StrongMocha: Charles, Tell us a little bit about your history in the movie business.

Well, being only 20 years old, my history is short, but I’ve had my fair share of vivid experiences, especially in film. I first picked up a video camera as a sophomore in high school, and I’ve been infatuated since. Throughout high school, I made a few extremely amateurish short films, but I made a name for myself in the community.

By my senior year, I produced a feature length documentary about my graduating class. Although it was shot and edited using consumer grade tools, it sold 250 copies and was a hit. Instead of pursuing film, I attended Purdue University the following year, and intended to major in engineering.

Purdue was great, but engineering didn’t fly. My sophomore year in college I attended Columbia College in Chicago for film & video and totally enjoyed it. However, film school is inherently expensive, and I’ve opted this upcoming year to stay closer to home and go to a less costly university.

For the past year and half, I’ve worked alongside my partner Michael Gebben from Gebbs Wedding Films (gebbsweddingfilms.com), producing wedding cinematography and commercial films. In my free time, I love taking pictures and learning kinesthetically.

StrongMocha: We love your recent video “Inferno Flow” , tell us more about the video?
Essentially, my friend John called me one day explaining that he was trying to get into some kind of theme group.

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He’s into the electronic music/rave/poi scene, and to get into the group, he had to demonstrate some type of skill. So, poi and fire eating being his skills, he figured a video would be the best way to go about demonstrating them. I’ve dabbled in poi a bit myself, and I knew the pictures always looked great, but video cameras could barely keep up.

With the Canon 5D Mark II newly introduced to me, I knew that fire spinning/eating was worth testing its limits. Basically, I went to his house one night and filmed for about 2 hours. I had an idea as to what I wanted the video to look like, and I knew that I had the tools to pull it off…I just needed to make it work. I filmed John performing several times, directing him a little, but mostly letting him work his magic.

Taking from my skills in wedding cinematography, I did everything on the fly, but that’s how I’m used to working. Getting a variety of angles, movements, and camera settings, I made sure that I had plenty to work with- I knew that the fast paced editing would need it. I then picked the song based on its composition and relation to my footage.

John wanted something “chill,” but I knew that the act of fire spinning required a higher energy music selection due to the nature of its intense motion. Edit, the composer of the song, is part of a group called The Glitch Mob, who I had listened to in the past.

I was recently listening to some of their beats in preparation for another video, and when I came across LTLP, I knew it was perfect. The slow lulls mixed with the crazy sampling and scratching fundamentally meshed great with the footage. I suppose the rest is history.

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StrongMocha: Who is the brain behind it?
I am the brain behind it, I’m just glad that John approached me for the video, otherwise I doubt I would have made the connection that fire + Canon 5D Mark II= awesomeness.

StrongMocha: Tell us more about John Klockenkemper, who is fire breathing & dancing in your video.

I’ve known John since high school, and truthfully, he’s the equivalent of a mad scientist, except that he works with computers. He’s a smart fella, and we share the like of fast computers, sick electronic music, and fire, with often all three being in close proximity.

I think John has been playing with fire for a year or two now, in the hobbyist since of the term. The last time we spun fire together, he was only a little better than me and hadn’t attempted fire eating, but he’s clearly gotten much better since then.

StrongMocha: Can John be hired for a Fire breathing & dancing performance?
I’m sure John would loves to perform, but I think he considers it more of just a fun, relaxing thing to do. I know he has performed in front of large groups of people, but so far, not for money. He has the skill to do it, I just don’t think he has ever actively pursued selling it. I would hire him though.

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StrongMocha: Can you tell our reader a little bit more about “Lying Still”?
Lying Still is a film about perceived reality. The film was entered into the Purdue Digital Cinema Contest and won Best Documentary as well as Best Actress. In my opinion, it was a complex idea that was executed in a simple, yet extremely effective manner.

