Audio in Computer Games

The journey of a GDPM who don't know how to audio

[jaime-clarke-abertay]

The completed trailer.

[jaime-clarke-abertay]

650 Word Summarised Report (including post-feedback action)

I elected to create a trailer for the table top card game ‘Magic: the Gathering’, produced and distributed by ‘Wizards of the Coast’.

My initial idea was to emphasise the notion of player choice, which is a strong feature of the game. The trailer would utilise as iconic symbol of choice from the game, the five-fold path, and use a slogan in the vein of “Choose your path”.

While I considered showing individuals playing the game in different ways, I believed non-enfranchised viewers would not be drawn in by this. Instead I decided to make use of the game’s extensive back story and evocative card art. I would display art of five of the game’s more prominent characters, each accompanied by their own line of dialogue.

For background music, I wanted something to evoke the feeling of an “epic trailer”, in line with the game’s grounding in High Fantasy and over-the-top action.

  Once I had chosen appropriate characters from the game, I devised a script and storyboard:

The five-fold path would display while the narrator speaks for the first time, then fade to black; each character would then appear in turn, fading in from and then to black, accompanied by a line of dialogue and some sound effects summing up the philosophy of which of the five colours of the game they represent; then the official logo of the game along with the narrator saying the slogan.

I located six images, one of the five-fold path, and one for each character.

I also obtained a video clip of the game’s official logo, which appears in all official video trailers for the game.

Using Adobe Illustrator, I edited the images I had obtained so that the characters portrayed were approximately the same scale, and so that each appeared illuminated by a spotlight.

The sound effects I required were almost all generated during a group Foley session with other students taking this module.

After several hours listening to “epic” music compositions, I identified a track, ‘Aeterna’ from producer ‘Liquid Cinema’, featuring a suitable segment, opening with silence and building to a dramatic climax, and exactly thirty seconds long.

I recruited five volunteers to contribute their voices towards the characters. Unfortunately, misadventure prevented the first organised recording session from being successful, although with the assistance of my cast I was able to obtain the audio I needed for my final sound effects.

The second recording session was successful, although I was required to voice two characters due to the absence of one of the cast – however, the sound quality of the recording conditions was poorer this time.

  Audacity was used to edit the character voices. I selected the best takes, trimmed each one to five seconds or less, and amplified them.

My sound effects were also created in Audacity, changing the pitch of several and layering many others together to create suitable composite sounds. These sound effects were then layered with the character voices to create my character segments.

Using Adobe Premiere, I imported all the audio, Illustrator files and logo clip. The illustrator files were arranged in the correct order for the video track and had cross-dissolve transitions added. The character audio segments were aligned with these as audio track one, and the background music was inserted as audio track two.

Character images alone made the video seem a little sparse – I located five more pieces of game art , edited them with Illustrator, and inserted them into video track two, trimmed short and aligned with the end of each track one clip so they would appear only as brief flashes on-screen, using a dip-to-white transition.

  Post-Feedback:

A number of alterations were made based on feedback I received.

I increased the length of the “brief flash” images so they were visible for longer, as they appeared too briefly, preventing my audience from properly interpreting them.

The video was still too static – it was recommended I apply the Ken Burns effect to my images, to create a sense of motion while still focussing on important aspects of the images. This proved easy to implement in Premiere, by adding a pair of keyframes to each character segment between which I panned and zoomed in on key character features.

It was also initially recommended that I increase the bass level on certain voice clips to compensate for tinniness, but later feedback on the modified voice clips was that I should increase the gain of certain clips in lieu of this, which would also resolve the issue.

References:

Argyle, S. 2011. Chandra's Phoenix. [online image]. Renton, WA: Wizards of the Coast Corporate HQ. Available from: http://www.thebagofloot.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Chandras-Phoenix_Buy-a-box-Promo.jpg [Accessed 24 November 2014].

Barger, R. 2013. Tarmagoyf. [online image]. Renton, WA: Wizards of the Coast Corporate HQ. Available from: http://archive.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/activity/1258 [Accessed 24 November 2014].

Briclot, A. 2009. Garruk Wildspeaker. [online image]. Renton, WA: Wizards of the Coast Corporate HQ. Available from: http://archive.wizards.com/Magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/downloads/wallpaper/garruk [Accessed 12 November 2014].

Briclot, A. 2010. Gideon Jura. [online image]. Renton, WA: Wizards of the Coast Corporate HQ. Available from: http://archive.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/arcana/430 [Accessed 12 November 2014].

