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00:05Welcome everybody to Beyond the Light episode 4. My name is Artyom and in today's episode we are
00:11going to talk about the soundtrack and also how we crafted the in-game audio for 007 First Light.
00:17And for that we brought in our missions and audio director Dominic Vega and also
00:22brought in the composers of the soundtrack for 007 First Light. Have fun!
00:30I'm Dominic Vega. I am the audio and missions director here at IO Interactive
00:35on 007 First Light and I've been on the project for about four years.
00:42From the from the earliest get-go kind of the core of the of the experience in Bond is is
00:47about the
00:47character and it's about the mission that he's on. He's kind of living through and playing out
00:52this story so from the very early early onset of something it's concepted out it's drawn up for
00:57the team but the audio department we go off and we start thinking about what the musical motifs
01:02are going to be for individual characters what the sound of that world or that location is going to
01:06be what kind of sound sources we're going to need to record in the future what kind of characters are
01:11we going to see what accents are we going to be hearing as we walk through the world how do
01:14we
01:14want to lay this out acoustically so how do we want reverberation and reflection and all this kind
01:18of stuff to work in the game we do some linear mock-ups as we get ready for that stage
01:22we go out and
01:23we're recording a lot of source getting ready for it but we're also prototyping in the engine from day
01:27one so as soon as we can get our hands on something new we're drawing things up and kind of
01:31working
01:32back and forth with all of our designers it's a really inspiring process it helps inspire some of
01:37the processes we see on the screen but also the work that the team is doing inspires the audio so
01:41we've got a in-house audio team that's been on the production kind of since day one shepherding
01:46this thing and the philosophy for the audio team is really keeping it tight keeping it small having us being
01:52involved as early as possible and working alongside the team while they're making it but we bring a
01:56lot of experts in we have a fully staffed music team and it's led by our composers the flight
02:00which is alexis and joe fantastic partners in music who handled the original music composition for the
02:07game we've got some of the best foley artists and performers working on all of our character sounds
02:13and bringing those things to life we sent our team out into the wild to record aston martins and handguns
02:18and all kinds of incredible source early in pre-production but also most excitedly we brought
02:22a lot of live musicians into the game so joe and alexis work a lot with some spectacular and fantastic
02:28soloists who were brought in for specialty instrumentation but we also recorded our entire
02:32brass segment at abbey road studios some of the best players in the world play out of that hall
02:37it's an incredible sounding room and it was a it was an honor and a privilege to be able to
02:42kind of put a
02:42cap on the project by recording all that stuff there
02:53i'm alexis this is joe together we are the flight um composers on 007 first light when we started the
03:01project um actually with all projects that we do we try and come in with our own angle on things
03:06saying
03:06that we didn't want to update it too much you don't want to have something that's going to date so
03:11all
03:11all all the scores for the james bond movies in the past and the games in the past they're very
03:16of
03:16their time but they you've got to be careful of not to do something that's so of his time that
03:21in
03:21the future it will date so we wanted to do something classic but with our our bent on it and
03:25we're
03:25naturally we bring our own thing to everything that we do and it was it that was our main thing
03:31was to
03:31make it sound like us but without me making it lose the core which is the sound of 007 franchise
03:37modern timeless
03:46the good good thing about bond is as a franchise because it's lasted so long it's already gone
03:52through a lot of kind of musical tastes i like to think as as children of the um 80s growing
04:00up in
04:00in the uk sitting down and watching bond films on the sofa with our dads every christmas we just
04:07have it built in that you can play it figure play a a chord pattern or a melody and you
04:13know if it's
04:14bond or not yeah you just know which was actually a bit of a surprise when we started because it
04:18when
04:18you you know you get something a franchise of this size it's like wow can we actually do this and
04:22it was actually came pretty quickly where we kind of felt that it we we have this in us
04:33because we're live players it very quickly we we put live instruments on the first you know so
04:40after we get the the idea going one of the first things i'll do is pick up a bass guitar
04:44or you'll
04:45pick up a guitar we're very quickly working in the in the real world it's not in the box
04:51and then there's a creative path that you take where you you know that you follow the music
04:56while you're playing and your ideas will come as we're jamming and then eventually it go we we
05:01we start writing for the orchestra and then that goes to an orchestrator and then we go to abbey road
05:06because bond is brass yeah it's all is those those strings you know when you're hearing it and it's
