UTILISING SOUND DESIGN
AUDIO INSIDE INCREDIBLE ATHLETES
Andy Hodges is no stranger to performing in front of the cameras, having acted and studied performing arts, but he now works behind the scenes on sound design and mixing at Envy, where he has worked on everything from Gladiators to Sex: How To Do Everything.
The recent, critically acclaimed Inside Incredible Athletes required all the power from his ICON controlled Pro Tools system, as he details: “The programme had what Mike [Christie, director] called performance videos, where he stylised the athletes doing their thing – so there was a guy with a horse doing ballet, a girl swimming at the beginning and blind footballers playing through the museum. I was doing sound design of anything from bubbles under water to every bounce of the ball.”
AVID’S ATHLETIC
“A lot of the sounds were from a massive library but I modified them in Pro Tools to make them exactly what I wanted. I’d also layer them to bring them to life so you’d get layers of bubbles, splashes, people in the swimming pool, that kind of thing.” “The horse doing the ballet was
pretty hard,” Hodges continues, somewhat bizarrely. “The music they shot to was a different speed to what we had in the edit so we had to adjust it to suit the track. I then had to match up the horse’s and dancers’ footsteps, which was pretty mind boggling.” “It’s cool kit,” Hodges says of his ICON set-up. “You can really make the sound tight to the visuals and you have 128 tracks to play with. The ICON gives dedicated control to Pro Tools tasks from the console surface and allows you to do everything a lot quicker.”
TRICKS WITH AUDIO • Sound design in Pro Tools helps bring projects to life • Using an ICON increases workflow efficiency
“I was doing sound design of anything from bubbles under water to every bounce of the ball”
ANDY HODGES Sound design ENVY
AUDIO JOE MADDISON’S WAR
Alan Sallabank, dubbing mixer at Ascent142, which recently worked on the ITV drama Joe Maddison’s War, reveals that Avid’s Pro Tools has become their digital audio workstation of choice for productions such as this, thanks to its easy integration with Avid editing gear and “its ability to interface with and/or be controlled by third-party equipment.” “With Joe Maddison’s Warwe harvested voice-over, ADR and music from all over the country,” he continues. “Chris Roberts [supervising sound editor] was able to keep us up to date from his own cutting room using Pro Tools|HD and from his mobile setup using Pro Tools LE. We are often bringing together projects originated from different places and systems, so the ease with which different versions of Pro Tools work with each other is great. We are now
PRO TOOLS GOES TO
even making ‘satellite’ Pro Tools LE systems run in sync with the main dub stage systems, so that sound editors can do updates before they’re submitted to the main systems.” “On Joe Maddison’s War I also used plug-ins within Pro Tools to generate the stereo fold-downs of the 5.1 stems, minimising the need for racks of outboard,” says Sallabank. “The ability to be able to re-
conform picture tracks along with audio has been invaluable. Finally, the huge variety of plug-ins makes the creation of unique sound design much easier and enables the sound editor to make signature sound effects, maybe with 5.1 surround sound elements.”
“I like the new AIR plug-ins that have come with Pro Tools 8 – lots of fun potential,” adds Sallabank.
WAR FOR ITV • Pro Tools’ plug-ins make sound design easy, with the new AIR plug-ins being a firm favourite
“With Joe Maddison’s War we harvested voice-over, ADR and music from all over the country”
ALAN SALLABANK Dubbing mixer ASCENT 142
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