Briclot, A. 2009. Jace Beleren. [online image]. Renton, WA: Wizards of the Coast Corporate HQ. Available from: http://archive.wizards.com/Magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg_daily_downloads_wallpaper_jace [Accessed 12 November 2014].

Briclot, A. 2009. Liliana Vess. [online image]. Renton, WA: Wizards of the Coast Corporate HQ. Available from: http://archive.wizards.com/Magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/downloads/wallpaper/liliana [Accessed 12 November 2014].

Chandra Nalaar. n.d. [online image]. Available from: http://hdw.eweb4.com/wallpapers/3122/ [Accessed 12 November 2014].

DS106. 2014. Layering sounds in Audacity. [online]. Available from: http://ds106.us/handbook/tools/layering-sounds-in-audacity/ [Accessed 22 November 2014].

Felix, J. 2010. Mind Unbound. [online image]. Renton, WA: Wizards of the Coast Corporate HQ. Available from: http://archive.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/arcana/750 [Accessed 24 November 2014].

Planewalker Symbol. n.d. [online image]. Renton, WA: Wizards of the Coast Corporate HQ. Available from: http://archive.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/arcana/208 [Accessed 12 November 2014].

Premium Beat. 2014. Creating a "Ken Burns" Pan and Zoom effect in Premiere Pro. [online]. Available from: http://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/ken-burns-effect-premiere-pro/ [Accessed 26 November 2014].

Rigney, B. 2011. Visara the Dreadful. [online image]. Renton, WA: Wizards of the Coast Corporate HQ. Available from: http://cryptcrawler.deviantart.com/art/MTG-Visara-The-Dreadful-252398429 [Accessed 24 November 2014].

Staples, G. 2012. Captain's Call. [online image]. Renton, WA: Wizards of the Coast Corporate HQ. Available from:http://archive.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/arcana/995 [Accessed 24 November 2014].

[jaime-clarke-abertay]

Changing the Bass, part 2

Spoke with Laurie at the drop-in today, and he suggested, after listening to each of my sound clips, that maybe altering the bass level wasn't what was needed after all, and I would be better off just increasing the volume of certain audio segments (particularly Liliana's and the Narrator's) in the Premiere video project. So, still a change to make, but a less fiddly one.

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Ken Burns Effect (and other edits)

I've spent the last hour relearning how to play with keyframes in Premiere, in order to add the Ken Burns effect to the images of the Planeswalkers. To add variety, 3 of them zoom in on the character's face, and 2 of them (Jace and Chandra) focus on the characters' hands instead (as these two are manipulating magical energies, which certainly makes for a more interesting focal point than Jace's face, which is shrouded, and is suitable enough for Chandra, who has good focal points at both her face and hands). The effect is present across the entire stretch for which the character is visible, as otherwise, the zooming in would happen too fast, and be disorienting to the viewer. I also increased the length of the secondary images from .3 of a second to .6 - while this is still extremely brief, it gives just a little more time for the viewer to process what it being shown. A final change was to replace the dragon with a phoenix - since green and black are already displaying huge/fearsome monsters, the dragon was just more of the same. The phoenix is still frightening (huge killer bird made of FIRE, after all) but increases the piece's sense of variety, which is one of the ideals I am striving towards.

[jaime-clarke-abertay]

Changing the Bass

I'm not sure which audio segments would benefit most from changing the bass level - my inclination after listening to them and playing with the bass is that Garruk, Chandra and the Narrator all need some modification. I will probably leave the voice changes until next week - there are a number of drop-in sessions for this module early next week, and I will hopefully be able to get Laurie to listen to each of my voice clips and individually judge what needs done to each to improve them. In the meantime, it looks like the Ken Burns effect really is very easy to implement in Premiere - I just need to learn how to pan around what's being displayed and edit keyframes (which is what Phil Smy taught me how to do for my contrast video, and what I immediately forgot how to do...)

[jaime-clarke-abertay]

Presentation Feedback

Showed the first draft of my video today, and received the following feedback: The secondary images I included (Tarmagoyf, the dragon etc) did not show for long enough - I made them as brief as possible, but I am familiar with the game and what these images represent, so while I was still able to take meaning away from these brief flashes, my non-Magic playing audience was not. I should increase their length and their presence in the video, as a way of emphasising the variety of the game. I wasn't particularly happy with the quality of the voice-overs, but I was reassured that they were acceptable. However, Laurie warned me that some of the voice work sounded a little tinny (probably a result of me amplifying the voices). He recommended that I boost the bass on my voices to compensate. David suggested I make use of the Ken Burns effect. He said that he wouldn't normally recommend it as a technique, but since I was using static images, the Ken Burns effect would be a way to add a sense of motion to my video. Apparently, it's perfectly achievable in Premiere as well.

