TOP TIPS FOR TRAILER SOUND DESIGN

BOOM Library has a rich collection of ready-to-use trailer sounds, as well as sounds that are ready for you to twist and mangle further until you get just the right tone that you are looking for. Either way, our sounds serve as a great baseline to getting the modern trailer sound design that you hear in movie theatres today.

From getting the right samples, to adding that raw edge, here we look at some trailers that contain BOOM Library effects. We also asked two highly experienced trailer sound designers, Michael Schwendler, lead sound designer at Dynamedion, and David Philipp, Studio Head at Formosa Interactive UK, about some of their top tips.

Finding the right samples

It’s not just about having the right samples on your hard drive, you’ve got to use them. You also have to be able to find them on your drive, layer them the right way, and add the right effects, without maxing out your computer resources. “I spend much more time choosing the right sounds rather than throwing everything into a session and seeing what sticks,” David tells us.

You can find and organize your sounds a number of ways. But to shave off time, many sound designers have resorted to third party library programs. “My workflow starts with Soundminer,” Michael says. “Soundminer allows to me to listen to my sounds in different pitches through different VSTs. Then I can render the VST into the sounds before sending them to my DAW, saving me a ton of processing power. In the latest version of SM they added the Radium Sampler, which can load up to 8 tracks. Each track comes with a ton of effects, it’s even possible to load VSTs and all parameters can be automated. It’s absolutely amazing what you can do with it.”

Mangling and layering

There are a lot of ready-to-use sounds on the market, including our own “Designed” libraries. However, to create real unique, signature sounds you’ll want to mangle them any way you can (start with, for example, one of our Construction Kits). One way to do that is to add effects chains, like those that can easily be created using ENRAGE. Another is through layering, which can be done very creatively with SOUNDWEAVER.

The Forever Purge trailer, for example, has a lot of gritty and grinding sounds from BOOM Libraries. You can easily find good designed sounds like this that are ready to go (such as with libraries like MUTATE ORGANIC).

When creating new sounds, “think in layers (frequency, sustain, tail, transient),” advises Michael. “Don’t use too many layers over each other.” You don’t want to crowd the same layers, but rather spread them out through those four definitions, otherwise your sound can become muddy.

Dynamics – Impacts

Using impacts alone isn’t the only way to use them, either. With the Cruella trailer, the composer brings in the hits and stings in order to build tension over the remix of the Doris Day song, “Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps.”

Another technique that can be highlighted in this trailer is the use of silence. Notice at 0:20 the music cuts off, leaving a massive auditory space to amplify the quote: “Whether you have the killer instinct is the big question”, with the loud crunches of Emma Thompson’s chewing afterwards.

In the same light as Cruella, the Army of the Dead trailer takes a “The Gambler” by Kenny Rodgers and adds impacts over it to hit that additional edge. The scene cuts are matched to the beat of the music, to give the impacts an almost “light switch” effect with each change – a very common practice in trailer design.

Risers and tails

The Suicide Squad trailer uses impacts in an even more musical way, replacing the entire original congo drumline for “Na na hey hey Kiss Him Goodbye” by Steam with BOOM Library slams and impacts (mostly found in our CINEMATIC TRAILERS pack). No need to mention the hilarity of using that song in a Suicide Squad trailer.

More interesting to note is the use of risers and tails. To make the switch to silence even more impactful, the composer uses long, drawn out tails to carry us a little forward and keep that attention a little longer.

Getting that big, raw boom

“That big fat trailer sound is maybe the hardest to get right,” Michael says. “It takes a long time to practice… it’s all about experience and practice. Maybe a couple of thoughts: Get the layers you’re using already maxed up, clean unnecessary frequencies, and create space in between the elements by sidechain ducking.”

The trailer for Land has many pure bass rumbles and loud booms, mastering dynamics to raise the tension and get viewers to the edge of their seat even in a trailer for a more mellow drama. Listen for how they created room in these sounds:

Compare with references

Even when you’re a master sound designer, it’s still good to use references. Find the sound you’re looking for and see if you can imitate that shape, “to get a feeling of how ‘things should sound like’,” says Michael. “Try hard, always compare, always find things to improve. Grab some videos on YouTube which sound great and try to recreate that sound.”

Final tips

David adds: “Be an active part in the audio/game-audio community and try and learn as much as you can from others. When sending reels to companies, keep them short and focus on the best sounding scenes. Anything over 2 mins is definitely too long. When criticizing the work of others, be constructive and try to see both positives and negatives.”

“Also good to hear the work you did the day before after a long break,” Michael says. “It’s very easy to get used to how something sounds when you hear it all day, even if its sounding not right.” And he concludes with a sage bit of German wisdom: “The journey is the destination.”