Who can wear the "sound designer" title?

This is an age old debate, and it's not specific to our industry - but a recent question on Social Sound Design by Jay Jennings kind of re-spawned the debate.  "What makes you think you're a sound designer?"  or as it's implied, "what have you done that gives you the right to take that title within the industry?"

In lieu of just answering in short form there I felt like I'd take the opportunity to go more in-depth with my own perspective.

Initially, my thought is that discussions about titles are discussions about language.  The fundamental questions behind the question is: what are you trying to communicate with your title, and to whom, and for what purpose?

To preface this: in my opinion the title of "sound designer" has kind of devolved into a similar place as the title of "graphic designer" or really any adjective + "designer" 

The best of the best take those titles, and a whole legion of hacks take those titles as well.  Its why reels and credits have become so important.

Just because someone designed something doesn't make that person a designer, but the fact will remain that the person did design that one thing.  If that person designs lots of things, at some point that person will move across the broad grey area that separates novices from masters.  Many people will take the title of designer after the first thing they designed though, not after they've truly created their first masterpiece.

All this dilution reduces the level of meaning that the title itself holds.  There are no pre-qualifications or trade guilds that police who gets to use the title of "sound designer" and who cannot.  This is not a title like "doctor" - or even "nurse" for that matter.  There are no standards, there is no board that can strip you of your title, and just printing the title on your business card or email sig or resume won't get you very far.

So with that said, my perception of the basic skillet a quality sound designer would have includes things like:

• field recording - including mic technique, signal flow, monitoring, etc
• data management and metadata fundamentals
• sync sound editorial
• creative manipulation of sounds with eq, compression, delays and distortion
• creativity in manipulating dynamic range
• creative use of synthesis
• a developed personal aesthetic
• the ability to communicate and defend creative decisions
• the ability to accomodate the creative vision of others

It's a tall list, and none of the things on it are easy or could be learned entirely in a year.

Of course not everyone that prints "sound designer" on their card can do all of those things well, and some of the things that really bring a person to the next level of sound design are not on that list.

I'll also note here, that generally titles can be pretty confining. They set up boundaries that imply both things that we do and things that we don't do.   My current business card implies zero about my ability to produce and edit copy, shoot video and timelapses, program websites, do public speaking, etc.

It also only peripherally implies things about my ability to cast, record and edit voices, mix for broadcast, and other more directly audio related things.

Its assumed that the titles we give use to describe ourselves are shorthand, but it's also assumed that it's shorthand for the most important thing that we do within the context of our jobs. 
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So with that in mind lets get back to the underlying language questions about the title, and what my opinion of the answers should be.

First off: what am I trying to communicate with a title?

Going back to the "doctor" comparison, in the US, the title of M.D. means that you spent years in an accredited college attaining your bachelor's degree, and in school you learned anatomy, biology, chemistry, and other fundamentals of medicine.  You then went to med school and spent even more years learning the craft.  Once you've performed to the standards set by those institutions, you then enter into a medical residency program where you essentially act as an apprentice under other practicing and experienced doctors.  Once that process is complete you've applied for and acquired a license to practice in your state. All of this is implied with the M.D. title and the purpose of this title is to communicate these qualifications to the world in a standardized and uniform way.

I think that in the case of "sound designer" I'm not really trying to communicate a very specific skillset, and I'm certainly not going to be able to communicate any specific level of experience. 
I think that all I can realistically hope to communicate to a stranger with the title of "sound designer" is that I work in audio, that I do some sound editorial, and that I think that I'm being creative when I work.  To assume any more than that from the title would lead one to some misjudgements about people pretty quickly given how many people do take up the title these days.


Secondly: to whom am I communicating?

Generally speaking, professionals of any kind are utilizing their titles to communicate with everyone they come into contact in a professional context.  This includes clients and prospective clients, peers, vendors, management, etc. 

Given the wide array of people that I'm communicating with here, I really just have to try and lay a basic groundwork with the limited number of words I have available to use in a title.  My email sig and business card are not the place to get into a detailed analysis of what I can and can not do.

Thirdly: why am I trying to communicate this with my title?

Medical doctors utilize their titles to shorthand all of the credentials listed in the previous question.  This leads their clients to give them a baseline assumption of credibility that they can diagnose and cure many physical illnesses that they may be approached with.  The standardization of the titles in the medical profession has gone a long way towards improving the art and science of medicine.

Sound is not nearly as noble or dangerous a profession, and as such those types of standards aren't really as in demand.  The question of why designers of any kind utilize titles at all is kind of interesting. 

