The sound effects discussed with the director should express and incorporate a unique design concept for motion, speed and velocity. Therefore, very untypical to the sounds of modern public transportation operating in most European cities. According to the visual excerpts of the design documentation, it seemed clear that in order to invent suitable ideas for the sound scape, I needed material that could help bring into being elegance, style, agility and futuristic technology with a unique blend in tonality.

Here are some mixed notions I made associated with the idea of how to to go about the general design conceptualization. It helps tremendously to hard print these notes with the most crucial key descriptions of a given mood or style that needs to be created.

Sci-Fi, machinery, airplanes, turbines, air, fan, engine acceleration, synthesized textures, hovering, precise, modern, slick, modern technology, elegant, sexy, easy to the ears, interesting, earconic, professional, expensive, high-end, signals, interior vs exterior.

Over the past years, I have stumbled over a variety of industrial machines, servos and hydraulic motors which I thought would give a good starting point. My intuition also let me believe that the e-trains (electronically driven) which I recorded with a D50 in America at the airport of Detroit (?) could come handy and may serve as a good natural/organic design reference. It is always a good idea to combine various sounds which contain characters of a different nature. Once these e-trains are sped up in speed or stretched in time, they sound completely different and may serve a particular key element in the concept. However, I knew that at some point I’d be ending up combining a lot of organic together with some synthesized textures.

However, I still had the drive to get something in there with a bit more edge and higher base definition, and something I could digitally modify to an extreme extend! Preferably recordings in 192kb. A fresh approach of sounds captured from the field is always a good point to start, as it occurs to be much more flexible to work with in the end! After studying the clients design documents and understanding the core mechanics for the various trains, taxis and buses found in the context of the plot, I became aware, that all their engines, which were mounted underneath these hovering objects and looked much like turbines, similar to the ones I’ve seen before on airplanes.

No doubt, that there are great amounts of commercial sample libraries available containing valuable recordings of aircraft related source material. But nothing really I found in them would benefit for the specific task given (or I may just didn’t have access to the right library). Sometimes it can be quite time consuming to find ‘just’ the right sounds in your database. It’s our job, indeed! Commonly, however, once you found it, there are no other variations of the sound available and you may find yourself being stuck in the middle of the process looking for ways to compromise. But because I was still spending time in Munich, I thought it would be a great opportunity to visit the International airport close-by for some more recordings

Specifically, I was looking to capture: turbine speed up/down/idle, INT and EXT room colors and other miscellaneous cockpit ambient that expresses a nice tone (whine, scream) of sounds to play with. There were no specific models of airplanes I was keen on recording specifically. I’d be happy with what ever I could get my hands on!

Generally, the sound of airplane turbines are unique and do carry its own sonic character and signature along within an broad frequency response to enable further processing after the recording.

For instance the artistic usage of turbine sounds in the sound design discipline is wide. It can be used for many other type of audio design settings, from ambient drones, high-velocity or character sweeteners. Check out the advertisement clip below which I have re-designed and if you listen carefully, you’ll notice the engine power up of the lawn mower in the beginning.

Unlike the sound of passenger airplanes and private jets, military aircraft carrier are a completely different topic – sonically. As well as security measures are much more complicated to overcome. It is therefore much harder to receive a recording permit. However, they are also on my list to record. Someday.

Honestly, it was no different in my particular case when I planed the recording session! Unfortunately, I can’t say to much about how the session become reality – but lets explain it by simply saying: I know people! It is always good to know people! Enthusiastic recordists have to have a good network of people who can help grant access to certain things. If, of course a huge production budget allows for external field recoding, it may be a little easier. But you may never know when you need to record a specific sound for a client. I once met a guy on the airplane, who was the CEO of a industrial print shop in Berlin. With huge printing machine! How cool?! I told him what I do and asked if it was possible to one day come visit the facility to record all his beautiful machines. We swapped contacts and I eventually visited him a few weeks after

Below are some outtakes from some recordings I did at the airport. The friendly personal guide I toured with at the time arranged a turbine test measurement location (?) inside a acoustically treated environment, which was a bit further away from the landing sides. Very good recording spot and I wished at that time I would have brought more microphones.

Another great recording trick is to point the the microphone (preferably stereo) at the source and move it 90° from left to right with different speeds to give a feel of movement and the typical ‘whoosh’ effect.

