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charlie007
MemberOvomorphSep-11-2012 11:51 PMI'm a chinese student, I really like Prometheus. There is a Prometheus's feature about the sound creation.. My major is Film sound design, I am very interested in this feature but I'm not good at understanding Engish, could someone help me translate it? I thank you in advance.
The video is: [url=http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNDM0OTE1OTY0.html]Prometheus Documentary[/url]
THX...You know ,for the English speaking people this is very easy to understand,but for me ,I really want to know the details of this feature..
And if you want to know some chiese things or some knowledge on Audio, I will try my best to help you ~ Send me a message and we can talk.
*Moderated by Svanya (do not delete/lock). Please help this guy out. TY
3 Replies

Necronom 4
MemberNeomorphSep-12-2012 8:55 AM@Charlie007. I had a bit of difficulty making out a few of the words because they were mumbling alot and spoke really fast.
Anyway, here's the rest from (5:20): I hope it helps!
When i first read the script and i came across this one scene, the abortion scene, i thought, i know what the perfect sound's going to be for this. At home i have a 35 year old blue ?? amazon and her name's skipper and she has such a huge repertoire of different vocals and emotions and i thought i could try to capture all of her vocalizations.
I had to ?? mic for weeks to get this, but some of them i turned into alarms and different beeps and stuff and then, the other one i turned into the alien baby, so she was really versatile as far as her vocalizations. So that worked out really good.
When we first discover that something is unique, in the cave and we see these ampules and David refers to them as 'sweating', you see this glistening, sort of ice, forming on it, that kind of pops and on the ?? stage, we went "where are those things from back in the 70s, pop rocks" and (John Koochy?) The ?? manager said, "you know something, i think i actually happen to have some of those." So he got some out and he tried a couple of different things, he put it in his mouth and put a microphone right there, we took a piece of metal and got it just a little bit wet and dumped it on that and i think he actually did some on stone, with a spritzer bottle.
So between all of that we had the sound of this popping, cracking, sort of evolving sound but It just harks back to just playing with Prometheus.
(Clip from the film plays)
During the time Mark was mixing the dialogue for Prometheus there's alot of dialogue in helmets, in the space helmets and if any of the dialogue needs to be re-done or re-recorded, it's an issue because you had these big (luscite?) helmets, that kind of go all around your head and it, doesn't really distort but it really kind of takes away the dialogue if it needs to be re-done, so we're trying to find a way to record the talent, with these helmets on again.
So they went to London and did it and it didn't match, you know, you have this issue of matching dialogue. One of the solutions, which was a total experiment, was to record (alter verb IR?) which is impulse response of the space, that you can apply and then plug in later and it'll get that space and i did some sign sweeps inside this little helmet, put some mics in there, you know, very simple and created this impulse response and gave it to Mark ? and he gave me a call, a day later, saying "Hey, how did you do that? that's great, it matches dialogue and they use it" and it turned out to be this huge help because they were flying to London to record this technique, well now they could actually have the talent in London and record it, send the files over and add this (IR?) to it and they could get the right balance of helmet sound verses dry sound.
(another clip from the film plays)
There's something about a 3D movie, particularly one like Prometheus, where the 3D field, their not sticking things in your face, it's all about depth and detail and something about that depth and detail is, it pulls you in, psychologically, it pulls you into a space. Also, in Prometheus, we were supposed to maybe have a sense of tension created by that space, the fact that you're immersed in it and you have a 7 point 1 environment, where you can play things maybe more dynamically behind you. I think it does a really good job of putting you in the scene.
I tended to bring the music forward a little bit, so i wasn't using the far back surrounds, i was using more of the mids, which gave it a little more of a cohesive feel to it and that allowed doug to play a lot of stuff, all the sound effects and things in the back, which made it wider feel, it had a lot of width to it and depth so it helped in clarity and in depth.
And obviously, you know, stereo imagery changes with the amount of density in a track, so you have to exaggerate stereo so it gets more dense, which we use the (sound in one for?).
Yeah, i'm really proud of the entire soundscape of how the entire movie ended up sounding, 'cos again, it's science fiction, you're trying to create a world and if you get just one part of that wrong, it doesn't quite feel like it's really happening, or feel like it's really there. I think it's very hard to convey that sense of 'this is actually reality'.