In my case, I use my title in context with my coworkers.  I'm generally the sound design guy, another guy is the lead composer, the boss does mixing and biz dev, and the new guy is still in the process of defining his niche within that dynamic.  This is not to say that I'm the only one that can do sound design in the shop (I'm not) nor is it to say that I can't do things like mixing and biz dev (I can). 

I think it also gives another level of insight into what I can do when I'm working with clients outside of the context of design.  If all I've done for this client is cut voices and they grab my card where it says "sound designer," they may think of me when its time to make cool noises near the end of the project.

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In the end, we're not defined by the titles we assume because titles are confining.  They're a shorthand, a means to an end, and we use them despite the fact that we're always learning new things, doing different things, and evloving our perspectives.

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for more thoughts on this, check out the second half of ep 56 on lets make mistakes, where  Mike and Katy struggle with the same issue in the web design world.  I don't think they came to any real conclusions there, but if nothing else it shows that audio people aren't the only ones who struggle with the whole title thing.  :)

fun with dopplers

here's  a quickie tutorial I just did with regards to how I use the Waves doppler plugin to make bys out of steady onboard vehicle recordings.  In this case I used the onboards that I recorded of my motorcycle a few weeks back.

Structurally, the concept draws heavily from Charles Deenan's 100 whooshes in 2 minutes tutorial on designingsound.org

The main change I made to his process was to really work the ins and outs of each by using the faders.
 
Some things I didn't really discuss, but you can see how they would work are the fact that you can make stylized whooshes with this technique as well.  That 100 whooshes post goes into great detail on that, though my preference is to go a little more focused than what Charles does.  For example, I'll  substitute a bunch of bow waves  and streams running, and get a bunch of underwater waves going on.  

In the vid I'm using a controller instead of a mouse to move the faders (so that I can move several simultaneously)and I'm performing the moves in real time.

skip the first 15 seconds or so.  Vimeo seems to have a pause glitch in there.



My two wishlist items for doppler would be an option to make it stop at the end of the path, and 96k support.

execution vs scope

I recently played through a couple of platformers that I found in the app store, and had a subsequent twitter conversation that got me thinking.

First off, the two games I played through were Rochard and Limbo.

Here's a taste of each:



Both games were inexpensive on the mac app store.  Limbo was $10 and Rochard was $6.  Both were relatively quick playthroughs - about 3-5 hours each.

The main similarities the two games had were the narrow scope, the low price and the high level of artistic execution.  (Here's an excellent interview with Martin Stig Anderson who did all of the sound design and score on Limbo.)

Immediately after having reveled my way through those two works I had a conversation with the voice producer of a AAA game in real life, and then a subsequent conversation with AAA game sound designer Mike Niederquell on twitter.

The end result of both conversations was what I think is an important (though obvious looking) conclusion:

The resources needed to execute art on a high level rises disproportionally with the scope of the project.

This is because good art takes time, and lots of iteration and refinement.  Every new weapon, gameplay parameter, or other artistic cog in need of creation requires time and expertise to develop, iterate, reject, recreate and revise in order to arrive in the end at high art.  This is doubly true in complex mix environments where implementation is at least as intense as the creation of the audio asset.

3 hour platformers are not AAA games.  They're casual games, and they require far fewer resources to execute.  They also cost far less money to create and bring to market.  But when you compare the level of the art achieved in those smaller games to some AAA titles you'll see that when you can over-allocate artistic resources by limiting scope you can really achieve something special.

Now, this is not to say that AAA titles cannot achieve the status of high art.  I think games like Battlefield 3, Red Dead Redemption and Bioshock have proven where the art can go in a large scope game given the proper resources. 

This is really just to say that sometimes the best way to up the quality of the art you're trying to achieve is to limit the scope of the project, even when the budget is bigger than that of a 3 hour side scroller.

Tortured Accordion

Last week my coworker Brad and I tortured an accordion.




This thing was old, beat up and had a hole in the bellows, which made it awesome! We bent it, flicked it, hit it and dropped it.

I went a little atypical on the miking setup. Left channel in the recording below is an AT4050 about 5 feet away. Right channel is a Schoeps CMC6/MK41 about 3 inches away.

The intent was not to create a stereo image, but rather to preserve to separate mono perspectives in on stereo file.

Here are some excerpts:



*update* and here's a little composition that Brad made exclusively using the sounds of that instrument.

Antique Accordion - Design Example by MoleculeMusic

This thing was just great fun to record and we got tons and tons of material out of it. We even managed to keep the thing intact throughout, so it's still basically performable if we need it later on.

