BIO: Roberto Salvatore is a Sound Designer | Composer | Mixer | Recordist | DOP | Video Editor located in Melbourne, Australia. Working across all disciplines empowers him with a vast skill set and rich story telling techniques. He specialises in Production & Post Production servicing: Film | Animation | Television | Internet | Media Art | Dance & Theatre | Cultural Institutions and Corporate Sectors.
Roberto has worked on projects which have been included in Film Festivals and Arts Festivals globally. “Gallipoli: The first Day” won the inaugural AFI (Australian Film Institute Awards) for Screen Content Innovation. “Dugong” was nominated for an AFI Award, “Living in the Dark” and “Sukki’s Story” won the Silver Award at the Hong Kong Independent Short Film Awards and “Still Waiting2” was exhibited at New Crowned Hope Festival – Vienna, Austria.
As of January 2009, after a full time stint with award winning post facility SoundWaves, Roberto returned to his private studio and the liberating world of freelancing. From 2002 to 2007, Roberto worked at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI), Melbourne – in both Content Development and AV Services.
In December 2000, Roberto graduated with distinction from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (R.M.I.T.) – Media Arts and is invigorated when working on projects based on the other side of the planet, as he believes he’s a good swimmer!
Q. What is Sound Design for Screen Productions?
A. In a nut shell – Sound Design for screen productions is the recreation of all sound we hear in the natural word and/or the unnatural world, recorded, edited, designed and mixed for screenculture. It’s like audio paint for the screen if you will. A sound designer will take into consideration every sonic detail (with the exception of licensed music and or the composed musical score) which we hear in a ‘soundtrack’ and will ensure it propels the story being told.
At times a sound designer will cross over their design into what may be considered music or musique concrete (which to me is most inspiring). That is, when an atmosphere or sound effect (SFX) morphs to evoke a deeper emotion, or is created to be the subconscious ID or motif of a particular character or space in a film. This is also what ‘they’ call non diagetic sound. Decisions on ‘diagetic’ and ‘non diagetic’ sounds are made by the sound designer. More on these categories shortly.
Q. What is the role of a Sound Designer?
A. A sound designer skilfully recreates/designs sound. Sound is something we as humans are acutely aware of, as in we all know what the sound the world around us makes. So we are hard to fool if something odd happens in the soundtrack of a film, like a door closing and the sound = a cat meow! Sometimes this is good, but generally a cat meow won’t work for a door closing.
A sound designer goes out and records, edits and balances this ‘natural world audio’ as part of the soundtrack to accompany a screen production. It is generally broken into two catagories, Diagetic and Non Diagetic sound.
Diagetic sound = our natural surroundings eg: say someone walks thru a scene, opens and closes a door. We as an audience may hear decisions made by a sound designer the likes of: a low buzz of room tone, the characters foot steps and the rubbing of their clothes as they move across the set. All these individual sounds would be multi-tracked on the time line of a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) and controlled via fader moves so as to balance the ‘reality of the scene’.
Non Diagetic sound = sound other than what we would NOT normally associate with the live action of a scene. If we go back to the above scene, the non diagetic sound may be expressing, what that person is thinking or their psychological emotion as they pass thru the scene. So we may not hear their footsteps, or may be they are mixed very very low and wet with reverb or delay and we hear a quick barrage of reversed whispers and sub sonic hits, etc, etc. Both of these approaches are powerful tools in controlling the audiences experience and conveying what is happening on screen.
Sound design contributes a minimum 50% and at times 90% of a story. Even 100% silence will express something if inserted and designed at the right place in a film. I have always believed sound design tickles two of our five senses – our hearing and our sense of touch. Obviously we hear sound, enough said! We also feel sound! Our sense of touch is tickled more through the science of sound. Sound volume and its frequency spectrum is measured via SPL or sound pressure levels. Obviously speakers emit sound and at times, depending on the SPL and frequency, we can feel this emission of the speaker as a soundwave. The most common of this is our experience of sub woofers in a cinema or our own home theatres – when a large explosion goes off or the rumble of ominous thunderstorms in the distance – we feel those low frequency vibrations. Designing sound with the sense of touch in mind can lead to very profound moments of expression in a film.