By the time you've finished a film, particularly one like Prometheus, that has alot of richness and detail and alot of visual effects that come in at the last minute, you're sometimes so close to the process, that it's nice to take some time, step away and watch the film and sort of confirm that you're happy with the decisions and the way it went and it's something you can be proud of. Hopefully that happens in most films and i think it definately will happen in Prometheus because there's so much heart and soul, from so many people and it was such a collaborative process,probably the most collaborative process that i can remember being a part of and that collaboration was from Ridley all the way down, through all of us, everybody.
We all got along well, we'd all share ideas very effectively and we all were so enthusiastic about the film and i think it really showed as far as how the film turned out.
The End.
The poster was good though!

Cyberdeath
MemberOvomorphSep-12-2012 1:58 AMHere's the first half, maybe i'll do the other half tomorrow if no one else wants to pick up at 5:20.
Prometheus is a film that begins with a question, and throughout the course of the film you are trying to answer that question, and it involves where we came from, and what our beginning,s are and how that came to be, But ultimately in telling that story not only does it ask a question, but it really presents itself as an adventure.
It's not, per say, pigeon-holed into being a horror film or a thriller, but it really has a sense of adventure, and a sense of wonderment, and Ridley did an amazing job of bringing all those genres together and i think packaging up into one film.
Because this is an adventure film, and has a little bit of the space horror genre intensity to it. For sound it will have this great dynamic range. It could be really quiet and creepy and maybe sometimes quite big and powerful, and it really provided really just a huge palette to do a lot of different things.
(part of the movie plays)
When i first read the script i noticed there was very similar elements that are in the original series, like there's the storms, there's tracking devises, there is similar characteristics but the story is different. I wanted to capture some of the original series because i know there's a huge fan-base and the sound of the original series is amazing, it's really really good for it's time. So i was listening to characters like the doors and in the original series the doors were very airy, just a simple air sound and so i developed that into modern technology, some of the elements i used to create the doors were like opening cans and can releases, soda streams, recording that, and xerox machines, and other different machines just used in a different way where is subtle, it's not a heavy sound, but it's light and it still has an air quality to it.
Ridely Scott relies on sound quite a bit for his films, i mean thats part pf the story telling experience and that's one of the many tools that he uses in telling his stories, and in a film like Prometheus where so much of it has to be creative and conceptualized from scratch. it's really rewarding because he really gives you this (sort of) blank pallet.
Ridley tends to go, I wouldn't say "broad-stroke", but he wants a feel, he wants a sense of flow to the film, and he wants to emotionally get what he needs out of each scene.
The whole adage of there is no sound in space is very hard to do in action movies for different reasons, even thought it's real science that there is no sound it just doesn't convey any sense of size or scope or grandeur to sometimes not have sound in those.
We treated it both by putting sound, the sound of the ship, and no sound at all, really depending on where it served us dramatically. If the score was saying something we let space be silent except for the music, if it were revealing something quite large and interesting like when you first see the Prometheus, it seemed appropriate to give it a sound and have an evolving sound to it, that grounded us in what some of the sound for the movie would be like because we went for an "old school" sound with Prometheus and made it sound very much like something based on present-day Earth you know with rockets, and crackles, and metal, and shake and things like that. It just seemed that was going to be one way we were going to differentiate our human earth from our soon to be discovered alien planet.
Isolation was a key on the ship, the crew was very limited and you feel that you are in this very vast spaceship, and we wanted just to accentuate those moments of feeling of isolation on the ship.
For the alien vocals we ended up using a lot of humanistic qualities because they are kind of a cross between humans and non-humans, for the Engineers in particular, but we wanted to also make it feel like if you had to talk to this person you could actually understand a language of some sort, so we did create a language for him too. For the other creatures in the film, when you see them they are representative of amphibians and snakes and that genre of creature because when you look at them that's kind of what they appear to be.
Ron, the dialogue music mixer on the film, has got a music background, has got a studio at home, and has got this incredible low voice that he can do, plus he has got this recording chain that makes it seem even more rich and big and deep, and so he would go home at night, and record different syllables and vocals and lines and words based on ancient languages, ancient greek and San-scrit, and he they would come in and sit down in the morning with Daniel Irwin, our dialogue editor and they would craft little conversations for times when it was appropriate in the film.
(5:20)
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