StrongMocha: For what reason did you make “Lying Still”?
Before I say anything, if anyone is reading this and hasn’t watched it, definitely do so now (Video below). Otherwise, I’ll ruin it for you. If you have seen it though, it basically stemmed from the simple, yet powerful idea of falsifying something that everybody takes for granted.

In film, home videos should ring a bell. Why would anybody ever fake a low production value/nearly worthless home video? With that in mind, I had to come up with an extraordinary event to “catch” on film.

A girl confessing that she was a victim to rape was a plausible idea for the time limit that I had, which was seven minutes. It was powerful, and more importantly, a touchy subject. Presenting it alone, even without the idea of falsifying it, would be moving. But, at the close of the film, the viewer learns that everything was made up.

In my mind, a majority of the population watches supposedly “real” events, such as the news or nonfiction documentaries, and takes them to be true. Home videos also fall under that category, but if someone were to fake a supposedly “real” event, more people might question the “reality” of the world that is presented to them. I optimistically question nearly everything around me, and I guess the main reason I made this film is so that other folks will follow suit.

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StrongMocha: Let’s dive into the technology and software you used for Inferno Flow. You shoot it with the Canon 5D Mark II, which lenses did you use?
As far as lenses go on this particular film, I used the Canon L-series 16-35mm 2.8 and an older manual Nikon 50mm 1.4 with a Canon adapter ring. I also used a shoulder mount for the static shots and a Glidecam 2000 for all of the moving shots.

StrongMocha: While you did shoot the footage did you learn anything you want to share with our reader?
Fire is hot. It doesn’t mix well with cameras, especially expensive ones. I was singed a few times, so be careful when you shoot poi. Aside from that, trying different shutter speeds with moving objects, fire in particular, produces very different effects.

It looks great with both low and fast speeds, and depending on your preference, both can work. On slower shutter speeds, however, I did encounter a bit of ghosting. Also, using the 50 prime was definitely advantageous for me- it performed awesomely in the low light coupled with the Canon 5D Mark II and gave me some breathing room with testing different exposures.

StrongMocha: Tell us more about your editing approach and the software you use?
I normally preach preplanning and preproduction, but with a great deal of event videography, things change on the fly. If you think about it, the concept for my video was extremely simple; it was just well executed. I knew going into shooting that I needed lots of variety within my footage, so I just left it at that.

The editing for this piece was more of just experimentation along the way. I wanted very beat driven movements (because that’s kind of what poi is based upon), so I rough cut about 40 minutes of footage down to maybe 20 minutes of good stuff.

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From there I just played around. If something looked good and flowed well, I kept it in. I kept the pacing of the video as close as I could to the pacing of the song, since I wanted to make the connection very apparent. Everything clicked really well, and I think that the combination of being at the right place with the right tools, filming the right person, and using the right music made the editing a no-brainer. Getting all those things right was the hard part.

I used Sony Vegas 9. I only applied speed changes and mild color correcting as far as technical stuff goes.

StrongMocha: We here at StrongMocha started to use compression code to speed our work up dramaticly, tell us about your tricks in your daily editing work?
I use Cineform’s standalone compression software to tame the beastly .h264 files. Converting everything to .avi makes editing a breeze.

For daily editing, knowing shortcuts is huge for me. I’m constantly refining my workflow, doing whatever it takes to be more effective and ultimately faster, while maintaining quality. I try to control the tools and not let the tools control me- knowing the ins and outs of the software will only make you better.

StrongMocha: What can we expect from your next film?
I have a simple concept that, although time consuming, if done right, will be effectively extraordinary and something never attempted on the magnitude that I plan to achieve.

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It will involve timelapsing, a living statue, some absolutely nasty beats, and a deep concentration on motion at its fundamental level. It’s in the works right now, and I’m pretty flippin’ excited.

StrongMocha: You also work on wedding films one of your recent one is “Sonal & Saidul-HENNA PARTY”. How did you start in the Wedding Film business?