So a sound designer is responsible for the sonic signature or sonic aesthetic of a film. They build complex multi-tracked atmospheres, design multi-layered ‘spot’ SFX. They brief Foley artists, (specialists in recording and overdubbing the ‘walking’ and ‘movement’ of human bodies on screen in addition to other specialised detail SFX). They supervise the dialogue edit, oversee or insert all mixed music and consult on the final sound mix with the director, composer and sound mixer, to shape the final sonic feel of a film.
To break this down I’ll give another example:
Scene Description: suburban back yard with fruit trees / warm summer day / lady sleeping on a banana lounge / wakes up.
Sound Design: Diagetic
Atmosphere: Very light breeze with the occasional rustle of leaves as the wind passes through a nearby fruit tree. The light chirping of cicada’s in the background along with the occasional whistle of local birds in the area, and a constant little dog bark way way off in the distance.
SFX: The occasional creaking of a rickety looking wooden fence. The occasional bee flying around, pollinating a fruit tree. The flapping of clothes on the washing line. The distant rumble of a deeply pitched motorbike way way way off slowly approaching. The light gentle breathy inhale/exhale of the woman as she rustles from slumber.
Foley: The jarring creak of metal and plastic as the banana lounge is flexed by her movement. The zip of plastic on skin as her sandal slips off her foot and lite thud as it hits the grass. The slight grinding of cloth and she moves around and raises herself.
Non Diagetic Atmosphere: Low rumble shifting and over ridding the light breeze as dark clouds roll in along with the increase in volume of the low pitched motorbike overdubbed with human and animal screams, snarls and roars as it approaches closer.
Music begins….
A bit cheesy and over the top with the screams mixed in with the motorbike, but as a scene you get the idea yeah! This might go for 30seconds though will be painstakingly multi-layered and multi-tracked for each sound effect described above and mixed so that the mood and message of the film is expressed just right – before we go onto the next scene.
Q. Who works with a Sound Designer?
A. Assuming that the picture edit is completely locked off (finished), the sound designer will lead a small crew, which includes:
Dialogue editor / ADR recordist / ADR editor: ADR = additional or automatic dialogue recording. This is performed in a recording studio when the location dialogue recorded on set is deemed unusable for inclusion, as part of the final dialogue track of film.
Music Composer: having continuous conversations with the composer is very important, so that minimal overlaps occur in a soundtrack. In that, competition or debate taking place in the final mix studio regarding what takes precedence in driving a scene is decreased ie: does music or sound design drive this scene? Having these discussions will also decrease the chance of double handling and creating undue work for each unit of the sound department. Plus ensures either unit or both, will always cover the soundtrack at any given time for the duration of the film.
Music Editor: inserts and edits all final music into the film at the appropriate points.
SFX Editor or Designer: creates complex and subtle atmospheres, rich and detailed SFX for all scenes in the film.
Foley Artist / Foley Recordist / Foley Editor: responsible for adding all body moves for characters on screen, be it foot steps, clothing rubs, eg: tacking off a jacket and/or specialised SFX eg: handling noise and the rattles of a WWII rifle.
Sound Mixer: in consultation with the sound designer, composer, director and producer/s shapes the final volume balance of all of the sound elements of the films sound track.
Q. How do you approach a project when Sound Designing?
A. I get a sound brief from the director and producer/s of the film. Their direction and what they’d want to hear is of utmost importance. This means spending time watching the film with them, and the composer, to nut out and ‘spot’ what feel or emotions are to be portrayed sonically – what do we want to tell the audience this room sounds like? When we see a particular character should we hear something the likes of a motif?
