Sounds Like Chicken

I spent this afternoon in a small room with big speakers, a fuzzy picture and green tea.  The winnowing of sound effects has begun at Audio Circus.

Actually, there was not much winnowing.  Sound post and mixing has changed even in the last ten years.  Used to be that I'd spend this time culling sounds because the sound designers would reduce the number of tracks by combining sounds. A giant's footstep may be a combination of an elephant's foot, a bass drum, something squishy and a crackle.  That would be decided at this stage so that on the mixing stage it would only take up a single track.  But that meant that the only change that could be made would be a volume setting.

Now more than a hundred tracks are used so there's no decisions made that can't be modified at the mix if necessary.  So today we went through the movie taking out anything that I didn't like.  For instance, one of the demons is "Lightning" so there are lots of electrical blasts and efx.  But many electrical sounds have a buzz to them that sounds like technology to my ear.  I wanted Lightning more organic so we cut out lots of buzz.

I also talked about what I thought was missing or the various sounds made by a single monster beyond a roar.  I also talked about treating certain actions as paranormal events as opposed to "real world" effects.  Everything was sound good.  It's astounding how much work the guys are putting into it...and how much more they have to do before Monday!  The guys will be working all weekend to be ready for the pre-mix next week.  Send them good thoughts! -- Tad

Comments

[Kirk]

I have been editting some old movies I did in my teen years and am having a blast with all the digital technology that is now available to the "common man." Oh, to have had these back in the day...

It really is such a time saver and larger canvas to work with than tape splicing super 8 movies and mixing music with a sound projector and a single input level knob. Sound effect editing has always been an amazing field to me and I am sure all that new digital tech has made it better, less frustrating, and a way for you to get closer to your original vision.

I find it so interesting how involved you are with every single phase of this project. Is this the norm?

[Sparky]

Aw, look at Hellboy pulling a Hamlet with that skull.

"Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Abe -- a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. Too bad he walked past that werewolf den during a full moon, while eating a Carl’s Jr. triple bacon cheeseburger..."

[hb]

SOUNDS goods!!! har har..ahem*

Good Luck guys! IM sure you'll manage to get through the weekend and be ready for monday. Whether or not you'll be able to understand anything around you after staying up 48 hours straight is a different thing however.
Digin the orange mike mignola-esque fire background there.

Im really most interested to see the incoporation of really comic related stuff in the movies. For example i remember seeing some wolves in an earlier post which looked fantastically like the comic style. The integration of the comics elements will be very intriguing indeed. AS will the sound.
I noticed the giant bat had a samael feel to it when screaming.

[Tad]

Sparky, you assume that when Hellboy holds a skull it's a soliloquy. With him it's more likely a dialogue. Well, not much of a dialogue mostly listening to a gravelly voice murmur, "It's a trap" or "Beware."

hb, our monsters lean more Mignola, especiall the vampire heads, Kappa and yes, the wolves from Blood and Iron.

The Mignola compositional stuff is subtle but it definitely led us away from typical super hero staging.

[Tad]

Kirk, whatever they're called, show runners, producers, supervising producer, director or "Your Majesty" the creative leads of an animated project play to their strengths. Because I'm both a writer and an artist I'm involved throughout the process a little more than most.

But if I was heading up a series my time would be much more limited due to the schedule. I'd be delegating a lot more to my directors because there's so much emphasis on the script in TV.

[hb]

hey tad...I saw that your going to be doing some work in the upcoming hellboy animated comics...any chance i could see some drawings? Ive looked you up on google but all I get is the crapload of animated films you worked on.