Visual Concepts

Ursa Minor Raises the Bar for Video Game Audio Production

Brian Luzietti is a perfectionist. He has to be. As the director of Audio for video gaming company, Visual Concepts Entertainment — a subsidiary of Take Two Interactive — Luzietti has the mind-numbing task of overseeing the scripting, recording and editing of eighty hours of audio files for each of his video house’s very sophisticated sports games.

On the leading edge of the gaming industry, Visual Concepts produce realistic sports related games for Take 2 with budgets averaging five million dollars per game, including NFL 2K1 2000 and NBA 2K1 2000. These games realistically replicate the televised versions of pro games, down to professional announcers and fans shouting in the crowd. “The consumers are demanding more and more levels of sophistication, “says Luzietti, who first got into the audio world as a musician, “but they have no idea how much work has gone into recreating a professional looking and sounding game.”

As his games became more and more complex, including dialogue from coaches, players, announcers, PA announcers, and random people in the crowd, Luzietti was faced with an enormous challenge. “We had to cut up 60,000 lines of dialogue and paste them into separate sound files, which each had to be named and located.” Unfortunately Luzietti didn’t have that kind of audio editing staff in house. “It was way too many files to cut up and name and process.” That’s when he turned to Ursa Minor.

“It was an impossible task, and Ursa Minor took it off our hands,” says Luzietti. “It was very nice to be able to go to someone who could handle that enormous work load. It took a huge weight off my shoulders.”

Under the direction of Ursa Minor CEO, Benjamin DePauw, the team at Ursa Minor devised a new system for editing audio files which would cut the process for naming and editing some tens of thousands of dialogue files in half. “We created a custom Filemaker database to import all the client data, provide an automated work flow for the editors, and interface with ProTools to name the files correctly,” says Operations Manager Robin Livingston, who worked on the client’s project alongside five other staffers.

By eliminating much of the human error, the process became easier and easier, as Ursa Minor’s creative team applied their intelligent solutions-oriented expertise to the task. They brainstormed together to elicit the best strategies to handle the heavy workload. One of the tasks was to cut and splice phrases together with names, as in “Santiago….” “…makes the touch down.” One team would handle clipping the waveform for the name; the other would have to cut the phrase. “We would sit together in groups,” remembers DePauw, “planning out where to best trim beginnings and endings, so the various files would sound natural during gameplay.”

DePauw explains the challenge of editing thousands of sound files day after day without making mistakes. “You have to be both alert and relaxed when doing this job,” says DePauw.” “You get into a kind of rhythm.” Editors must also be aware of the myriad levels of energy expressed vocally during a ball game. “We had to understand how big a deal it is in a game for a certain thing to happen--like a critical interception—as opposed to an easy touch-down--so that it would be accurately reflected in the announcer’s voice.”

As they got more nimble at processing the audio files, they even began experimenting for fun. “The outtakes from announcers are really hilarious,” says Livingston, who began editing together these outrageous lines, when the announcers flub their lines or adlib. “You’re used to hearing these announcers on TV, but when you hear them go off script they’re hysterical.”

While the team at Ursa Minor has enjoyed experimenting with sound, Luzietti has been more than happy with the results. Over the past few years he has handed over a total of twelve sports games to Ursa Minor to sound edit. “It’s been great working with Ursa Minor,” says Luzietti. “They have found ways to speed up the process which is good for them and it’s even better for us. They work incredibly hard, never take advantage of anyone, and they are exceptional at taking directions.”

And as Luzietti looks toward the future, he can only envision a better relationship with his out-of-house sound-edit team. “I am completely comfortable with Ursa Minor taking on more work, which is a good thing, because I’m going to be needing them again soon. Presently we are in the death throws of our college basketball game,” says Luzietti, from his office in Northern California where he is taking a ten minute break. Once again, Luzietti needs somebody else complete his vision of perfection, and he has found the right folks.