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Randy Alberts of the popular DigiZine has written a great article combining some excellent footage straight from the “houses mouth” of Steven Ticknor and his sound designing techniques. Steven Ticker is the sound designer responsible for creating the sonic soundscape on Terminator 3: Rise of The Machines. Good article if you are interested in the work of Steven Ticknor, sound designing and film sound tracks in general.

Apparently (I’ve not had the pleasure of seeing her yet) T-X is a vocally modest type of girl that you might take home to meet your mother, until of course she starts to take on the new T-101 Terminator. Being a Terminatrix (Kristanna Loken) must be a tough gig, and one would expect your gear to take quite a bashing in the process of “kicking the new T-101 Terminator's butt all summer long in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines”. (DigiZine)

A progressive film such as T-3 naturally comes with a price tag. “With a budget of around $180million, Terminator 3 has the biggest budget in history” (Cinemascreen). The expense comes in the attention to detail, in not only the visuals, but also the highly detailed sound track by Steven Ticknor. Being a sound designer on T-3 means you really got to know your T-3 terminology and have a good understanding of what either the Terminator or Terminatrix is actually doing at any time. Each “micro-sound associated with T-X's arm” (DigiZine), has been carefully chosen by a team of pros, included in that team is sound designer Steven Ticknor.

Steven Ticknor is a sound designer experienced in the Sound Scoring business having worked on such films as Spider-Man, Spy Kids 3D, and Darkness Falls, before Rise of the Machines. “The Arm” sound scoring was constructed with a Pro Tools|HD. And the article on the DigiZine website contains some great insight into how the mind of Steven Ticknor works in breaking down the complex set of movements a T-3 makes in order to sound design.

Countless sections of “The Arm” scene (and the entire film) are small segmented sections of detail where the traditional “Foley” approach to sound design would be laughed at in such circles. So when T-3 gets into “morph” mode you know Ticknor and the team have been busy with the Pro Tools|HD system.

Sound Designer Working – Taking On a City

A large-scale project like T-3 inevitably means quality sound designers of the class of: Steve Flick (earned two Academy Awards), supervising mixers Kevin O'Connell (a massive sixteen Oscar nominations) and Greg Russell (eight nominations), along with sound editors Ken Fischer and Jay Jennings.

The DigiZine report, in quoting Ticknor, continues to map out some interesting occurances of exceptionally challenging sound designing techniques. One in particular is when the team of experts had zero live audio footage to work with and had to create the entire sound design from scratch, like the Terminator 3 bike chase with 22 year old John Conner.

Ticknor edited and mixed down the six-minute scene in his ProControl room for the first temp. "I wasn't about to send Kevin and Greg 300 elements for a four-day temp. We mixed it down quickly with the ProControl so that they could fine-tune the temp pre-dubs I sent. That way, we got a good idea of what it was going to be like for the final." (DiziZine)

This particular chase scene has been reported to have been highly praised. In fact you have to wonder why all films cannot have such a free rein in terms of time money and professional sound designers on the job. Sitting back and listening brings a smile to the face for any sound designer.

Pro Technique 1 – Stemming the Flow

This technique is a must read for anyone wanting to get into sound designing containing such quotes as "the biggest insurance policy ever" (DigiZine) for film sound designers. Steven lays done some honest and straight-forward info for the readers in this technique when he tackles the questions of separation in the separate stems and the elimination of any unwanted artifacts.

Ticknor suggests that to combat this ugly and un-professional situation one needs to look at separation in the stems (pre-dubs), much like the way you would always check your individual tracks on any mix-down. In 5.1 surround this is just as important.

Ticknor comments on specific techniques in relation to the ProControl and Tools|HD that anyone who has used the system will easily glean insightful techniques. Essentially the report focussing on outputs and a methodical approach to checking. Much like any good QA system.

Pro Technique 2 - Creating definition without noise

T-3 is full of incredible action shots (like you didn’t know) one of which is chosen for a Pro Technique. When the blades of a helicopter crash through thick solid concrete, what sound effects would you choose?

Ticknor avoided any off the shelf sound effect that could have easily downloaded from the studio servers, and instead went about creating his own customs sounds. Ticknor utilised the TC/E [Time Compression/Expansion] plug-in in Pro Tools. The Pro Technique quotes Steven Ticknor recalling exactly how he sped up and time matched the sounds to visuals, it’s an educational read.

Serato Pitch 'N' Time 2, was then used to fine tune the feel of the “chink” before going back into TC/E. Ticknor also indicates the importance of being realistic and not trying to turn an existing effect into what it’s not when you can simply create a new effect.

The report is highly recommended and can be found at the website below.

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