Making a medieval sound effects library – the Kickstarter way

Hi Ben, please introduce yourself and the team

Hi Asbjoern, thanks for giving us the opportunity to share a little bit about our project. Our team is comprised of several college students from Michigan Technological University in Houghton Michigan. I am the co-creator of the project, and I act as the chief sound engineer in the creation of the library. For our Kickstarter video I worked as the writer, director, and post (sound and video).

Brian Nelson is also a co-creator as well as our chief weapons expert. He not only selects, but has also built several of the weapons we will be using for this project. He’s our go-to guy for proper use and application of the sounds we are developing, and he gets the best job – using the weapons. For our Kickstarter video Brian worked as our script editor and as an actor while also helping with Foley.

Kevin Heras is in charge of marketing for the team. He tracks analytics for the Kickstarter, researches outreach tools, and creates content to keep us active on the web. Kevin also played a major role in developing our Kickstarter video, acting as production designer, director of photography, and developing Foley.
 

What’s your new library all about?

After we finished making the Firearm Sound Effects Library we thought about other libraries we could make. One of our main goals is to build a community around open source sounds, and we knew that another library would be a great way to keep that community growing. We wanted it to be like the firearm library: something we are passionate about that we have a unique opportunity to record. Most importantly, we wanted it to be useful to the open source community, which means usability above all else.
 

What made you go for a medieval SFX library?

In the end, it all boils down to passion. Brian, our weapons expert, spends so much of his time researching and building medieval weapons. So far he has built a crossbow, a Type X sword, a seax, and he is currently finishing a beautiful katana. We also enjoy shooting traditional bows, and we couldn’t help but notice all of the unique and rich sound textures these weapons make. In all honesty, the firearm library was incredible to make, but we are more excited to record these medieval weapons with all the rich textures and impacts. There is a considerable amount of depth to the sounds needed to make this library complete, and that just seemed like a lot of fun to us.
 

Some of the weapons the team plans on recording

How do you plan on recording this? And what sounds will you be targeting?

Like the firearm library, we are crowd funding the project through Kickstarter. We have some incredible backers who are just as excited as we are to make this happen. We will use the same recorder as before, a Sound Devices 744T for top of the line recording quality and a Sennheiser MKH416 microphone. We are currently researching additional microphones to use alongside the 416 as well.

When it comes to deciding what sounds to record, our goal is to record every possible sound we think could be useful to a sound designer, sound mixer, filmmaker, or game developer. With the bows we will record different stages of use (drawing, relaxing, releasing) as well as arrows flying through the air. Then there are impacts (for all weapons). Mail, metal, shields, wood, flesh, bone, earth, stone, etc. We will likely expand the list even beyond that, and that’s just impacts. On our Kickstarter Brian has actually compiled an extensive spreadsheet listing all the weapons we will use and what sounds we will be recording with them.

You previously did the Firearm Sound Effect Library. How did that turn out, and did you learn any lessons you can use for the new project?

The Firearm Sound Effects Library turned out better than we could have imagined. The response and support we received was overwhelming to say the least. We had industry professionals go out of their way to contact us through the Kickstarter to show their support for what we were doing and offer to answer any questions we had. Their advice alone improved the quality of the library exponentially, and they did it just for the sake of helping out.

The most important things we learned were more about the backers, though. It is really important to listen to their needs and make the sounds work for them. To be specific, this time around we are using a descriptive naming convention along with our metadata to make individual files easier to read without having to use a master spreadsheet.
 

How can people support you guys?

Join the community and participate. Our projects would be nothing without the momentum of the people backing them. People can back our project for as much or as little money as they want, it is all appreciated immensely. We also need people’s help to spread the word about the library. It takes a lot of people to back a project designed the way ours is, and we like it that way. We want as many people using these sounds as possible. Lastly, people can support us by using our sounds and showing us and the rest of the world what they could accomplish with an open source library. We want this idea to catch on and build.

If it turns out you receive sufficient funding for the project, what happens next then? And when would backers be able to get their hands on the sounds?

We are working hard right now to get the Kickstarter campaign funded as fast as we can. The earlier in the campaign we secure funding, the earlier we can order equipment to begin the project. There are so many options for medieval sounds but we had to be cautious about keeping a reasonable budget. If we get funded with enough time to spare we will introduce more weapon options as stretch goals, and we may even introduce some tangible rewards for backers who want keepsakes, and believe me, if we get there they will be awesome.

Our delivery date is this December. That really isn’t much time considering everything that has to get done from the end of the Kickstarter to our delivery date, but definitely more than we gave ourselves on our last project, which is another important lesson we learned the hard way.

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