May 2023

Audio Director at Supermassive Games, currently working on a new IP, Frederico Pereira is an awarded creative and technical professional with over 23 years of experience in the audio and music industries. He has put together teams, both big and small, working with TV, Music, Film, Interactive installations and Games.

You’ll see that his passion and skill for all things sound and music is palpable. Over to Fred…

MASA: Can you tell us exactly how you got into the game industry. What was your first foot in the door?

FRED: It started with home experiments programming music on the ZX Spectrum 48k back in the 80’s. Manic Miner was my first game. Those first steps were filled with excitement and curiosity. In the early 90's, I discovered Cakewalk, my first DAW, which opened up a whole new world of computer-generated music and sound. As I continued learning, my studies focused on the intersection of art, sound, and music. Eventually, I started developing interactive installations and spent nearly two decades working in the film and music industries. Over time, I developed an eclectic portfolio and was lucky to be recognized with a few awards. So it was all a natural progression to almost 6 years ago when there was an opportunity for me to join Electronic Arts. It took intention and persistence, but I knew that to further grow in interactive audio and music, I needed to be part of the gaming industry. Shortly after, I joined Supermassive where I've happily been part of the team ever since. This journey has been both rewarding and full of learning, and I'm grateful for every step along the way. Every individual will have a different story of how they got into the industry. A lot of people enter straight out of university. If for example you’re coming out of university now, focus on developing your skills, making redesigns and apply to every company that you like showing your best work. If you present good quality work, eventually you will get a break.

MASA: Could you give us an overview of what your role at Supermassive entails?

FRED: As an Audio Director, my primary objective is to ensure that we deliver a top-notch audio experience to our players, complementing and enhancing the overall vision of the project. That involves a dynamic range of responsibilities. At its heart, audio and music direction entails guiding the overall vision and aesthetics. Setting the tone and style of the soundscapes and music that are the sonic fabric of the narrative and gameplay. One of the crucial tasks is assembling and supporting a talented team of sound designers. This involves hiring the right people, providing ongoing direction and support to ensure the team consistently delivers highly creative, top-quality audio content. I also actively participate in the creative process, doing sound design and writing music. Defining, developing, and optimizing systems and workflows for our projects is essential to maintaining efficiency and facilitating collaboration within the team and outsourcers. This may include developing custom sound libraries, streamlining asset management processes, or defining studio equipment and systems to serve flexible workflows and several different projects.

MASA: Can you tell us about a particularly rewarding part of your last project? The best sound moments? The most satisfying sound accomplishments?

FRED: The sound design of some of the transitions on Little Hope were particularly fun and satisfying. This project involved frequent transitions between 1692 and modern day. They are powerful moments that create a rip in time and pull the player to a different time period. A lot of those have a specific style of vocal effects that take the beginning or end syllables of the characters sentences and process them using granular synthesis to make the time transition audible. It’s a sort of quantum superposition as if that voice exists in both time periods for a moment and then materializes in a different time and space. Granular synthesis, being able to dissect and manipulate slices of time in a waveform, was the ideal tool for this. The idea came first, based on the overall game intention, and then the choice of the tool and approach followed to get to something that sounds fresh and makes sense in the narrative. This helps in inviting the player to abandon the idea that this is a game, suspending doubt and instead it becomes real. When sound can be a part of that, it’s truly satisfying.

MASA: And any particularly challenging times? How did you overcome these?

FRED: How can anyone not have been affected by the lockdown restrictions? Those were challenging times indeed. Like with every other challenge or frustration, it was something to overcome and make us stronger. There was the task of adapting the setup at home to serve AAA audio development. Working on headphones, using Sonarworks Reference, now called SoundID, was essential. On another level, very important as well, was to double up on meditation, walks in nature, exercise, anything that could help in keeping a fresh mind and open spirit. Despite all the difficulties, it ended up being a very inspiring time.

MASA: When it comes to asset creation, what is the breakdown between how frequently you and the team record your own material, how often you turn towards manipulation of library sounds, and how often you start with synthesized source sounds?

FRED: Those are all good ways to get the ball rolling. It comes down to a few factors like goals, quality, time and budget. Typically, we go through the script and the game design documents and breakdown the assets needed. We cost everything and then make decisions on what approach will suit best. If a sound is being used one time in the whole game and it’s difficult to record we might layer some sources of pre-recorded materials or libraries. More often than not, a game will have a specific sonic fabric, a set of sounds or types of sounds that are used more than anything else. We tend to record all of those as we need a lot of flexibility, quantity and variety from those. If something needs to be done quickly for a prototype, we’ll use libraries to kick off and make a plan for a latter iteration. It all depends on the interaction between those initial key factors.

MASA: What tools and software do you typically use?

FRED: The first set of tools have got to be the brain and ears. I like what neuroscientist Antonio Damasio says about a water lily of reason within a pond of emotions. I like to let that guide the intention and then either hear in my head what I’m about to materialize or at least hear clear parts of what that will sound like. Second set of tools are writing or recording with the “mouth emulator” which is really just recording yourself performing whatever you’re working on. Or anything else that tries to capture your initial sonic idea. Then it becomes a technical task of what will get you there faster, with the best result and with the most flexibility. At this stage there’s a lot for experimentation. It’s a back and forth with the initial idea, revising, updating and a dialogue between the technical and creative modes. To materialize anything audible, Avid Protools was my main DAW for many years, simply because of session compatibility and constant feature updates. Because it has a huge user base in the film and music industries, it’s made for that. Protools is not only a DAW, it’s above all hardware with dedicated processors. It’s very stable but it’s not ideal if you require highly customized workflows as it’s the case in game audio development. It’s very clunky compared to the more scriptable DAWs. Nowadays I mostly use Cockos Reaper. The ability to incorporate your own scripts is key. There’s hardly anything that we need for which a script doesn’t exist. And if it doesn’t yet, we’ll create it. It’s endless customization. Need a button to quickly hide all the tracks except the one named “Wacky Tickle”, zoom in and start shaving those waveforms? You got it! Other tools are obviously Audiokinetic Wwise and Unreal Engine, Metasounds. In terms of plugins, nothing fancy for functional operations. EQ, compression, transient design or modulation with Waves, Fabfilter or Soundtoys. Restoration with Izotope RX. And then go more customized and creative with Max/Msp, or outboard and pedals.

MASA: And lastly, what will you be looking for when judging? What makes a piece of work worthy of a Music+Sound Award?

FRED: I think I can only be a good and fair judge if I rate highly the stuff that I usually admire. Outstanding creativity, consistency, and adequacy. In other words, how well does it serve the storytelling and gameplay and ultimately, how well does it serve the people that will want to experience it and come back for more.

MASA: Thank you so much Fred for such an insightful, info-packed chat. It’s a great honour to have you on this year’s judging panel.

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