Week 2 - Posted on 2014-04-21 by Will Dawson

Happy Easter y'all!

Much of this week's activities followed in the vein of last week's activities: many weeks' worth of RRF curriculum, including the midterm and a mix assignment. In the interest of streamlining, I went with my strong suit and picked the metal song for the mix. There was a lot of processing and editing already on the "raw" tracks that I wish I could have done a little differently, but it was all usable except for the guitar sounds (kind of an essential part for metal, no?). The sounds provided had waaaay too much gain set on the amp, and it all sounded hissy and flat. Luckily, they tracked a DI with the amp, so I was able to reamp the tracks through UA's ENGL amp sim and get a sound much closer to my ideal.

New this week was my first in-studio lesson with Greg. His priority this week was to run through all the job titles and important people that are involved in a movie production. We especially (of course) focused on audio and on post production, and talked about the roles of each person, the dynamics of workflow and communication between people, and compared and contrasted all this with music production and game design. My homework is to explore more deeply into this on my own, dig through movie credits and look for patterns of people that work together a lot, and generally get my head into it more. I also have to watch a movie of my choice and analyze the audio work, sound design, etc. Greg has given me a lot of pointers and I definitely have more of an idea of what I am listening for. So far, I've only gotten through the first 20 min of the movie (Batman Begins) and already I have TONS of notes and have been able to pick out a lot of things Greg mentioned.

Onward and upward. I expect I'll finish the RRF curriculum in the next few days, and we'll see what the future holds.