05:15bond it's also the players a lot of because because we're in the uk the the a lot of the
05:19players we use in
05:20the in the brass and the string sections have played on multiple bond either games or films
05:26in the past which is amazing so you have the trumpeter who knows they know exactly what
05:30they're doing the same as us when we were working on it writing the musicians walk in and they know
05:35what they're doing is ready this is a bucket list thing for a for a composer especially a british
05:40composer recording james bond abbey road with 40 of the best musicians in london recording bond
05:48abbey road i mean it doesn't get any better than that one thing that i felt was really important
05:58for for something that has such a cinematic pedigree and it has such a legacy um is that there is
06:04a lot
06:04of the real world brought into the soundtrack right and that isn't just the music necessarily but it's the
06:09sound effects it's going out in the field going out to an airfield north of stockholm and recording
06:14drive-bys and engine revs of an aston martin it's uh sending one of my sound designers out into the
06:20blistering snow to record pistols uh to get quiet non-reflective tales for the game um and yeah and
06:27then of course bringing in live musicians there's a there's a color and there's a flavor that you can
06:32feel in music um when you've got people actually playing on top of it and playing alongside i think joe
06:38and
06:38alexis's music um does a lot to lift the pixels on the screen it brings you into the world it
06:44reinforces the the fantasy of being james bond in this new world to him but then more importantly
06:49they brought in all these great players so they always knew when to bring in a specialist to play
06:53on top of something um that extra little element i think is something that if you're an audiophile
06:59and if you're just a lover of the bond music that's something that's kind of for you it's for
07:02people out there that can recognize and appreciate that little extra care um that goes into crafting
07:07the sound we want the sound of the game to be very handcrafted we don't want it to feel artificial
07:13we
07:13don't want it to feel hyper processed we want it to feel like i'm playing a film now let's see
07:21what all
07:21the fuss is about there's greenway
07:32so bond is this really sonically rich ip um there's a lot of stuff to pull from we sort of
07:37internally always
07:37talk about it like the vault the themes are in the vault we we have access to all this great
07:41material but we also kind of want to treat it with a lot of deference and respect and and uh
07:46i think
07:47playing that right on top of his very first you know footfall onto the ground in the opening of the
07:51game is going to feel really wrong for this origin story when we were drafting up ideas for how the
07:55game
07:55should sound when we were in pre-production one kind of idea kept coming up in my mind which was
08:00he should earn his themes james bond earns his themes and i think seeing that out written out and just
08:04you know
08:05clear white text on the black background is a concise way to kind of tell the team and tell
08:09our composers what we're looking for we're looking for something that's understated but we don't want
08:14to subvert the thing that you came for
08:23the opening of the game where he's not actually 007 yet has a completely different feel to much later in
08:29the game where he's actually you know he's done a few missions by this point so there's the the kind
08:34of experience of bond at that stage was was kind of like how how much of the well-known things
08:41we
08:42were going to see you're earning those themes as you work through the game and then the setting um you
08:47know would trigger different um instrumentation ideas for us i mean obviously most of the tracks all
08:54the way through how we'll have strings and brass and the the bond the bond instruments but we tried to
09:01keep we tried to also have a kind of specific for each each kind of new level palette as well
09:07again i
09:08don't i don't want to ruin too much about the settings of the game but there's some quite different
09:12settings and so we could use some quite interesting um different instruments and we also kind of got the
09:19got the vibe of like oh yeah this one's more you know this one's more kind of classic bond yeah
09:25this
09:25one's more kind of let's push it mod the modernity as much as possible so we talk through that and
09:32then we'd um and then we'd kind of split the level into you know into roughly kind of pieces of
09:39music
09:39that we might need for that for that level we try and start that at the beginning every time yeah
09:45introduction to the level then into some exploration and obviously there's going to be some stealth because
09:51you're a secret agent and then there's going to be some action we're also weaving in if there's any
09:55specific characters either friend or foe going to introduce some of their themes if they're important
10:01through the level as well and the rest of it was just kind of going with it yeah we just
10:05keep writing
10:06keep writing keep writing until it starts that's enough we've got it we've also got the cinematic
10:11moments as well which can be you can go really kind of big and there are some moments in the
10:15game where
10:15you can really let rip and bring in the themes and bring in the bondiness and go for it
10:20along with earning his themes another thing that i really wanted to to really lay out for