Positive feedback for the music (although Laurie would have liked it a little louder): apparently it did indeed capture the idea of an "epic" trailer (which was what I was hoping for). David liked my choice of images. Personal feedback - I would like to find a way to fit my trailer to widescreen, but I think that means starting again with my base images and editing them very differently.

[jaime-clarke-abertay]

Last Minute Revisions

Since I was not able to present my trailer today, I used some free time this evening to make a couple of tweaks to the video. First of all, I removed all the Fade-to-Black transitions. When these were viewed full screen, they were grainy/pixelly and looked sub-par. I discovered that a cross-dissolve transition actually had the same effect (fading to black) but without the aforementioned graininess. Secondly, I moved the character segments closer together - they were unnecessarily far apart while I attempted to emphasise the fade to black, but moving them closer together had no real detrimental effect and shaved 2 seconds off the video (which was slightly too long as it was).

Thirdly, and most significantly, I added 5 more images, each one third of a second long (assuming my maths is correct). Each image was a flash of a monster or dramatic magical event for each colour of the game, visible for just a moment as the Planeswalker cross-dissolves out of sight. Unfortunately, these images are not as well aligned with the dialogue as I'd like - I placed them at the end of each character segment, just as the cross-dissolve is finishing, because this was the most aesthetically pleasing way to do it. However, it might be better for some of them to appear earlier in the character segment (like the Tarmagoyf appearing in concert with the loudest of the animal roars in the Garruk segment, or the soldiers appearing as the cheering starts in the Gideon segment).

I think this would require me to shorten certain character visuals though, and increase the time that these secondary images appear in the video, which I would prefer not to do - I feel like it would compromise my original plan without providing sufficient gain.

[jaime-clarke-abertay]

Background Music

The background music I am currently using is a 31 second segment of Aeterna, by Liquid Cinema, from their album of the same name. I have also been pondering using part of "From the Ashes We Will Rise" by Immediate Music instead (whether I change it depends on the feedback I receive during my presentation).

http://liquidcinema.com/liquid-cinema http://www.immediatemusic.com/#!music/c1t3s

[jaime-clarke-abertay]

Game Trailer - Magic the Gathering; Version 1

This is the first version of my game trailer for my Audio for Computer Games module at Abertay University. It is my interpretation of a trailer for the card ...

I only realised tonight that I did not actually upload my video to Youtube - oops! Well, it's up there now, and here's a link. This is not the final version. Some tweaking still needs to be done. However, I am confident that it reflects what the final product will look like.

[jaime-clarke-abertay]

Putting the Trailer Together

Once I had all the pieces, I was able to start putting the trailer together.

I edited my sound clips in Audacity, exporting my finished sound segments for each Planeswalker as .mp3s.

My images were edited and had effects added to them in Adobe illustrator, and were exported as .ai files.

The trailer itself was created in Adobe Premiere. I imported the sound segments, images, background music and video clip of the Magic logo, and set to work arranging them correctly, and trimming them to size. I deliberately left space between each clip, so I could have both a fade-in-from-black and a fade-to-black on each (leaving space between each created a pause, to highlight the effect of fading in/out. Once this was done, I added in the sound segments to the first audio track aligned with the appropriate images in the first video track, then inserted the background music into the second audio track.

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The Images for my Video

As I stated in my post about creating the script, I wanted to be minimalistic with the images I showed in my trailer, forgoing filming live images in favour of more evocative stills that better described what the game has to offer in terms of story. I essentially wanted 6 images for this trailer: one for the Magic: the Gathering logo, and one for each of five significant characters in the current Magic story.

For my characters, the choices were obvious: "the Lorwyn Five" are five Planeswalkers (individuals from the story with the power to move between different fantasy worlds), each of whom represents one of Magic's five colours of mana (the colours of Magic are highly significant to the game, each being capable of doing different things within the game - mixing and matching cards of a colour (or different colours) are one of the ways players create unique play experiences for themselves), and who are all significant characters within the story. I made one alteration to this lineup: I replaced Ajani Goldmane, a "leonin" (an anthropomorphic lion race from the story), with Gideon Jura, a human character. I believed that while this detracted from the diversity of the lineup, it presented a character the audience could more easily relate to. I also knew that I wanted the white Planeswalker to follow immediately after Garruk, and I would have wanted both characters to have deep, growly voices - for the sake of audio diversity, Ajani had to go.

