[Ty Ford]

FOUND IT!

Ossama Khuluki was the Foley artist. Great guy.

The article was Millimeter, August, 1998.

Check this out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfGQxKqqbMM

Regards,

Ty Ford
Cow Audio Forum Leader

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[Ty Ford]

Here’s another story from my Millimeter Magazine archive;

Lobster Foley
Ty Ford
Oct 1, 1999 12:00 PM

The thing about three-foot-long lobsters crawling around on the bottom of the ocean off the coast of New England is they don’t really make much noise. That’s what the three-man team from Producer’s Video in Baltimore found after listening to the location sound tracks for the one-hour Discovery documentary tentatively titled Realm of the Lobster, directed by Clarita Berger for Nick Caloyianis Productions. “We thought some of the actual sound of the boats on the surface would be useable, but the outboard motor covered the sound of everything else,” explains senior audio engineer Bob Bragg. “We also realized that we needed to create sound for every minute of the show.” For second engineer Rob Johnson, a certified diver, that meant donning a wetsuit, jumping into the water, and dodging 30-mile-an-hour winds blowing at Loch Raven Reservoir and the Gunpowder River to record more water sounds.

The two found that the standard tool for underwater recording-the hydrophone-lacked character and high-end frequency response. That meant using studio mics under water, where they’re not meant to be. After a 15-minute conversation about condoms with a pharmacist in Baltimore, Bragg was rea dy to buy. “Due to the size of the microphones, we ended up going with Trojan Magnums and regulars, unlubricated, of course. We thought about the larger female condoms, but they’re all lubricated, so we couldn’t use them.”

Next Bragg discovered that high-end condenser mics weren’t the best choice under the sea. “This was an adventure in discovery for us,” he admits. “In the open water, there was so much low end that we couldn’t use the condenser mics. We ended up using an old dynamic EV mic that was once used for announcements at Navy Football games at the U.S. Naval Academy. It’s so old that the model number markings have worn off. That and an EV RE50 worked the best.”

Composer and sound designer Ned Boyle, the third man on the team, heard more in the sounds than Bragg and Johnson. “At first the sounds were not very impressive,” Boyle says. “With a Kurzweil 2500SX sampling keyboard, I created a lot of different loops, all of which had different lengths. Then I EQ’d and filtered them. There’s a lot to consider. You have to deal with depth of water, how fast it’s moving, and how fast what’s in it is moving. For the water mix, I panned five different looped layers across the stereo spectrum to get the right complexity of sound. Suddenly you felt as though you were underwater.”

With the water sounds in place, the team turned to the individual fish and lobster Foley. “We Foleyed every step of every lobster. We spread peanut shells, sea shells, and sand on a sheet of Sonex, creating a mini Foley pit,” says Bragg. “Ned’s fingers played the part of the lobster steps, walking across the bottom. On those we used a Sennheiser MKH 60 and a Lexicon PCM 80 bandpass program to contour the sound for EQ. We used a Sennheiser MKH 40 above water to capture some of the fish motion sounds. We even had a sound for the way the fins of the tuna breaks the surface of the water as they chase the herring. We found drawing a chopstick through the water in the tank gave us some of the sounds we needed.” Sushi anyone? Reach Ty Ford at https://www.tyford.com

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[Ty Ford]

Thanks for the nod, Rosh,

I was once asked to do an audio production that paralleled Jackson Pollack, the painter known for throwing and splattering paint on his canvasses. I needed the splat sound. I didn’t have paint and didn’t think that would work anyway. In thinking about something I could heave at a thin board that would resonate and give me a good splat, I chose yogurt. Pudding would probably have worked.

I wrote a story for Millmeter Magazine a number of years ago about a Foley artist. Sadly, I can’t remember his name and he’s moved on. He was doing cop shows, Xena and other prominent shows and movies. I went to his garage studio. He had rings of shelves around the walls on which were the weirdest collection of household objects. His favorite at the time was a baby carriage he lifted from someone’s trash heap. When twisted it created a symphony of squeaks that he used for everything from ambulance stretchers and gurneys to who knows what.