I opened up the phone book and persistently asked for an interview. Basically, my partner and I really hit it off in the beginning, we were both passionate, and we were both driven.

Wedding films are being totally revamped, and our company is at the frontend of the wave. By all means, check out our films, I can safely guarantee that they are unlike (and better) than any wedding film you will ever see. Imagine Inferno Flow translated into a wedding film. Yeah. It’s cool, and we love what we do. We’re open for destinations worldwide! gebbsweddingfilms.co

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AN INTERVIEW WITH DOUGLAS MORTON (PRESIDENT & FOUNDER) OF Q UP ARTS
by Thorsten Meyer

Douglas Morton from Q Up Arts did take the time out off his busy schedule to provide some insights and background information about Q Up Arts and their world-class sound collections for computer companies, professional music producers, Film/TV composers and recording artists.

Thorsten Meyer: Doug, first of all, thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy schedule. Would you be so kind and tell us a bit about yourself and how Q Up Arts started out in the business back in 1993?

Thorsten! many thanks for taking the time to speak with me! I’m excited to share my experiences and hopefully inspire and enrich your readers.

I started playing organ and piano at 7 years old, played in bands through my teen years in Cupertino, California and British Columbia, Canada. I later migrated back to Santa Cruz, in northern California, a hotbed of digital audio. in the early 1980s, E-Mu Systems had set up shop in Santa Cruz in a house on Broadway and Ocean. I’d met some of the muons and quickly became enamored with this new sampling technology. Next thing you know, I’m sampling drums for the Drumulator. My first customer was to Christopher Franke of Tangerine Dream. I kept sampling as I worked in the test department, then marketing before moving over to Optical Media International (OMI) down the coast in the hills of Aptos, California, then to Los Gatos in Silicon Valley.

OMI had developed the first desktop cd.rom publishing, Topix. The Universe of Sounds was the first sample cd.rom published, was for E-Mu’s Emulator II. the OMI CDS3 cd.rom drive connected to the EII via rs422 finally enabling users to escape the drudgery of the floppy disc and load from cd.rom providing access to hundreds of sounds at the press of a button. I produced and managed the development of the Universe of Sounds which was released to a vast audience of customers including Pink Floyd, The Cure, Stevie Wonder and many other A-list film/tv composers and producers. OMI continued publishing samples for Emax I/II, EIIIX, EIV, Akai, Roland, Ensoniq and more as well as implementing connectivity between most hardware samplers on the market. This connectivity provided access for users and thus heralding the beginning of the sample market. In 1993 I left OMI and created Q Up Arts, leaving Silicon Valley and heading back to the beach near Santa Cruz. after 24 years, Q Up Arts is creating content, developing and licensing samples and loops for a variety of customers and companies across the globe.

Let’s talk about California Keys collection of keyboard instruments including California Grand, Wurly, V-Organ, R-EPiano, H-Organ, Clav, F-Organ. What makes this collection so special besides the number of included instruments?

I was originally approached by Guitar Center’s Private Brands to produce content for the Williams Digital Piano line, a consumer platform of hardware digital pianos. Our goal was to capture the most important sounds from each of the instruments. Sounds that have been proven to work in a multitude of musical situations and applications. My first instinct was to find the greatest sounding instruments I could find. We had 2 Fazioli Grands to choose from, the 9ft and the 10ft. After we all played and listened to both, it was unanimous, the 10ft was the most beautiful instrument we’d ever laid our hands on.

It’s truly the Stradivarius of pianos. There were also so many C7s sampled out there. I was after a piano that you could play very softly, the main element that is missing in most sampled grands.

Next up were the organs and keyboards. We enlisted the services of master keyboard curator Arlan Schierbaum in Topanga, Southern California. Arlan had the most keyboards I’d ever seen in one place, so we had a lot of choices available. His instruments were very well maintained with help from renowned keyboard restoration expert Ken Rich of Los Angeles.