Have you ever wondered how a jets landing flaps sound like? Certainly, you’ll never be able to hear them from the outside whilst seated inside the airplane anyways But to give you a better picture of how they sound like, here is an example. This particular unit was from a much smaller jet, though, a private one! The ones VIPs get carried on to fly to crazy parties.

Btw, in case you have missed Airplane Part 1, make sure to check it out if you’re interested in reading more about the recordings of over-head fly-bys.

During the show the city is on fire and a lot of great events take place spread in the heart and soul of Berlin. In 12 Cinemas, international film productions are being screened, competing against each other to be awarded with the golden bear (the bear is the symbol and trademark of Berlin). The cultural thoughts and genres of films being shown varies. Personally, I just love to go to movies which I haven’t heard a word about prior to my visits. It excited me to see something totally unexpected and something untypical to my taste buds. Unlike the Amazon.com marketing campaign that tries to force you into buying a book similar to the one you are reading currently – I absolutely dislike that feature! I usually try to go every year, whenever I happen to be in Berlin during holidays or a project based visit.

The jury’s decisions is somewhat artsy. Most films should encompass a critical viewpoint on contemporary or historical events with political, ethical or social aspects. Because film art can be a tool to change a persons opinion or serve as an eye opener to another, somewhat forgotten or even new world. As much as I love the genre of historical, drama, action or steep art house movies, the Berlinale offer a wide assortment of productions – from short to documentary. There is something for everyone!  As for sound, it is fascinated how far we’ve come but uncertain on how long this road will take us. There is improvement with each year we pass and people (I believe) have started to appreciate sound more and more to include as an element of their story writing.

To get to know the work of sound design colleges from other countries demonstrating their work, is refreshing!  For instance, the Berlinale talent campus serves a as social and educational platform but also enables people to network, catch up with old friends or meet a bunch of new folks. You’ll end up having the most interesting conversations with directors, producers, production designers and cable boys.

The Programm:

If you make it out sometimes to the festival, make sure to drop me a line. If I am in Berlin at that time, I am more then happy to meet up for the legendary Berlin traditional Currywurst!

The widely used foundation where animal sound sources melt into the sound design process are for instance creature effects. An overly used animal source are pigs, lions (wildcats) bears, dogs, everything with grunts, growls, snarls, barks sniffs, breaths etc. Some may disagree and find it boring as it has been overly used – which I partly agree with. But they are emotional and powerful and if they suit the context of whats needed within a current setting… so why not simply use them? One can always approach the process differently in terms of modern modulation dsp (pitch), audio resolution (196khz), kyma, microphone selection or positioning and so on. I think that there are many ways to still come up with interesting modification techniques that affect your sounds. However, I’ve seen/heard some very good human performances on creatures (including my self). It does greatly relay on motif and context of the sound subject and the direction of sound aesthetic required. It’s like composing a musical score, finding its core instrumentation to harmonically blend together a range of instruments. Ideally, each project should have a unique approach to the overall design decisions. Although, I agree that in some cases this can be time consuming and possibly require a financial backup.

In the movie “I am Legend”, sound supervisor Skip Leyvsy hired a Hollywood based voice artists, who apart from being a composer also performs creature vocalization. In this case, the movie’s enemies were once real human characters transforming into zombies. Hiring a specialist and keeping true human aesthetics alive  turned out to be a great way to go. However, there are many ways of accomplishing the right effect, such as to combine animal layers with that of a humans.

Here is a re-design I did after I’ve seen the trailer of the new novel Nocturnal by Scott Sigler on Vimeo. Lots of pigs and human recordings used in there to shape the idea of the various creatures in his world. Check it out!

Animal sessions ain’t easy! Would you agree? I think that every recordists would compliment on it (or fisherman). It can be really hard and even disappointing to get the very best results out of such a field trip. Not only does a good recording depend on the species itself, but also: climate, season, time of the day or environmental influences that may determine the outcome of your data.

Before hitting the field it’s advised to look up sound related references ahead  of time (i.e YouTube.com), to get a better idea of what to target and to expect! Low-fi audio is enough to get the picture! Also research on species can help to find out the animal’s most active day circles, eating habits or routines, combined with studying common body language and other unique behaviors. On the long run, a shotgun mic can get heavy, so be sure to save your muscle energy for the very right moment. You can chat up with institutions and ask for specifics on animals and their prime moments. Usually, they are comfortable to share! One time I was in need of wolf howls and a nice lady at Schorfheide Wild Park in Brandenburg shared some good insight with me when it’s best to visit.

