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What?  I have a blog?  Could have fooled me, seeing as I haven’t updated this thing in ages.  Well, lets see if we can’t do something about that.  I’d like to update this site more frequently with project updates, voice over samples and just general rants and thoughts.  Sounds like fun, doesn’t it?

To that end, I’ll post a Voice Over sample today featuring me doing a voice from  Futurama.  If you don’t know what Futurama is, well, then you probably shouldn’t be reading this blog because you’re obviously not cool enough to handle it.

Today’s character is old enough to have seen the original big bang (plus a few more) and he’s a distant relative to the main character of Phillip J Fry.  That’s right, let’s hear it for Professor Hubert J Farnsworth.

Enjoy!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The sound work for this scene was to recreate all of the sound for most of the scene, as the original sound was either not available, or not usable.  So, there’s foley work, background work, as well as dialogue cleanup, especially noticeable on Helen’s line.  Enjoy!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Doug Jones

Hey all!  Here’s the latest clip from Carnies that I have permission to release from the director, Brian Corder.  In this scene from early in the movie, we see the character, Ratty, tending to his snakes at the carnival.  This clip had lots of audio problems from the get go, including low levels on the actor, and high levels of background noise due to the traffic on the road nearby.  I needed to save the audio in this clip as our star of the clip, Doug Jones, was unavailable to do any ADR work, as he’s quite a busy guy.  You may not recognize him, but he was in Hellboy and Hellboy II as well as  Pan’s Labyrinth, but was in full character make-up in each movie.

As for the sound design on this clip, I added in BG noises of the crowd at the carnival, sounds for the snakes in the scene, and created the sound for the snakes POV shots.  I did some research on how snakes actually hear, and then created a stylized version of this for those shots.  So, I can’t say this is exactly how snakes hear, but it was a fun challenge to come up with something I felt was my artistic version of snake hearing.    Enjoy!

Click here to view the embedded video.

I know there are many camps out there as to how to raise your kids.  There’s the Dr. Spock method, there’s “it takes a village”, there’s timeouts vs spanking, but for me, there’s one thing I’ve always believed in…The Warner Bros method.  What is that, you say?  That’s when you raise your kids and let them watch all the old Warner Bros cartoons.  You know, Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd, Yosemite Sam, Road Runner, The Coyote…and the list goes on and on.  And I mean the real versions of those cartoons, not the sterilized versions they would show on TV in the 90′s.

I grew up with Elmer Fudd shooting Daffy Duck in the face, and the only thing that would happen was Daffy’s bill would end up somewhere else on his face, and he’d have a little soot to show for it.  That was funny.  Then someone decided that was too violent and it might make kids actually go around and shoot their friends and family in the face.  So, they changed the cartoons.  Now when Daffy got shot in the face, they’d cut away to a still shot of Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd, or maybe a freakin’ bush, just so they wouldn’t show Daffy getting shot in the face.  We still KNEW it happened.  We heard the gunshot, and we’d cut back to Daffy and see his bill on the backside of his head, so all we were missing was the actual visual, but dammit, I wanted that visual.  That was part of the fun!  You see, I wasn’t any more likely to shoot my friends or family in the face because of it, and you know why?  Because I knew it WASN’T REAL!  How did I know that?  Because I was taught it wasn’t real and that wasn’t the way it would REALLY happen in real life.

That’s the real trick, isn’t it?  I was taught it wasn’t real.  I wasn’t just stuck in front of the TV thinking it would raise me and that I would never see anything objectionable.  And that’s the problem with these idiots who made them sterilize my Bugs Bunny.  They didn’t want to take responsibility if their kids shot someone in the face, that they hadn’t taught their kids the difference between real life and cartoons.  They wanted to be able to blame someone else.  A problem that seems to plague this country at times.  It’s McDonald’s fault I spilled Hot Coffee on my crotch!  They should have warned me when I ordered coffee that it would be hot!  I had no idea!  Geez, what a bunch of morons.

So, now I would like to thank Cartoon Network for bringing back all the old Warner Bros cartoons.  Not only bringing them back, but also showing Daffy getting shot in the face during the promos.  That’s classic stuff.  And for those of you that have a problem with that, either change the channel or raise your kids right.

Rabbit Season!  Duck Season!  Fire!  BLAMMO!  Great stuff.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Anyhow, back to the flick at hand.  This is from the opening scene for “Carnies“, right after the opening credits.  This scene suffered from some muted and muffled dialogue here and there, had traffic noise in the BG from the road right next to the shoot.  That all had to be cleaned up, and then the scene fleshed out with a fuller sound mix, including more noises from the “Wild Man of Borneo” as he runs around in the BG, and more noises from the chicken as it tries to escape its fate.  A fun little scene to put together, and it throws us right into the carnival world of  “Carnies“.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I’ll have some more scenes coming soon from “Carnies“, as well as some other goodies, so stay tuned!

Trippin Sound Demo 1

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This is an example from the opening of the movie, known in “trippin” circles as The Van Scene.  Here I had to take shots from a stationary van and a moving van, and make them all sound like they came from a van driving down the road.  The van had to sound a bit “old” to sell the later plot elements, but I also had to remove the sounds of birds and insects that were captured while filming outside the van.  Also, the metal walls of the van created some nasty sonic artifacts that I removed as well.

Trippin Sound Demo 2

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This demo comes from the “Bathroom Scene” in “trippin”.  Here I took the audio, which had low levels to begin with, but also had lots of errant sounds to be removed, like the sound of the rain that happened during filming.  It all came out quite nicely in the end, and then was combined with a much fuller sound mix for the bathroom, that includes water in pipes, a leaky toilet that bubbles and gurgles, as well as frogs and the other creatures and insects of the night you’d expect to hear in a cabin in the woods.

Trippin Sound Demo 3

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My favorite of all the demos released so far.  The sound in this scene was all over the place, what with the insects, frogs, different car and truck sounds and none of it matched up.  So, the first step was to clean it all up as best as possible, then start designing the remaining soundscape.  This was a lot of fun, as one of the things I wanted to do was create a unique sound for the truck, as it belonged to our character Red, and I wanted the truck to be an extension of his character.  It was already a crappy truck, but it needed to”sound” crappy.  So if you listen closely, you’ll hear lots of rattles and squeaks and a nicely distinct engine sound, as well as an appropriate song on his radio.

I hope you’ve enjoyed these samples, and believe me, these are just the tip of the iceberg.  This movie is a lot of fun.  (Not only to work on, but to watch as well.)  Rock on, and keep on trippin!

Click here to view the embedded video.