Some days ago I read this great article on Gamasutra created by my friend Damian Kastbauer, and I just realized that I didn’t talk about it on the blog, so if you haven’t read it yet, you can do it now:

It’s a great time in game audio these days. As we move forward in the current console generation, several emerging examples of best practices in audio implementation have been exposed through articles, demonstrations, and video examples.

Even though in some ways it feels like the race towards next gen has just begun, some of the forward-thinking frontrunners in the burgeoning field of Technical Sound Design have been establishing innovative techniques and pulling off inspirational audio since the starting gun was fired over four years ago with the release of the Xbox 360.

It’s a good feeling to know that there are people out there doing the deep thinking in order to bring you some of the richest audio experiences in games available today. In some ways, everyone working in game audio is trying to solve a lot of the same problems.

Whether you’re implementing a dynamic mixing system, interactive music, or a living, breathing ambient system, the chances are good that your colleagues are slaving away trying to solve similar problems to support their own titles.

In trying to unravel the mystery of what makes things tick, I’ll be taking a deeper look at our current generation of game sound and singling out several pioneers and outspoken individuals who are leaving a trail of interactive sonic goodness (and publicly available information) in their wake. Stick around for the harrowing saga of the technical sound designer in today’s multi-platform maelstrom.

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The deadline for questions is February 25 and the answers will be published on the final post of the special. Charles will choose and answer any questions that he want. Note that all questions will be considered, but not all will have to be answered.

And for those who are waiting for the Richard Devine Answers, don’t worry… all the answers will be published very soon.

New Avatar Sound Profile, this time by SoundWorks Collection, with great information about the sound of the film, given by Chris Boyes from Skywalker Sound.

The groundbreaking technical and directorial abilities of Director James Cameron can be experienced in his breathtaking visual world of Pandora in “Avatar”. This never before seen world is filled with landscapes, creatures, and civilizations that have also never been heard before by audiences.

Bringing to life the sounds of Pandora include the talent of Skywalker Sound’s Supervising Sound Editor, Sound Re-recording Mixer, and Sound Designer Chris Boyes in this SoundWorks Collection sound for film.

Avatar @ Designing Sound

Designing Sound: Hi Charles, first of all, would be great to have an introduction about your career. How did you start, how you grow up in the sound world, and so on…

Charles Deenen: Thanks for the invite! We’ll have a fun month together with (hopefully) lots of usable info.

I’ve been called an old fella by some young folks in the industry, so am getting up there in age. I grew up in the netherlands and around 1983, attempted to start doing audio on a computer. That was the era of Commodore PET, so I tried to get tolerable sound out of a single-beep CBM-PET, and oh my, that didn’t go so well, LOL. Soon after acquiring a C64, I started to make music/graphic demos, through which I met Jeroen Tel. We wanted to make our own music, and wrote a music-driver for the Commodore 64. Well, this led to us having the “odd” idea that maybe we could make money doing this. You know, maybe just enough to pay for some gum and floppy-disks. There we travelled as young teenagers, all dressed up, to the european computer show in London where Hewson gave us our first paid gig. Apparently they liked what we did, and this led to many more jobs from a wide range of companies. Initially, I mainly provided the sound-effects for the titles which we did, but soon had to delve into doing music. Well, I knew nothing about music. I knew that a C major sounded OK after a D minor, that’s about it, LOL. However, funny enough the first music pieced I did wasn’t bad, and started doing more and more.

Early appreciation of cars

In the late 80‘s our company “Maniacs of Noise” had to begin sub-contracting, and at its peak had 5 people making musical noise at once. Considering those early computer-game years, that was huge. During those time, computer games were not nearly as main-stream as now. Zzap 64 was about the only magazine dedicated to gaming, and a game development team was 3-4 people. We provided music and/or sfx for over a hundred games on Commodore 64, 128, Amiga, Atari ST and Spectrum.

