Sound Design
KOJIMA PRODUCTIONS-INTRO VIDEO SOUND REDESIGN
This was the second big sound redesign project I did as an assignment at SCAD. I knew it needed to be something interesting, and what’s more interesting than anything Kojima related?
The biggest challenge for this project was finding a moment of silence right before the whale breaches the water. My professor was VERY insistent on that and it took a couple days to think about it and tweak it to where it would work properly, and in the end it worked out incredibly well. It gives just the right amount of tension before such a big event occurs.
The garbled radio transmission of “the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” was something I found on accident when I was looking for radio chatter effects. I thought it fit in perfectly with the classic Metal Gear Solid FOXHOUND theme, and I’m still very happy that I found it!
THE DARK KNIGHT-BANK HEIST SCENE SOUND REDESIGN
The Dark Knight still remains in my top 5 (maybe even top 3) favorite movies of all time. I think it’s nearly a perfect film and I love the performances of all the characters. Heath Ledger’s transformation into the Joker is so iconic and I don’t know that we’ll see anyone embody a character like that again.
For this redesign I wanted to tackle something that was pretty big and had a lot of density sound wise. The sound in the original scene is already incredible and I wanted to see if i could match that. One of the bigger challenges was getting the reverb levels right in the bank interior. It’s a pretty big and open space, but too much reverb would just wash everything out. I think the final result is a good representation of what it sounded like originally.
The most fun sounds in this one were the drill on the bank door where I had to layer in the squealing metal as the bit drills through, and recreating the Joker’s Glock 18. I did the same trick the original sound team did and used the sound of an M134 Minigun to give it a much more menacing sound, and layered it with a couple different sounds to really give it a lot of depth and bass.
BLACK LAGOON-REVY VS PIRATE CREW SOUND REDESIGN
Ah Black Lagoon, one of my favorite anime that never got continued after a couple seasons. This is the first sound redesign I did for an animation and it was a pretty big challenge! This scene is extremely dense and I had to figure out how to really make every element shine through on its own.
The boats were the hardest part when it came to sounding individualized. The pirate fleet are all pretty much the same boat, but they still needed to have their own space. The Black Lagoon needed its own sound characteristics since it’s the “hero” ship of the show. I finally managed to find enough different engine sounds that would sound good for each individual boat, and managed to work out their physical space on the water to where it sounds natural.
Gun sounds were also a challenge since there is a TON of gunfire in the scene and a huge variety of guns that get used. I really hated how weak the grenade launcher sounded originally, so I layered several different sounds to give it the classic Call of Duty-esque “THOONK” sound. Revy’s machine pistol also got some extra punch since she’s the star of the show here and we need everyone to know that she’s not to be played around with.
METAL GEAR SOLID 3- SNAKE MEETS OCELOT SOUND REDESIGN
Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater just might be my favorite game of all time. This was the first sound project I ever did at SCAD and it was a monster. It was really only difficult because I chose an extremely foley heavy scene before I had ever even recorded a foley sound, so I pulled all the sounds from a library. Every footstep, shuffle, grab, literally everything was from a sound library. The lesson here? Just get that cheap shotgun mic and record those sounds. Your sanity will be saved!
As difficult as the foley was I really had fun with the gun SFX and all the little details in the background. The ringing in Ocelot’s ears after he gets slammed was a fun one to throw in there. The Ocelot commando’s machine gun is actually the sound from one of the machine guns in Call of Duty MW2 that I extracted from a YouTube video. Their sound design team is just incredible!
I really am proud of this one especially since it was my first ever attempt at something like this. Knowing what I know now about sound design I would definitely change some things, but overall I think it’s pretty great!