7 Steps to Award-Winning Sound Design: “Human Revolution – Deus Ex”
Space: the final frontier for sound designers.
Deus-Ex sounds as riveting as it looks.
Any audio artist can go gaga with gadgetry on the teaser trailer for a sci-fi fantasy – it takes something more to exercise discretion.
The assignment: The NYC sound design/audio house HOBO got the nod to sound design a 13-minute short film, the sci-fi adventure Human Revolution – Deus Ex, which premiered earlier this year on Machinima.com’s Machinima Prime channel.
Based on the popular video game of the same name, it imagines a dystopian society in which multinational corporations are larger than national governments and one man – equal parts human and machine – is determined to destroy the system.
Director/writer/actor Moe Charif of NYC’s D-Code Films wanted an audio landscape that would be equal parts intricate and immersive – the better to match the intensive visual one he created in Human Revolution. The experts agree that HOBO pulled it off – the film just captured a 2014 Telly Award for Best Sound/Best Sound Design (full credits are here).
Here you get a special opportunity to experience a part of the trailerwithout sound design, followed by the same segment (+ more) with it added. Prepare for some pleasures of the mind and body the 2nd time around: deep tremors, beyond body blows, and what just might be the most satisfying robot-arm-transforming-into-a-sweet-machine-gun sound sequence yet.
Deus Ex Human Revolution Trailer BEFORE and AFTER from HOBO on Vimeo.
How does an audio post project like this unfold? We asked HOBO audio engineer Diego Jimenez, the Sound Designer on the project, to lay it out the timeline:
#1 — Connect With Your Craft
Sound Design is my favorite because it’s the most creative part of audio post.
Every project requires new ideas and is a new challenge, you have to find a perfect relationship between your own ideas, the creatives or producer’s ideas and what the piece you are working on really needs.
Your sound design should help the project tell a story and give the audience an experience.
#2 — Pre-Production
At HOBO we always gather with creatives and producers to discuss their vision of their project, that’s our starting point.
On the technical part, I have a Pro Tools Sound Design template which I update frequently. That’s where I have all my favorite settings, plugins, virtual instruments, easy access to SFX libraries and my custom sound libraries and recording track settings in case I need to do any Foley or any other experimenting in order to get the right sound.
#3 — Get In Synch with the Client
Moe is a great director, he gave me a lot of freedom and was very open to new and different ideas for the sound design we were developing for the teaser as well as for the film.
But he always had something clear in mind and wanted a fresh, new and different approach for the piece. He suggested as a reference the sound of the video game but taking it to a more cinematic level.
#4 — Organize — Your Elements & Your Team
HOBO’s Diego Jimenez.
Since the Teaser as well as the film had a lot of graphics and visual FX, shot with a green screen and in a warehouse, I decided to start working with the ambience and the backgrounds of the piece. Also, I couldn’t use any of the production sound, only the dialogue.
After that, I worked on the hard Sound FX like punches, guns, steps, etc… And when I had something rough, I started adding sounds that could enhance the piece with synths or sounds that I recorded on my own that gave the project that original and unique sound that we were looking for.
The last, but most important thing, was sitting down with the HOBO team to listen and decide which elements of the sound design were helping and which others could be left out to really create a feeling, an experience for the viewer.
#5 — Tackle the Tough Parts
In the “Human Revolution” teaser, the most challenging aspect was to create everything related to the character’s augmentations: their movement, the punches, and weapons attached to them — like Adam Jensen’s blade and Yelena Fedorova’s mini gun.
Since at the beginning we wanted something different, we use lots of pitched servo sounds. But I also recorded sounds of scratching plastic, sand paper, wire, metal, ceramic, and then combined them in lower and higher pitches to create a different and distinguished sound for the character’s augmented body parts movement.
#6 — Stop, Look & Listen
But I think the most challenging part was, after you put all together, to decide what sounds are really helping the project. What’s in the way and needs to go out, and what really is going to help tell the story and enhance the experience?
When Mixing your sound design, you have to decide what is enhancing and helping the visuals, and what is creating that experience for the viewer.
It might be muting all sounds and leave everything silent, or in this case, mute everything but leave the sound of the blade coming out of Adam’s arm.
#7 – Enjoy the Ride, Spread the Love
I learned a lot from this project in all levels of audio post, but especially from all the people that worked on it and helped me to grow as a sound designer and engineer.
I put a lot of passion in all the work that I do, I think everybody involved in this project was sharing the same feeling. Everything was well put together, from production, direction, cinematography and visual effects – that’s what made it possible when it got into our hands at HOBO. More than a job or a challenge, it was an amazing opportunity to explore and test our creativity.
— David Weiss
See the complete short film, Human Revolution — Deus EX here.
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