In 1990, one of the projects we did was “Dragon’s War” by Interplay which I’d taken on. They liked what I did, and asked me to move to the USA. Only 20 years old, I said “sure, why not”. After all Visa related items were completed I moved to Irvine, CA in the middle of 1991 where I started as Audio Director for Virgin Games and Interplay Productions. After doing McKids for Virgin on the NES, I moved solely to Interplay where I stayed for the next 10 years. Startrek, Baldur’s Gate, Ice-Wind Dale, Descent and others were some of the franchises I worked on while employed there. After a short stint at Shiny where I worked on the Matrix game, I went freelance to work on feature films. Thanks for Soundstorm, who gave me a chance on “Superman”, “Fast and Furious” and “2 Fast 2 Furious” were some of the first ones I worked on. This is were I fell in love with cars and emotionally engaging sound design.

Electronic Arts was in the process to re-boot their Need for Speed franchise a bit with NFS Underground.  During this, I received a call from a very nice gentlemen at EA who asked if I’d be interested to move to canada to work on this. My first reaction was “canada… oh man… that’s too cold… thanks, but no”. Through the generosity of EA, my wife and I visited Vancouver, BC and actually really liked it, so we ended up moving there.   We had the fortunate luck to find a house which allowed me to build a nice studio from which I do a fair bit of (non game) projects as well.

Since 2001, doing sound for Feature film trailers has been a side-job on weekends. Daredevil was my first one, and since then have worked on more than 60 of them including some recent ones like “Clash of the Titans” and “Salt”.

They are my learning cases. How to do great sound-design under an extreme tight deadline has you reaching for the most odd solutions, which in turn help with the production of video-game sound design.

DS: You’re creating sounds since the era of the Commodore and Atari ST… What do you think about the evolution of the game audio industry? What could be the next step?

CD: We’ve now reached a level of sound reproduction similar to film sound. The next era will not be about “more voices” and “more dsp”, it’ll be about creating emotionally engaging and believable soundscapes. 95% of games still break the believability barrier within the first few minutes, wether it’s through actor performances, character placement or odd pauses and gaps. There are many ways to take a player out of the experience, and that’s still our biggest issue today. Added technology will help, and make it easier again, but until we overcome this believability gap, all the technology in the world is not going to do it for us.

DS: You have worked as freelance and in-house… What would better for you? What you learn of each “status” and what do you recommend for all the sound designers out there?

CD: I was always freaking out a bit when I was freelance. Always looking for the next gig. It drove me insane at times. The insecurity of having a mortgage and family to sustain and the need for a constant stream of income worried me greatly. Oddly enough I never had to really look for jobs when I was doing freelance work, it was merely the “what if” factor that did it.

What I’d recommend freelance sound designers to do is become good and fast. Easier said than done I know, and it might be a simple statement. There are so many sound designers out there who haven’t been exposed to musical pacing, musical editing styles, or haven’t been exposed enough to highly demanding directors who crave for a emotionally stimulating and fitting soundbed. These experiences are needed to sustain in a demanding, volatile market-place to be able to rely on your experiences to deliver. Also, specializing in something really helps getting some sound design jobs. For example right now I’m hired a fair bit for car chases and any other vehicles. That seems to have become my “thing”.

The amount of games with large budgets is rapidly decreasing. The request for “cheaper and faster” not only is hitting the film industry, but also the game industry. In this situation though, cheaper and faster doesn’t mean “worse”. Industry peers are still expecting high quality work. The trick is how to gain the experience of doing something fast and good. This is only something you can learn mostly on your own, learning your own strengths and boundaries. Its critical you acquire honest feedback. If everybody keeps on telling you your work is awesome, there’s something amiss, unless your name is Randy maybe. You simply haven’t met the producer or director yet who has found some flaws in your work which requires improvement or adaptation. Now, make sure you continue to work for that person. He’s the one who’ll drive you further (or nuts in some cases :)

DS: I can see a couple of series of video games and films, such as NFS series, Star Trek and Fast and the Furious. What are the sound challenges on each sequel? The game/film is always different, but the essence is the same, so how you make to have a sequel of sound too?

