Ben Burtt is by far one of the greatest and notorious animation sound designers and sound editors for animation, with his work appearing on some of the greatest films of our time and the owner of countless awards for best sound design.
(Ben Burtt)
Ben Burrt IMDb: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0123785/
I want to look at an interview that Ben did back in 2008 with the release of the major Pixar Animation WALL-E, I’m not going to look at how he created the sound… yet. What I’m going to look at is his opinion on one the greatest tools and abilities a sound designer must utilise. The power of opportunity.
Here is a quote from Ben Burtt himself from an interview he did about creating the sound design for WALL-E “You learn that the most important thing that you can do as a sound designer, is to make the right choice, with the right sound, at the right moment in a film.” (Ben Burtt, 2008, Building Sound from the World Up, Available from: https://youtu.be/NsfbXGDw_aA?t=1m19s) with this in mind, there’s an element within this blog that I’ve missed! I’ve talked about working with clients, workload, productivity, finding work, motivation and equipment… but not. Opportunity and timing. In another interview with Ben on the release of WALL-E, he is asked about when he’s not working on any projects or jobs does he still go around recording various sounds and audio… his response was “I’ve learned that the world is a big sound file and if I’m not prepared to just collect things, all the time then I will miss opportunities, because a lot of the best sounds have been found by accident, I just hear something and run over and get it. And yes a week doesn’t go by or a trip doesn’t go by that I haven’t gone out to record something, and even on this press chunk I’ve been recording things, there was this great squeeky door at this catherderal at the Notre Dam in Paris, and I got it! So some day if we need that squeeky door in a movie… I’ll have it.” (Ben Burt, WALL-E, Sound Design Interview, Available From: https://youtu.be/01gj9SqTSJI?t=2m35s) So as demonstrated by one of the godfathers of sound design himself, it’s imperative for a sound designer always to be on the lookout for new sounds, always keeping an ear open if you pardon the pun.
Of course not everyone can have a microphone on them at all times, well not always a high quality microphone. As mentioned in an earlier blog post the Zoom H4N microphone is a handy portable microphone which you can have on you ‘one the go’ but… something that caught my attention recently was this. Now in this day and age, a lot of people have iPhone’s… they seem to be one of the most used modern tools of the 21st century with the capability to do almost anything. But now with the help from Zoom you can now record sound in stereo from your phone, apparently it’s “mid-side stereo made easy”. The product itself is known as the Zoom iQ5 and can work with any iPhone 5th generation and up and any iPad 4th generation and up.
(Zoom IQ5 – iPhone Recorder)
It simply plugs in the the charging point to your iPhone/iPad and with the handy software that comes with the product, turns your phone into a professional recording device. This is very handy for starting out Sound Designers at only about £50 from Gear4Music … it almost seems like a steal, here is a short conclusive review from the writers at Ask Audio on what they thought of the product.”The iQ5 microphone from Zoom is a compact and great sounding alternative to using the built-in microphone on your lightning-capable iOS device. I used it for 2 weeks in a variety of different ways and was pleasantly surprised at how capable it was. It’s no surprise that the iQ5 has found its way into my camera bag as a piece of kit I want to always have with me.” (Ask Audio review on the new Zoom IQ5 recorder. Available from: https://ask.audio/articles/review-zoom-iq5-mini-mic-for-iphone)
Now back onto the main point, opportunity. Ben talks about the relations he has with his family & friends with his work, he describes how generally whenever there is a family member that is sick, like has a cough, he will generally record it! He spoke about how his friend had a busted fan, so he recorded it! One of the key elements here obviously then as also stated by Moroz … is to just … Record Everything! if you have a sound library as large as you can get … you’re always less likely to ever run out of sounds. It is also vital for a sound designer to always update his library, due to copyright some of the sounds that you use in a project may end up being exclusive to that project itself, and plus nobody wants to hear the same sound effect over and over again, it’s just boring and lacking in creativity! How does one ever expect to succeed and progress by constantly using the same tools.