Out side of the brief, and budget depending, I go out and record original atmos and sfx – come back to my studio edit and effect these original recordings to give the film a true and original sonic identity. Again budget dependent, I assemble a small team of people to take on other roles in the sound department as mentioned above and oversee their work. And ultimately, I be as true to the story as possible by building and designing a soundtrack that is authentic to the films narrative and messages.
Q. When do you get brought onto a project?
A. Sometimes it’s in pre-production or production, sometimes it’s when the film is in the can and locked off. Sometimes a director can engage a sound designer early on, so that a full history of the project and the requirements of the sound department can be met before crazy deadlines start to loom. Best practice is, the earlier you can get the guernsey as sound designer the better chance the project has at being fully realised sonically.
Q. Can you take us through what happens on a project?
A. I recently worked on the video game de Blob 2 by THQ/Blue Tongue Entertainment. My role was to sound design and mix all the cut scenes and marketing trailers for the game.
Cut scenes are like short films at the start and then between each level of a video game, concluding with the final scene.
De Blob 2′s animation is highly detailed and required a sound track to match. There were fifteen cut scenes in all for the project. When I came onto the project some cut scenes required a little tidy up and additional fx designed and mixed. Eight scenes required a complete soundtrack to be built from ground up. Each scene was between 1.5 to 2.5 minutes in length, which amounted to over 30minutes of FMV (full motion video) for the game.
For this project everything was happening at once which is quite normal : the scriptwriting, music composition, VO recording, VO editing, sound design and delivering sound design for signoff was all going down at the same time. As was all the actual ‘in game sfx and music’ that amounted to thousands of discrete assets (which John Guscott [audio lead], Daniel Armstrong and Courtney Johns [audio designers] were responsible for.)
I had on average four days per scene to design and lay up all sfx and atmos. Some scenes were more complex than others, so I’d ask for another day to complete the design and layup. I’d begin by laying up all the atmos for the scene. Then I’d design and layup all the SFX over three sfx busses, which fed into the main SFX stem. These three SFX busses chewed most of my tracks as I required many layers to create the detail and sonic textures the project required.
After that I worked on my foley tracks, which was essentially a squishy wet spongey / kitchen glove sound (courtesy of Daniel Armstrong) for the ‘greydians’ and ‘inkys’ foot falls and some heavily cut and eq’d cloth for their ‘body’ movement. Once all the SFX were finished, I then moved onto the VO of the various characters for each scene delivered by Courtney – tidied it a little here and there if required, and premixed the VO for import into my main session. Music would be delivered from John around the same time as the VO sessions or at the end of my FX layup and I’d then mix the scene. I’d had around .5 to 1 day to mix each scene.
Some scenes were very complicated and busy, so I wanted to be sure that all the hard work put into the layup and design, would come out in the mix. I tried to keep my track count to about 140trks and had discrete stems for my dialogue, music and sfx. The project was first layed up as a 5.1 design @ 30frames per second for which I’d perform a final mix for John to sign off on. When approved this final mix was then folded down to a dolby prologic II encoded mix for delivery to the Nintendo Wii console. Deliverables were: final mixes at 30fps and also a pull down to 29.97fps for both the 5.1 and PLII mixes for other consoles.
There was a lot going on for one sound designer to do, but I got there in the end, the game got shipped. Best of all I got to work with a really talented crew and a great company that understood and took pride in attention to detail – knowing it takes time to create detail, and they invested in that philosophy. It was an absolute pleasure to work on such a challenging project. From memory I think they were working on building and rendering the picture component of the animations for 8 months or so before I got my hot little paws on it.
Q. You have a vast skill set, tell us what else you do.
A. Outside of sound design my number two role is as video editor. The roles go hand in hand, lending themselves to each other. So I can kill two birds with one stone as my studio is set up for both gigs. Some years I do more video work than sound work – like this year was all video – last year was all sound … it’s good to switch it up – it keeps me on my toes.
