Need some feedback on my sound redesign

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CouchardThomas
Intern
Posts: 3
Joined: February 8th, 2014, 12:26 pm
Location: France
Occupation: Student

Need some feedback on my sound redesign

Post by CouchardThomas » February 8th, 2014, 12:35 pm

Hello everyone,

I'm new around here and it seems that I finally found a forum with mostly sound designers interested into games or movies so I'm already pretty happy about that and I also found great informations and fun reading some of the topics. I decided to make an account because I am myself (hopefully) a futur sound designer and I'd like some feedback on my sound redesign.
I mostly love games but I'm also interested in movies. I am currently remaking a fight from Pacific Rim so maybe I'll post this one but so far I've redone SC2 HOTS trailer and a few trailers for my demo reel. So here is the link, I hope you'll like them and I'd really love some feedback (good or bad) :

http://www.ctsounddesign.com/demo-reel/

Any feedback is important to me since I'm trying to get internships.

Thank you!

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Nick Output
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Joined: January 30th, 2014, 4:03 am
Location: London
Occupation: Sound Designer
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Re: Need some feedback on my sound redesign

Post by Nick Output » March 2nd, 2014, 4:37 am

Hi Couchard,

First of all, great work all round. It’s a big challenge for sound designers to attempt this kind of work on their own and you have managed to do something credible for your level of expertise and skill. Well done.

I can offer a few points of advice based on my experience creating showreels and working on the projects I’ve completed to date.

If you are attempting to do a sound to picture tracklay for some or all of your reel content be careful on length. Every seconds worth of picture means a lot of work for you to create at a very high level of delivery. Remember teams of designers have worked on this footage to produce the results you hear on a finished product. Don’t try and compete with that for 4 mins. Make it short, make it punchy.

You mentioned the wind level at the start, nice touch but probably a mute point. The mix should feel right at all levels on most/all systems. Test it on a few set ups until your happy then let it fly. Use metering and monitoring plug ins to get the right levels. See here - viewtopic.php?f=20&t=168

Maybe use a few more whoosh FX in action sequences. They are the secret trick of Hollywood style sound designers.

One other point about technique. I liked the fact you addressed all major movement in the scenes. It would be nice to hear more high frequency detail and reverb tails. This will help you build atmos. But be very careful with EQ. I speak from painful experience here. I EQ a lot less now and things sound much better. The trick is to design sounds that layer together lots of frequencies instead. The end result is a really big sound that fills most/all of the frequency range you want to fill without having to EQ lots.

You can find my showreels and work on my site.

All the best.

CouchardThomas
Intern
Posts: 3
Joined: February 8th, 2014, 12:26 pm
Location: France
Occupation: Student

Re: Need some feedback on my sound redesign

Post by CouchardThomas » March 6th, 2014, 4:26 pm

Hi,

Thank you for your answer!

Sorry I'm late, I stopped watching this thread on a daily basis a while ago.

Thanks for the nice words and for the tips. It did kinda boost my confidence since I have a phone interview tomorrow and I'm stressing out like crazy.

I think I have a big problem with the mixing it came up multiple time, I don't know if it's my ears that still kinda suck at it or if it's because I do not own a monitoring system and I do it with headphones. My professor told me it's because of the headphones but I'm not really sure it's only that. Also I do use the BX meter for my levels.

I watched your reels and I think I see your point with the whooshes and the short sequences. Maybe I went a little bit over the top on length, that's the first time it came up tho, but I've seen multiple reel that were indeed short.

I also got one other time the "high frequency" point. Does my reel sound a little bit too "in a cave" or something like this because of that? Obviously the first one is supposed to be in a cave but still, I lack the brilliant? I do feel this way at some point when I hear it.

Anyways thank you for your input and I really like the sounds you used for the planes on the sci-fi reel.

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