CD: Sequels have indeed their dilemma’s. You’re asked to better the work you did which was last year was just considered “your best”. Now “your best”=old, and you’re faced with re-inventing the sound-design you did. In some cases you’re lucky and the movie or game has a new feel which will inspire this. For each project I always look for the single “it-factor”. Sometimes this doesn’t come to fruition until the last second, and sometimes it ignites the project. For example on NFS Shift we did these “in your head” driver experience sound-beds. This resulted out of an early teaser where I played around with non typical sounds, trying to emulate what a driver would hear in a race. This came partially due to the “driver experience” slogan the game just got. This stimulated the signatory sound for the NFS Shift FMV’s and menu-beds.

Charles at Interplay

DS: What kind of software you use to work with sound at EA Black Box? What are the technology to work with the implementation process?

CD: Some industry folks say that we’re spoiled at EA. I hear this often at GDC and such. Know though that the technology we use is build by a very small team, and often on the game-teams themselves. Technology is not the end all be all.  For me, it’s less important how the tools work, as long as the result can be obtained. For the past years we’ve worked with a MAX/MSP style tool where we can manipulate sounds in almost any way in real-time. This has been the work-horse for many EA games for over 8 years.

Then there are game specific tools. For Blackbox’s Skate, we build tools which were able to emulate the skate-boarding sound much more realistic than ever before. For our driving games, we build a car-engine technology which (until recent) hadn’t been done in any other game. Now, with Dice’s Frostbite technology it makes it even easier for Artists at EA to integrate flawlessly with the game itself. So, yes in one way, we’re spoiled, but these tools are driven by folks who know what they want to hear, and through team-work, get great results.

I recall when I started at EA in 2003 we were mixing in text-files, and had to restart the game everytime we made a single change. Now, it’s all real-time, thanks to a talented group of programmers and the artists who steered them  In hearing the many storeis from other companies, I do believe EA has some of the most advanced tools right now, and we’re making them even better every day.

DS: What you consider as the most important skill of any sound designer must have?

CD: Will-power. Never give up. Sometimes directors will ask the impossible of a sound-designer, and I’ve seen many give up. The ones that didn’t,  became the leaders in this industry. One story I’ve told many is one that happened to me during Descent; I wanted to make a very cool ship fly-by, and whatever I did sucked. Determined not to give up, I locked myself up in my sound-design room, not to leave it until I arrived at a result. I started off by mimicking some other ship fly-by’s from movies in order to learn. This was the hardest part; I had to create each element from scratch with a very limited library. Frustration set in rapidly, but got to know my effects processors (DSP4000, PCM80, DSP4, BBE, SPL’s etc. etc. at that time) very very well. After 3 days and nights I ended up with a set which I really liked, but that wasn’t the payoff. The real payoff was that I had just learned 100+ ways on how to make by’s, air-distortion, clean tonal whooshes etc. Those 3 days have brought me partially where I’m at today.

Another big part is real-world inspiration. Sound Designers who don’t get to hear the world and its wonderful plethora of sounds, and/or don’t expose themselves to other people inspirational work, will inhibit themselves of growing to their full potential.

Sound Designers also must find a mentor to learn from, people who inspire them to greatness. Don’t be afraid to ask questions. You’ll be amazed how many people are very willing to help others, especially in the sound community.

Few more things I value in sound-designers; musical understanding, musical sensability, and rhythmic sense, as well as the ability to know every owned plug-in’s potential very well.

DS: You’ve worked in film and video games. If you had to choose just one, what would it be? and why?

CD: That’s like making me choose between Candy and Chips. Come on !! :) Each have their best parts; Game development has a real sense of team-work. You become part of the development from day 1, and get to adapt the game to make it work better with audio to enable a richer player’s experience. You get to play with a lot of technical tools, which is really fun, but the amount of emotional fulfillment isn’t nearly as high as film. With film or other cinematic experiences you’re usually working to make a director or sound supervisor happy. You work purely on sound and its emotions, with no worries on how to play it back. The amount of emotional connection to picture is a dozen times higher. I edit sound on picture based on feel, not on # of channels available or trigger mechanism. It’s a whole different paradigm, but I wouldn’t want to miss either one. Sound design for film speaks to my emotional side. Sound design for games covers a lot of my technical outlets.

