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Sound Effect Design for Advertising, Broadcast & Corporate CommunicationsBowen Technovation was one of the first audio shops to coin the term “sound design”, probably as early as 1986 or so. Use of this term simply indicates we possess a great awareness of how all sound effects elements fit together to create a total sound environment. Our clients always rave about the neat sound effect work we perform on their projects. And we love doing kids stuff. Here are some resources we use to create the right sound design for your projects. Sound Effect Libraries Our extensive digital sound effects library at Bowen Technovation actually consists of a collection of a number of libraries. Our largest library is from The Hollywood Edge”. This company is owned by Oliver Stone and some guys from the 12 time Academy Award winners Soundelux. Same sound effects as used for all those big-time movies Oliver and the guys have made. I don’t like those little spiral bound books listing the sound effects, so our sound effects are located very quickly using a couple of software search programs. We have the little books on a shelf if you prefer to use them. It’s ok with us. If you ever sneak back into our tape library you’ll see a whole bunch of DAT and reel tapes of sound effects we have created ourselves. These are catalogued in our computers, too! You may use them if you like. I would rather pull out these tapes than Foley the salt mine explosion again! Sweetening Oh, yeah. One of the most important services we can provide as sound designers is that of sweetening. We clean up the air duct noise and low battery problems, match up the dialog from your many different production locations. Fix those little slurps, ticks, and pops from your video edit, and repair that perfect take of on camera talent... perfect except that he turned his head away from the lav at the end on his lines. Hey, we’re magicians in this area. We even receive project work from law firms that ask us to save unintelligible interviews. A More Creative Approach to Sound Design We began working with computer synced sound effects in 1985. Early in that year we came to the conclusion that we hated using china markers and razor blades to build our sound effects packages. Because we began to find ourselves stacking up layers and layers of sound effects to get the perfect final result, here are some of the modern sound production techniques we have developed at Bowen Technovation: Sampling In the mid 80’s we perfected the art of triggering digitally sampled sound effects to match SMPTE time-code addresses on video or audio tape. This is still a very valid production method. We simply record shorter length sound effects or sound effects that are very repetitive or rhythmic in nature into our Kurzweil and Akai samplers. Our Mac computers then “play” these sound effects back at exactly the time-code addresses we desire. The “hits” can be shifted any number of frames forward or backward. This is a great technique to use for footsteps, hammering nails, door slams, screams, swooshes and zaps. Digital Audio Workstations These are the “Swiss Army” tools of the audio profession. We can record and assemble stacks of sound effects, dialog, and music, change tone and eq settings, and automate the final mix right in the workstation. Workstations are completely random access and our workstations are so fast that you can move from the start of a production to a point one hour into the show in less than 1 second! No tape winding or sync waits! Another neat thing about our disk-based workstations. We keep a “Take Directory” or hard disk file of your most often used tags and sfx, then can drag and drop them right into the perfect time-code locations in your productions... without re-recording. Oh, and still another neat thing about workstations. We edit using visual representations of our recorded sound. These “pictures” are called waveforms. Visual waveform editing allows us to edit to .00002 seconds... that ought to get rid of about any lip smack, huh? Digital Tape Digital tape is still a great way to transfer materials to and from our studio hard disk audio editors. DA78-88-98, time-code DAT, ADAT...all are supported..all word clock locked with timecode and blackburst sync. We also use digital tape for archiving. Computer Automated Mixdown Our mixers have featured automation since 1989. Computer assisted mixing is a must when working with complex audio packages. The automation computer remembers all of our 64 fader and mute events, and plays them back synced accurately to picture. This not only allows us to perform mixes that would otherwise be impossible, but also means we can easily reload the mix file and revise the mix accurately for years to come. That ought to make your client happy. What? Your clients never ask for changes... uh, right! Need a Demo...fast? or do you have time for a visit? We have some pretty nifty samples of sound design work we have completed on DAT, cassette, or videotape, but you want to know what we will do for you, not what we did for someone else. After you hear our demo... come on over and hear some samples at our place. You’ll like it! Great! How Do We Get Started? Sound design for video/film based projects takes place after your rough cut or final edit. You deliver a BetaSP or 3/4" work print to us with SMPTE time-code on the address track and any reference audio from your master mixed on audio track 1 and 2. This allows the use of two separate audio channels for split track monitoring. Your project will move more smoothly if you burn in a visible time-code window. A specification is included below for this workprint. If we need to include edited audio from your video master, please supply this lay-off on time-code DAT. We recommend you leave the tracks split-track so we can properly integrate this audio and provide you with a final synchronized mix. We then lock our computer systems up to the time-code from the work print and begin designing your audio package... integrating the best in computer- based workstations, digital audio tape, and MIDI samplers. The Mix After our music, dialog, and sound effect work is completed, we can deliver our product mixed mono or stereo to BetaSP, DAT with time-code, DA-78-88-98, ADAT digital 8-track, 1/4" tape with center track time-code... as a split track with your narrative/dialog, our music/SFX, and time-code all on separate tracks, or at your request we will layback to any video format. Or we can burn a CD for you. Surround sound is our specialty! We have performed dozens of multi-channel mixes for museums, science cneters, etc. We can work with most surround formats and our control room monitoring is set up everyday in 5.1 surround. Hmmm... I’m Doing Radio! Great! Our experience in producing sound-effect-rich planetarium and space theater soundtracks becomes a real asset here. Our staff have become masters at creating perfect “audio-only” environments supported by little or no visuals. Just close your eyes and listen to our demos in the dark... you’ll see what we mean. Specifications for Video Work Print
Audio Layoffs
For Layback to Video We Mix to:
SFX Layoffs from Our Library for Post
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