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Avoiding Production Nightmares There are plenty of ways that things can get screwed up when working with a third-party sound designer. For example, the producer may not choose the proper adjectives to describe the game and, in turn, the description may not mean the same thing to the sound designer. Or, the production could go through dozens of design changes, causing the sound designer to lose interest and quit. The list of potential problems is endless. We've all had our own experiences which we'd rather forget, but it's important to learn from them, if for no other reason than to prevent history from repeating itself. Here are some true horror stories from the trenches. Mark Temple, owner and executive producer of Enemy Technology, has many games to his individual credit and he's currently at work on his company's first game. One of his biggest pet peeves is trying to work with sound designers who are not computer literate. Yes, believe it or not, there are still people out there who don't know much beyond their immediate sound applications. He has made several treks during hectic schedules to visit a sound designer just to get a copy of a game running. He's also had to instruct them how to zip and unzip files, attach sound files to e-mail, or use a modem to connect to the company BBS. So now when hiring people, he makes it a point to ensure first that they know their way around a computer. Another time, Mark's sound designer left a project in the middle of the contract, with half of the milestones completed and half of the sound effects budget. A new sound artist was quickly brought in, but the effects had a different quality and it became difficult to match his sounds to the previous work. Reluctantly, they opted to start from scratch, which forced them to spend more than they had budgeted and also broke their schedule. People leave in the middle of projects all the time for various reasons, and there are as many different ways to prevent this as there are reasons to leave. But honest communication and understanding of the creative processes helps. Contract points, which give the proper incentive (such as increasing milestone payments over the course of a project, with the largest payment for the completion of all work) are another option, but overly aggressive contracts that withhold too much money until the end can spoil things, too. Try to find the right balance. A potential contract sound designer, whose work is outstanding, wanted to work on a particular game, but didn't have the right equipment for the particular project, nor the money to buy it. And because the development team didn't have the resources to help him with this purchase, he didn't get the job. If you find yourself in this position, talk about the situation with the prospective sound designer and see if you can come up with a creative solution before you pass up the deal. Developers have been known to loan or buy equipment for the contractor, depending heavily on how badly the contractor is needed and the cash flow of the developer. The idea of "one-stop shopping" for a sound designer who can also compose and produce music is appealing. It's an opportunity to hire one fewer person, saving time and money. However, when Mark began his search for just such a person, he found few available. What may have helped this situation would have been to have the producer looking in the right places (no offense, Mark). If they had done any previous research, they could have had a list of names and demos already at their disposal. But since that didn't appear to be the case, there are plenty of online sites that cater to this very thing, some of which are listed at the end of this article. Here's my horror story. A while back, I replaced a sound designer late in the production cycle of a fantasy game, after the producer became dissatisfied with the previous contractor. It seems the former sound designer was missing his milestones by ever-increasing amounts, and the overall creative quality of the work had declined rapidly. As an example, for some of the spoken magical spells used by the various wizards in the game, he recorded profanities and simply played them backwards. While his "shortcut" wasn't recognizable to the average listener, someone with audio editing software could reverse it and a lawsuit could develop, something this small developer couldn't afford to have happen. I was able to step in late in the game and secure a few points, landing the contract for their next two games. Managing Outside Talent Shouldn't Be a Mystery At some companies, there tends to be a stigma attached to third-party contractors. To some, it seems a highly unnatural act to search beyond the company walls after you've spent a tremendous amount of time and effort collecting and nurturing your own talent. As you might have guessed, I take a different attitude. I've found that artists are more creative in working environments that they have designed for their own purposes. Not keeping to a nine-to-five schedule actually lets them budget their own time and work when they are at their best. Their happiness and security can be heard in their much-inspired work, and any game could benefit from this passion. When it comes down to it, working with a contracted sound designer is not so different from interacting with any of the full-time developers on your staff. Graphic artists, programmers, composers, actors, and voice talent are all looking to you for the proper motivation and, though the sound designers are not immediately within the corporate view, they respond to the same proper, positive stimulus. The key
points mentioned here, when focused on, can help you achieve fantastic
work from a sound design contractor. Even though there are no hard and
fast rules, secret formulas, or prescribed methods for creating the
consummate assemblage of game sound effects, it can happen. It takes
fluid communication and a firm vision from the development team coupled
with a sound designer who shows no bounds to their creativity and patience.
Together we can take on the gaming world and keep them lining up at
the stores. Tommy Tallarico is making life easier for both producers and sound designers by trying to standardize sound contracts and the often unpredictable contract negotiation process. With more than 125 games to his credit, he has plenty of experience in this phase of deal-making and after paying lawyers large sums of money to draw up the paperwork, he's still willing to share. At the 1999 Game Developers Conference, he gladly handed out copies of the agreement to anyone interested. Hundreds of people took advantage of his generosity. This contract, available for download from the Game Developer web site(ftp://ftp.mfi.com/pub/gamedev/src/oct99.zip), is a revised copy that pertains to the sound designer and the created effects. Many points can be added or taken out as needed during negotiations, since both parties are attempting to have their best interests represented. Whether you're a producer or a sound designer, I recommend you download this file and read it over closely so that you get a sense for what the top talent in the field is asking for. Tallarico has granted everyone permission to use it as is, or merely as a guideline for sound design deals. A Sound Is Born Here's an example of how one simple sound effect is created. The project I'm currently working on is a space strategy game, in which units are maneuvered in formation to battle against other players. It is a PC game with final sounds to be delivered as 22KHz, 16-bit .WAV files. I'm creating a sound which is triggered when a shielded unit is fired upon. The shield sound should have an "electric" quality to it - a controlled surge of energy that might sound as if it were deflecting a shot from a laser weapon. I wanted it to sound unique, so I stayed away from stock library effects and used one of my synthesizers for initial inspiration. I ultimately settled on a patch, similar to the keyboard sound in the Van Halen song "Jump," and recorded four seconds of a three-note chord. I saved it into my audio editing program, Sonic Foundry's Sound Forge, as a 44.1KHz, 16-bit stereo file. Experimenting with a few different effects processors, I found a nice Doppler effect in another program, GoldWave. I edited an existing patch to give it a quick one-second Doppler increase with three seconds of Doppler decrease. Back in Sound Forge, I pulled up a radio static sound file (which gives it that "electric charge" feel), ran it through a 1Hz stereo flange effect, and equalized it to increase the high frequency range. I then cut that file to four seconds to match the manipulated keyboard sound and mixed the two sounds, keeping the static barely perceptible. I gave the new mixed file a one-second fade-in, and faded out the last two seconds with a linear fade. Now it was beginning to sound like something. I normalized the file to maximize the sound, adjusted for any abnormal level peaks and finally saved the new file as SHIELD.WAV. Later, the producer wanted a dull, metallic clank mixed in to give the player some distinction between a shield hit and a hit to the unit's space suit. I pulled up a nice clank sound, used the equalizer to get rid of most of the high frequencies, and mixed to the shield file. All was well; the producer was happy. Converting down to 22KHz is simple. Utilizing the resample feature in my audio editor does the trick nicely. Because some of the higher frequencies get lost in the conversion, I usually adjust the equalization to compensate. After another check on the levels, the effect is ready for the game. Total time spent creating this one sound effect: two hours, 15 minutes. For Further Info Places to Find Third-Party Sound Designers: Gamasutra.com Happy
Puppy Dungeon
Crawl Black
Sheep Journal GameDev.Net Aaron Marks (aBmajor@aol.com) is a sound designer, music composer, and owner of On Your Mark Music Productions. Look for more of his life story at: http://members.aol.com/aBmajor. ________________________________________________________ |
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