I have tried to record at Zoos, parks and commercial wildlife territories, on boats (whale watching) and in the wild. Certainly, material can always be filtered or processed and make up for cool sounds, often times non-related to your initial expectation which get refereed as: Accidents! Although, you can’t relay on them all the time. Best is to stick with what you aimed for. Sounds that got stuck in your head.

However, I don’t recommend city zoos or anything that its located in a city polluted with a constant low-rumble, airplane pass-bys or loud screaming school classes. Although, the lows you can always cut depending on the animal source frequency range. You can also try to go early at the last hour of their opening times. A good timing is around mid-week in the winter, when local birds (the ones stealing the food of the exhibits) or insects become less audible overall. In general, bird houses or birds can be quite okay. However, I think by now, I could actually assemble a whole tourist-kids crowd library from collected content over the years

My general experience with zoo visits around the world have been mixed. Wouldn’t it be funny to claim, that I found zoo crowds in Europe  to be much quieter compared to … the US?! Anyways… Lets blame it on the animals

This bison below, I recorded at a great Wildlife Park in Poing a small town close to Munich. They have extremely quiet terrains with an interesting and wide range of wild and native European animals. If park keeper tend to treat their animals respectfully (lots of open space with hygienic overall treatment) their animals will most likely perform great, simply by nature law. Especially the pairing seasons can be quite exciting. If you don’t find time to go out into the field to capture unique source material, sound libraries can do the job as well. I highly recommend the Creatures Library from the team over at BOOM with their vast collection of inspiring material based off all kinds of vocalization. The packages includes a fairly wide range of usable production asset.

Apart from public wildlife parks and animals caged zoos we’ll also find good animal material at more traditional places, such as on a farm. They are a great bunch and I respect and value every single one of them for their strong attitude towards nature and producing from life’s resources. With the idea to eventually feed us. I actually grew up in a rural area myself and one thing I still remember were the endless possibilities to get creative in our play. Hay barns hideouts and other exciting stuff. Much to see and more to do! Especially when your young. Back in time, building a tree house was kind of cool! Way too old school at today’s life! Am I that old?! New media has taken the lead on mass entertainment and we see kids play computer games with friends over the internet or on handheld devices more and more. I’d argue it will take another generation to pass for the appreciation of building ‘tree houses’ to return.

However, animals are commonly the big thing at a farm among machinery and vegetable fields. You’ll find pigs, cows, chicken, cats, dogs, doves, horses or even camels (which mainly depends on the farm’s product focus). I found that talking to farmers about sound recordings is very similar to making good friends. Farmers, much alike recordists (and any other passionate individuals who love their profession) tend to geek out about what they love to do. In my case  it is SOUND! And their case … FARMING. good communication and  social skills are needed in order to get the best for your recordings! Farmers don’t often get visitors and to let along someone visit their farm, life and facility it’s  usually new to most of them. It can be critical! So be tactical!  Below are some tips before going to meet a farmer to ask for permission on recordings:

1.) Be polite and respect the farmer’s work rhythm and core times. A barn is like a business with opening hours, launch times – for both the farmer and the animals. Farmers hate when somebody disturbs their animal kingdom during sleep or feeding. Its their product which results to income down the line. Makes scene right? Keep in mind that animals are like kids to them (without them being sold after their old).

2.) Be enthusiastic about wanting to get involved in the ultimate farmers life. Ask interesting questions about their coolest animal and daily routine.

3.) Make them feel a part of YOUR creative experience. Everybody loves attention and has a story to share, so do farmers, be creative and keep a positive attitude and spirit throughout. Excite them about your job and they will share inside and excitement about about theirs.

4.) Always smile and completely look insane during the recording (do the creative tough hang out) – it might works magic! This all will influence the quality of your recordings. Only the farmer holds the key of the animal kingdom, and it is no one else then them to trigger the unexpected. This is where it gets exciting! Be surprised!

After the recording try to pause editing and archiving for some weeks. Try to do something completely different from animal recordings. Then, at a later stage, listen to it and be surprised of how it all turns out and sounds. Usually we always tent to expect too much of our recordings and are all excited when bringing them home, right?! Let the recording describe the story of the particular scene, that your microphone and yourself has experienced, and wait how it affects and stimulates you. You’ll notice that the audio will bring you right into the core moments of the session. Personally, I feel that by doing this, recordings become more rememberable and personal. They can contain the very smell of a specific moment! As well archiving and naming will be much easier and refreshing. I once did a great monkey shooting in Miami, Florida, and got to edit these little buggers only after half a year. The process will just become way more entertaining. That’s just how it works for me!

