
Award-winning sound designer and re-recording mixer Alexander Ephraim’s career spans video games, streaming series, independent film, and marketing, among others. Some notable projects he’s applied his craft include World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Call of Duty, and Arcane Season 1.
Here, Alexander discusses his journey into the profession, provides insight into sound design approaches and how he uses BOOM Library FX and tools.
How did you know this was the career for you and how did the journey start?
In high school I had a very strong feeling that my professional career should be in film somehow. Being obsessed with movies, not just in the stories they told, but also learning how all the different roles worked to bring a script to screen. The summer before senior year of high school I was given the opportunity to take part in a five week summer film program at North Carolina School of the Arts to explore this possible future career. The program had several groups with about a dozen students in each. A bit like a summer camp, if you will. We were given a few weeks’ crash course hands-on for the most common roles for film in production and post. At the end of that period we were each granted an opportunity to write and direct our own short film while we crewed our peers’ projects. The one I was assigned to edit unfortunately had a malfunctioning audio cable, rendering the entire production dialog unusable. Without the time nor resources to commit to a proper ADR session the director and I decided to make the most of a bad situation and edit around the dialog. Such a scenario would seem stressful, which it was. However, up to this point in my life I don’t think I had ever been so hyper-focused and determined on any single task. I was completely engrossed in the moment. In the end we used music and creative editing to craft a story superior to the original intent. Eventually, the director of the project ended up becoming a production sound mixer herself. One bad audio cable launched two sound careers, is the way I see it.
Upon graduating high school, I went to film school at Savannah College of Art & Design. I knew going in that editing would be my primary focus. However, with each editing project I spent an increasing amount of time on the audio. It got to the point where the sound aspect was what I looked forward to the most, by far.
“At this point I sort of looked inward and asked myself, “If sound is the thing you get most excited about, why spend time on anything else? Just do that.”
I was so close to finishing my film degree that instead of switching majors I simply spent another year in school and tacked on a Sound Design degree. Immediately after college I spent the summer finishing a student feature film and then moved out to LA where I landed an internship at Danetracks. That lasted for about nine months while I also took on PA and assistant jobs here and there, some freelance work, and finding my footing as one does when they’re getting started.
Were there any movies that you watched as a kid that had a big impact on you?
Too many to recall, but for sound I specifically remember being humbled by the sound in Starship Troopers. Perhaps I was WAYYY too young to see a movie like that but my main takeaway immediately upon exiting the theater was how the sound affected me. About a year later, Blade had the same impact. Again, too young but my dad and I were big Wesley Snipes fans so there’s that. A short time thereafter it was The Matrix. Saving Private Ryan also deserves a mention. There are too many. The late 90’s was a great time for movies. Titanic…
Would you deconstruct these movies as you were listening to them or were you just so enthralled by the whole experience?
At that age I would say watching movies was a more of a broad experience. Magic just came together onscreen and it was a total mystery how that happened exactly. Upon reflection, I found a greater sense of immersion in the films where the production put great care into the quality of the soundtrack. These more engaging films led me on a path to research the individual parts of a production and learn what made these experiences so special. When I decided to pursue sound as a career, I revisited these films frequently.
One incredible resource were those beautiful Lord of the Rings special edition DVDs that were released around the time I started school. The trilogy was a masterclass in production that stood on its own but the special features provided a general wealth of knowledge. It was thematic during my college term; everyone was talking about them.
What was the tipping point where you got your first “real job”?
My career started out at a very difficult time in the industry. I was trying to get into film or TV in the beginning but I had some very big hurdles working against me. There was the ’08 Great Financial Crisis coupled with a WGA strike which had been resolved by the time I arrived in LA, but there was a potential lingering SAG-AFTRA strike that just kinda shut down production for the most part. That made finding work in the traditional sense a big challenge. It was difficult to land a gig at a post house because they were frequently closing, and the rest that managed to stay afloat only offered internships that didn’t really seem to go anywhere because the business was scarce. There was a sense that internet streaming was going to be a thing in the future but no one quite knew how to monetize it. I did have a few work opportunities in this area as people experimented, but the budgets were very small.
One trend I noticed while attempting to land post work is that a lot of filmmakers would claim they didn’t have much budget left after production. So I came to the conclusion that if production was where all the money was being spent then that’s how I should make my living. I think I did production sound for about a year, maybe year and a half and momentum was good. I was enjoying myself well enough, but deep down post is really where I wanted to be. Weirdly enough, as business was picking up on the production side, so too was post. One of my college friends was working at Fox during this time and invited me onto a web series called Wolfpack of Reseda. Naturally I jumped at the opportunity and this began my shift back into post. While recording ADR in between reshoots for that project I got a call from another college friend asking if I was interested in doing a short three-month contract at Blizzard. Well, you don’t say no to Blizzard so you can imagine how I responded.
“That three month contract ended up turning into a job that lasted seven years.”
You’ve done film and games, is it easy to transition between the two?
It’s easy to transition from movies to game cinematics. Cinematics tend to be the little movies that happen before gameplay or in-between moments that help move the story. They can also be used for marketing purposes. That workflow is very similar to film. Game asset creation is a bit different because you need to consider the overall direction, the type of game, how prominent any specific design will be, how it will be implemented, and how many variations and at what length. That last point is the biggest difference in terms of approach. For cinematics you can pull one specific sound or layers for specific moments. In games, you need to build your assets in a way that can spit out multiple variations. In linear work, it’s also much easier to see how the individual elements make up the whole. In games, there’s a big coordinated effort, meetings, documents, conversations with leads, etc…and often times I won’t see how my work fits until the game is nearly finished.
