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July 6, 2000 Link to this post
Marty O'Donnell discusses Halo's sound
We asked Marty O'Donnell about the score for the E3 movie, and about what went into making it. His response made for some very interesting reading, so we've included it in its entirety.
Scoring a movie and scoring a game are two entirely different processes. I approached the E3 movie the same way I'd approach any cinematic sequence. I know exactly how long each event is and precisely when the camera is going to cut to the next scene. I "post-score" the entire movie. In a game of course, each event is triggering a sound, each area is triggering an ambient sound, and the music will be triggered by who knows what. We're still working on the specific mechanics of total interactive sound and dynamic music. My goal is that the player will hear and feel no difference between the game audio and the movie audio. At this point in development there have been no final decisions made on the actual sounds or music that will be heard in the game although I'm sure (since I'm creating it) that there will be a lot of similarities.
As far as this movie goes, the newly composed and produced music is from the opening through the scene in the underground structure (when Wang gets impaled). After that I used the original track with some edits and rearranging to finish it off. We had recorded the actors about a month before E3 and Joseph used those tracks in the game play. We basically did all the rest of the sound design and music in just the few days prior to E3 since Joseph and his crew were working feverishly to get the visuals done. The final mix was finished and then the DVD burned about 2 hours before my plane left for E3. No one had seen or heard the final DVD until the morning of the first showing at E3. Once again - total panic. Maybe I'll change my name to Total Audio Panic @ Bungie. Seattle here I come.
No matter what happens with this game, one thing's for sure... the music will kick your ass. Thanks, Marty, for taking this time! (Louis Wu 01:25:46 UTC)
