Sound Design & Effects Editing
Sound Design is where your motion picture really starts to come to life! It’s what brings realism to sell your visuals. From Subtle & Realistic to Larger Than Life, or Even Over The Top & Cartoonish, there are several stylistic directions to the Sound Design for your video!
Simply put, Sound Design sets the stage for what’s happening visually and where it is taking place. Generally speaking Sound Design is categorised into three subgroups, Hard FX, Location Ambiences, & Tension Builders (or mood driven sound design).
Everything from phone sounds to gun fire & laser weapons, explosions, robot sounds, creatures, cars, & more have to be added during the sound design phase. Armed with an extensive sound effects library containing tens of thousands of individual SFX sound, I have everything ranging from Mechanical Sounds to Cars, Magic, Science Fiction, Explosions, Gunfire, Combat Sounds, Modern User Interface Sounds, Debris, and much more.
Setting the location is an important part of creating an immersive experience for the audience. From restaurants to city streets, a quiet forest, oceanscapes, or even a construction site, each has a unique sound. Having this underbed not only draws the listener further into the story but helps hide production audio gaps. With 1000s of unique ambiences, as well as isolated elements, I can provide a realistic soundscape no matter where the scene is set.
The final area of sound design is in a grey area that overlaps the composer’s role in scoring. Think about all those horror films that raise the hair on the back of your neck, or that TV Drama that makes you feel like your heart just suck. Behind each of those emotional responses is sound design helping set and support the mood as the drama unfolds. Risers, Hits, Bass Drops, and Stingers can all be effective tools for adding extra suspense.
Foley Recording, Mixing & Editing
Akin to Sound Design is Foley, the art of performing & recording interactions sound of everyday objects in sync with picture. This commonly includes Footsteps, Clothing Rustling, & any sort of interaction with objects on screen. Named after it’s pioneer, Jack Foley, it’s become a mainstay in post-production for movies & television. Foley yields a much more naturalistic sound then pre-recorded effects. Good foley you won’t even notice is there. With an 1000 Sq. Ft. Foley Sound Stage & an extensive collection of props, we can create sounds and textures for nearly everything through creative foley.
Scoring, Composition, & Music Editing
Generally speaking music for film either falls into one of two categories: Score or Source Music. Source music is music that you hear coming from somewhere off or on screen; For example from a car stereo, alarm clock, radio, TV, or wherever else. Source music is generally either licensed from an existing artist, or from generic stock music libraries. Score however is the soundtrack that drives the action & mood, usually custom composed to follow the tempo of each scene. Most modern video productions have a combination of both, depending what’s appropriate given the context of the scene. Once the score is complete it’s layered and seamlessly edited in and out of the video where necessary.
Audio Mixing for Video
The final stage of Audio Post-Production is Mixing, also often called Dubbing or ReRecording Mixing. It’s all about balancing each element, and delivering a clear and consistent final mix. Using tools such as Equalization, Compressors, De-Essers, Sub Enhancement, Multiband Dynamics, Noise Reduction, Reverb, and much more every part of your video’s soundscape will live polished & refined. There are a lot of elements to ensure are all heard clearly, with Dialog, Voice Over, & ADR taking a priority, while keeping space for Sound Effects, Foley, Score, & any other Sound Design.
Mixing on an acoustically calibrated Film Mixing Stage equipped with an exceptionally transparent monitoring system & powerful studio computed with an extensive audio software collection. Mixing in a studio space like this ensures every mix will translate and more importantly sound great on a wide variety of end user playback systems.