So, let’s take a franchise game with multiple generations of successive titles. Is there an expectation on you to keep the audio aesthetic and the elements that have appeared in earlier versions of the game? How do you approach something like that versus a brand new game where there’s no expectation?
With those types of games, you want to either play them or watch YouTube videos to get a really solid reference before beginning the work. Typically, live documentation (online spreadsheets, online word documents with daily/weekly updates, external links such as YouTube, game wikis) is provided to the sound team. Then there’s a kick off meeting to discuss the direction and needs of each project segment. Sometimes we can expect weekly stand ups with each team member to discuss what we’ve accomplished, our current task, and any problems we’ve encountered. This gives us a solid frame of reference for all of the moving parts. When it comes time to get my hands dirty, I’ll take a listen to specific examples from previous games or if a library is provided then I’ll load it into Soundminer and preview the assets. I might try to make the assets thematically the same based on my perception of what it should be, but I also might try to sneak in something new if it fits the context. Then I’ll send it off to the powers that be and await feedback while I tackle another asset.
Are you often picking up a kind of kit of parts from previous projects that give you a starting point?
Yeah, sometimes they’ll provide materials and say, incorporate these assets. For cinematics they may request those assets to be used as well but often times you have to build around them because they don’t read quite the same contextually.
“You want to be faithful to what audiences know with the gameplay but you also want the immersion audiences expect with cinematic experiences.”
It’s a balancing act.
I’m guessing, more so with games, that these are super fans and they’d recognize if you changed a commonly recurring sound, wouldn’t they?
Yeah that’s the interesting thing. With any movie or even TV show, you’re looking at spending anywhere from 90 minutes to a dozen hours invested before moving onto the next one. Certain games, especially ones with ongoing releases, most of the dedicated players are looking at hundreds of hours of game time. They know the style and will respond very vocally if it’s not hitting their expected standard.
You love to go and capture stuff but obviously that’s not always possible. How important are sound libraries to your process?
I’ve always been jealous of people who could plan recording sessions around a specific project need. The turn around time for my projects is usually relatively quick. I’ll receive project assets and the supervisor(s) will say they need to see something in a few hours to a few days. As such, I lean on commercial libraries heavily for the majority of my work. BOOM Library saw frequent use during my time at Blizzard.
“I became very accustomed to not only the quality of the sounds, but also the excellence in metadata and organization.”
During my employment I ended up purchasing all of what BOOM had to offer for my own personal use, which was instrumental when I returned to freelance.
My work generally revolves around sound design heavy projects, requiring fairly fast iteration on a wide range of themes (fantasy, sci-fi, horror, etc…). I tend to search my BOOM stuff first because it’s clean, easily searchable and organized in a logical manner. Often when I either have to move very fast, or I need inspiration I’ll sketch out an idea with the pre-designed elements and then build around them when the beats are satisfied. In calmer periods between projects I’ll sometimes go through the Designed libraries and try to replicate those sounds with the Construction Kits. BOOM Library tends to have their fingers on the pulse in the trending styles so I find this method helpful in keeping my mind sharp. However, sometimes I’ll fail in this endeavor about half way through as I get distracted with some plug-in chain or sampler patch in the process. We’ve all been there.
Do you find you use the Construction Kits as well?
Oh absolutely! I use it all. If I have a solid grasp on what needs to be done then straight to the construction kits I go. The construction kits are also super useful when I’m building out patches in a sampler or synth. The Design libraries tend to get too busy too quickly when you’re layering and mashing keys. I’ll almost always grab the construction source in those instances.
Do you use BOOM ONE, the general library?
I do indeed. Often you still need to fill out smaller moments with a more subtle approach so the big moments can really sing. Or sometimes there are entire projects that require a gentler hand. There are also instances where I need to search a broad index for a hyper specific inquiry. BOOM ONE is great for those scenarios.
How are you using ENRAGE?
How am I not using ENRAGE? That plugin touches a lot of my design these days. When you’ve been a sound professional long enough you tend to acquire a lot of gear to a fatiguing degree. At that point, everything gets scrutinized to the point of, well this plugin seems cool but I already have tools that can accomplish all of that. That’s how I initially felt about ENRAGE when it was released so I passed on it. However, sometime later I was working for a client that required ENRAGE so I bought it then. After the project I figured, well I have this tool so I may as well learn out how to use it. The thing about new tools with a more unconventional approach like ENRAGE is you start small. You work with them in a familiar manner initially. I would go into ENRAGE and just sort of stack modules much like my plugin chains. But then I realized you could parallel process inside the environment. And then I realized you could split and combine the signal and add generators like a synth. And then I realized you could modulate the parameters with envelopes and LFOs and modulate the LFOs with envelopes and vice versa and and and…you get the idea. It also does have some very unique processors that I can’t quite accomplish with any other tool. I’m particularly fond of the Tame, Splash, and Warp modules along with the Smooth, Spring, Change, and Formula modifiers.
“ENRAGE completely shifted my approach to how I think about and process my sounds.”
Suddenly I wasn’t stacking these huge plugin chains anymore (sometimes I still do tho).
What one bit of advice would you give to somebody trying to get into this industry now?
Is sound a detail you’re particularly drawn to when watching movies, playing games, or similar media? Are you curious about how creative sound is accomplished to such a degree that you’re itching to make it yourself? If you’re already going out and recording, editing, designing, or playing around with the tools, is it something you think about to an obsessive degree? Such are the qualities inherent in sound professionals. Typically this work isn’t a normal 9-5. The hours can be brutal and the competition fierce. In case this criteria seems daunting, know this: most of the very best people I’ve worked alongside fell into this work purely by accident, myself included. I didn’t choose a career in sound, it chose me.