DS: How you survive to “the crunch”?

CD: When you get older, surviving a crunch becomes harder and harder, and I can’t honestly say I survive it well anymore. I simply can’t do the 80-100 hour weeks I used to do. At this point its more important to me to get stuff done earlier vs. later. This makes the crunch at the end is a lot shorter. My job over the last 3 years  (through my own doing) has been close to a constant “crunch”, helping out several games during their final stages. It also had me travel quite a lot which, combined with late hours, can get a bit straining. But that said I’m not complaining about it. Will-power makes me overcome the crunch, and the end-result always is the pay-off. Lets say I like coffee and “beaver buzz” energy drinks :) But my real goal is to limit crunches by setting deadlines much sooner, and by distributing more of the work. The crew at EA is awesome. They all help out during needy times.

However I’ve had my downs too; during my first year at EA I was doing some late nights since I wanted to learn every tool quickly, and was drinking a lot of Mountain Dew. Now, nobody in canada had told me that you can artificially put caffeine in a drink, so the mountain dew I was drinking didn’t have the usual buzz I was used to. After 7 cans I was wondering why the hell I was falling asleep.. The next morning, there was quite a bit of chuckling going on when they explained the canadian non-caffeine rule… damn :)

DS: How many time you spend playing games?

CD: Honestly, fairly little since I have little spare time. I check out the competition of games we work on, and any games my friends work on, and/or highly praised sound-jobs on games. Usually I spend enough time with them to get the jist, but hardly find myself continuing to play for “fun”. Luckily through some peer judging panels I’m part of, every year I get to play 20+ games during december and march, and usually those are the best of the best that year, so it’s fun to check them out and talk among peers about what’s great etc.

DS: Someone you admire? Any special influence in the world of sound?

CD: There’s many folks I admire, either for their talent, their perseverance, their contributions to the industry or other. Whenever people ask me this question, the first person that comes to mind is Harry Cohen. For the last 15 years he’s been my inspiration for sound-design, and he’s always open to share some advice and/or techniques.
The other that comes to mind I John Fasal. Everytime we work together he remains calm, even under the greatest stress, and always delivers quality work. There aren’t many people who can do this on a consistent basis. I want to learn his “zen mode”, LOL.

Having known Tommy T for 19 years, ever since we worked together at Virgin, I admire everything he’s done to promote the game industry towards the outside world. We’ve had our differences for sure, but that doesn’t take away from everything he’s accomplished in those 19 years.

I also admire people who speak their mind, and don’t bullshit. Some execs in my past talked a good talk, but don’t always walk the walk. This in turn made them loose respect from the crew. A great visionary (exec) producer who knows what he wants is his weight worth in gold.

DS: Finally, could you tell us something about your current projects? And for the future?

CD: In January, I went back to work mainly on Need for Speed games, to help shape its bright future. At home I’m still helping out on an occasional ad, trailer or movie, but have tried to take more time off to enjoy life with my lovely wife. My hobby of photography (http://www.flickr.com/photos/cdeenen/sets/) is also moving a bit to the foreground. A few years back I noticed that a lot of fellow sound designers are also photographers, and have enjoyed sharing techniques with them on both sound and photography.   One of my biggest pleasures will remain helping folks excel at what they do, and succeed.

Seeing the plethora of young, very talented sound designers arise through the masses makes me realize our industry has a bright, but very different future.  Each person brings their own element to the table.  Too bad we don’t have a sound design museum. We should. There is so much great work out there done by all these folks to be enjoyed and inspire a whole new generation.

The future will also hold more relaxing time, I hope :)

Thanks for listening

Cool featurette on the sound design of “Drag Me to Hell” with comments of re-recording mixers Marti Humphrey and Chris Jacobson and co-sound supervisor Jussi Tegelman.

