Events » 2005 Past Events »
Audio for Halo 2
February 10, 2005 at Cornish College of the Arts
Audio Director and composer Marty O'Donnell and Audio Lead Jay Weinland will
talk about creating the sound and music during the development of the game.
This seminar will cover the creation of all the audio assets for Halo 2,
from live recording to digital editing workstations; from casting and
directing Hollywood actors to working with live orchestra and "name" bands.
It will show the inner workings of the proprietary audio engine designed for
use exclusively within the Halo 2 development environment.
Creating and producing high quality audio is only one half of the equation. Marty and Jay will show how they take multi-voice audio tags all the way through the implementation stage and expose real-time physics and AI feedback to change the audio playback parameters. 5.1 surround mixing, DSP effects, and environmental "shapes" are just a few of the features that will be discussed. They will also show how the audio development engine is able to bring the game characters to life using a robust and proprietary AI engine, and bring music to another dynamic level by making it respond to realtime gameplay. Marty will take a piece of music from it's initial composition, through production, and finally dynamic implementation within the game engine. They will reveal how the real-time cinematics are put together with music, foley, dialog, and scripting as opposed to pre-rendered movies.
Speakers:
Marty O'Donnell, Audio Director, Bungie Studios at Microsoft
Marty O'Donnell received his Masters of Music Degree in composition, with honors, from USC in the early 80's and since then he has written and produced numerous original scores for TV, Radio and Film. Some of his commercial work includes Flintstones Vitamin's 10 Million Strong and Growing, Mr. Clean, Principal Financial,McDonald's, Kelloggs and many others. In 1997 his company, TotalAudio, produced sound design, foley and final mixes for Cyan's Riven, the Sequel to Myst, and all the original music, voices, and sound design for Bungie's award winning Myth: The Fallen Lords. TotalAudio went on to produce the audio for Valkyrie Studio's Septerra Core, Legacy of the Creator and Bungie's Myth II: Soulblighter. In May of 2000, ten days after Marty accepted a full time position with Bungie Software focusing entirely on the audio production for Oni and Halo, Microsoft purchased Bungie and moved them to Redmond to develop games for the Xbox. The audio for Halo received numerous industry awards including The Game Developers Choice Award, The Edge Award, and Best Soundtrack of 2002 from Rolling Stone Magazine. In 2004 he composed the music and produced the audio for the highly anticipated Halo 2. Although still co-owner of TotalAudio with Mike Salvatori, who stayed in the Chicago studio, Marty is currently Audio Director for Bungie Studios at Microsoft.
Jay Weinland, Audio Lead, Bungie Studios at Microsoft
Jay Weinland is a 10-year games industry veteran who began his sound designing career with Manley and Associates, a small Seattle area company working on games for MAC, PC, Sega Genesis, and Sega Saturn. After Manley was acquired by Electronic Arts, Jay went on to work on the FIFA and Need For Speed franchises on PC/PSX. Jay hooked up with Bungie after the Microsoft acquisition and has since worked on Oni (PC/MAC/PS2), Halo (Xbox/PC/MAC), and Halo 2 (Xbox). After graduating from Oberlin College Conservatory in 1991 (BM in oboe, MMT in music teaching) Jay moved to Seattle.