Demo Reel
Reel Notes
Choosing the clip:
I needed a chase scene with a bike and “Ultraviolet” had anti-gravity! The original segment was mostly music, so spotting SFX was a challenge that offered me creative room.
Challenges
Synchronizing cycle samples, processing impacts for the helicopter gunfire to match visuals and building a climactic glass opera on the skyscraper required creative editing. I made sequencer/fx patches to give the flat helicopter hover loops I had on hand qualities of active movement.
Bikes
For redline and acceleration/deceleration I mostly used dynatron recordings I did for Midway (Die Werkstaad-SF). The dynatron recordings had the advantage of steady loops at varying RPMs - which allowed me to keep pitch editing to a minimum.
For the high speed “air whine” I flattened-out Superbike passby recordings I made at Laguna Seca for “Roadburners” using volume envelopes and pitch bend curve surgery/adjustments. These were favorites of mine
For the gunning of the engine and the “load” sequences (when the rider stops at the edge of the building and then burns out over the corner) I used library sounds of dragster bikes.
The skid sounds I used for the bike were posi Cuda burnouts I recorded in the Midway parking lot, thanks to Jerry Miller of MOPAR Alley, who sacrificed two rear tires for the cause. His 1971 450 Hemi Cuda was a thing of beauty. (He rigged his engine to the frame with bungies - otherwise his motor mounts would snap when he hit the gas too hard)…I believe the dual crescents he carved into the asphalt are still there in Milpitas, CA.
Cars
I used library sounds for skids and library sounds for one of the car engines. To differentiate the 2nd car I used the aforementioned Cuda samples.
Helicopters
I used all library sounds for these. Because all the samples fluctuated slowly through a narrow pitch range, I only bothered with pitch shifting for Doppler and used samplers and eq/distortion modules for load factor – to do this I set up lanes for presence and distortion controller tracks. Altering these added the quality of moving through the air I needed.
Glass and Impacts
I used all library sounds. To accelerate the individual glass shatters to keep up with the helicopter machine guns I spliced and faded lots of attacks into long sequences, and used long debris sounds to smooth out the cuts and to cover the post-impact glass ambience.
Bullet sounds and metal impact sounds were all out of sound libraries.
Nanoland
For the anti-gravity device on the bike I used a combination of library tesla sounds, analog sounds created using Reason’s noise generator, and ambient technical sounds created using Reason’s Malstrom grain synth.
Managing Tracks
I spotted most of the sounds in Nuendo 3 and used Folder tracks to keep things organized. Once my system maxxed out I created group tracks and bounced each into a separate project, then used those to make stems for a final mix project.
I needed a chase scene with a bike and “Ultraviolet” had anti-gravity! The original segment was mostly music, so spotting SFX was a challenge that offered me creative room.
Challenges
Synchronizing cycle samples, processing impacts for the helicopter gunfire to match visuals and building a climactic glass opera on the skyscraper required creative editing. I made sequencer/fx patches to give the flat helicopter hover loops I had on hand qualities of active movement.
Bikes
For redline and acceleration/deceleration I mostly used dynatron recordings I did for Midway (Die Werkstaad-SF). The dynatron recordings had the advantage of steady loops at varying RPMs - which allowed me to keep pitch editing to a minimum.
For the high speed “air whine” I flattened-out Superbike passby recordings I made at Laguna Seca for “Roadburners” using volume envelopes and pitch bend curve surgery/adjustments. These were favorites of mine
For the gunning of the engine and the “load” sequences (when the rider stops at the edge of the building and then burns out over the corner) I used library sounds of dragster bikes.
The skid sounds I used for the bike were posi Cuda burnouts I recorded in the Midway parking lot, thanks to Jerry Miller of MOPAR Alley, who sacrificed two rear tires for the cause. His 1971 450 Hemi Cuda was a thing of beauty. (He rigged his engine to the frame with bungies - otherwise his motor mounts would snap when he hit the gas too hard)…I believe the dual crescents he carved into the asphalt are still there in Milpitas, CA.
Cars
I used library sounds for skids and library sounds for one of the car engines. To differentiate the 2nd car I used the aforementioned Cuda samples.
Helicopters
I used all library sounds for these. Because all the samples fluctuated slowly through a narrow pitch range, I only bothered with pitch shifting for Doppler and used samplers and eq/distortion modules for load factor – to do this I set up lanes for presence and distortion controller tracks. Altering these added the quality of moving through the air I needed.
Glass and Impacts
I used all library sounds. To accelerate the individual glass shatters to keep up with the helicopter machine guns I spliced and faded lots of attacks into long sequences, and used long debris sounds to smooth out the cuts and to cover the post-impact glass ambience.
Bullet sounds and metal impact sounds were all out of sound libraries.
Nanoland
For the anti-gravity device on the bike I used a combination of library tesla sounds, analog sounds created using Reason’s noise generator, and ambient technical sounds created using Reason’s Malstrom grain synth.
Managing Tracks
I spotted most of the sounds in Nuendo 3 and used Folder tracks to keep things organized. Once my system maxxed out I created group tracks and bounced each into a separate project, then used those to make stems for a final mix project.