A long answer to your question, but what makes these instruments special is the quality of the instruments and the care we took in capturing the true character. We also care deeply about the playability and expressivity of the final instruments no matter what platform or engine they play from.

There are many piano libraries available these days. How does the California Grand differ from other available pianos?

There are some great sampled pianos out there, however, the Fazioli 10 ft. grand, as I mentioned earlier, is the finest instrument I’ve ever played. It’s a rich instrument with power, sonority, singing quality and perfect harmonic effects. The subtlety that’s available to the player is something I’d never experienced before.

The challenge of course, was to create virtual instruments out of this source material that contained as much of this expressivity as the architecture would allow, in this case, Williams and Kontakt. We went for the softest hits we could get, that’s where the beauty lies in most instruments, in my opinion.

Another stand out feature is how the piano was recorded. It’s recorded in true surround. Matched stereo pairs of room mics were placed in front of and behind the player. U87 was placed under the piano, a classic ORTF config was to the right of the player with close mics directly above the hammers as well. In Kontakt, these mics can be sent to the surround matrix for 5.1 and 7.1 and beyond. The surround capability is very flexible for many configurations. Everything was recorded with utmost care @192khz 24bit.

Which of the included instruments has been the most fun to sample?

They’re all fun!! Challenging is fun for me. The piano was the most inspiring and challenging.

When recording the California Keys collection, who did perform the instruments and helped to record them?

I hired a Rachmaninoff pianist named Candace Winterton, she was the perfect candidate for this project. The pianist must have a deep knowledge of dynamics and a personality and nature to sit very still while hitting note after note after note. Any movement after striking a note can render the sample useless.

On the production and engineering side, Jim Norman of Guitar Center, Q Up Arts programmer Michael Scott and recording engineer Robert Abeyta completed the team. Arlan Schierbaum played and tweaked the keyboards and organs. An excellent team indeed!

What are the challenges when producing California Keys collection?

To properly capture and convert the emotional quality and playability from the organic world into our digital playback world.

How long did it take to collect and process all the sounds and samples for OMI UNIVERSE OF SOUNDS?

The first volume was a mixture of swap parties of EII users, some factory sounds. At that time there really wasn’t a sample for sale industry. Users traded sounds and Kevin Monahan from E-Mu developed some of the early sounds. Volume 2 was produced by me, David Hannibal and Steve Bodekker at OMI. We spent around 2 years developing volume 2.

Tell us more about the MASTER STUDIO COLLECTION and let us understand how it differs from OMI UNIVERSE OF SOUNDS?

The Master Studio Collection is a part of the Universe of Sounds. We originally created this for the Emulator III/X and moved it into Akai S1000 and several other platforms.

You have quite a large collection of Apple Logic EXS24 Collections, many composer however do use Kontakt these days. You migrated some EXS24 libraries to Kontakt. Can we expect more of the remaining EXS24 libraries to be migrated to Kontakt?

Absolutely! We have a vast back catalogue of sounds to port over to Kontakt and other platforms as well. We’ve just started developing for the Korg Kronos as well.

Is there a sound or style that you see lately as an upcoming trend?

I’m not that hip really 😉 I tend to go after sounds that I find interesting and haven’t been done before or done well. When I produced Voices of Native America, I did this out of respect and curiosity about Native American people and their musical history. I didn’t really think or care that anyone would purchase it, it then went on to be one of the best-selling titles in the history of sampled sounds.

I also like to encourage users to become better keyboard players. I love loops but, let’s play some keyboards!

Would you be so kind and share your experience on what to look for when recording your own samples, be it pianos or other instruments?

I look for unique and great sounding in tune instruments and the people that play them.

Any microphone on a budget you would recommend for close and wider recoding?

I like the Neuman mics, Audix, Earthworks, B&K. For field recording, the zoom F8 is fantastic with the mics that they offer.

How do you manage the recording and samples to sound like a real instrument?