Many thanks to Tim Prebble for providing the inspiration for this kind of endeavor.

Here are some more pix.

west texas gun recording pt 2-recording day

In part 1 of this little series I went over the background and prep, and in this part I'll go over how the day of the record went.

The day before the shoot I had tested and packed everything up, and I drove to Lubbock on a Saturday morning. It's about a 5 hour drive from DFW, and after leaving at 8:30 am, I arrived at my destination around 1:30, with sunset due at 8:15 pm. When I met up with my gun-toting friends I was informed that the site that we had so carefully scouted was in the process of being bulldozed.

crap.

Time for plan B, and we had to scramble. We had access to a hunting lease about an hour outside of town, but it was relatively unscouted. It was a couple hundred acres of dry plains wilderness. With no alternatives we loaded up and headed out. Upon arrival we found another group of people out on the lease, camping and chilling out. We informed them of our intent and started scouting.

Scouting mostly consisted of me walking around and clapping. Most of the lease was pretty flat sounding, but I eventually landed in the spot you see in the photos and video. This was the most heavily wooded area, and really the only place with any notable echo at all, which was the primary thing I was looking for.

With our location set, I went about setting up the mics while the boys prepped the weapons. It was closing in on 6pm at this point.

My setup was:

-COS11 lav on the shooter
-Senn421 and Schoeps CMC6Mk4 for punch
-Rode Nt5 pair and AT4050 pair for verb
-I fried my Sony D50 the week before, so I brought a Zoom H4n for more verb

pix!

NT5s in ORTF


Schoeps CMC6 MK41


AT 4050s distant


Senn 421


Senn 416


Setup ran until about 6:30 pm, which meant I was going to lose daylight fast. I had the lav on a lanyard, which we used to quickly change out between the guys shooting and I told them all that priority was variety. I had each shooter try to vary his angle and target, and after one clip or so I was moving on to the next gun.

After the first test shoot I realized that one of my Nt5s was not passing signal. I did a quick look to make sure that my cable was connected and my channel was set properly, but after nothing obvioius reared its head I had to make the call to just roll with the one mic and get what I could get given the time that I had available. If we had gotten there an hour earlier I would have stopped it all down to troubleshoot, but I didn't feel I had the luxury of time. After the fact I discovered that the mic/line switch on the mixer had settled into a halfway point that killed the channel, so while it would have been an easy fix with a little more time I felt like I had to make a call and roll with it. I'm still not sure if that was the right call or not given what the issue ended up being.

On top of setting and monitoring everything I was also having to shoot the vid with the iphone, since the other guys were spending all of their time prepping and loading guns.

Here's the mic comparison of the different perspectives on a couple of different guns:

west texas gun shoot-mic comparisons from rene coronado on Vimeo.

After we had exhausted our weaponry, the other people at the lease pulled up in their 4-wheelers and offered to let my guys shoot the guns that they had on them as well. This netted us a .357 magnum and a 9mm high point rifle that we wouldn't have gotten otherwise, so that ended up being a really nice thing from what could have been a crappy situation.

As we were packing up, I went to the H4n and facepalmed as I looked and saw that it was set on line input mode and had recorded nothing. I really needed an intern out on this thing.

All in all, we shot 12 guns in about an hour and were packed up and heading out as dusk set in at 8:15.

Here's a comp of all of the guns we shot:

West Texas Gun Shoot 2011 from rene coronado on Vimeo.

In part 3 I'll discuss some of the things that I'd do differently and reiterate some of the things that really worked well.

west texas gun recording pt 1-prep

So a little while back I packed up the mics and headed out west to record some gunfire with my friends. Not because I had a project that required it or anything, but just because they have lots of guns and I have lots of mics. Also, weapon recording is one of those techniques that requires experience and iteration, so any opportunity to do this type of recording is to be seized upon.

What I'd like to outline here is my prep process, experiences, and things that I would do differently.

Background

I have done gun records before, but have not really come back with the results I thought I could. My previous experience came from carbon copying Charles Mayne's setup as described on Gamasutra. From that article:

Channels 1/2
Start with a stereo pair of dynamic mics basically arranged in an equilateral triangle from the weapon, with the two mics in front, and pointing to the weapons muzzle. Try to have about a 8- to 12-foot distance here, but it may vary further depending on the gun itself.

