Hello,

So i'm appealling to any professional, in studio or freelancer, who makes sound effects for movie or games, documentaries, etc...

I understand the necessity of using pro tools in a pro setting and i've been switching to it for the past week, starting to feel more comfortable with the program.

I actually bought the legit version today because i'm going full dedication in this.

But even though the shortcut workflow is amazing, there are still a lot of very counter-intuitive things about Pro Tools and that makes me curious to know how you personally deal with it to make sound effects.

Also really curious about your experience, especially how you started out, what else i should learn according to you, etc... I'm reading a lot of interviews (notably sound designers for Rayman, Dishonored, the Valerian movie, Spider-man, etc.. but of course they focus on specifics and not how they started out for most. It's still extremely interesting though).

For those who work in company studios, do you have to do the creative part on PT or do you for example use your daw of choice to create the sound effects and PT only for editing etc.. ?

I'm really pushing myself to leave ableton live aside and prepare my first showreel projects in PT but what a drag.

 

little bump

 

Hey @Boosire.
It's great that you've committed your spare time to mastering the intricacies, tricks and foibles of Pro Tools. Well done!

Be aware, tho', that as a Pro Sound Designer you shouldn't paint yourself into a corner by learning only one DAW. You need to be (if not an expert) at least familiar with them all. If not, your availability for jobs will too narrow and limited. Don't be a one trick pony.

Fire up your favourite internet search engine and take a quick peek at current job listings in Audio Design. Here is one such sample to get you started....
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=s...bp=htl;jobs#htidocid=z2HYw7lusWS81H2pAAAAAA==

Spend half a day studying what the clients have posted as requirements for the job. You might not actually want those jobs right now but the listings are a really good indicator of the current state of the market for Sound Designers.

 

First of all thanks for the answer.

I know the basics and could get decent to Reaper, Studio One and Cubase in a couple days with a refresher course.
But thanks for the reminder, i've been focusing on movie sound design a bit more lately so i might have put aside the thought that daw requisites in video games are more laxist.

It's really scary how the priority in job offers seems to pend on middleware and integration, i really have to go full learning on fmod and wwise (unreal engine as well ?)

Are you a professional yourself ?
If so, any other essential tips i can strip from you ?

cheers!

 

No worries. Glad to be of service.

Erm.... yeah. I could say that I'm a pro. I percolated up through the ranks of production sound. Moved across into directing and, as these things go, was dragged kicking and screaming into the senior management side if things.

Essential tips? Emulate, innovate and circulate.

 

I worked as a boom-op for TV & film and did post audio on indies and corporate stuff. These days, I almost left the business, doing only sound for a coupe of friends.

In reality creating soundeffects for a living is a niche that’s done by only a few. The majority is pulling & layering effects from libraries.
In the movie industry, time is (a lot of) money; With most productions, there’s no time (money) for a sound-designer, spending weeks on a couple of sounds.

If you want to work in the post audio industry, try to get a job or internship at a post house to learn the trade of sound editing first. In your free time, you could work on free stuff and learn to design.
It also wouldn’t hurt to work on set-sound, as it would give you perspective when doing post audio..
You could then build a resume.
In sound for picture, a showreel isn’t all that, it’s all about your network, and, later on, your IMDB page.
The majority of the -few- jobs are to be found were movies are made, in the U.S, that still is L.A.

I would focus on a certain genre. Don’t generalise, specialise! I guess the majority of sounddesign work is in games. For that genre you’d have to be good with the game-audio middlewares @DarthFader already mentioned. Also, a thorough understanding of game coding is a necessity.

Interesting sites for sound: https://www.asoundeffect.com and http://designingsound.org

 

In PT I don't do that much sound design and "creative" work. I like to use other software for stacking/layering, DSP and mangling duties.
I rather use PT for assembling, editing, layering and final touches (EQ, panning, automations, etc).

The latest movie I did was my own specific sound design for UI interactions, transmissions, bleeps, glitch sounds, etc (for a film about a teenage hacker). The rest was just pulling in sounds from huge collections of sound libraries (using Soundminer) and editing these together in PT.

 

Last edited: Jul 26, 2018

feel free to PM me if you need analogue sounding fart sound effects.

 

This is a grimmer reality than i thought.

I guess i should be open to everything and learn a lot of other skills to fit the bill then.

@boomoperator You're a bit scaring me about coding. Middlewares aren't enough ? If so what coding skills should i prioritize ?

@Baxter That's good ! I'm past the point of no return now i'm going to focus on Pro Tools for a while but it's good to keep in mind that i can reverse to ableton at some points.