I do lots of play testing of all the instruments. I also send them to my colleagues who are great keyboardists. You can have great sounding samples with deep layers but it’s got to be playable. This is one of the most overlooked aspects of virtual instrument design. I have a lot of respect for the sound designers at Korg, Yamaha, Nord etc for the attention to playability they offer.

Could you let us in on your favorite and most used tools in your studio, both analog and digital?

I use Myriad by AUDIOFILE ENGINEERING for batching. Izotope RX Advanced for SRC, denoising and batch conversions. Logic ProX for sequencing. Apogee I/O and Adam A77X for monitoring, Mac Pro with a giant screen.

Could you share some insights about your next project you’re most excited about?

I just completed the production of sample content for Guitar Center’s Simmons Drum Kits. We re-designed the entire kits from OS to sounds to surface. Kudos to Jim Norman at GC for a miraculous makeover.

Which advise would you give to composers who still want to incorporate the charm of a live orchestra into their productions?

Absolutely!! Go for it! There’s still nothing like the real thing.

 How do you typically go about creating a new track? 

I get most of my ideas playing the Fazioli sampled grand these days. I usually start there. Sometime I start with a groove. The sounds really drive my inspirations.

What is your main instrument when it comes to writing music?

Grand piano and keyboards hooked up to Logic ProX

Could you share your secret weapon when it comes to composing?

Hiking, skiing surfing and getting outside I find very inspirational.

Would you share some of your tricks to achieve an epic, cinematic sound?

I like to double and triple parts with different sounds. Explode chordal melodies into separate parts. I experiment with different tempi.

Are there incredible talents you worked with that you would like to point out?

I recorded bassist Benny Reitveld a few years back, an amazing player. Working with Arlan Schierbaum was a real treat seeing how he approached keyboard playing. Too many to mention really.

Thank you for your time.

Thorsten, many thanks for this interview. This always makes me think more deeply about what I’m doing and why. My biggest motivation is to inspire musicians to create beautiful music and enrich them with my work.

All the Best, Doug

Connect with Doug 

www.douglasmortonmusic.com

Q Up Arts  www.quparts.com

Doug’s SoundCloud

Q Up Arts on Youtube

AN INTERVIEW WITH Axel Rohrbach (Founder) OF BOOM Library
by Thorsten Meyer

Axel from BOOM Library did take the time out off his busy schedule to provide some insights and background information about BOOM Library and high end, ultimate sound effects for media and audio professionals.

Thorsten Meyer: Axel, first of all, thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy schedule. Would you be so kind and tell us a bit about yourself and how BOOM Library started out in the business?

Thanks Thorsten for the opportunity of this interview! My name is Axel Rohrbach and I founded the Boom Library in 2010 together with Pierre Langer and TIlman Sillescu. At that time I was Lead Sound Designer at Dynamedion (founded by Pierre and Tilman) and we wanted to try something else on top of Dynamedion’s work for hire business. Initially it was planned as a side job for less busy times but it turned out to be at least for me a full time job now.

Tell us a little more about the team behind BOOM Library?

When I started at Dynamedion Michael Schwendler was already Sound Designer here. Around the time we started the Boom Library, David Philipp was an intern at Dynamedion. Those two guys together with me are the main three Sound Designers at Boom Library. Even though I do Boom Library work full time and Michael and David are also still heavily envolved in work for hire work. Besides that, Benjamin Drumeaux, Patrice Börding, Byron Bullock and Felix Diekhake do both, Boom Library and Dynamedion work. Benedikt Huster is doing all marketing related things plus customer support.

Your products have been used in games, trailer, TV and film score. Would you be so kind and name a view recent ones? (12 Months)

MOVIE / MOVIE TRAILERS
Justice League
The Martian
Dr. Strange
Ghostbusters
Captain America – Civil War
Warcraft
Independence Day – Resurgence
The Purge – Election Year

GAMES / GAME TRAILERS
Total War Warhammer
Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands
World Of Tanks
Overwatch
Destiny – Rise Of Iron

MUSIC
Drake – Views
ZEDD – True Colors

How and where do you capture and record the sound you offer?

