We know that music should be more than just a background element in any narrative audio medium, be it film/TV, audio drama, or games. I was particularly interested in Eriksson’s description of how he used his own vocalisations to capture a rough idea of the pitch and sound envelope, as a starting point for many of the eventual designs. Baby alligator roars, slinky movements, and kittens all contributed in some way, which certainly demonstrated some out-of-the-box thinking. Philip Eriksson (EA Dice) talked about creating unique audio signatures for the signature power move (weapon attack sound) for characters in Star Wars: Battlefront 2. It’s so easy to throw a listener out of the experience with a clumsy transition, and a classic whoosh won’t always cut it. Listening to Andrew Quinn’s (Rocksteady) lecture about how he and his team used audio to support the story Batman: Arkham VR, I was reminded how important a seamless transition could be even for non-visual experiences like audio drama. Experienced game voice director and actor Stephane Cornicard discussed how helping an actor to understand character location (outside/inside, far away/up close) and intention in a scene (what does the character want?) will produce a far more connected performance than saying “just read it like this.” Transitions are your friendĮffective audio transitions can help maintain immersion in any media and particularly in VR, where scene transitions between environments can be jarring for the player. Line reads (where you perform the line to the actor and ask them to mimic you) will never give you a truthful performance. To get the best out of voice actors, tell them how to feel, not what to say In a particular cutscene that she played from The Last of Us, a low drone, the background whistling of winter wind and an intermittent sink drip were all that was needed to create an intense feeling of isolation, which supported the bleak nature of the scene. Shannon Potter (Formosa Interactive), who worked on The Last of Us and Uncharted 4 talked about how sparse sounds can help to enhance a particular emotion, and it was a good reminder that sometimes the most effective sound design for a scene includes a lot of space and silence.
I know I often fall into the trap of feeling a soundscape has to have a ton of layers to be effective. Here are five short and sweet takeaways from this year: It’s not always about the noise One day of the conference is dedicated to audio in games, with lectures from audio directors and sound designers covering everything from how to get the best performance from voice actors, to sound effects creation and video game music tropes.Įvery year I come away from the lectures with useful tidbits which I’ve found can easily apply to sound design in general. In July I attended Develop: Brighton, the UK’s biggest conference for game developers, held in Brighton, England.
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