Drag Me to Hell Website

(Thanks to Gabriel for the link)

Dark Void is a new sci-fi adventure game from CAPCOM for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC. The story is about a cargo pilot called William Augustus Grey who crashes into the Bermuda Triangle and is teleported to a parallel universe. With the help of other survivor humans and Nikola Tesla, Willian have to go back to the earth, but first fighting with all kind of creatures on the Void.

Here is an interview I had with Tom Smurdon, Audio director of Dark Void.

Designing Sound: Hi Tom, please give us an introduction of your career and how was your start with sound design.

Tom Smurdon: Hi! When I was younger I learned to play guitar, but I was always playing more with the effects. I loved plugging pedals into pedals and more pedals to see what kind of noises I could make. Then I got a 4-track and knew that’s what I wanted to do. I ended up going to Full Sail to become a recording engineer. I interned and then became a second engineer at Bad Animals in Seattle. This was in the early 90’s and I got to work with some great bands Soundgarden, Deftones, Staind, Pigeonhed, Presidents of the USA, and the Foo Fighters. I also worked with some great producers and engineers. There is a lot of downtime when you assist on a record and during mixing the bands get so bored.

Luckily right around this time the playstation came out. If I wasn’t in the studio I was home glued to that thing. All the bands had them too. The music industry was changing and I bought my first daw, PARIS. I started freelancing more and doing some sound design work then. I ended up working for an online education company as their audio guy. I would edit dialog all day and sound design the flash animations that went with the lectures.

DS: How did you get involved with the games industry? and how with Dark Void?

TS: My wife was still working at Bad Animals and she would record voice talent for videogames. She was working on a game called Voodoo Vince for the Xbox. One of the guys asked her if she knew of any sound designers that worked freelance and bam, I got my first videogame! I still have no idea how I talked my way into that job.

After that game, I got a job working for Omni Audio. I worked on sooo many games with those guys over 6 years. I have sounds in over 22 shipped titles. We did all of the Guild Wars games; I think I am personally responsible for over 300 different sets of monster sounds in that series alone. Worked on Halo 2, the Sims, Vanguard, Rise of Legends and on and on. Omni is a great group and they will do entire games or just get pulled in at the last minute for emergency sounds when teams run out of time.

Airtight Games was looking for an audio team and they hired Omni. I became the audio lead on Dark Void and then when the project ended, I stayed on as Airtight’s audio director.

DS: How long was the development cycle of “Dark Void”?

TS: It was right around 2 years from vertical slice to finished game.

DS: How the concept of the game influenced the audio crew to start thinking about sound? How was the relationship with the developers, artists…?

TS: The artists would show us a ton of concept art and that would let us start to build our source libraries. The story starts out in the 1930’s and involves Nikola Tesla, so we wanted a lot of electricity source. We also wanted it to have an older feeling to it, but not make it sound like an old movie. And I knew I had to put a Theremin in the game somewhere.

There always seem to be some term that gets used for every game. For this one it was ‘Dark Energy.’ Dark Energy is what the Watchers used to power their weapons and vehicles. Poor Chase Combs. He was another sound designer at Omni who worked a ton on this game. He would just get revisions saying, make it have more dark energy. I think he wanted to kill me whenever he heard that term.

The devs and artists were great, it was just a matter of keeping up with everybody. The game changed a bunch from the original vertical slice. It started out as a more graphic novel styled game and turned into a more realistic one. That changed how we approached all of our sound design. The survivors guns had to be more realistic and the watcher guns nastier.

DS: Could you share some interesting field recording experiences? What were some of the sources for the sounds of the game?

TS: We went up to the American Museum of Radio and Electricity in Bellingham, WA and recorded all of this old electrical gear they had. We only had a day so we recorded everything to a bunch of different mics since we didn’t know what piece of equipment would interfere with which mic. It was different depending on the contraption the owner was playing with. The tesla coils were shooting out arcs of electricity all over the place. We stayed far back from that stuff. We got a lot of great source from that trip. They also had a ton of old radios and televisions that we recorded all of the switches and knobs from.

DS: What were your primarily tools for sound design on Dark Void?