Here is a group of pics that I recorded in the middle of the night. The pigs are absolutely not used to that sort of time-rhythm being woken up by a dude with a microphone pointed at them. Check out the recording below how angry they were, because they thought its breakfast time. They completely freaked out! On this note, I should mentioned that no animals got harmed during the recording process. However, with pig recordings, you’ll sure get a stinky revenge. Make sure to through cloth and shaggy dog in the washer afterwards.

Here are recordings of 5 different locations I recorded at. The last one was a recording of 4 types of pigs (yes species!) that sounds like pic choir screaming so loud that its huts! Interior as well as exterior. Interestingly, pigs vocalization from various different areas of the world sound completely diverse from each other. That… and there are dozen of pig species too.

Apart from this blogs topic: Pigs – I commonly get to experience the wild life wherever I can or lifted so far. Simply because I love being it touch with nature and getting to know new species or to meet old ones in person. Recording its sounds is a nice side affect and they come in handy for design work quite a bit. During he last 3 years I was able to collect a massive amount of animal recordings, including pigs, dogs, birds, wolfs, cows, monkeys  and camels. I try to write up some more about very specific and cool animal experiences if I have time. It be also great to hear your stories on funny animal takes?!

And this is how near I could position myself on the take-off and landing site of the airport.

Airplane recordings have long been the ultimate sound design resource for everything defined to be larger-then-life sound setting. Since they’re rich in dynamic and cover a wide range of interesting textures, they can be used for many effect layers during the sound effects creation process. Plus, not to forget that each airplane has its own unique character! Plane engines can make their way into audio production for i.e. sci-fi engine power-ups, race car pass-bys or weapons sweeteners for a sci-fi type characteristic such as spaceships or other machinery applications. Especially the take off sound contains rich low-frequency content that can serve well when being filtered for all type of rumble or blasts in explosions or weapons.

Here is a recording of a smaller jet taking-off:

Here is a recording of two direct and a side overhead fly-by:

I recorded about 10 or so airplanes that winged in at the time doing the ‘revers thrust‘  (not sure how its being done) in order to slow down or brake the plane right before touch-down. Apparently, it is a common way to reduce speed whilst landing. Because I was standing in an interesting acoustic space (close to trees in a lowered vally circle), I was able to capture its post-shock wave quite nicely. Listen for yourself! I marked the moment when it happens. There is a  small ‘crack’ the followed by a wave of energy reflecting in the woods. I reminded me of a HUGE whip slap. Imagine for what you could use it for in sound context? I have tried to use it for all kind of interesting textures. It serves well when being filtered and slightly pitched up or down.

Radio-Funk

Slightly off-topic but perhaps relevant to somewhat airplanes, or at least the telecommunication side of it, security cars drive up and down and sometimes even stop and ask what the hell I was doing. I am used to explaining people my profession and passion for recordings! There was this one guy, a really friendly individual, that I was chatting to for quite some time. However, I was able to persuade him to do a recording of his radio chatter!

GNV

Oh! Before I forget, here is a little temperature contrast from the cold white winter Munich! I shot this video in Florida at the Regional Airport, where I also did plane recordings and I thought of sharing it with you, since I couldn’t use it anywhere else. I love the shot, with the sunset in the background going down, seeing just the boom in the air! awww! The airport is so small, it can be frustrating, as only every hour a airplane either takes off or lands. Sometimes I had to wait even longer – as you can see, till dawn.

]]> http://carstenrojahn.com/archives/493/feed 0 http://carstenrojahn.com/archives/25 http://carstenrojahn.com/archives/25#comments Wed, 04 Aug 2010 16:38:02 +0000 Carsten http://carstenrojahn.com/blog/?p=25 Player footstep sounds in the FPS genre are crucial, because they can contribute a meaningful purpose to the game’s audio vision!  They can be a vital aspect to tell a story and push the overall game experience extensively, as well as  help the player/listener to make certain game play decisions during gaming. They can provide disclosure to the listener, revealing either weight, speed, surface material or space the player character happens to be in or walks on. In a multiplayer game play scenario they’re invaluable. They can warn the player when somebody approaches or moves about in distant. Ultimately, which can help the listener to look for cover and estimate its range. However, not only do they provide essential information to the listener, but also arise tricky questions about their production and technical implementation process  -  leaving it up to the audio artists to decide on how they need to be integrated, and esthetically aligned to the nature of the games needs.

