Interviews

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Bringing Developer Stories to the World


Anthony Hales, Technical Director of SIDE, oversees the entire technical output from the studio through post production and editorial. Hales has worked on “AAA” game titles including Cyberpunk 2077, Assassins Creed Valhalla and Hitman III amongst others. Hales talks to Behind the Glass about his work at SIDE.   

 

Once captured at one of their locations in London, LA or Shanghai, or one of their partner studios around the world, all the content SIDE records is then sent to a centralised team for the edit, mastering, creative processing, and QA. It’s Hales’ role to make sure the teams are well supported and managed so the assets leaving the studios are ‘game ready’ and of the highest quality. 

 

With facilities in London, LA and Shanghai, SIDE used to be known as The Vocal Suite. In 2002 they moved from their one studio facility to a studio on Great Titchfield Street, rebranding as SIDE. Hales was taken on as their first employee (after the founders) and basically did a bit of everything – running, editing, recording. “It started with just four of us, and that has now grown into a team of 50+ including our freelance staff, working across 3 time zones, multiple studios worldwide and delivering thousands of files successfully. The success is all down to the hard work of the team – we are lucky to have a great unit of sound techs that are passionate about delivering high quality audio.” 

 

With a career spanning 20 years, Hales has had quite a few career highlights. “I’ve worked with some great actors and creative people on many great games. One that will always stand out is the work I did with DICE on Battlefield 1. For their previous title, DICE had recorded outside with a group to get an authentic sound of battle – the dialogue, although sounding great, just had too much background noise and was uncontrollable in game. So, working alongside their dialogue team, we were tasked with capturing an equivalent performance in energy and style – whilst technically keeping it under control. After a bit of trial and error, we landed with a format that still allowed us to record with an ensemble of actors and balanced authentic, gritty performances that sounded great.” 

 

So how does he approach a game project? “The core process is we need to speak and engage with the client and ask them in detail about what their project will entail. We can then work out the resources needed for the project. We can offer casting, direction, recording, editorial, mastering, facial capture – a project may require all these services or just one of them. Once we have established this, we can then offer the correct director for the project, put them in the correct studio for recording, let them know they may need to record in LA and London for the recording – there are lots of factors at play and to navigate these correctly we to work with our clients as partners.”  

 

“We use a mix of Pro Tools and Reaper mainly – but will happily work on any DAW or proprietary software the client prefers. It’s the same with hardware; for instance, we have an extensive microphone collection, but if the client would like to use something specific then we are more than happy to discuss and get the right setup needed. Our studio teams are all well-versed in working with clients to get them the sound they need.” 

 

So what have been the most technical challenges? “Over recent years the need to record to picture with an HMC (Head Mounted Camera) and reference cameras has been a huge technical challenge to get right, especially whilst working to picture and taking into consideration the amount of content we need to record – it’s proved very difficult at times for sure.   We now have a slick pipeline but getting there was tricky. A huge credit must go to our technical team on this, as they’re the ones who have really innovated and iterated this process to make it a success.”  

 

The games industry is forever evolving and Hales hasn’t seen it plateau during his career. With the fast pace of the industry he ensures that SIDE remains ahead of the game. “The first factor has been expanding and improving our localisation offering. We have partner studios in over 30 territories, and we make sure each one adheres to the same processes and standards as our main locations. We do everything we can to keep the process simple and streamlined, with one contact for all languages. Our teams in London do all the prep and post, we’re able to maintain the same level of quality VO in a huge range of languages.”  

 

A key factor has been partnerships for other services, a most recent one being with the motion capture specialists at The Imaginarium Studios. “We’ve worked with mocap providers for over a decade now, providing casting, direction, talent management and of course remote audio recording, but now we can streamline the process for clients who are looking for more cohesion. The fewer parties they have to go out and search for and brief, the better. Expanding our services like this while keeping everything in one neat package helps massively with remaining agile to developers’ needs in the rapidly changing industry.” 

 

The need to deliver a more realistic, emotional and truthful character performance has always been a main driver. Dialogue production is equally important to mission design and story architecture and needs to be one of the tightest and most organized elements of audio production yet remain fluid and open to change. Hales manages this with a mix of good tools and invested staff. “For Cyberpunk 2077, we provided all our core services so we had to be incredibly organized - especially as we were working across SIDE UK and SIDE LA. Not only did we have a cast of 125 actors recording in two cities, but we also had to get voice files (for feeders) and script updates from London to LA in time for their sessions and then back again for London’s morning sessions.  The scripts were massive and constantly getting updated and amended. Our Solutions team created bespoke tools to handle the scripts and keep Post-Production up to date, leading to a total delivery of 118,000 audio files. Our teams worked on the game for over three years, with lead PMs, engineers who lived and breathed Night City, and even a brand-new role of Technical Production Manager to help bridge the gap between production and post.”

  

With a diverse range of tools and technology available, when achieving a great performance Hales starts with the script. “Authentic sounding dialogue is very hard to write – especially when most of the time it is mainly exposition or path leading. Getting that correct is a real skill, and over the years I have been fortunate to work with some amazing writers. The ones who nail it whilst still delivering on the story are worth their weight in gold.”

 

In terms of audio, what are the key challenges you face when recording mocap? “In a word –Velcro! No, only joking – I think for me one of the biggest challenges is making sure the performances are achieved despite all the tech surrounding the actors. From an audio point of view there’s a balance between getting a great recording and not getting in the way of the actors doing their thing.”  

 

With actors being expected to perform pages of script each day, how much correction gets done in post? “We have a unique way of working at SIDE; in general, what leaves the studio is the selected audio files that have been worked upon by the voice talent, director and client. If the studio team have then done their job correctly the Post-Production/editorial team only need to do a moderate amount of fixing to the assets. I would say 40-50% of our projects are recorded to picture in some sort of way – and a large portion of the dialogue that’s needed to be replaced – unless it’s a reversion – is done alongside HMC (Head Mounted Camera) capture. We have developed a good pipeline for this using VoiceQ by Kiwa Digital. It really helps the actors in session.” 

 

So how does he manage a game where the performance requires a variety of dialogue including screams and shouting to whispers and crying. “As mentioned, we always work with the client to get the best mic setup for their recordings – over the years it’s something I have pushed our internal team on, to make sure they are interacting with the client’s audio team early on to make sure we offer the best advice. The sound of the dialogue for their titles is specific for each– for instance, do they require movement from the actor in their performance or are we matching Mocap audio, do they want a full-bodied sound, or should it sound like sync-sound? Whatever then is settled with the client, it’s then my job to make sure it’s maintained wherever we record. The Post-Production/editorial then plays a big part in this process to make sure the quality is maintained.” 

 

Hales has seen game audio change over the years. “The main change from our perspective has been the amount that needs recording. Back when we first started recording on games it was still on CD-ROM, that’s just 680mb in total and audio teams had a fraction of that for all their music, dialogue and SFX. Now the size is massive in comparison and the content and quality seems to constantly grow. Maintaining that high quality across a project that’s recording for months across territories is definitely a challenge.  I can see AI and machine learning playing a big part in generating dialogue going forward. It will be interesting to see how that unfolds.” 

 

As for upcoming engineers looking for a career in games Hales has some advice. “Never stop messaging or poking potential employers! This can be done in a simple or polite way, without being aggressive or needy. Just a simple message asking if you have roles or opportunities every now and again is a great way getting your foot in the door.”  

 

www.side.com

 

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