Here’s a piece I wrote for Millimeter about Charles Deenen’s work:

Audio Outside the Box: Breaking the Rules to Get Bigger Sound

Ty Ford

Sep 1, 1999 12:00 PM

Given Charles Deenen’s field recording gear-HHB PDR1000 DAT, Apogee AD1000 mic pre-amp and A/D converter, Neumann RSM 191 stereo shotgun, KMR 81i, and Sennheiser 416 shotgun mic-you would probably expect to see his credits on documentaries and on feature film sound design projects. Although that may happen soon, his gig for the last 16 years has been recording, editing, and producing audio for computer games. For almost the last decade he has been at Los Angeles-based Interplay Entertainment, discovering how certain types of audio grunge make things sound bigger on pint-sized speakers. Deenen says these discoveries have not gone unnoticed. EFX Systems used a similar approach to create big sounds for the Mortal Combat II and Blade films.

Working within limitations unheard of by most film and video sound people, Deenen started by getting the most out of early consumer systems like the Commodore 64, with only 8K or 16K of memory for sounds. “Back then, to play a note, you’d type in a value, length, and turn byte by hand. These days playback systems are usually 16-bit with a lot more memory. Interplay now produces sounds on a full 5.1 studio using a Euphonix CS2000 console and a staff of 10 people.”

Working in a minimalist environment forced Deenen to come up with unorthodox ways to make sounds bigger. “If your ear hears a really loud sound it starts to distort in a specific way, which tells the brain it’s loud. If you use a good limiter, the sound won’t change, but the perception is that there is loudness. Add a specific type of distortion to this, and your ear believes it’s a loud sound. Finding that distortion took us a really long time.”

The search led Deenen to uncommon ways of using the processing gear, including the use of compressors and limiters in parallel side-chains instead of in a series. “We layer those processed sounds with the unprocessed sound. We use an Aphex Studio Dominator II in parallel and a Sony F7. There’s an algorithm in the Sony that does a particular kind of soft clipping that helps us get our sound. The Apogee AD1000 A/D converter has an analog soft clipper that, when overloaded tremendously, gives sounds a certain distortion quality. TASCAM DA-88s, when overloaded, give a certain distortion to a sound. The Lexicon PCM80 effects box can also be used to distort in a useful way.”

EQ is also crucial to the mix. Deenen says until recently he made his team monitor on the cheapest Radio Shack speakers available because they reproduced nothing under 200Hz. “That keeps you from relying on low end to make an effect sound big. We use a GML 8200 high-end mastering equalizer. Cheaper equalizers just turn sound to mud.”

Some of Deenen’s other tricks include putting Barcus Berry contact mics (used for micing acoustic guitars) on train rails while recording approaching trains and using his Sony TCD-D 1000 portable DAT machine with Sonic Studios’ miniature, head-worn, stereo condenser mics to get surreptitious ambiences at public places. He has also strapped the rig on “Chili” his chihuaha/mini-pincher to record some of its stranger sounds for future projects.

Reach Ty Ford at https://www.tyford.com

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[Ty Ford]

Hi Folks,

Sound design is the opposite of plug and play. There are no rules. That makes it difficult to write or speak about.

I try to think about it as a cross between photographic and music composition. In photography, composition is about foreground, midground and background, what’s in the frame and where. What’s in focus and what’s out of focus.

In music composition, it’s about the arrangement of instruments, their individual parts, how they combine and layer. In music production, the addition of reverb and echo can smear and stretch the sound.

So begin thinking about the space in stereo or in surround – this is your two or three dimensional canvas. Also begin thinking about the frequencies of sounds – these are your paints.

And, to a certain extent, you’re right; you can’t get much while reading about it. It’s sort of like glass blowing. You also can’t get very far watching someone else do it. You have to play with it.