Inside the game audio community there have been current discussions on how to implement player footsteps effectively. Many different opinions from audio professionals exist! My good friend and technical sound designer, Damian Kastbauer has had a recent conversation on this topic over at the Game Audio Podcast, debating with  special quests: Julian Kwasneski, David Steinwedel and Kenneth Young who shared their personal views on this. Make sure to check it out if you get a chance! On a personal note, I think that the production and integration of player character footsteps does vastly depend on the game’s nature, beneath genre, design, relevance and style of the game. There is no common rule of whats right or wrong – if they sound good, inside the game, then that’s the way to go   It  may take hours of experimentation, good team communication and tweaks of your middleware knobs, until you reach satisfaction.

Implementation

Sound transparency = the dynamic composition of sound effects, music and voice overs, all blended nicely together within the game’s soundtrack, serves to keep the listening experience pleasant and interesting to the auditor. This also may relate to casual and portable games, despite the fact that audio of course is lower in its  high-fidelity, and the number of streamed audio files minimal. The more dynamic and balanced a mix is put together, the more likely the listener gets sucked up into the immersive listening experience, to fully relish the game play adventures.

But how does this related to the implementation of footsteps? Well for instance, in some occasions, I would want player footsteps to stand out on purpose – emphasizing on a particular space or location that player is in at a given time. Such as in a tunnel, or a narrow basement.  Where  room acoustics can be a  good servant to  paint the tonal sonic picture of the dimension of a room. It is here where footsteps could become prioritized and gain slightly in volume, leaving the remaining sounds  low on the totem pole (often archived through bus ducking). Now in contrast, in a battle scenario for example, the games activities (sounds played at once) will be elevated (weapons, explosions, intense VO) and footsteps by default become less notable and relevant to the player. Because the gamer rather wants to pay attention to the sound of close-by bullet impacts or essential voices  overs of team-mates, in order to trace their position (multiplayer).  Actually, very similar to a real-world situation! Imagine, if you were walking on the street in the middle of the night on a semi-busy street, listening to the echo of your footsteps bouncing off close-by walls. A transporter truck approaches and passes you by… if you’re still moving you wouldn’t hear a single step – only the distinct sound of the truck going by! Right?!

Fortunately, with today’s innovative and advanced audio middleware applications, such as Wwise, make it  easy to set up real-time parameters to control the dynamic of an adaptive in-game mixing case. Basically, we’re able to control volume curves, fx and multiple EQ-filter changes adaptively. This enables us to adjust artistic modifications based on the entire game play situation. It relates to ambient, music and single sound effect events! The control schemes are endless, and creativity and a little bit of technical mind-bending (scripting) around on the game engine is key to highly-immersive results. However, there are times when we, as sound designers are limited to on-hand streaming memory – as we constantly have to battle to draw back on sound events. Even the ones we fell in love with.

On the note implementation, there is a great article at DesigningSound.Org with Jeff Wesevich and Justin Drust talking about their  Dynamic Wind System which has been applied in Ghost Recon: Warfighter 2. It utilizes visual parameters to control the increase/decrease and intensity level of wind layers to build up tension and draw away from it, based on altitude and location of the player character. Also make sure to check out Damian’s blog and interesting articles on DesigningSound.Org where he shares many informative stories about the technical aspects of sound design.

Pre-Production

As with everything, to plan ahead and to write down notes on: ‘what needs to be recored’, will help a lot in order to stay organized throughout production. I even used normal paper with a analog pen! I’ve had several instances where the iPhone made terrible artifacts into the recordings, in search for a near-by Wi-Fi connection. Sometime we just forget to switch-off our phones to Fligh-Mode. Mainly during the day or on my way home I tried to take notes on locations that I’ve passed by, putting down comments on where and what possibly could be recorded there.

It takes good understanding of your environmental surroundings, by that I mean, whether if you life in a big city or a small town, it is good to know your locations to plan for a recording at some point. Right now I life in Gaineville, Florida, a small college town and it sometimes seems difficult to get away from traffic noise to get a clear shot when recording. Remote foley can be a true hustle and requires TONS of time, as well as initial trail and error attempts. It took me a while to really get what I was hearing in my head and there is always the unexpected. Like sick cats or dogs barking, crickets or drunk teenagers etc.! Anyway, a lot of times I found myself headed out for recordings in the middle of the night, when traffic noise was low. It was pretty much a hit-and-run type scenario, with the goal to avoid attracting the police – called up by the local neighbor- watch, informing them that they saw a man holding a big ‘gun’. Oh boy, I twice had the honor to meet them face to face. Plus I have an European accent – it certainly can get complicated Anyway, I could capture two or even four different surfaces per night performing on about two different locations.

