ALIEN LIFE
Behind the scenes designing sounds for the next alien blockbuster
ALIEN LIFE is our latest sound effects collection, packed with vocalizations like snarls, squawks, grunts, and groans perfect for aliens and other nasty creatures. While the Construction Kit is the carefully recorded and curated collection of animal sounds and props to be used as sources, the Designed is the fully processed, ready-to-use version of the collection, deriving solely from the Construction Kit.
Jannik Hähn was one of our team of sound designers who spent many long hours crafting the perfect, gruesome extraterrestrial sounds for your next film or video game. In the last blog, we discussed with him his experience recording some of the animals for the Construction Kit. Now he walks us through his process for designing sounds.
The final sounds for the Designed pack are visceral and organic, dripping with alien realism. It contains sounds to help create the vocalizations and bioacoustics of complex alien lifeforms of all sizes. From the massive lineup of animal and prop sounds in our Construction Kit, we were able to craft an entire new selection of high-quality alien sounds for you, ensuring immediate use in your projects.
ALIEN REALISM
“The vocalizations must sound realistic,” Jannik says. “It shouldn’t sound like you just laid out five different elements. It’s sometimes really difficult to blend them and make them sound like one sound. And it shouldn’t sound like the original; you don’t want to hear this creature and think, ‘Oh, that’s a lion.’ So you’ve got to process it in a way that the result isn’t obviously from an animal.”
“There are many ways to do that, and each designer brings in their own preferences and style-choices. This allows us to draw inspiration from each other, to share techniques, and also to create a constant cycle of feedback.
“I love learning new things and exploring new approaches. And when I listen to other designs I can simply ask: wow, how did you create that low end, what is the processing chain on that tonal screech, how did you get this stereo image. Not with the intention to copy but rather to expand my own knowledge. A library like this is always a team effort and working with a group of top-tier designers for sure is a pleasure.”
CONCEPT AND VISION
It’s important for Jannik to first establish the overall concept and vision of the creature. Is it a carnivore or herbivore? Is the alien large or small? Is the mouth big or tiny? That gives him an idea of the end goal and what sounds he should choose from the Construction Kit.
“Thinking about a creature with a very large mouth,” Jannik says, “the sound could be more open than a creature who has a smaller one. Or, for instance, in The Arrival, where those aliens didn’t have a mouth at all and sounded more like a mumble. If you have something like that, then you’re going for a whole different sound design. It’s helpful to have something to go off of visually and / or to have a strong vision in your head.
“I think about the differences between certain states: maybe attack is a short burst, but idling could be a long, low growl. And what about pain? There I want something with a tonal element, where the pitch goes up. I collect those ideas and take note of them while designing.”
The characteristic can also change the sound. “If it’s a slimier creature, I’d look for more wet sounds, but for an insect-like creature with an exoskeleton, more crunchy, dry sources.”
BLUEPRINTS
Jannik describes another helpful element of designing sounds. References. “It’s really important to not get lost, to have a comparison or blueprint of something that can remind you what a good sound actually is, either as a complete blueprint or just in some elements. Like a reference that only showcases how something can be highly processed but still sounds organic, or a reference that shows how timing should work with creatures of certain sizes. Or a reference that in your opinion has the perfect frequencies featured to stand out and so forth.
“This is not at all about copying something. I think: What was specifically interesting for me about aliens, or what differentiates them from our other creature libraries? I wanted to have them sound more abstract than a wild animal.
STARTING THE DESIGN
By carefully crafting each element of the sound design, Jannik ensures that every detail contributes to the overall cohesion and effectiveness of the final product. To make the process more streamlined when dealing with a massive number of sounds, he has some steps to follow.
“I’d usually start with some effects chains laid out,” Jannik describes, “and then start going through the library and start pre-processing some stuff that I think works and basically create a smaller construction kit.”
TOOLS OF THE TRADE
To ensure the alienness of the sound when editing, Jannik uses a range of morphing tools, reverbs, pitch shifting, and distortions. He aims not only to mangle the original but also to glue it all together, and he often processes on the bus level of the sound.
“Sometimes it makes sense to use morphing tools, but you have to take care as the results can be hard to control and it can sound synthetic very often and very quickly. For the tonal element of the sound, you can put certain pitch and frequency shifting tools on top of all the sounds, so they basically run into one frequency shifting tool together.”
FINDING THE GLUE
Movement can also act as a glue. “If you’ve got multiple elements and you put one tremolo over the whole thing, it can help glue it together,” Jannik explains.
“Whatever you use in music can also work, like the basic glue techniques: compression, multi-band compression, distortion, and stuff like that. And using one sound as a lead sound that controls the gain envelope of all the other sounds, so when one sound fades out, all the other sounds fade out. It’s something I mostly pick ENRAGE for, because you can set it up for such tasks in no time.
“Also, reverb – even if it’s not like a big reverb that you don’t notice necessarily, but a very short reverb – acts like the resonance a large creature would have. You can imitate that presence with some smaller reverbs, which glues it together.”
AN ABSTRACT SOUND
“For example, a sabre-toothed cat. You would probably more or less use a lion or tiger and maybe pitch them a bit, but you wouldn’t do a lot of abstract processing because you still want it to sound like a wild cat. I didn’t want that for this library; I wanted a little bit more processing and abstract sound.
“For an alien sound, it’s a similar approach as for any other creature, just with maybe more abstract processing, more experimental processing. And that is again where references come into play: once you start processing organic sounds, even if it only is distortion, it can very quickly sound synthetic, destroying all emotions, pulling the listener out of a scene, the sound might sound unbelievable in a very bad sense. It is easy to get lost in this process, pushing it further and further and losing the initial vision. Listening back to these good references instantly refreshes your ears and brain, helping to listen to your design again as if you would listen to it for the first time, being much more critical about the realism and context.”
GET ALIEN LIFE
ALIEN LIFE showcases our unique high-quality audio and design and gives you the ability to create distinct vocalizations and bioacoustics for all sentient entities in your universe. Use these animal sounds and prop effects in the Construction Kit to create your own sounds for extraterrestrial voicings and movements or use our expertly crafted effects straight away from the Designed pack.
Read more about the creation of the Construction Kit here.