TS: I used nuendo, sound forge and a fireface 800. Uad-1 cards for a lot of processing. Chase also found a great little plug in called Pitchfork. That was used a ton on the giant metal beasts in the game. When you use it on metal groans it can make this incredible giant mutant sound.

DS: And how about the implementation process? Could you tell us more about that?

TS: When you are on the ground, enemies are pretty close but when you fly around with your rocketpack, the distance to enemies multiplied by 20. If you hear all of the flying vehicles when you are in ground combat, you wouldn’t hear the ground combat. So we had to come up with a way that the radius of sounds changed depending if you were in the air or on the ground. In a game where you can just take off at any moment, this was one of our biggest challenges.

I also changed the way the air vehicles sound depending on your location. In the air, your rocketpack is playing all the time. So it would knock out all of the mids on the UFO’s and planes. Different layers play depending if on foot or in air to help compensate for the rocketpack.

Putting in music was a dream. Bear McCreary is a gamer and he was totally into the way the music would work. He wanted no repetition and he recorded all kinds of alts and solo tracks that let us play the tracks differently just about every time they are used. The music has a great progression as it changes from more natural instruments to just crazy over the top at the end of the game. He has a great blog post up on his site about scoring the project.

DS: What software you used for the implementation process? How was the sound engine of the game?

TS: We used fmod with some customization and it worked pretty well. We did have some issues with streaming too much info and we are working on solutions for that on our next games.

DS: There are a lot of different weapons in the game… Any experiences or specific process there?

We started with just the machine gun. And we made it BIG. The thing is that it was the smallest gun in the game, so we kept making all of the other guns bigger. We recorded a lot of guns for the game. The machinegun uses shotgun blasts for part of its sound. There were 10 different guns sounds used to make the machinegun.

We also made all of the weapons surround. The coolest ones are where we could put the whine from the automatic weapons in the rear speakers and the shots were in front. And always, more dark energy never hurt.

DS: And for the spaceships/sci-fi stuff and creatures? (if you wouldn’t mind)

TS: There is a Theremin mixed in with the UFO. I didn’t want it to sound too 50’s sci-fi so it really only comes out as you are banking and when you are hijacking them.

Most of the creatures are mechanical. Lots of metal creaks and groans, but we tried to stay away from too many servos. Inside of each pawn robot is a living slug. So if you are lucky enough to have one pop out, you can stomp it for a nice squish. I had a temp pig squeal attached to the slugs during production. It was so obnoxious. There was a bug where it just played over and over again if there was one near you. One of the guys from Capcom told me he was going to cancel the game if I didn’t take it out.

Another request I had was to make the sarpa (snake creatures) sound intelligent. So we made up some nonsense chants and english taunts and split them to 2 tracks. One track we put through a high pass filter and then a tremolo. That track is automated so that its volume only comes up at the ends of words and the tremolo was automated so that it would go from fast to slow at the tail. When this is mixed with the non-processed track, it gives you a little snake sound. All of this was pitched up and then added a small amount of verb.

DS: The Jet-pack is one of the key features on the game… How was the sound design of it?

TS: The jetpack was fun to make. That was done really early in the development cycle so I figured everybody would be sick of that sound by the end, but surprisingly we didn’t get any complaints. I set out to make something that was going to be on a lot, sound big, but really take up only a small portion of the audio spectrum. You really need to hear all of the other vehicles, music, dialog and weapons at the same time. We added the sonic boom late in the game to give you a better feel of propulsion as you start flying. I also made the sound louder when you first take off and then the volume comes down on it as you are flying so you can hear everything else. It was also compressed and limited pretty heavily to keep it out of the way. I think the source was a couple of jet engines with a pitched vacuum cleaner and a low rumble. Sorry, I don’t have that project here at the moment.

DS: How you do the sound design direction for the game? Any special influence or method?

TS: I’ll start building source libraries early on and I will usually stumble on to some sound or weird plug in that gives me something new. I always keep my H4 on me and that’s great for source that you didn’t expect. Everybody always wants everything bigger, but I always push back saying that if everything is loud, nothing is loud. As for influences, I always check out what the concept artists are looking at. They find great source and then if I use some of the same stuff as reference it helps the art and sound to gel better.