Channels 3/4
A second stereo pair condenser mics in an x/y pattern. Try putting about 10 to 12 feet behind the weapon. These are elevated also to about 7 feet. Do some test firing, sometimes you will shift the whole setup and sometimes change the directions the mics are pointing for a better sound.

Channels 5/6
Again a stereo pair, this time a Crown SASS stereo PZM mic. Place the mic setup about 30 feet behind the weapon. This mic captures a very nice low end from most weapons

Channels 7/8
Start with a shotgun mic set up on the right side of the weapon, just over the shoulder of the shooter. For the second channel, a Lavaliere can be attached to the weapon or the person shooting the weapon

While my results from that setup were very usable and interesting, they weren't amazing, and that's mainly due to a series of mistakes I made due to inexperience at the time. We do this in order to learn.

I learned how much I didn't use the SM57s that I had in XY, and how much I really did use the COS-11 lav mic. I learned that Sennheiser MKH series mics don't respond to really loud sounds very well.

But mostly I learned just how important location is.

Location

Guns make lots of noise. The initial attack of a weapon firing is often only fractions of a second long. The vast majority of what you're listening to in any given gun recording in a film or game context is how that initial contained explosion sounds as it echoes out through the space it's in. This means that location is one of the most critical things you're dealing with on a gun shoot. Ideally you want a location that has lots of interesting reflections and is also free of traffic and insect noise. This is much easier to say than to find. Remote private canyon-like areas are really the best bets, at least in this part of the country.

The location for my first and uninteresting gun shoot was very flat and non-reflective. It looked like it would sound good, so we went with it, but in the end it really didn't. Out in the middle of the plains and facing one sand berm, it was difficult to really get any good reflections going. I had failed to understand the degree to which location would influence my sounds, and I paid for it.

For this gun shoot I was determined to not fall victim to that again. I had one of my friends scout a private gun range north of town that was a custom built range with 12 foot sand dunes that were making great reflections and verbs.

Gear

My philosophy here was to break the sound of a gunshot into three parts and then retro fit my gear choices around what I figured to be the best way to record those parts.

- Punch -

My punch mics were going to generally be a medium distance from the weapon and aimed at it from in front. I went with a Senn 421 and a Schoeps CMC6 MK41. Mono makes the most sense for punch IMO, so I didn't bother with a dynamic XY setup.

- Mech -

For mech I needed to isolate the mechanical movements of the weapons fired while excluding the explosions and verb to the best of my abilities. Mech also makes sense in mono, so there are no stereo elements here either. I learned on the first shoot how amazing the (wired) COS11 lav sounds for mech, so I went with that and with the Senn 416, which I would aim from behind and over the shoulder. In retrospect I think I should have used the 416 to come at the weapon from the shell eject side at about a 90 degree angle.

- Verb -

The key element, and I wanted to spend as many channels as needed to on this. I decided to bring a stereo pair of AT4050s in omni that I would place a hundred yards or so downrange. The 4050s are great workhorse large diaphragm mics that are quiet and clean sounding, so I figured they'd be prime candidates for verb recordings. I also would bring my rode NT5s set up in ORTF and place them behind the shooter. Additionally I'd bring my Sony PCM D50 and run the internal mics on that.

For recorders I ran with a sound devices 788t for all of the close up mics, a Tascam HDP2 for the distant 4050s, and the sony as a standalone unit.

I also shot video of everything on my iphone.

In part 2 I'll discuss what happend on the day of the shoot.

Truck record-part 3:editing

In part 1 of my truck record retrospective I talked about the prep work required to get ready for a full on vehicle record. Part 2 covered the actual recording date, and this part will go over the post and editing process with the final recorded files.

I've thought a bit about how to approach this particular blog post, and I think I'm just going to go mostly with words here and less with screenshots and audio or video.
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Once I got all of the files back into the studio I dumped the raw tracks and photos into a folder on a drive called 1993 Ford F150-raw. I needed to jump right into editing the sounds into the film, which mean I really didn't have time to go through a formal library edit/metadata tag process at first.

I had tons of stuff, so I started listening to the audio slates I had given at the top, and used those to roughly rename the files. This was mostly a working naming system that looked something like Truck-onboard-tire-start stop by-20mph.

Once I had my roughs labeled I opened a 24 bit 96k protools session and imported everything. My first order of business was to come up with something from the onboard mics that I liked. Each onboard truck mic angle was put on a track, the tracks were routed through an aux and out to a mono print track. I started playing with balances and EQ until I was getting a moving vibe that I liked.

