City Skylines

‘City Skylines’ has been chosen by London-based Sound FX Editor / Designer, Tony Gibson, who I was happy to welcome to the club for the first time earlier this year.

Tony has won an RTS award in 2009-10 & a Music and Sound award in 2011 for his work on the popular TV series, Misfits.  He also picked up ‘TV Sound Editor of the Year’ award at this year’s Conch Awards in the UK.  He currently works for the post facility, Molinare in London.

Here’s Tony’s brief for our latest theme:

“Underneath every great audio tracklay is something that to most people goes unnoticed.  But to the people who work in our field they are the bed that everything is built up from.City Skylines are very important to the our work, they help to create a base for all of our dialogue, effects and sound design to blend together and create our overall sound track.These are none specific in nature but are very indispensable to what we do.”

I’ll second the importance that these recordings are non-specific atmos beds rather than a collection of traffic passes.  My personal view is that different senses of space are useful so perhaps we can experiment with different stereo or quad, etc. recordings.  On the flip side of that, corresponding mono recordings are also useful for helping fill the centre speaker on occasion – but maybe that’s the dialogue editor in me talking!

My experience of collecting this type of recording is that it’s best to go high:  Tops of buildings or other raised viewpoints over an area of the city gives you the necessary distance from the urban melee of traffic and people so that you get that generic ‘roar’ rather than any sense of specific details.  If you simply stand on a street corner, you’ll pick up too many close sounds like footfalls and car passes.