Sounds for Movies: Junk Yard Sounddogs Recording in Uruguay

May 7, 2010 - PRLog -- PR Log (Press Release) – May 6, 2010 – On April 25th, after completing his fifth season on the hit Fox TV series “Bones” as Supervising Sound Editor, Rob Nokes was en route to relax in beautiful Punta Del Este, Uruguay. At that moment another job came in, recording metal robot-like sounds for Hollywood Sound Designer Craig Henighan (Date Night, Night at the Museum, Tropic Thunder) who is working with Director Sean Levy on his new film “Real Steel” starring Hugh Jackman.

In the near future, Robot Boxing is a popular sport in which the two thousand pound metal giants battle for a championship. After reviewing the awesome footage and receiving notes from the ultra-creative Henighan, Nokes set forth on his vacation with two microphones and two Zoom H4N recorders. Upon landing in Montevideo the Sounddogs.com crew was put into action sourcing locations. A report of a spooky abandoned 1884 mill in San Carlos, Uruguay led to an excellent metallic semi-trailer bed hoisted on blocks. Slamming metal poles and plated shields on the lengthy rickety trailer bed was dangerous, but due to the lack of large rubber wheels that would otherwise dampen the metallic resonance, the risks were worth the rewards. The mill itself was visually awe inspiring as a horror film location, however, it only provided some metal door frame shakes and sheet metal bending.

When Nokes records a library for a Sound Designer he focuses on recording powerful rich detailed sounds that the designer can manipulate and contort into what they see on screen. A simple allusion would be providing a palette of paints to a painter. With a sound effects palette it is important to record as many locations, surfaces, vibrations, performances, and types of metal so that each color on the sound palette in unique. With this in mind the Sounddogs, Nokes, Silvia Barreiro and Cecilia Formoso, were off to Montevideo to record at two factories with giant steel machines that date back to 1910. Ten-ton hydraulic punch presses stamped and punched with incredible force. Only in countries like Uruguay can you go back in time to find historic machines like these.

On to the greatest find of all, on the outskirts of San Carlos a small city of 27,000 people, there is a junk yard with five hectares of steel, metal, iron, girders, augers, chains, frames, poles, balls, gears, appliances, cars, rims, fence, wires, nails, rods, barrels, buckets, and more. The owner Sergio was a very friendly man with sixty-seven dogs and his only request was that we did not break anything in the junkyard. We insisted on buying the dogs lunch for the two days (1,000 UY pesos or $53 USD) we spent recording at his junkyard, compare this to recording outside of Los Angeles where it may cost $500 or more to record at a noisy location polluted with constant traffic and airplanes.

Now on to the real work of mastering and cataloging the sound effects for Henighan so he can create his Hollywood movie magic! If you’re interested in seeing and hearing more about Sounddogs’ recording adventure in Uruguay please visit http://sounddogs.com/blog/

About Sounddogs.com
The first Internet sound effects library in the world (1997) with 500,000 sound effects and production music tracks immediately available for download in WAV, AIF, and MP3. Call 877-315-3647, 714-948-8383, AIM: sounddogssupport, Yahoo / Msn: sounddogs, and support@sounddogs.com.

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Sound Effects and Production Music via immediate download for content creators and editors since 1997. We pride ourselves on a vast, easily accessible sound library for download in .aiff, .wav. and .mp3 and on hard drive as the SoundStorm SFX library.