BETA | GAME AUDIO A new Wave
After Microsoft revealed it was working on a unique Sesame Street-based interactive TV show using Kinect, Craig Chapple talks with the console giant and sound studio Wave about the challenges of creating immersive audio
Sesame Street Kinect brings the loveable show to a new level of interactivity, giving players tasks such as throwing coconuts into an on-screen box
DURING THIS year’s Consumer Electronics Show, which was also to be Microsoft’s last at the event, the console giant announced that it was developing Sesame Street Kinect, a new interactive TV show based on the famous children’s programme. Using the Xbox 360’s motion sensor peripheral Kinect, users interact based on cues given by the Muppets on screen, such as being asked to throw coconuts into a box. But being interactive, if the player refuses to comply with set directions, the show will produce new incentives and clips, perhaps introducing other Muppets to encourage the user or help out with the task at hand.
A MODERN ENTERTAINMENT Creating such a new kind of entertainment certainly comes with its many challenges, and none perhaps more so than in audio. With creating a sense of immersion the name of the game for such an ambitious project, the wrong sound cues could distance the user and create a barrier between them and the show, rather than one seamless experience. To do this, Microsoft’s Soho studio partnered with its close neighbour, audio outsourcer Wave Studios, which has worked on a plethora of games, films and adverts to date. “We’re dealing with sound design for various parts of the content in the show,” says Wave’s head of game audio Anthony Matchett. “Predominantly it’s interactive video
segments that may path off and take different routes. We create the sound design, record foley and help with dialogue requirements.”
40 | MARCH 2012
Original footage for the Kinect show was shot at Sesame Street’s New York studio live, with voicing recorded on set, rather than dubbed afterward. This left Wave the challenge of also having to successfully blend two clips that weren’t originally shot together and making it a seamless experience. “There’s a unique challenge. As much as wanting to be creative on our own you have to take into account the Sesame Street heritage,” says Matchett. “Equally, we are slightly extending upon that for that fact that its now interactive, which hasn’t been really done before.
It’s creating sounds that not only fit in
with existing Sesame stuff, but also bringing a new element to this show.
Anthony Matchett, Wave
“So it’s creating sounds that not only fit in with existing Sesame stuff, but also bringing a new element to this show. Things like reward sounds, when a player gets something right, just adds to the interactivity.” Microsoft’s audio director John Silke adds:
“The TV show would never have had to deal with videos being chopped and issues with flow at any point, because it’s linear. So sometimes we have to take our own
approach because it’s new, I don’t think anyone’s really done it before.”
THE SESAME SOUND Wave has also had to build up the game’s audio from scratch, as the Sesame Workshop does not have a complete bank of sound effects used throughout the show’s history. Matchett estimates that the company has
had to create and blend hundreds of thousands individual sound effects to build up the game’s audio, and it is a task that the creators of Sesame Street have also played an integral part in. Not shy from collaborating on the audio elements of the project, Atkins says the creators have leant their experience of the Sesame world by offering useful feedback on the effects and what they need to sound like. “They know what is and isn’t Sesame, just off the bat,” states Atkins. “Whilst they may not possibly have a sound archive of things going back 40 years, they do intrinsically and instinctively know what works and what doesn’t work. “Their feedback has been very good,
they’ll hear something and they’ll give very specific notes stating ‘on this show we do it this way’.”
Should the Sesame Workshop, Microsoft
and Wave succeed with Sesame Street Kinect in providing an immersive and interactive experience, Atkins believes that the London Soho area in particular can look to take advantage of this new genre, with companies like Wave already in place to build a new development hub upon.
DEVELOP-ONLINE.NET
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84