DS: Did you find any limitations or technical issues that prevented the team for develop something?

TS: I always want more memory, more streaming and more time! I am pretty happy with the audio for Dark Void so I can’t really complain.

DS: What would you like to have in a next generation consoles?

TS: Real time convolution reverb and more memory. Always more memory.

DS: Finally, could you tell us something about your actual and future works? What’s next?

TS: I would love to tell you about our next projects, but unfortunately everything is still unannounced.

Dark Void Website

February will be a great month for Designing Sound. We’ll have a lot of great stuff, starting with this month’s featured sound designer: Charles Deenen.

Bio

In a career that has spanned more than twenty years, Charles has leant his hand to over 200 games, numerous films, and dozens of film trailers.

In the 80’s, Charles and a partner founded the world’s first company dedicated to producing audio for computers. Charles’ work was eventually noticed by Interplay Entertainment, he moved from the Netherlands to work on Baldur’s Gate, Fallout, and Star Trek game franchises, among others.

In 2000, Charles took a break from the gaming industry to pursue sound design for films. During that time, he worked on two Fast and Furious films , among others. This work translated into a passion for fast cars, loud sound, and the ultimate pursuit of emotionally-engaging audio. Alongside long-format sound design, Charles continues to contribute to Hollywood’s trailer advertising arm.

Charles returned to game audio on the Matrix franchise for Shiny Entertainment in 2002. This led to a full time position in the role of Senior Audio Director at Electronic Arts Vancouver. Here, he managed to combine his fascination for fast cars with his history in games on the Need for Speed series.

Currently living in Port Moody, BC with his lovely wife Ana, he enjoys spending his spare-time withpPhotography, music remixing and watching movies.

Some Works

• Need for Speed – Franchise (2003 and up) – Sr. Audio Director (Blackbox) & Sound Designer
• The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008) – Sound effects editor
• The Incredible Hulk (2008) – Sound effects editor
• Skate – Franchise – Sr. Audio Director (Blackbox) & Add’nl Re-recording mixer/designer
• NBA Street Homecourt (2007) – Sound designer and Sound re-recording mixer
• Enter the Matrix (Video Game) (2003) – Audio Director & Sound Designer
• Baldur’s Gate – Franchise (1993-2001) Audio Director
• Star Trek – Franchise @ Interplay (1993-2001) – Audio Director & Re-Recording Mixer
• The Fast and the Furious – Sound designer
• 2 Fast 2 Furious – Sound designer
• Fallout – Franchise – (1994-2001) – Audio Director
• Icewind Dale – Audio Director
• Descent – Franchise – (1995-2000) Sound designer and Sound re-recording mixer
• Trailers: Clash of the Titans, Salt, Fast & Furious, Hancock, Dark Knight, 10000BC & many more

Full Credits
Charles Deenen on IMDb
Charles Deenen on Twitter
Charles Deenen Website
Photography hobbypage

The last issue of MPEG Magazine has an interesting article about the sound design of “The Book of Eli” with sound editors/sound designers Steven D. Williams, MPSE, and Eric Norris, MPSE. Let’s read:

After tackling survival in urban America in Menace II Society, Dead Presidents and American Pimp, directing team the Hughes brothers—Albert and Allen—have turned their attention to the end of the world.

In their latest, The Book of Eli, due mid-January from Warner Bros., the world as we know it has ended. In this post-apocalyptic landscape, it’s everyone for himself and no-holds-barred in the struggle for survival. Eli (Denzel Washington) fights his way across America bearing a precious book that holds the secrets for the survival of mankind.

Just what does the end of the world sound like? That’s the question that faced supervising sound editors/sound designers Steven D. Williams, MPSE, and Eric Norris, MPSE, as they approached this daunting film. “When I read the script, I saw very exciting sound opportunities,” says Williams. “Everything that ends up on the screen sonically has to fit.” The audio post was done at Universal Studios Sound.