10:24the player here was that instead of having this sort of through line or an underscore that could
10:29blend in and be a little bit more anonymous this is james bond so we want to be a little
10:33bit more
10:33out there and in front it's a music forward ip so the way we kind of uh designed the direction
10:39of
10:39music for the whole game is that every mission should sonically feel like its own record right we have
10:44a theme we have an idea and we kind of have a high point we have a tentpole that we
10:47want to hit
10:48that sort of gives us two levers to play with while the character himself is moving through the world
10:53he's earning little themes here and there you're hearing these sonic motifs when he does something
10:58particularly bondy the world itself is this huge character and that you know that extends to sound
11:02design that extends to acoustics that extends all over but musically speaking we want to put the music
11:07in that space now sometimes that's just music coming from radios diegetic music that you hear
11:11globe trotting fantasy but then other areas it's actually embedded in the underscore what i think
11:16the flight did brilliantly is they found this beautiful medium between moving between southeast
11:22asian music and then into the bond score and back out into uh this uh downtown london gala experience
11:29back into the bond motifs we're sort of traversing this very carefully and trying to bring out the
11:35most of everything the last thing about the album feel of every mission is that as opposed to having
11:40music kind of sit in the background or music is maybe a little bit more subtle or subdued we sort
11:46of established this term internally just called a needle drop and so we would just when we were working
11:50with the flight when we were working with our music team we would just kind of identify a moment where
11:54we say like this is where the record scratches and the needle drops here
12:13because bond is such a kind of high velocity but high high pedigree ip
12:19he is a tough character to sonify right we're working with a character who is really comfortable
12:26in high octane high action sequences and those are a blast for the sound team to work on but also
12:31has
12:31to work and operate in really subtle and understated ways and that's something that i think io has
12:36perfected over the years but something that we wanted to integrate into all of our systems
12:41when we think about these aspects of audio design we're thinking about voice design how do
12:47mpc actors react and sound based on what the character is doing is he eavesdropping is he
12:52doing any kind of um social espionage acts that we need to kind of draw the player's attention into
12:57mix some other elements down to get out of the way how do we let the acoustics of the space
13:02play in
13:02is that very important voice playing from you know around the hall through that door and around the
13:08corner we want the player to be able to pinpoint that in a really subtle space
13:11the high octane stuff is just an absolute blast to work on i mean it's a challenge um it's something
13:16that we put a lot of resources into but it's the kind of thing that you know we really these
13:21these
13:21climactic set piece bond moments we want to surprise awe wow and it's that classic challenge of we want
13:27to hear our hero we want to we want to be with him and and hear what he's saying we
13:32want to hear an
13:32incredible motif and we want super loud sound design in the mix all around you it's really challenging
13:37but it's uh it's a lot of fun for us to break off um now for gadgets those are really
13:41delicate
13:42right and i think that that's something that the team had a lot of fun with but it's really
13:45challenging because what is a gadget for a cool young james bond in the modern day look like it's
13:51a little bit different than every generation's fantasy of gadgets that kind of represent the future
13:55the sort of analog that we came up with was that a lot of these gadgets are housed in these
13:59sort of
13:59pocketable items that uh could presumably make it past security and so one of our sound designers who's a
14:05who's a bit of a mad scientist and is always playing with little toys and old cameras and just
14:10gadgets and and a little electronics kind of handled a lot of the source recording and getting all of the
14:15elements together for our gadgets they are an amalgamation of synthesized sounds and this organic
14:20reel to kind of keep it grounded and feel like it's in the world my biggest hope is the player
14:25walks away
14:25with an appreciation with a feeling of uh of of high audio fidelity with a kind of an excitement
14:32um to to stick the headphones back on to turn the speakers up um to enjoy themselves being bond
14:38it's a kind of a globetrotting adventure of a game and i hope that the sound actually takes them on
14:42that journey as well we hope you enjoyed today's episode and if you haven't seen it we also got a
14:48couple other episodes already online feel free to check out the channel below uh pre-order the game
14:53now to earn yourself a free drugs upgrade for 007 first light releasing on may 27th and stay tuned for
14:59more
15:00content on this channel we have a lot more coming your way thanks for that and see you next time
15:08agents a very short life expectancy
15:13and if you do get caught we will deny ever having heard of you how does that sound when do
15:19i start
15:30this one
15:30you
15:30you
15:30you
15:30you
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