It mainly depends on the topic. Some things can be recorded in our studios, for other things we need a larger recording room and rent a studio. But mostly we record outdoors around the world. Of course mainly close to our place or in the UK, where David and Byron are located, but we also recorded a lot in the US, we recorded for example the “Historical Firearms” library in South Africa.

What are the challenges when producing your latest sound library MEDIEVAL LIFE?

Most sounds have been recorded in a rather close perspective to get a bit more punch, probably more flexibility and details as well as a better noise floor. The issue with that is, that we have really hard times to create background sounds for diverse settings. We tried to record things from a certain distance so that it smoothly blends into a scenery without being “in your face” or without having too transients. The challenge however is to find places that are quiet enough to do so, especially with all this traffic noise pollution we have here in Europe, but also concerning animals, wind and so on. This is even harder when recording people which plays a major role in such background ambiences – it is very hard to find a place that not only has no modern vehicles close by, but also no ringing cell phones and no music playing. The second important challenge was to find places that do have some kind of distant room to it, but no real reverb that would make it a lot less flexible and probably not suiting a lot of sceneries.

How did you find all those sounds that belong into medieval places?

Before we go out and record things, we make a list of sounds that we need to be included in a library. Then we search of ways to record those topics. We asked around for example if anyone has some animals, we asked blacksmiths, farms and even historic museums. There is a lot of planning and scouting involved in this process and in the end, we still can only hope that a recording goes as planned. Some things cannot be foreseen, for example we were at a friend’s farm but a construction side (modern road work) just started right that morning when we were on our way to the farm. It was so loud, that we had to drive back home – one day wasted. That is what makes such topics so difficult to fill up with content that works in this context. We also did another approach by collecting tools like saws, hammers, metal pieces etc. and recorded those at night on a remote place. Recording animals is always very difficult, because unless you hire an animal trainer you never know how the animals react to someone they don’t know and the little fur thingy called a windshield for the microphone. So this basically is try and error all the time.

Would you be so kind and share your experience on what to look for when recording your own samples?

The most important thing to begin with is finding an interesting source. So what every you want to record, it should already sound good. Not only concerning what the source does, but also how it sounds in the environment you want to record it in. For more expansive and complicated sessions, keep track of weather conditions. Of course picking the right equipment (recorder, choice of microphone etc) is important as well. But unfortunately the most important thing is to built up your own experience by simply recording a lot of things and analyzing why it either sounds good or why it does not sound right.

For new and upcoming sound engineers: Is there any microphone on a budget you would recommend?

For field recording starters Zoom or Sony handheld recorders are definitely worth a try. Not only can they produce good recordings, but it is also nice to have backup or additional recorders in the future when the personal equipment grows. If there already is a recorder available, I recommend to start with an MS setup, we use either Sennheiser MKH8050 hyper cardioid or MKH416 shotgun combined with a figure eight MKH30 microphone. MS setups are easy to handle and probably the most flexible setup. Again, from there compare how for example a XY setup work in different situations to the MS setup or if an omni A/B configuration might make sense.

When the sound is captured which tools, software and hardware is part your postproduction process?

A lot of them. After renaming the recordings in a useful way I import them into the host (might be any host, in my case ProTools HD) and roughly cut out not usable material. After that I do very basic gaining (no compression or limiting) and EQing. Next step is denoising if there is anything to denoise and I use iZotope RX for that. These are the steps for our “Construction Kits”, we do want to offer rather raw recordings here to make sure the files are still very flexible for the users (and for us). If we would be talking about the process for the “Designed” counterparts, a whole bunch of things might come into play. Basically all available plug-ins from diverse brands are used as well as some outboard gear when suiting the topic.

Could you let us in on your favorite and most used tools in your studio, both analog and digital?

