Ric Viers - The Sound Effects Bible: How to Create and Record Hollywood Style Sound Effects

Rics book is an excellent introduction to techniques for producing professional sound effects for films, games, etc. Its packed with nuts-and-bolts information that beginning and intermediate level sound designers/editors will find useful.

Randy Thom, director of sound design, Skywalker Sound

Ric Viers eats, drinks, and breathes sound effects. If youre a sound designer, editor, or filmmaker, youll need the Bible!

Tasos Frantzolas, founder of Soundsnap.com

The Sound Effects Bible is the go-to resource for anyone serious about sound creation! Ric Viers generously shares his real-world experience in an absorbing and hard to put down guide to this fascinating corner of the entertainment industry.

Aaron Marks, composer/sound designer and author of The Complete Guide to Game Audio

Fun, funny, and the most informative source Ive seen on the what, why, and how of creating sound effects. This books a blessing of inspiration, common sense, and trade secrets, a must for everyone planning to get their own microphone for recording our sonic world. Thanks, Ric, for sharing your experience creating those 100,000 humongous, teeny, sloshy, brittle, honking, shimmering, etc. etc. sounds.

David Sonnenschein, author of Sound Design

Ric Viers manages to not only detail the technical aspects of an underappreciated craft, but explain how a sound effects expert approaches this work from a practical perspective offering specific examples of how one can capture and later utilize audio that will add depth and character to images.

David E. Williams, Editor-In-Chief, Digital Video Magazine

If you are interested in learning about the details of sound effects for your own productions this is the book!

Frank Serafine, Award Winning Sound Designer/Composer/ Multimediaist, Tron, Star Trek, The Hunt For Red October, Brainstorm

Ric has really nailed it on this one. There is no other A-to-Z book that a media maker who has limited knowledge of sound effects can use to get a great overview of how sound is matched to visuals conceptually and technically and then with this knowledge actually make a movie soundtrack.

Alan Howarth, Composer/Sound Designer for Star Trek, Halloween, Poltergeist, Dracula, Stargate, The Hunt for Red October, and The Little Mermaid

HOW TO CREATE AND RECORD
HOLLYWOOD STYLE SOUND EFFECTS

RIC VIERS

MICHAEL WIESE PRODUCTIONS

Published by Michael Wiese Productions

12400 Ventura Blvd. #1111

Studio City, CA 91604

(818) 379-8799, (818) 986-3408 (FAX).

mw@mwp.com

www.mwp.com

Cover design by Kevin Capizzi

Interior design by William Morosi

Copyedited by Bob Somerville

Photography by Brian Kaurich

Printed by McNaughton & Gunn

Manufactured in the United States of America

Copyright 2008 Ric Viers

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.

The author acknowledges the copyright owners of the motion pictures from which single frames have been used in this book for purposes of commentary, criticism, and scholarship under the Fair Use Doctrine.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Viers, Ric.

The sound effects bible : how to create and record Hollywood style sound effects / By Ric Viers.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-932907-48-3

1. Motion pictures-Sound effects. I. Title.

TK7881.4.V54 2008

791.4302'4--dc22

2008022846

Printed on Recycled Stock

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank all of the people that have helped me along the way in my journey. Its been quite a ride so far.

To Bill Kubota and Dave Newman of KDN, for letting me borrow their DAT recorder to record my first sound effect.

To pros like Randy Thom (The Empire Strikes Back, Indiana Jones andthe Temple of Doom, Forest Gump, War of the Worlds) and Charles Maynes (Fantastic Four, Spiderman, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, Twister,From Dusk Till Dawn), for hanging out on forum sites to share their wisdom and insight with other sound designers.

To my mom and dad for all their support.

To Gary Allison, for being a great friend and partner.

To my son, Sean, for being me only smaller.

To my wife, Tracy, for telling me to go for it.

Thanks!

FOREWORD

Sound Effects The reason you picked up this book, at least the reason you might be browsing through it right now. The discipline has an intriguing legacy wrapped up in the art form from the first talkies to Treg Browns legendary work at Warner Brothers on their cartoons of the 1930s through the late 1950s to the digital soundtracks of Middle Earth and The Matrix. It has always been a playground of simile and metaphor and has perpetually challenged its practitioners to higher and higher levels of excellence.

Sound, like image, must come from somewhere and the documentation of that endeavor is what this book is about. Hopefully you can take away from your time with it new understanding and techniques that will allow your work to be something fresh, something different, and most of all something brilliant.

Working with sound presents challenges not dissimilar to photography. In the process of capturing sound, we have many similar concerns and production techniques available. Microphone selection is similar to the selection of lenses and filters a photographer might use, and your recording device and media might also impart sonic qualities to your source material. Other tools in the process will allow great latitude in manipulating the sound in directions impossible in nature.

Ric presents a great set of recording commandments that are invaluable guidelines for your recording, but as they say, you should know the rules before you can stretch, or break them but there is more to things than just that. The first rule of recording, no matter what, is: MAKE SURE THE RECORDER IS RECORDING. Even if the levels or mic placement is not quite right, if something crazy happens, at least you will have some record of it. So, with that in mind get to the rest of this book.

Charles Maynes, January 1, 2008

INTRODUCTION

How in the world did I go to film school to learn the craft of directing movies but end up as a sound designer? I ask myself that question all the time. The answer always comes back the same: necessity.

The day I graduated from film school, I quickly pranced off the stage clutching my diploma expecting someone to be waiting for me with my first film deal, which, of course, would lead to my very first Oscar. Needless to say, there was no one waiting for me and I still havent received an Oscar yet. Upon graduation, I found myself in the midst of the dawning age of digital filmmaking.

I quickly jumped on the digital bandwagon and began amassing every piece of gear and software I could find to make my own movies. Soon thereafter, I sat down at my new editing workstation and stared at a screen that displayed my first finished video. The picture looked great. The dialogue levels were set just right. The music nearly pushed me to tears. However, there was something missing. It felt dry sonically. I needed sound effects.

I told my wife of my dilemma and a couple of weeks later, I found my very first set of sound effects CDs wrapped with care beneath the Christmas tree in our small apartment. I remember opening the gift. Had I only known the significance of that moment, I probably wouldnt have gone so rough on the wrapping paper. Needless to say, that was almost a decade ago and now I am writing this introduction sitting next to a sound effects library of hundreds of CDs totaling more than 250,000 sound effects. But thats not whats so significant. The truth is that more than 100,000 of those sound effects were created by me for commercial use through the biggest sound publishers in the industry, including Blastwave FX, my own sound effects publishing label. I never saw that coming.