kraftschaum

Sound Design Essentials: 6 Recommended Books and 11 Google Books Links: “

Continuing with the Sound Essentials series, articles created to provide resources and tips to learn sound design. Since I give the first list of recommended books, some people told me if we could recommend more of them, ans the answer is: yes. Buy software, buy gear, it’s ok, but also buy Books! I consider them as one of the best ways to spend money, and come on, they’re cheap. Excellent value for the money.

So, here is a list of more books (in no particular order), enough to don’t stop reading about sound this year.

The Sound Effects Bible - Ric Viers said it and did it. On this book he puts everything he knows about sound effects, from beginner topics to intermediate and advanced tips to create sound effects. You’ll learn everything from digital audio and software to studio equipment, field recording and sound design techniques. The Commandments Chapters are really great and has the wonderful ‘Sound Effects Encyclopedia’ section with tips and tricks to create a lot of different sound effects.

Soundscape: The School of Sound Lectures 1998 – 2001 - This book is a kind of magic source. Each time you read it again, you found more and more good info. The book contains fantastic articles, lectures and investigations made on The Shcol of Sound event between 1998 and 2001. Secrets, stories, tips, techniques, thoughts, and everything you want to know from the masters, edited by Larry Sider.

Sound-On-Film: Interviews with the creators of Film Sound- This is one of my favorites. The sound on film didn’t come from nowhere. What we have now has been the result of the efforts of many masters of sound. This book collects interviews, experiences, stories, and the theory of several of the most important figures in the evolution of sound in cinema.

Sound Theory, Sound Practice - A great book to know about the fundamental theory of sound in cinema, form historical aspects to deep theory and fantastic information on different prespectives, genres and the different ways to deal with film sound.

Sound Design: The Expressive Power of Music, Voice and Sound Effects in Cinema – David Sonnenschein did a great work with this book, putting great information about how you can approach sound in cinema, with a really detailed guide covering psychological, narrative, expressive and technical aspects with awesome analysis of sound on film, quotes by other sound designer and a really great feature called ‘Try this’. This is one of my latest reads and I loved it.

Dialogue Editing for Motion Pictures: A guide to the invisible art - Some times people don’t think about dialogue as a very important part of a movie. This book gives you a journey through the world of dialogue recording and editing, with theory, techniques and tricks to get the most of the dialogues in your productions.

If you want to read the contents of the books before buy it, or don’t have money or a good way to get any of those books, I made a list of sound design books on Google Books. Some of them has a large preview of many chapters available to read and some are more limited. Check:

• Soundscape
• The Foley Grail
• Sound for Picture
• Sound Design and Science Fiction
• Sound Theory, Sound Practice
• Sound-On-Film
• Sound for Film and Television
• The Dolby Era
• Game Sound
• Audio Programming for Interactive Games
• Computer Sound Design

Enjoy!

“

(Via Designing Sound.)

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

As seen, I did not update anything because of many lacks of time and internet access. In addition to this, I will keep it short this time, too. But I have the links to all the podcast episodes on youtube this time, except for episode 18, which will be released tonight.

I will post some notes to each episode soon.

Episode 1

Episode 2

Episode 3

Episode 4

Episode 5

Episode 6

Episode 7

Episode 8

Episode 9

Episode 10

Episode 11

Episode 12

Episode 13

Episode 14

Episode 15

Episode 16

Episode 17

Being late for a couple of days, sorry. We had much work, and returning from the first of two sea trials, I am happy to use internet access again.

We will leave in a couple of hours, and I will be offline again, approximately a couple of days.

We just finished our 7th episode yesterday, it will be online this evening. We tested my Zylight Z90 with the one which belongs to the studio equipment on board, the bluetooth link feature is really nice! I would love to spent more time on creating light, but it usually is not possible because of time schedules.

I will post YouTube links next time!

The eighth day was about shooting in engine control room and several engine rooms on deck one. We interviewed the senior engineer Christian, the idea was to tell something about the his life and his personality, not only his function.

I tried the GoPro HD inside the well lit engine rooms, it was a successful recording. I did use not this material, because it did not fit in the producer´s vision, but now we know what is possible and what is not.

In the afternoon, we edited and choose the music.

Day 9 is th day we moved on the ship. In the afternoon, we did some additional shooting at the brewery. Andreas actually brewed beer, and these were the missing pictures.

There was some confusion with our cabins, but now we are almost ready to go, if I had a table to setup my studio equipment… The room is very small to work for two persons. I hope to get a table during the next hour, waiting for a call…

The eighth day was about shooting in engine control room and several engine rooms on deck one. We interviewed the senior engineer Christian, the idea was to tell something about the his life and his personality, not only his function.

I tried the GoPro HD inside the well lit engine rooms, it was a successful recording. I did use not this material, because it did not fit in the producer´s vision, but now we know what is possible and what is not.

In the afternoon, we edited and choose the music.

Day 9 is th day we moved on the ship. In the afternoon, we did some additional shooting at the brewery. Andreas actually brewed beer, and these were the missing pictures.

There was some confusion with our cabins, but now we are almost ready to go, if I had a table to setup my studio equipment… The room is very small to work for two persons. I hope to get a table during the next hour, waiting for a call…

This is a recording from last saturday, when swimming in Papenburg. I will have lots and lots of use for this camera…

That was an easy one (viewed from the following perspective): I slept after 3 hours after finishing at 05:30 AM, had a breakfast (a life saver), edited 2,5 hours, slept again 4 hours, edited again 2,5 hours, dinner, half an hour of testing, finish.

I love to sleep and I love to work. I should be a professional sleeper, maybe for scientists? If anyone is interested to pay me for that, don´t hesitate to contact me.

The next day will be tougher, because more parallel actions will happen, and we need to decide what´s for us and what´s not. But progress feels nice!

We met at 3:00 PM, starting with shooting at 4:00 PM at Meyer Werft. We had to wait for the darkness, meanwhile, I did some timelapse shoots outside. It was already snowing, and the Sony EX-1 got a little wet. I did not expect this to be a problem, but when I went inside again, and turned the camera off and back on, it won´t start properly. The menu screen showed up for a second, then the camera rebooted. I turned it off, removed every removable accessories and put it down to get dry again.

We were unlucky, because we needed to get some shots, and we decided to take one of the ship´s cameras, which were stored back in the hotel, so we had a delay. Then we continued with the Sony Z5 to do some interviews and insert shots.

After 2 hours, I tried my EX-1 again, worried about all the telephone calls and time needed to get it fixed in case it is broken. But I was lucky, and it turned on again!

We shot lots of interiors, walks and details of the ship, finishing with the recording at 1:00 AM, going into the edit, which was done at 5:00 AM. The material of two different cameras, the little amount of sleep and lots of footage worked out fine, I expected to spent more time on editing.

The work starts to improve, we learn to know each other better and this makes us faster.

This episode won´t get graded, because we need to see how it looks on the web like in its purest form. I´ll try to improve my understanding of our  technicial infrarstructure and the look from episode to episode.

I went to Media Markt to buy an SDHC card for the GoPro HD camera, which I got yesterday from Ingo. Ingo is a pleasent guy who works at Meyer Werft , we met during shooting and talked about cameras. He distributes the GoPro stuff, and so I ordered the GoPro HD. I will make some recordings with it the next days, maybe I can use it for production.

Now, I am on my way to go swimming, but Aqua Park opens at 1:00 PM, I have a cup of coffee meanwhile.

Papenburg seems to be quite nice, loveley people who know what they want, and how to socialize. I’ll add some pictures.