 

What equiment do you have ?
And i don't mean your rear.

How much does one fart costs these days anyway ?

 

There are two rules you need to follow.
Know what you want.
Have good gear.
With those two in mind you can learn anything for free:
*Do research get into facebook groups. Aputure in fb posts awesome folley etc stuff.
*Just copy people and try to make sounds like them. Wonder why you couldn't.
*Izotope is your friend.
*There are loads of sound engineers etc in youtube. Watch all their channels to learn anything & everything.
*Get a sound devices and mkh 416, if you are on a budget a zoom and aputure deity
*Youtube some room acoustics and damping, diffusing it if you ware gonna folley.
*Learning is limitless. Make jobs that are coming or time the factor when learning about sound. I chose the latter.

 

Last edited: Jul 26, 2018

Excellent advices thank you !

I definitely don't have such a budget for mics right now, but i bought an little olympus ls-12, quality isn't ideal but with some rx6 and eq treatment i got decent samples so far.
I'm reading a lot of sound engineers interviews and found a show called reel talk on twitch where the sound designers from the game Celeste get reels from people of my level and give advices about what's wrong, they're really honest and don't hesitate to critic any single thing, it's really helpful to get an idea, and thanks to that i've started to check professional reels and sound designs on vimeo it's been quite educative.
But yeah i need to check youtube you're right, i hope sound design is well represented in quantity with a lot of good material there.

I think i have an ear for it, in the sense that by tweaking around i always manage to make something sound the way i want and i'm quite ocd about details, but i want to know as much as i can, and i know the invisible wall, it's always easy to get illusions of grandeur when you're decent at something without realizing what's actually left to learn ahead so i'll stay motivated for what's ahead and never stop to learn.

Thank you guys for the answers anyway !

 

God my english is terrible when i vape.

 

u r me? I'm fly as a kite.

Sound engineering is a form art that matters. There are different paths to take if you are in it for the money or a way of life.
If you can self criticize then you will learn faster without needing anyone... (which is great) The part of equipment quality and importance will came on you when you just CAN'T replicate something without that quality. (thats why all good equipment is usually +$1000)

Don't shy away from ebay and second hand stuff. You can find things 1/3 cost perfectly usable. The great thing about audio is that it makes much more sense to buy and learn rather than rent and learn like video equipment. Get a decent set of earphones and use it with morphit or sonarworks...

 

Oh I was reading about morphit just yesterday night, I didn't have long to check but i got a taste of really different opinions about it.
Did you get good results switching from headphones to speakers afterward ? I use beyer dt 880s

Gonna keep an eye on second hand sells once i get the right money for these things.

 

I think Ubisosft (among many others) use Reaper for game audio design, it's much faster and way more customizable than ProTools, for fraction of cost

 

880s are the best bang for the buck high quality headphones out there! I prefer sonarworks its speaker calibration is incredible. It's all good.

 

Hello mate. I started learning Wwise last year in order to help my sister in law who's a game designer in an indie company. If your goal is to work in the game industry, this is one of the platforms you need to be familiar with. It's based heavily on a familiar "tree" philosophy, i must admit i found it quite easy to learn. I have been offered a job as sound designer for a game company in the far past (around 2003) but i skipped as it meant moving to a distant place in the middle of nowhere lol. My personal thoughts is noone will care on what soft and hardware you will work on to produce your sounds/fx etc. You will be judged on the quality of your creations and the speed you worked with (this is a very time demanding industry and projects can become hectic for those involved). But you will have to know whatever is the main daw/engine etc the whole creation studio will be working on, for compatibility reasons. Whether you want to get into the gaming or film industry being a team player is always a key to success, in such a position you will always have to work as part of a larger team. Knowing Foley sound design is also a plus.
Last year i read there was an opening for a sound designer in CD Projekt RED (creators+publishers of the Witcher series, that has sold over 25mil copies in total, https://www.pcgamer.com/the-witcher-series-has-now-sold-more-than-25-million-copies/). As i love those games i was very tempted to send my resume but a little digging showed me the salary was about 2500 euros/month and there was no limit in workhours, meaning you could work anywhere from 8 to 16 hrs per day lol. And you had to relocate to Poland.
Anyway as others have said, learn as much as you can. Learn the classics first is always my moto, so you are on the right path.
Best of luck

 

Last edited: Jul 26, 2018

Ahh just watched a video showing ubisoft studio in annecy, the sound designer had Reaper opened in her taskbar indeed.

Guys, i'm getting used to wwise and fmod, i plan on pushing to unity and unreal engine, i was wondering to what extent should i learned any coding for any of them ?

 

wwise and fmod and your golden!