Michael Bartnett
Game audio: programming, music, and sound design
In Spring 2009 I took Audio for Video I with Langdon Crawford. Our final project was to recreate the sound for a 5 minute clip from a movie, so I chose an action sequence from Hancock. My onlyregret was that I didn’t have time to score the movie myself (there were a LOT of muzzle flashes to cover), so I chose music from a couple of my favorite game composers as temp tracks. Then again a lot of the bullet shots are a little too hot, and I could use a few more pings . . . but anyway, be sure to watch the second half! Brendan McGrady did an incredible job voicing Eddie Marsan’s character.
Hancock Soundtrack Reconstruction from Michael Bartnett on Vimeo.
WaterAid Mixology is a sound composer/visualizer application on Facebook in which players collect sounds and build and share songs while supporting the efforts of WaterAid.
Recently I composed 42 looped music stems to be included as an “instrument” with others that players can use to create their own songs. These songs can then be shared with friends to be included on other songs, making a sort of sandbox remix community in your friend network that spread awareness about WaterAid’s projects and mission.
My friend, Ema Ryan, had been working with the online video project, 8 Billion Lives, making a beautiful film about her grandfather. As a followup, she filmed and interviewed David Burke, the famous chef and restauranteur. She needed some music, so I composed some cues that I thought would highlight Mr. Burke’s unique combination of sophistication, wise-cracking humor, and down-to-earth love for cooking. The video has since been taking offline, but I still have the track up on Soundcloud.
Read moreThe Global Game Jam
Posted January 31, 2010Comments Off on The Global Game Jam
Building an Interactive Portfolio
Posted January 19, 2010Comments Off on Building an Interactive Portfolio
As a student at the 127th AES Convention attending the game audio track lectures, I found the best advice was given by Richard Stevens from Leeds Metropolitan University.
“If you don’t have some sort of game or interactive project in your portfolio, you’re just not trying hard enough.”
This makes perfect sense, and I don’t see why more people don’t do this. It’s all fine and dandy to have your Flash mp3 playlist of your demo reel on your site—potential game developers looking for an audio guy want to know if your music and sound design work is any good with a quick listen. But, how do they know you really know how to make this stuff sound good in an interactive setting?
Choosing the Technology
Posted November 1, 2009Comments Off on Choosing the Technology
This would be a pretty lame blog about game audio and game design if I never actually made any games. So today, I decided to start sketching out the structure of a game I’d like to create as a portfolio piece. Before I did anything else I thought, “What do I want to get out of making this game?”. Since I’m not designing to make money, I figured I might as well set some technical and creative goals and analyze the tools available to me for making this game.