Music of Sound

Say what you like about it but I’m slowly learning that the quality of your experience on twitter depends on who you follow, or subscribe to. Some people seem to think its just full of trivial short messages about what you had for lunch or something, but in the end its like life; you define it by your actions. To illustrate my point, here are a bunch of random but relevant/entertaining links that were scattered through the twitter feeds I subscribe to …

BBC gave a 13 year old a walkman in exchange for his mp3 player, to use for a week… some of his revelations beautifully illustrate the technology/perception gap between the digital generation (those who have grown up with ubiqutous internet/digital technology) & everyone else who has lived through the transition: “It took me three days to figure out that there was another side to the tape. That was not the only naive mistake that I made; I mistook the metal/normal switch on the Walkman for a genre-specific equaliser, but later I discovered that it was in fact used to switch between two different types of cassette.”

Similarly if you are old enough to remember playing the 8bit computer game Prince of Persia then watch this!

One of the ‘people’ I follow on twitter that reliably makes me laugh is Big Foot – for example:
“You think I just wandering aimlessly, but actually I on big comeback tour.”
“Peed on you so you technically mine now.”
“Don’t remember swallow lawn flamingo but sure happy it out of system.”

I love checking out some of the light drawings on flickr but apparently Piccasso has been there too!

And next year, ‘they’ have changed the rules so that the Oscar for best song is able to be given to no one, should they so choose. Interesting reading why Peter Gabriel chose to pull out of performing at the last Oscars too:

Last year, the best song category inspired controversy when Peter Gabriel withdrew at the 11th hour after being asked to perform his song Down to Earth, from Pixar’s Wall-E, for only 65 seconds as part of a medley with two songs from AR Rachman’s soundtrack to Slumdog Millionaire.

“We’d assumed, as there are only three nominees, that the songs would be performed in full. But the producers came in to revamp it as audience figures were falling off,” Gabriel said in a video on his website. “So I’ve now decided to withdraw from the ceremony, but I’ll still go along. I do think it’s a bit unfortunate. I do think songwriters, even though they’re a small part of the filmmaking process … we still work bloody hard and I think deserve a place in the ceremony as well.”

Next, a good link to an article with handy tips on making a demo sound design show reel… The only thing I would add to that article is that I’ve found one of the most important things that helps when making a show reel is to have access to the seperate Dialog, Music & FX stems from the mix of each source clip… Most films have a reasonable amount of music & it is the one aspect that will stitch you up when cutting shorter sections together, and considering its a sound show reel the last thing you want a director to hear is bad music edits! With the seperate stems you can tidy up music edits across cuts (or drop music all together) & rebalance the stems in their new context.

Lastly, thanks to sound designer Andrew Harris for getting in touch, who recently finished work on a great short film that you should see called Terminus – directed by Trevor Cawood. I wont embed the youtube as its worth going & watching the higher resolution via the quicktime version

Andrew commented “I made the sounds of his feet by using a “NO PARKING” sign.. the type with the big cement block bottoms. I had to drag it two blocks and up four flights of stairs to my studio in Toronto at the time.” – nice work Andrew!

Coincidentally the score for that short was done by Clinton Shorter who was recently in New Zealand for the mix of Neil Blomkampf’s District 9 at Park Road Post, which many of my sound editor friends have been working on for the last six months.. Heres two of the trailers for it:

I can’t wait to see that movie! Some of the marketing for the film is pure genius!
Check them out: