Today I’m sitting down with Joel Green. Joel is a professional sound designer, helping to generate amazing audio for game titles such as Need for Speed: Undercover, Mass Effect 2 and 3, Dragon Age 2 and Inquisition, and is currently the Producer / Audio Director at Cloudhead Games working on the VR title The Gallery: Six Elements.

Show Notes

 

Graduated from Vancouver Film School

Worked on Need for Speed: Undercover

Worked under Charles Deenen 

From there got hired onto Bioware’s team to work on Mass Effect and Dragon Age titles

Took time off to learn C# and Unity

Found position at Cloudhead Studios on Vancouver Island

Rural Living + High Technology

We don’t need to live in cities to work on games.

Be willing to start with big ideas and expectations that get whittled down to the core idea of what something is.

If you shoot for the stars — even if you fail — you’ll at least be in outer space.

Bioware’s employees have an extensive collection of larping gear, weaponry, and armor.

Mass Effect 2 was a highlight experience in Joel’s career

Seeing a game come to fruition is incredibly rewarding

Virtual Reality is so new that every step into the technology is defining the medium

Everything being done in VR is breaking new ground

Audio in VR has a number of new considerations to take in such as Binaural listening

We have a huge discussion on Binaural recording 

The Dark Crystal was freakin’ terrifying

Implementing orchestral music is a challenge in VR 

Getting the player to look where you want them to is a challenge within VR — you have to figure out how to draw attention naturally

VR won’t only change the gaming world. It’s going to be a global shift in how we communicate

VR has the ability to create incredibly great things and incredibly dark things

Story Studio

The conversation takes a philosophical turn discussing the implications of Virtual Reality and its future impact on the world

Short Answer

Favorite Mic

Sennheiser MKH 80-50 

Favorite Game You Haven’t Worked On

Super Mario World or Super Mario 64

What Book Would You Recommend

Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

Best Piece of Advice

“You can’t wait for your ducks to all be in a row because they’re never all gonna’ be in a row… There’s times when you have to plan, and then there’s time when you just have to do it, and deal with what comes up.”

The Gallery: Six Elements

Story Studio

Henry’s Premiere from Story Studio on Vimeo.

 

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