it’s 59 miles to Rockville, we got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it’s dark, and we’re wearing sunglasses
road trip!
today we headed down to big sister studio Bethesda Softworks to meet the audio team, ogle their studio setup, and maybe engage in just a wee bit of fanboy sightseeing. since we’re in the midst of drawing up the plans for our audio facility here, and since their team is very much like our team – a couple of guys in a couple of rooms doing lots and lots of work – it made sense to have a look-see at how they do things down there. besides, if they’ve already done the R&D for putting together such a space, why not just pick their brains instead of doing the legwork myself? /smart? /lazy? /yep!
the guys there are super cool and indulged us for hours, fielding all manner of questions and filling in the gaps of our own studio design. turns out, the similarities don’t end with us both being small teams. they’re located in the midst of a bunch of people they have to shield from racket, and we’re going to have people on all sides & above & below us. guess we can’t all be david gilmour.
so, we’ll spend some money to make the rooms sound great on the inside. and we’ll spend some more money to keep as much sound as possible from getting to the outside. and maybe we’ll spend what’s left on flowers and chocolates for the law firm upstairs. cuz after “metal impact foley” week, we’re gonna need it to stave off litigation.
p.s. and in the durndest twist ending to my tale of the “asleep at the switch” sfx vendor, the very morning i arrived on the doorstep of Bethesda Softworks, so did the 60 sfx CDs hollywood edge has owed me for about three months. they finally made things right…by sending my merchandise to a completely different studio. just dumb luck that i was there to pick them up. it literally went like:
[BGS admin gal] “oh hey mark…did you order a bunch of CDs? these things showed up this morning, but i don’t know who they’re for.”
[mark the BGS audio guy] “nope, sure didn’t. that’s odd.”
[brad, the visiting ZOS audio guy] “uh…i did? (looks inside box) yeah…these are mine (sighs heavily).”
so all-in-all, a very fruitful trip indeed. complete with door prizes!