Production – Fun Part?

Now – lets plunge a little into the fun part and examine the recording techniques I applied for a first person shooter project I worked on this year. As we’ve learned in school, all footsteps assets (or in general foley props) get recorded dry, within either a foley stage, performed by a foley artist OR in this very case – via remote foley or worldizing! There are good and bad things going about this recording method. I tell you right away, its time consuming, and can be a lot of fun! Here are some of the pros and cons:

Pros:

- It gives an overall higher sense of natural rhythm
- It adds a unique and exclusive sound texture to the recordings
- Physical work out to get out of the studio (-:

Cons:

- Continuity is vital (same shoes and intensity level)

- demands extra hours
- To find suitable locations and surfaces
- Very time consuming: Editing and recording!

Here is a video of how I recorded most of the player footsteps – holding a mic in my hand and pointing it towards my feet. Common requirements for variation were: walk, run, shuffel, turn, stop, jump and land-  YES all performed by me! For when the player jumps down a higher object or platform, landing sounds were split up into: soft, medium and hard. So did the performance!

Testing & Tweaking

After each completed recording session, the next step was: editing, mastering and integration. We’ve build a footsteps test-map in the UnrealEditor, defining each different surfaces that the player character would encounter to walk on in a specific level. This gave us good feedback time of how they sounded to tell us what needed to be changed. Usually, we would set up random containers (in Wwise), a setting for each of the variations, to randomly play them back to us – focusing on panning, volume & pitch-randomization.  I tossed about 10-15 separated footstep samples into each surface defined and named container and successively minimized them down to 4-5, based on performance and overall feel they communicated. I got rid of all unpleasant sounding samples and shaped them so they would work together as set. Here is a video capture of a test map representing different material surfaces that the player performs on.

And here is a video of testing water footsteps in on of the sewer areas. Actually, I recorded these towards the end of the Florida summer period at my apartments swimming pool, when pool maintenance let water out. Phew! I am glad I didn’t slip ending up with a water-soaked microphones. All went well, though!

In the end, it was a great learning experience to apply this recording technique. Even though, it takes up a lot of time and patience (which most of us may not have), I feel that the final quality on when the character moves around in the maps, make in all worth while. Its funny! I sometimes even recognize the sound and recording location, which puts a smile on my face!

As always – I tried to work from the very early gun concepts which, at the time, appeared to be very Sci-Fi-y, but also had typical mechanical gun parts associated to it. Because each of the eight total weapons, which we needed sounds for, had an alternative fire: Sci-Fi faster fire rounds and we immediately knew we would have to experiment in order to come up with a unique sound texture for each of them!

Initially, hand in hand with the visual effect department we went over the possibilities for the different weapon types and how they might ‘feel’ & interact when being used by us and the gamer. Throughout the entire development and production phase, we went through constant durations – audio as well as Vfx. Many times the art director changed the art and design concepts completely. Since the audio department remains to typically be the very last craft to be concerned about, on occasion, we did miss valuable information on changes that happen to come up in meetings, which had relevance to us and our decisions.

However, until then, I never really had the chance to do a proper gun recording and it felt to be a perfect timing to set one up. Yeah!!! In Germany this wouldn’t be possible with ease – or at least it would be very very bulky! Germans love bureaucracy! And as a result, the law likes to ‘make’ things extra difficult. On the other hand, in America its really easy – and a super -duper fun experience!! To shoot a gun is like whiskey on the rocks. Stephen, my sound college, helped me out with managing range location, ammo and to find caliber types which suited our sound concepts.

During production we soon discovered that we would require every possible gun that we could get our hands on, due to the ever changing nature of the project. The more the better! It turns out that guns would change into a more realistic and mechanical look/feel! Either way, we concentrated on the recording and collection of fresh material which also should include alternative perspectives for NPC and PC distant fire. Stephen and I went out several times to test out location-space and microphone setups. Here is short video of a test sessions on the range in Gainesville, Florida.

Please note that the guns shown in the video may differ from it original sound you’re hearing. At the time I couldn’t quite keep track of look and sound to sync them up perfectly – sorry This should serve for demonstration purposes only and should give you pretty decent idea of how it all went down!