There are many images of these characters online, both official and fan-made, so I really was spoiled for choice - in the end, my criteria for selecting images became whether they were available in sizes greater than 1280 x 1020 (so that I had larger graphics to work with); whether the images were wider than they were tall (so that they fit the landscape screen better); whether they featured some amount of background which helped to characterise the subject (such as Garruk being surrounded by wilderness, Liliana being surrounded by dark, swirling energy etc); and whether the Planeswalker was set the right distance from the viewer (I didn't want some pictures where they were far back, and then some where they dominated the picture - I wanted each to look equal in size and stature).

I wanted the characters to be framed in the video, almost as if by spotlights illuminating them and leaving some of their background visible, while leaving the borders of the image shrouded so that the fade to black transitions appeared more natural. To do this, I imported the images into Adobe Illustrator, and overlaid the entire picture with a black rectangle. I then reduced the opacity, and gave each rectangle a white-to-black gradient radiating out from a point centered over each Planeswalker. This provided a unifying theme for each of the images. They were then ready to be imported into Adobe Premiere.

I had also decided by this point that I wanted another Planeswalker icon which I could use at the start of the video, or in place of the logo at the end (as I was using the logo produced by Wizards of the Coast, rather than making my own, which I was concerned could be an issue and might have to be replaced for my final submission). I found a suitable image of the icon, but it featured a white background, which was at odds with the other images I was using. So, into Adobe Illustrator it went. I placed a black rectangle over the top of the whole image, and sharply reduced its opacity, creating a grey filter that dulled the colours of the image and gave it a grey background that fit more closely with the muted tones given to my other images by my spotlight effect. I then applied a white-to-black gradiant over the top of the image as well, so it too was highlighted by a circle of light fading into darkness at the sides.

I wanted, if possible, to use the official Magic: the Gathering logo at the end of the video, not only because it makes for an attractive graphic, but in order to mimic the trailers created for Magic (which used to always end on this logo, although more recently they have began to use them at the beginning of their trailers).

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Sound Effects

My trailer required a number of sound effects, almost all of which were generated during a class Foley session. Each character had a background noise of some sort while they spoke, and two of them also featured another effect as the image transitioned away. Garruk's segment features the sound of "wild beasts". These were contributed by Ian Morrison and Lauren Baird, doing impressions of a horse and a tiger respectively, which I then pitch-shifted down to create the sound of savage monsters. The most audible of these noises (the transition sound) is Phil Smy, pretending to be a bear (and also pitch-shifted). Gideon's segment features the sound of a marching army, created by the sound of feet walking across gravel combined with brushing a piece of metal against the same gravel (recorded by myself on my phone during my failed dialogue recording session - I'm quite surprised it came out as well as it did). The cheering at the end is a mix of "crowd cheering" and "battlefield roars" created by the class during our Foley session.

Jace's background whispers were created during my successful dialogue session, with the pitch lowered very slightly to make it different from the cast's speaking voices.

Liliana's undead army-on-the-move sounds are comprised of a jingling chain, the sound of Laurie's leather jacket being dragged across the recording studio floor, and "zombie" howls created by another (unknown) member of the class.

Chandra's igniting fire sound was simply the noise of myself blowing out a lit match. Following some advice I found online, I discovered that it did indeed create a credible "whoomph" like a large fire springing suddenly into life. The crackling flames I wanted for her background are a cause of concern for me, as I was unable to start an actual fire anywhere where I was able to record. Instead, my mother, at my behest, recorded the sounds of our fireplace at home and emailed them to me. I am concerned that this strains the bounds of the "We must create and record all sound effects ourselves" criteria for the trailer.

[jaime-clarke-abertay]

My Cast

My trailer wanted to emphasise the idea of variety, so I wanted every character in the trailer to be voiced by a different person. Fortunately, I approached several of my friends for help with this before my period of ill health - this meant that when I was finally able to record audio, I did already have a cast ready and willing to lend their voices. It feels appropriate to credit their involvement somewhere, so:

Alex Porter as Garruk Wildspeaker

Emily Davidson as Liliana Vess

Rachel Southern as Chandra Nalaar

Glenn Cullen as Gideon Jura

Myself as Jace Beleren

and Robert Meek as the Narrator.

