- Hollywood Tech Nerds
- Posts
- Getting Some Sound Advice
Hola Hollywood tech nerds!
In this week’s post:
Subscribe to get Hollywood Tech Nerds magically delivered to your inbox every Tuesday!
Getting Some Sound Advice
Happy almost-August dear readers, thought I’d do a few quick newsy bits on the very important but always underappreciated topic of sound!
What Did He Say???
Janko Roettgers has a great writeup on “streaming’s mumbling problem,” as he puts it, and the ways streaming services and audio hardware makers are trying to fix it. This got me thinking: why don’t the streamers take a cue from video games and have variable settings that you can change depending on your audio setup?
Sometimes I’m watching a movie at home on my big screen TV and soundbar, other times I’m on a plane with my AirPods and a tablet. Shouldn’t there be significantly different options for these two scenarios?
I suppose a major complication is that various mixes are director-approved, and there’s no way to fully vet every possible iteration as it would appear on a streamer. Still, in a world where people’s home entertainment options are so varied, it surprises me that there isn’t more opportunity for ways to assist in calibration for maximum viewing enjoyment.
The Majesty of Murch
A few years ago, the now-defunct Sound Magazine printed a fantastic interview with the legendary Walter Murch, which is filled with incredible advice and insights on sound for film and TV.
…I recorded the sound effects and mixed George Lucas’s first feature film, THX 1138, and we couldn’t afford to record the footsteps for all of the actors at a studio, so I took upon the job myself. And this was particularly difficult for these robots, who were the equivalent of the clone soldiers in Star Wars. They were just completely covered with metallic faces, and the idea was that they weighed 300kg and were made of metal.
…I created special shoes and I went to the Museum of Natural History in San Francisco, a big space, and recorded myself walking in that space, but then the nightmare of how to synchronize all of this, each footstep at a time, and I had this headache.
If one robot is walking, the footsteps need to be in sync. If two robots are walking side by side, those footsteps need to be in sync… Suddenly, I discovered, that if it’s three robots, none of them has to be in sync because the brain simply can’t keep track of everything!
I’ve since called it my ‘Law of Two and a Half’ – something happens between the numbers two and three.
Generate Your Own Sounds With Adobe Firefly
IndieWire has a good writeup of a legitimately cool generative AI tool: Adobe Firefly’s text-to-sound function, where you can use your own voice to shape sound effects in a project.
Firefly also has the benefit of only using Adobe-created and licensed training data. Regular readers know I’m as AI-skeptical as anyone so I’ll be the first to admit it: seems pretty cool!
Online Sound Libraries
Of course, if you don’t have access to Firefly but you’re looking for free use sounds for your projects, I highly recommend FreeSound.org and SignatureSounds.org, lots of great stuff at both sites!
Microsoft Gives Up On Film/TV Sales and Rentals
Interesting news on the streaming front: Microsoft has decided to end its film and TV store:
“Downloads will continue to be available on Windows and in HD max resolution,” Microsoft says, but you’ll have to continue using the Movies & TV app on Windows or Xbox to play the content you own, rather than accessing it from another service — unless your purchased movies are part of Movies Anywhere in the US. Microsoft is not offering a refund for purchases, either.
I think we’ll be seeing a lot of this over the next few years: entities that rushed into offering media content even when it was an awkward fit will likely increasingly exit these spaces. PlayStation next? It’s hard to say, since Sony actually has a library of film and TV it owns, unlike Microsoft.
I was always curious about who was buying movies on platforms like Xbox and PlayStation. And I don’t mean just using either console to stream Netflix or YouTube, I mean actually making a purchase tied to either’s proprietary store. I’ve had every Sony console since the PS2 but I have never rented or purchased a movie on one.
Which company awkwardly offering movies and TV shows do you think will bail on content next? Hit me up at [email protected]
Kernels (3 links worth making popcorn for)
Here’s a round-up of cool and interesting links about Hollywood and technology:
Warner Bros. Discovery is splitting into… Warner Bros. and Discovery. (link)
The next hot concert ticket: anime VTubers??? (link)
The AI tech bros are driving themselves insane. (link)