My initial impression was that I was very happy with my control of the wind during the shoot. I was also a little surprised at how much rattling and craziness was going on in the engine compartment when monitored soloed out on the big speakers. When I put together a comp track like this I'm looking for which mics and textures are working in which frequency range. For example, the tire mic was very good for mid range whirring and high end grit so I pulled back the low end there, while shelving back the top end of the exhaust mic a bit to replace that part of the spectrum with a better texture. The engine mics were used pretty sparingly, and the end result of each move was a balanced and mixed mono track. I knew I still had the split out iso's if I needed them in the edit, but I had made the determination that I'd go to them only as needed.

My next move was to deal with all of the foley. Some of the foly was in mono, some was in stereo, some was pretty loud, some was pretty soft. I did no dynamics processing here, though I did boost the levels on some of the wide angle door opens and other softer moves for usability. Mostly I was dividing sorting and naming though.

The same process followed for interior driving moves, exterior moves recorded with the shotgun, and anything else we recorded that day. Listen, divide, name, and process if needed.

This whole routine took the better part of one working day, but it made the next step very efficient - cutting the sounds into the picture.



With all of the prep, this step actually went pretty smoothly. Only in a few spots did I feel like I needed more coverage, and I was able to augment my recordings with a variety of library stuff and other recordings I'd done. I got through the entire truck edit for the film in around 2 days, and was very happy with the result.

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My main takeaway from this part was that the time spent prepping the whole process paid huge dividends when it came time to actually cut the sounds into the film. A lot of sound effects editing is ingredient based cooking, and when you take the time to get the recordings right and mapped out on the front end then the back end editing becomes the easy part.

Truck record-part 1: prep

Benavides Born has just premiered in the dramatic competition at Sundance, and as lead sound designer I thought I'd give a little insight into one specific element of the audio design: the truck.

The film is about a South Texas girl played by Corina Calderon who embarks on a journey of self-discovery in her home, the world of weightlifting, and college. Much of this journey happens in an old 1993 Chevy pickup.

During the initial spotting session I knew I'd need to find and record a similar truck to even hope to do that part of the soundtrack justice. We were working on a condensed schedule, so time and planning were very important.

Step one for me was research. I had done some recordings of my car a month or so prior, as much to scout possible vehicle recording locations as it was to acquire the sounds and practice the technique. I reviewed my notes from that session, and re-read the thoughts of Tim Prebble and Rob Nokes on recording vehicles. That Rob Nokes article is incredible and was pretty instrumental in both my car recordings months earlier and the truck record on this go-round.

I also had to find the right truck. I tried the usual methods of poking friends and family, but that didn't pan out as quickly as I was needing it to, so I started cruising craigslist, which was both enlightening and scary. In the end one of my good friends did come through with his father's vehicles which were conveniently located at his house outside of Ennis, TX - the middle of nowhere and roughly 45 minutes from me in downtown Dallas .
View Larger Map

The location I ran my car tests before was a strip of road behind a high school in Ennis, andI ended up ruling out that location for future records because of a crazy interference I was getting from what's likely a microwave tower in that part of town.

Strange flutter distortion by Rcoronado

Unfazed, I used google maps to scout other roads from afar and talked to the owners in advance to find other recording locations nearby. While I did not end up with some perfect mecca of car recording locales down there, I did manage to get what I needed cleanly enough to satisfy the film and the library.

The truck in the film was a 1993 Chevy V8. I had a choice of a 1993 Ford V8 and a 1995 Chevy V6. I went with the Ford.


With my location and vehicle secured, I set about creating my two main checklists: performances and gear.

Performances first. I opened up the film in a protools session and separated out every shot in which the truck appeared. Playing back at 2x speed helped the process. In the end I had a 20 minute compilation of nothing but truck movements. I output this as a separate quicktime in m4v format so that I could have it on my iphone or ipad during the shoot.

Then I sat down with my notepad and watched the 20 minutes down again, noting every specific move that I saw. Door open, door close, hit tailgate, pull up head-on, peel out on gravel, etc. If moves were repeated I put down a x3 or whatever it happened to be.

With my performance list in place I began compiling my gear list. From my experience and the Rob Nokes article I knew I wanted mics on the axle, exhaust, engine compartment, interior and exterior. I went with a pair of Senn 421's for the tire and exhaust mounts, a Sanken COS11 for the engine compartment, and an SM81 for another engine compartment angle. These all ran through a sound devices 442 into a 744t. For the interior I used my Sony PCM D50. For exteriors I went with a Senn MKH60 in a rycote blimp recording to a Tascam HD-P2. For wind protection on the truck mounted mics I stole from Tim Prebble and used ripped to fit terrycloth towels as well as good drafting placement. I had tested this in my initial car record and was very impressed with the results.