Unfortunately, Glenn was unable to record audio this weekend, and given the short notice, I didn't think it appropriate to try and recast the character, so I performed the lines for both Jace and Gideon.

An initial attempt to record in Abertay's recording studio failed due a number of reasons (primarily that none of us knew how to work the software in the studio - while we did eventually figure it out, we then discovered our second problem - the microphone I had signed out was faulty). Instead, we recorded a few days later, using an extremely large and heavy microphone borrowed from one of my flatmates. Instead of the lovely quiet recording studio, however, we were forced to use one of the seminar rooms in the university. While this was preferable to any of our flats (in all of which there is significant ambient noise) this did result in us recording in an environment featuring background noise from the room's PC and ventilation system, which affected the overall quality of my recordings.

While Rachel and Emily's lines were both recorded (relatively, given the ambient noise) cleanly, Rob and I are both very soft-spoken, and as a result, our lines were on the quiet side and needed to be amplified during the editing process. I ran into an unexpected issue with Alex, though - every line he spoke into the microphone came out sounding fuzzy. We made several attempts at a clean recording, and each time, his voice sounded off once recorded. There's something about the pitch of his voice that seems to require a different recording technique, but I had no idea what to do about it, so I've used it as recorded and hoped for the best.

[jaime-clarke-abertay]

Storyboard/Script

My first idea for the script came during our first lecture for this module. A slogan "Magic: the Gathering. Choose your path." came to mind, and from there the rest came quickly (there were, of course, a number of changes between then an now, but the premise remains the same). Magic is not generally an exciting game to watch being played, unless you are already an established player and can easily follow what is happening. A trailer in which players are shown playing the game would only be interesting if it featured elaborate fantasy sequences showing the action being represented by the cards (which requires, at its simplest, a variety of elaborate costumes, and really could only be done justice by extensive CGI work. Neither are practical for my needs). I wanted to capture the rich and flavourful lore of the game, and use that as the hook to reel in new players. I decided that the best way to achieve this was to simply use a number of evocative pieces of art from the game, with transitions between each (preferably fading to/fading in from black) to add a sense of dynamism to otherwise still images, each accompanied by a different line of dialogue (seemingly the words of the character depicted in each piece of art) which summed up what the character represented in-game. This would capture both the game's flavour and its variety - one of Magic's greatest strengths is the diverse number of ways it provides a person to play it. The result is this:

The screen is dark. Only the Planeswalker icon, the symbol that represents both players in the game and the idea of choice (it is a road that splits into five paths) is visible. Background music starts to play.

Narrator: Where will your choices lead?

The Planeswalker icon fades to black. Garruk Wildspeaker, a green Planeswalker, fades in. His words are accompanied by background noises of wild beasts.

Garruk: Will you unleash the savage forces of nature?

Garruk fades out, and Gideon Jura, a white Planeswalker, fades in. His words are set against a backdrop of marching feet.

Gideon: Will you work with your allies for absolute order?

Gideon fades out to the sound of an army cheering, and Jace Beleren, a blue Planeswalker, fades in. His words are set against a background of inaudible whispers.

Jace: Will you seek perfection through the pursuit of knowledge?

Jace fades out, and Liliana Vess, a black Planeswalker, fades in. Her words are set against quiet moaning and dragging noises - the sound of the undead on the move.

Liliana: Will you cheat death and destroy your enemies?

Liliana fades out, and Chandra Nalaar, a red Planeswalker, fades in to the sound of a fire igniting.

Chandra: Or will your passion burn away those who would hold you down?

Chandra fades out, and the Magic logo, a Planeswalker icon formed out of blue fire set above the words "Magic: the Gathering" appears.

Narrator: Magic: the Gathering. Choose your path.

Fade to black. Music ends.

[jaime-clarke-abertay]

Reasons for Hiatus

It has been a number of weeks since I posted anything to this blog, and several more since I posted anything pertinent to this module's assessment.

My health has not been particularly good for a while, and while I have been struggling to get to grips with my mental wellbeing and attempting to resolve a number of troubling issue in my personal life, my university work has suffered greatly. As such, this blog has been completely ignored, along with any work for this module over the past few weeks. With the deadline for my game trailer imminent, I have attempted to execute my plans for the entire assessment over this past week, to varying degrees of success.

[jaime-clarke-abertay]

Fear and Unease

A video intended to create fear and discomfort in the viewer. Made for an exercise in creating moods (specifically, fear) using audio and video effects, for ...

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If you check the caption for each image, you will find a link to a Youtube video, and a note of which segment of that video is pertinent to the image.