Booked.

Ladies and gents, I am booked.

I'm now ten days into a twenty-two day shoot in and around Portland, Oregon for the movie Trainmaster, directed by Phil Branson.

I'm production sound mixer on my first full feature (I've only day-played before). We're shooting single-system (yeah, I know...), with two Panasonic HVX-200's, utilizing both P2 and Firestore hard drives.

It's long days in hot rooms with sweaty people. Luckily, everyone's cool and I have an awesome boom op in the form of Creed Spencer. Actually having someone who is more of a teammate rather than an intern has made an incredible difference in the efficiency and quality of the work that we've been able to produce.

Plus, I finally got my kit.

Things happened in a hurry. I was asked to come on board about ten days before we started shooting, so I had to make it all happen post-haste. Since I'd been refining my wish list for the past two years, it was only a matter of calling in the order and getting it shipped in time. As it turned out, I used the kit for the first time on the first day of shooting (after having diligently tested everything at home the night before, natch:). A full review of each piece will be forth coming sometime after we finish.

This is what we're working with:

Sound Devices 442 mixer
Sennheiser G2 Evolution wireless
Countryman B3 lav mics
K-tek boom pole
Rycote S-Series suspension
Petrol PEGZ-1F audio bag
AKG Blueline modular mic system with SE-300b amp body, CK-93 hyper-cardioid capsule, and CK-98 short shotgun capsule

We're slated to wrap in early August. Until then, quiet on set. :)

-Christian

Two Snaps Up.

Happy 4th, y'all (and I'm sure that you're all wearing hearing protection with those fireworks, right?:).

Today's post is about soundsnap.com, a new website that offers free sound effects and music loops for download, as well as creating an online community for artists to upload and share their own recordings.

From the website:

What is Soundsnap?

Soundsnap is the best platform to find and share free sound effects and loops- legally. It is a collection of original sounds made or recorded by its users, and not songs or sound FX found on commercial libraries or sample CD's.

What Soundsnap is NOT:

* An alternative to Myspace, Limewire or BitTorrent.

* A place to upload your band's songs or your favourite mp3's. Soundsnap is only for sound effects and loops.

* A place you can upload or find sounds from commercial libraries. All sounds here are original- made or recorded by its users.

Soundsnap is the brainchild of 25 year old Tasos Frantzolas, a sound designer and musician who recently returned to his home country of Greece to launch the website.

From Creative Cow News:

He started Soundsnap in order to fulfill a need for a library of high quality, on-demand free sounds. He gathered a talented team of contributing sound designers, producers, web designers and developers to start the Soundsnap community.

I've covered one other open-source SFX website before, but Soundsnap takes things a bit further, wrapping everything in a very pleasant AJAX-y interface, complete with very high-quality Flash previews of each sound. For download, MP3 is offered alongside uncompressed PCM, in either WAV or AIFF format, depending.

Along with the slick visuals, Soundsnap is very intuitive and easy to use. Samples are tagged, allowing quick keyword search, as well as more traditional categories, such as Human, Film and Comic FX, and Science Fiction. There's even a tag cloud, showing quantities of samples relative to one another.

As I've said before, there's often no substitute for a professionally recorded and produced FX library. But for those on a budget, or just on the lookout for something new and fresh, I heartily recommend giving Soundsnap a try.

Link to soundsnap.com.
Link to Creative Cow News article.

Free Guide to Audio Meters

Via ProSoundNews Online Daily: DK-Technologies Debuts Audio Metering Guide.

Snip:

Have you ever wondered why engineers measure audio levels? Or why they use the dB scale? Or what Leq and Dynamic Scales are?

Audio Levels and Readings offers engineers a basic insight into the world of audio levels and metering and covers many topics, from the basics such as what is an audio signal and how does one measure level, through to more complex issues such as Loudness, A-Weighting and how analog levels relate to digital scales.

Link to DK-Technologies website with download; direct link to PDF.

AfterEffects: Working With Audio

Over at Creative Cow, Aharon Rabinowitz has posted a video tutorial entitled AE Workflow Tips #8: Working With Audio.

Link to the flash movie. For those who have trouble with playback of that particular file (as I did), here is a link to a video podcast in mp4.

John Eargle 1931 - 2007

From JBL Professional:

John M. Eargle, who was considered by many to be the foremost expert in the audio engineering field, has died. He was 76. Eargle, who was senior director of product development and application for JBL Professional, authored The Handbook of Recording Engineering; The Microphone Book; The Handbook of Sound System Design; Electroacoustical Reference Data; Music, Sound and Technology; The Loudspeaker Handbook; and the recent The JBL Story: 60 Years of Audio Innovation. He also wrote and coauthored many articles in the Journal of the Audio Engineering Society and the SMPTE Journal.

If you've been to a cinema in the past twenty years, you've heard the results of his work.

From Mixonline:

In 2002 Eargle received a Scientific and Engineering Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences along with other JBL engineers for the concept, design and engineering of the modern constant-directivity, direct radiator style motion picture loudspeaker systems.

Links to articles via mixonline.com, jbl.com, and a memorial tribute at johnmeargle.com.

Vegetable Abuse

From The Official Dark Sector Developer Blog: Sound Designers Dustin Crenna and George Spanos talk about how they abused fruits and vegetables to obtain the raw material they needed to create the soundscapes for the game Dark Sector.

Snip:

Working in a talent-based industry is an experience in and of its own – this becomes even more apparent when you line an empty room with plastic sheets and pulverize a variety of fresh produce to capture the sounds of breaking bones, splattering blood, and tearing flesh. And all this happens on a Tuesday afternoon. Along with insightful commentary provided by sound designers Dustin and George, Digital Extremes is proud to present the results of a Foley session that left the 17th floor of an office complex smelling like cabbage…

Link to the blog post, including a pretty cool movie showing the process.

It's All Greek to Me...

Semi OT: Found this interesting article over at livescience.com, entitled Mystery of Amphitheater 's Amazing Sound Finally Solved.

Snip:

Audiences of up to an estimated 14,000 have long been able to hear actors and musicians--unamplified--from even the back row of the architectural masterpiece.

How this sonic quality was achieved has been the source of academic and amateur speculation, with some theories suggesting that prevailing winds carried sounds or masks amplified voices.

It's in the seats.

Link to the article.