Hat trick to Jonathan Lowe, who turned me on to his interview with Sue Zizza, which is also a small treatise to the state of the craft and its future.
The article starts a bit slow, with an oft-used example of the War of the Worlds, but as we get into it Sue drops some great tips:
“The acoustic space is not the same [on CDs] as the space where the actors record, and you can tell. With animals in a zoo, for example, there’s a reverb which can’t be corrected. So getting a sound effects artist to listen and add effects in real time actually saves time. Where the science has advanced is really in post production, with digital recording and editing. But if you don’t understand how the elements of writing and acting and sound design combine in the final product, it won’t matter if you’re producing it digitally, and Pro Tools won’t save you.”
Well said from an artist versed in sound effects. And while ProTools won’t save you, I’m not convinced even being able to produce a killer drama will save you, either (though, as Zizza notes, it might get you a gig doing field sound on a film!).
Again, the lesson is pretty clear: with enough iPods, and stories to put on them, we may get somewhere.
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