I was also sure to pack lots of batteries, gaffer tape, cash, cables, zip ties, water and snacks.

With my lists and gear in place I was ready for the record date.

need wind protection? Howbout a fuzzy duck?

The little clown-nose wind protector that comes on the H4 just doesn't provide enough wind protection. I took it out during a recent trip to west Texas, and while I was able to get a bunch of good stuff, my ratio of unusable to useable was probably 10:1 due to wind noise that was being caught with the slightest breeze out there.


I was kind of disappointed with that once I got back into the studio because I really was hoping for a greater variety of useable stuff. One location in particular had a very distinct insect sound going, but in the non-windy spots I had a prop plane running overhead - so I did what I could but it wasnt as good as it could have been. Fortunately this was just for library stuff so it was non-critical, but I expect more from my little rig.

I had been brainstorming a little home made rycote style rig for the H4 with suspension and pantyhose as an additional wind buffer, but while the lovely Mrs and I were out at the pet store we found an unstuffed dog toy that looked almost exactly like the little afros that rycote actually sells for things like mine.

This looked like it made all kinds of sense and was far far less involved (or expensive) than building a suspension rig for the thing, so we picked it up and set out to mod it.

A few scissor snips and pulled stitches later, and voila! The Fuzzy Duck mod.

I think its kind of cool in a sick kind of broken duck back kind of way.

Initial recording tests showed a HUGE improvement, so I'm going to have to go out again and see how she holds up in a tougher environment. The other challenge is keeping it away from the dog.

personal showcase:the airforce technology site

I did the sound design for this website recently, and I'm really pleased with the implementation and the way that it all came together.

The fine folks over at Tribal DDB did the flash implementation, and once the site was pretty much complete they sent it to me. I did a full report of the sounds that I thought it needed, they revised the list and we got to work.

I used a lot of cameras as my source audio for this stuff, running it through dopplers and other sound-bending things, and I'm really happy with the results.

I need some more servo-type machines to record for future stuff, but the library elements that I added as a result of this project have become staples of my arsenal and are just incredibly useful.
Any comments and critiques are welcome!

showcase - some minimalist sound design

I really like what the modern world of animation has done for those of us who make a career as sound designers. Now it's true that a lot of modern animation has become overblown and confused, but those elements of our digital lives just serve as the perfect backdrop against which to lay the minimalist things I'm about to present.

I'll also state that I certainly don't believe that all complex animation sequences are bad artistically speaking (see Transformers and Iron Man), I'm just saying that the truly minimalist stuff forces the sound designer to bring his absolute best game because the audience is guaranteed to have the capacity to perceive every detail.

When complex visual and aural elements are done at the highest level the viewer can watch a sequence repeatedly and see new and cool things each time. When minimalist visual and aural elements are done at the highest level the audience can be focused in enough to catch the nuance of each element on the first or second pass.

Toyota's Yaris spots are an excellent example of this:





There are tons of those on youtube, but the net effect is pretty stark. Lots and lots of whitespace visually, which removes the need for ambient sound in the sound design - leaving room for all of the little reverb tail, and dog-tag jingle details to shine through. It also means that the sound designers have to start with the highest quality recordings for everything not synthesized because of just how naked everything is.

Here's another from dydree Media for Nickelodian. (sorry, couldn't embed that one)

IMO the sound design is just a notch down from the Yaris stuff, but its still a very high level and many of the same minimalist elements and restrictions are in place. No defined environment so therefore no ambient sounds and a very stark soundscape which leaves lots and lots of room for detail.



All of this eventually culminates into an event that I really can't wait to experience. Pixar's Wall-E

Wall E's lead sound designer is the full on modern legend Ben Burtt. You might recognize some of his work:

-The Star Wars franchise where he dreamed up the sounds for (among other things)
---R2 freaking D2
---the lightsaber
---the x-wing
---etc
-The Indiana Jones franchise
-Wilow
-The Dark Crystal
-
-...well, you've got the wiki link there. He's the man.

So here are some of Wall-E's minimalist beginnings:



and here's a pretty straightforward evolution from minimalist to full on film-level complexity.



Based on what I've seen so far, I'm very hopeful that the film will allow all of that room for Burtt's creative genius to come through. Taking on a project of that nature has to be one of the most difficult things a sound designer can hope to get himself into, and I'm just flat out excited to see what Burtt has come up with.