The movie was shot in the desolate desert outside Albuquerque, New Mexico. “There are a lot of wide-open spaces,” explains Norris. “It has an Old West feel to it. A lot of life was damaged and destroyed in this apocalyptic event, so we had to build that into the sound.”

Williams had the benefit of having worked with the Hughes brothers for 17 years, since Menace II Society. He notes that their last movie, From Hell—about Jack the Ripper in 1800s London—also required the creation of another kind of world. “But for The Book of Eli, surviving the environment is a big part of the story,” he says. “Water and all other resources are scarce. Our sound had to make that harsh, unfriendly world more believable.”

The directors put a big emphasis on sound, according to Williams. “They think about it before they start shooting,” he says. “Before they shoot, they let us know what the movie is about; they send us movies to listen to and talk about what they’re thinking. We also had the opportunity to go to the set and get a sense of what they were trying to achieve.”

Williams and Norris also note that their efforts were supported by a strong team, including editor Cindy Mollo, A.C.E.; supervising Foley artist Gary Hecker; and re-recording mixers Chris Jenkins and Frank A. Montaño.

Though a post-apocalyptic world can be quiet, there are gun battles aplenty in The Book of Eli, and that was one of the more challenging aspects of the sound editing/design work. Norris notes that the Hughes brothers mentioned two films—director Michael Mann’s Heat in 1995 and the 2005 Australian film by John Hillcoat, The Proposition—in terms of how they wanted the guns to sound. The opening gun battle in the latter, says Norris, was quite effective. “You don’t hear the guns at all—just the impact, the ricochet and the debris,” he says. “It gave you a visceral feeling.” This was crucial to the movie, in which Eli gets directional cues for where to shoot based upon where he hears the gunshots.

The sound editors also got a good feel for what the directors wanted from the gun battles in Heat. “The brothers aren’t into big Hollywood-sounding guns,” says Norris. “They are more into realistic-sounding guns. Having said that, they wanted it nice and big, but not over-the-top.” Williams agrees. “They’re into realism,” he adds. “Michael Mann [in Heat] is known for using a lot of the production sound captured on set. It has a visceral feel for guns. We wanted to make sure we weren’t Hollywood-izing our guns.”

Easier said than done. One thing they learned right away was how profoundly the environment in which the guns were recorded added to the overall sound. It turns out that most firing ranges are located in canyons, giving a distinctive sound that didn’t match the film’s location. “We didn’t want the canyon tail off the guns,” explains Norris. “The big battle happens at a house in the middle of a desert with wide open spaces.” The team ended up bringing on re-recording mixer John Fasal, who is well known for his wealth of knowledge, for location recording.

They spent several trips doing test shoots, bringing the sounds back to Norris’ cutting room and comparing them to get exactly what they wanted. “Finding the ideal location is a science project,” says Williams. “You have to go out there physically and once you get there, you have to really spend time going into different areas in that location. You have to do that before you bring the whole team out there.” The two winning locations ended up being the Burbank Police firing range and the Ojai Valley Gun Club.

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Chris Latham from Engineaudio has published a video with his top 10 changes to the Unreal Audio System from UT3 to UDK.

10. New Sound Actor Icons
9. Multiple Sound Slots for AmbientSounds
8. SoundGroups are now called SoundClasses
7. SoundClass Editor
6. Ambient Zones
5. Visual of Min Radius
4. Switch from OpenAL to XAudio2
3. Improved Distance Models
2. Improved Low Pass Filters
1. Content Browser

Did you like UDK? What are your favorite tools there?

New sound for film profile on SoundWorks Collection, this time on the sound of “Inglorious Basterds”.

Director Quentin Tarantin’s “spaghetti western but with World War II iconography” sets the stage for a stellar soundscape produced by his talented sound team. In this sound for film profile we talk with Sound Re-Recording Mixer Michael Minkler, Sound Re-Recording Mixer Tony Lamberti, and Sound Designer Ann Scibelli. A basterd’s work is never done.