I am also a location recordist, so recoding and being on set is another facet of my skill set. Holding both the location recording and then the sound design role of a gig is a great way to ensure quality and continuity in the sound department. I can handle a video camera and DSLR camera to shot video, mainly short doco work or music video and I am finally doing more fun stuff like music composition and beginning to make that an income stream as well. I guess these days freelancing requires you to be multi-skilled in order to pay the bills, or at lest it seems that way in my world, maybe I got ADD … I don’t know?
Q. Lastly where can we find you & your work.
A. You can generally find me boarded up in my studio in the Melbourne CBD. I usually do all my sound design and video editing there and i mix / master at a facility if budgets allow. If there is no budget for a mix facility, then I do my best to realise the mix in my studio. It’s not a great sounding room but importantly I know what it’s limitations are and I can get stuff over the line to translate in another space.
Finding my work ….. I have held various roles on numerous projects, below is a list of projects (links where possible) where I have held the role strictly as Sound Designer. Check them out if you can / want to – I guess google is a good start if you can be bothered where no links are posted below. I will be posting a full archive of my work on my web site robertosalvatore.com.au …. I ‘gotsta getsta it’ some day …. That said I am in the process of relaunching by business name and logo under the name of ‘Pips n Tones’, so check that out early next year for my archive of work.
Selected Works:
“DeBlob2” – 5.1 Sound Designer, SFX Editor, Mixer – 6 month contract – 15x2min animation game cut scenes and marketing trailers – mulit platform delivery [John Guscott, Nick Hagger – Blue Tounge / THQ Games]
De Blob2 marketing trailer links:
“Gallipoli: The first Day”” - Sound Designer, Music Composer, SFX Editor, Mixer – Large Scale Hi-res Web site – [Sam Doust - Creative Director, Astrid Scott - Producer - ABC Innovation Unit]
“Dugong” – SoundDesigner – Short Film – [Erin White, Feather Films]
Trailer link – http://www.featherfilms.com.au/dugong/
Other Selected Gigs I have worked on:
“Overture” – Sound Designer, SFX Editor, Mixer – 15min short film [Jonathon Dutton, Andrew Benjamin Smith – Crankyfish]
“Tasmanian Mine Rescue” – Permanent installation @ the site of the disaster @ Beaconsfield Mine – Sound Designer, SFX Editor, Mixer – Installation – [Bryce Grunden, Sound Environment, Beaconsfield Mine]
“LifeBoat” – Sound Designer, SFX Editor, Mixer – Short Film – [Mikael Brain]
“Pests” – Sound Designer, Mixer – Shot Film – [Timber Dean, Kate Breen, Butterfly Productions]
“Living in the Dark” – SoundDesigner and complete Audio PostProduction – Short Film – [Thomas Leung]
“Sukki’s Story” – SoundDesigner and complete Audio PostProduction – Short Animaton [Thomas Leung]
“Still: Waiting2” – SoundDesigner and complete 5.1 Audio PostProduction – Interactive Video Installation – [Lynette Wallworth]
“Planet Protectors” – 4 Part Animation series – SoundDesigner and Mixer – [ELC Hong Kong]
“ESD Ride or THE EDGE” – 4.1 Sound Designer – Observation Deck, Eureka Tower, Melbourne – Installation – [Bryce Grunden, Sound Environment]
“Bird” – Sound Designer, SFX Editor, Foley Performer, Mixer – Short Film – [Mel Brunt, Feather Films]
“Skelton Interactive Simulator” – Australian Institute of Sport – 5.1 Sound Designer, SFX Editor, Pre Mixer – Installation – [Bryce Grunden, Sound Environment, AIS]
“Tasmanian Aboriginal Gallery” – Sound Designer, SFX Editor, Pre Mixer – Installation – [Bryce Grunden, Sound Environment, TMAG]