Sound design techniques and tools for weapon sounds
Sound design is one of the most important areas in audiovisual production. The interaction between audio and video must be complemented in such a way that the viewer is completely involved in the situation or experience that we aim to provide. It consists of the creation of the whole sound environment for a production of any kind. The sound design takes into account several aspects, such as dialogue, music, ambiance, and, of course, effects. These aspects are technically known as ‘sound planes’, and they add realism to the image itself. Today, we will talk about effects; in particular, about some techniques and tools that you can use for the weapon sounds of your TV series, movie, or video game.
Let’s start with the good news: there are several tools to create excellent quality sound effects without having to rely on massive and expensive recording studios. Don’t forget that the main tool in sound design is creativity. Sound designers must pay attention to the sounds around them and capture the ones that catch their attention and can be useful later.
While it is always possible to use sound libraries (and there are dozens of thousands), you can also record or recreate the sounds yourself, and, in this case, there are many paths to choose from. Generally, all of these paths end up in a DAW such as ProTools, or Digital Audio Workstation (more about some tools later). Similarly, a portable recorder with a built-in microphone usually solves a lot of problems, since, in a lot of cases, portability is essential. The question is how good the quality of the microphone is, as well as how much-unwanted ambient noise it records.
In addition to a shotgun microphone to isolate background noise, a video camera will also be ideal if you don’t have a portable recorder or even a still camera with video mode. Once you transfer the video to the computer, you can separate the audio from the video and use it for your projects. It may not be of impeccable quality, but the important thing is to start working with the tools you have at your disposal.
Of course, you can also use much more sophisticated tools. A good example of them is Weaponiser. You know, it is common these days to find sound design tools specifically oriented to a particular task within the creation of sound effects for video games or movies. Turbine, for example, was created to simulate the sound of jet engines. Weaponiser is perhaps the best tool for the sound design of weapons and related war sounds.
Weaponiser works as a layered sampler, with sections and controls oriented to the needs you normally have with gun sounds, which are not only shots but also other details and elements such as cartridges, handling, or the very tail of a shot. For this purpose, the plugin has a special library including several types of weapons and foley of the same.
Each internal module has modification functions including a synthesis system, pitch processing, duration control, envelope editing, MIDI control, and various options for synchronizing sound layers. It also has an awesome effects section that includes a limiter, saturation, ring modulation, flanger, transient shaper, and gate, among others, being able to control parameters according to time and generate sound and effect drive sequences.
Similarly, DaVinci Resolve 18.1 from Blackmagic Design can be an excellent choice for this purpose. Resolve 18.1 includes a new AI-powered voice isolation effect that can suppress unwanted loud noises in voice recordings. By incorporating this effect enabled by DaVinci’s neural engine into the Montage, Edit, and Fairlight modules, it is possible to isolate dialog in a recording to remove the sound of an airplane or even an explosion, for example, in order to hear the voice more clearly. This feature is ideal when conducting interviews or recording in noisy locations.
On the other hand, the dialog leveling effect in the inspector processes recorded dialog and levels the volume without the need for tedious adjustments to clip gain or automation curves. Controls include a real-time scrolling waveform graph, focus presets, and three processing options that make natural sounding audio easy to achieve. Thanks to new vector keyframes in Fairlight’s automation curves, it is now possible to graphically modify them with conventional tools. In addition, an innovative display mode is provided when making changes to automation, which makes organizing curves and keyframes faster and easier, as well as a grid that offers the ability to place clips on the grid according to timecode or musical time signature.
If you are producing a series, a movie, or a video game that includes a lot of gun sounds, and you don’t know exactly what to do to make it sound professional, don’t hesitate to contact us. Enhanced Media Sound Studio is happy to help you.
