Super Saturday’s magnificent Team GB Olympic gold rush was preceded by a completely unrelated talk at the Royal Armouries by OMUK’s Mark Estdale on sound design and the sounds of war in video games.
Contrasting realism and sound for dramatic impact Mark took the audience on a sonic journey dipping into the Foley artist’s arsenal and torturing the audience with the sound of celery and demonstrating the power of plastic bags to evoke the imagination. Thankfully the front row was empty when he turned to swords to explore the conventions of film sound vs realism. He concluded the talk demonstrating of the use of layering in explosions to avoid repetition during gameplay. The power of the explosions shook one of the theatre’s speakers from the wall but thankfully Game Republic’s Jamie Sefton was on hand to control the offending speaker’s excitement.
No Team GB medals were missed. Go Team GB!