Name/company?
Rene Coronado/Dallas Audio Post Group
What is involved within your role as sound designer?
maintaining sfx library, custom recording in the field, spotting projects with director, sound design, sfx spotting, mixing, billing, deliverables, qc, sometimes site visitis for installation pieces.
How did you get into the industry?
Graduated from South Plains College in 1999 with AAS in Sound Technology, moved to Dallas and started at Dallas Audio Post Group in 2000 as an audio engineer. Specialty in sound design developed over the next few years.
Briefly what equipment do you use, both hardware and software?
location recording rig - sound devices 744t, 788t for big projects, Sony PCM D50 and Tascam DR100 for off the cuff recordings. Various mics including AT 4050, Schoeps CMC6, Senn MKH60 and 70, etc. I also have a set of cold gold contact mics and a self built electrostatic pickup made from a cheap ebaye'd guitar pickup wired to an xlr. I use my iphone tons as well.
In the studio its basically a good recording space, the 4050 or schoeps into a John Hardy M1 then straight into protools. Plugs include the waves bundle, the AIR stuff that comes with protools, speakerphone, dverb, revibe, xnoise and izotope RX, etc. Soundminer for sfx databasing, automator gets used a lot.
Do you find most of your work is freelance or do you have long term employment?
December 1st will complete my 11th year at DAPG.
When designing sound effects for film, what is the most difficult part of the process.
The biggest hurdles tend to be language, schedule and budget. If people communicate well, and have the right amount of time and money then projects go very well. The degree to which those things are compromised is the degree to which the projects become difficult to do well.
Where do you see the future of theatrical and home theatre audio going, and how do you think this will effect the way you work?
Home theater is likely to get much more interactive, which complicates mixes because you're less sure about what's going to play in what order and over what things. Theatrical is likely to stay static for a while, though more films are coming out in 7.1
Do you find yourself using music instruments as effects? ( an example of this would be in the Tom and Jerry cartoons)
yep. lots of recorded instruments, synths, tonal sources, etc.