Today I began the dreaded task of telling our sound designer how long the sounds we’ve requested need to be. This doesn’t sound too difficult, does it? “Gimme a twang with a burble in it“, maybe you think. “And one of those whirly biz-whizzers, you know what I mean. Not too long, not too short.” And then you get an email back asking questions, wanting to know horrible things like “How long should this sound go for?” and “Could you please provide more detail?” and “What on earth is a ‘BLART’?”
The reality is, the more detail you can provide in advance, the better your sounds will be and the less back and forthing you’ll need to do. Sound can often be neglected or deemed “not as important” as art, when this is really not the case. As seen in this re-edit of Mary Poppins, by selecting some of the stranger parts of the movie, and adding howling wind, a heartbeat, and tense music, the end result becomes quite unsettling.
Another interesting thing you’ll soon discover is that your perception of how long a sound plays and how long it actually does play for are quite different. One example given to me by Andrew was that a door sound he received for Jolly Rover on its first pass played for a second, and by its final revision, it needed to be about a tenth of a second! What about that famous jingle from Zelda when you solve a room? How long do you think that goes for? Although the video runs for five seconds, the actual jingle is closer to one second (possibly even less!).
Audio is definitely under appreciated as an artform, but putting time and care into it will really enhance your game.
That’s a lovely conversation about sounds in the first paragraph. 🙂
And thanks for linking to that Mary Popping trailer re-edit – it’s great!