I personally love my two Kush Audio “Tweakers”, a hardware compressor. Michael has a pretty big chain of hardware stuff from different brands for different purposes. I think he does not really have a most favorite here. As for plug-ins Fab Filters Pro-Q 2 and Pro-C 2 are always in my sessions. I love the Sonnox Oxford Limiter as well as the Avid Pro Limiter. Other than that I do have a ton of plug-ins installed that do very specific jobs, so nothing that I use on such a regular base as those four mentioned above.

Could you share some insights about your next project you’re most excited about?

The thing I am most excited about is unfortunately something I can not talk about yet. This is still unannounced and will also still take a while to finish – but it will be different from what we did so far. So stay tuned 😉

Let’s talk about Cinematic Metal – Impacts, Cinematic Metal – Construction Kit, Cinematic Darkness Designed, Cinematic Trailers Designed. Those products are now part of a special bundle that is available for a limited time. (Sound FX Cinematic Bundle (Affiliate Link) is available for 99 USD)

What is in for the buyer and how do you see those 4 products being used?

The “Cinematic Trailers” library can be seen as a basic trailerish sound pack, featuring hits, whooshes, rises etc. The “Cinematic Hits” features numerous more typical trailer impact sounds as well as the “Cinematic Metal – Impacts” which concentrates on impacts with metallic elements in it. This one is based on the “Cinematic Metal – Construction Kit” which only features metal sounds, mostly impacts which can also be used to layer to the other two libraries. So this basically gives you a whole bunch of sounds for trailer usage, but also when every you want to powerfully highlight anything. That works not only in trailers, but also for in-game sound effects, cut scenes, movies, image films or logo sound design.

What is the difference between the Construction Kit and Designed products?

The “Designed” versions are always fully designed, partially heavily processed sounds which can be used as is or as layers. The counterpart, the “Construction Kits”, is what the “Designed” collection are made of. Those are as raw as possible and only as processed as needed to make them useful. The “Construction Kit” sounds give you more freedom, but you also need to put some work into it, basically the same way as if you would have recorded them yourself. But you can really create your own sounds out of it. The “Designed” already have the typical Boom Library character, it is our creative work – that will help to work faster and also gives nice ideas what to do with the “Construction Kits”, but also are a bit less flexible in terms of usage. A more detailed description can be found here: http://www.boomlibrary.com/boomlibrary/index.php/news/149-bts-ck-vs-ds

Which advice would you give to composers who still want to incorporate your sounds into the scores is it for a trailer or a film score?

A lot of composer actually do this, but you should use them carefully and only when the music has some space left for such sounds. It has no effect if there are constantly boomy impacts in a track, it only works if they really highlight certain spots.

Could you share your secret weapon when it comes to composing?

I am no composer, so it would be bold to give any composing tips here 😉

What are your techniques that help you get started on a new score/song?

Would you share some of your tricks to achieve an epic, cinematic sound?

The overall frequency response is a bit different to other audio material. It is mostly heavier, les “sparkling”. Also modern trailer sound is all about working on spot on sounds to create more impact and to push the listeners eyes to the right action and leading his emotional reaction. But it also is about carefully selecting frequencies, leaving space wherever possible to get a cleaner, bigger and louder sounding result without really being loud.

Are there incredible talents you worked with that you would like to point out?

I think our team isn’t that big and they are all extremely talented, mostly in specific fields. To be honest, no, I don’t want to pick one out of that. It always is teamwork to get something done in a quality we want to achieve. Everyone plays a part, even if those might be really different.

Is there a sound or style that you did see lately as an upcoming trend?

Staccato strings and “hu-ha” choirs with an orchestral style song featuring fast percussions might be 2000. 2020 is more accent driven, more marching in its music rather than running with bigger emotional themes. Concerning sounds it is kind of the same, sounds get more and more in sync with the music, something that wasn’t too much the case 10 years ago. That also means sounds tend to become shorter, more emphasizing, cleaner.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you very much for inviting me!