he or she makes is on top of what you’ve already accomplished.

A few caveats on this:

  • Make sure to use volume automation rather than clip gain when adjusting volume for perspective changes.  Always first balance your build with clip gain, then cut it in perspective and make any volume changes for perspective with the volume bars.
  • Do not ever clip gain a sound down to the point of being inaudible.  That makes it impossible for your mixer to turn up the volume with a fader without seriously compromising the signal-to-noise ratio.  Furthermore, if you find yourself turning anything down that much, just delete it!  You obviously don’t actually like it, and you need the space so you can follow #1 and #4!  Take the opportunity to edit yourself!
  • Do not clip gain BGs.  Use volume bars instead to adjust the balance.  This is a good practice for two reasons: First, BGs often need to be super low in volume, and if you use clip gain, your mixer won’t be able to turn them up enough with the fader.  Second, since these are long, steady elements, it’s nice to see where the volumes are on the faders rather than having them all at zero.  But mostly, this is a signal-to-noise ratio issue.
     

Designing Signature Sounds

The Project

I recently had the pleasure of creating signature elements for a new animated series which will likely air near the end of 2019.  We were brought into the process at a very early stage, the first animatic, which was incredibly exciting. If you aren’t already aware, in animation, an animatic is essentially a video of storyboard panels timed to work with the recorded dialogue and then exported as a video.  An animatic is a very thorough blueprint for the animation studio to follow. Adding sound design to an animatic can do a number of things: it can bring the animatic to life for the animation studio which allows them to better understand how to animate important moments. It can help executives to better understand the action when reviewing the animatic for approval. And it can establish signature elements early on so that the sound can help to inform the animators’ creative concept for the series.  Having clients who appreciate the importance of bringing the sound team into the mix (pun intended!) early on is a wonderful thing for us here at Boom Box Post! So cheer to all of our amazing clients!

The Process

Step 1: Brainstorm about an Overall Aesthetic

The key elements of the series are birds and babies (sorry to be cryptic about the premise, but it’s too early to share too much about this project!). My mind immediately started churning about how to incorporate these in a way that would be nuanced and special.  When designing sounds for a new project, it’s also important to consider the audience. This series is geared toward preschool-aged children. So I also wanted to create a soundscape that would be friendly and familiar to viewers in that age group.

First, I decided to make all of the items in this animated world sound like they are made out of materials familiar to preschool kids.  This would involve recording a ton of children’s toys to really let these textures shine through in the mix. The set locations look high tech and designing in that aesthetic is always fun. But isn’t it much more fun to design a baby’s take on tech?  Now that would be a challenge.  Second, I decided to incorporate the bird aspect of the series by creating new sci-fi sound effects for all of the tech elements by processing bird calls.  I didn’t want the bird calls to be in your face. After all, it doesn’t take much creativity to just throw a bunch of hawk calls on everything. But, folding them into my tech builds sounded like a fun challenge that would result in a truly unique signature sound aesthetic for the entire series.

Step 2: Decide which elements should be stand-out signature designs.

I consider anything that will clearly appear in a series again and again to be signature.  And so, even if it’s a mundane item, to me it’s an opportunity to add a little special flavor.  You might think it’s a waste of time to create special door open sound effects or record all-new hand grabs. But creating a new palette from scratch for all reusable elements can ensure not just stand-out sound design moments but an overall signature aesthetic for an entire series.

For this series, I decided that the sounds for all of the things in the main location should be signature: all doors, all grabs of items and furniture, all mechanical elements, etc.  Basically, anything that will clearly be seen again and again needed to be custom.

Step 3: Create a Custom Recording List

When I’m creating a recording list, I like to brainstorm things to record which might add to the overall aesthetic I’m trying to achieve while keeping in mind what I need to cover.  Sometimes, if you map out exactly what to record for each signature element, you close off your brain to considering other options during the process. Think about the general aesthetic you would like to achieve and come up with items that you think may help to achieve that aesthetic–whether you think you’ll use them now or they may just be handy to have in the future.

Here was my list.  Notice that I’m focusing on what I want to hear and not marrying myself to specific items just yet:

  1. Toy ratchet
  2. Toy click into place
  3. Different plastic items for grabs
  4. Toy rolling
  5. A toy which “pops” or “thunks”

Step 4: Browse for Items to Record

I took this list to a local children’s consignment store and roamed the aisles looking for interesting items and listening to how they sounded.  I chose a consignment store because it was cheaper, but also because the toys were not in their original packaging, so I was free to test them out.  Often browsing for things to record is best done in your own home or a friend’s closet for this very reason. Keep in mind that the best recordings are made from items which are different from what you actually see on screen. You want to achieve a certain texture, a certain sound, a certain feel. You don’t want to just record the exact thing you see in the picture.  Think about how an old loose doorknob is often used for gun foley or a piece of celery is broken for a good bone crunch. When choosing items to record, shut off the visual part of your brain that’s telling you to go for the obvious, and start listening to everyday items with your creative hat on. Evaluate each item solely on its ability to give you the sound properties you’ve already brainstormed in the above list.

Step 5: Record new sounds

Step 6: Edit your recordings to work with the picture.

Once you’ve recorded all of your new (or old) props, bring everything into your DAW and start playing.  Often I find that elements I recorded in hopes of covering a certain signature element actually work best for something else.  Don’t be afraid to play around and try new things. Use the clean recordings, process them to the point that they are unrecognizable, or mix them together with sounds from your library.  In this step, you are the sonic painter. Give yourself the creative freedom to use your full palette and don’t be afraid to make a mess. That’s how the best discoveries are made!

Step 7: Collaborate with your clients.

Sound is never a job that’s pursued in a vacuum.  We’re part of a larger project team, and most often that project is the creative property of someone else.  Once you’ve come up with your most alluring signature sounds, share them with your clients and let the collaboration ensue.  It’s incredibly important to realize that the creative process doesn’t end with you: it’s easy to think that your signature sounds are the best they can be when you’ve finished designing.  In fact, I find that they often get even better when I present them to the clients and they offer tiny tweaks and new creative insights. Sometimes muting one element or incorporating something else that you never even considered is the key ingredient to the perfect sound.

The Sounds

Here are a few of the original recordings I made with the help of our intern, Sam, and the signature elements that I designed using those recordings.  The recordings and designs may sound simple, but remember that signature sounds compound with each other in order to create an often nuanced and distinguishable scape for the series as a whole.  It’s the totality of all of your creative ideas that form an overall new and exciting aural aesthetic.

 

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