Think outside the box; taking a sample of sound and slow it down or speed it up until it sounds like something else. Learn to think about what a sound will sound like when sped up or slowed down so you can do it in your head as you compose.

The thought process is this. Does this need sound design? What do I want it to make the viewer feel? e.g. happy, sad, terror, sympathy, you name it. Will a simple, single sound do it? Do I need sounds, music or both?

Layering can be complex, requiring attention to the background, midground and foreground, or just one or two of these.

Placement from left to right also requires attention, depending on on what else is going on with dialog.

How’s that?

Regards,

Ty Ford
Cow Audio Forum Leader.

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[Ty Ford]

Hello Kat and welcome to the Cow Audio Forum,

First, you dampen something with a liquid. You damp to reduce vibration or movement.

Second, if you want your recording to sound as though you have a sound blanket over your head, sure, have at it.

Most of the time, though, you want a controlled and natural sounding space.

Knowing nothing about the room, I can’t really tell you what to do. More details please.

Regards,

Ty Ford
Cow Audio Forum Leader

Want better production audio?: Ty Ford’s Audio Bootcamp Field Guide
Ty Ford Blog: Ty Ford’s Blog

[Ty Ford]

Peter,

Years ago, when it was part of the DAR Soundstation, I arranged for a demo at Rodel in DC. We used material that was in a current Rodel production, not demo fodder.

It was pretty stunning even back then. I later wrote an article for MIX or Millimeter. I interviewed an LA post house (Doc Kane, I think) and he said Vocalign reduced their ADR by about 70%.

One other non-ADR plan that may help people is in situation where you have multiple takes and there’s a problem with the “keeper” take.

Vocalign software, either stand alone or plugin can make a “keeper” out of a bad take. If the problem is just a small section of the “keeper”, you may be able to use a portion of the audio from another take. Vocalign will analyze the “keeper” and apply time compression and expansion to the target take to make it match the timing of the “keeper.” It works scarily well a lot of the time, but there are limitations.

Regards,

Ty Ford
Cow Audio Forum Leader

Want better production audio?: Ty Ford’s Audio Bootcamp Field Guide
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[Ty Ford]

Craig,

I capture it as best I can, hoping to not peak above -3dB and leave it to post.

Regards,

Ty Ford
Cow Audio Forum Leader

Want better production audio?: Ty Ford’s Audio Bootcamp Field Guide
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[Ty Ford]

Richard,

Again, which microphone?

Regards,

Ty Ford

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[Ty Ford]

Hello Rod and welcome to the Cow Audio Forum.

1. Sorry for your pain.

2. You did a great job in explaining your situation.

3. I don’t know.

4. Try using Wave Agent https://www.sounddevices.com/products/waveagent.htm on a COPY of your files and a COPY of your production. (or small section that you can undo) You can use it to change the header information of each file.

5. There’s also Virtual Katy. It costs, but it does more. https://www.virtualkaty.com/ I have not used it.

Please let us know here if this works or not so those who come upon the thread later can benefit from your effort.

Regards,

Ty Ford
Cow Audio Forum Leader

Want better production audio?: Ty Ford’s Audio Bootcamp Field Guide
Ty Ford Blog: Ty Ford’s Blog

[Ty Ford]

Hello Richard and welcome to the Cow Audio Forum,

You don’t give us much detail on what you’re using to achieve sound that you don’t like or why you don’t like it. I think that needs to addressed before considering a recorder.

Capturing good audio is a craft as much as focus pulling, videography or plumbing. I could have en entire plumbing truck at my disposal and the results would be underwhelming.

You don’t mention a mixer. The right mixer between the mics and camera (or recorder) is a wonderful thing.

Perhaps you could elaborate on what you don’t like about your sound now and what your gear setup is.

Regards,

Ty Ford
Cow Audio Forum Leader

Want better production audio?: Ty Ford’s Audio Bootcamp Field Guide
Ty Ford Blog: Ty Ford’s Blog