There are few worldwide hit movies and series of recent years that did not use technology Portuguese company Sound Particles in the sound. The list is already long: Star Wars, Game of Thrones, Stranger Things, Dune, Mission Impossible, Indiana Jones, Oppenheimer and Barbie there are only a few. The next step will be to launch, in 2024, immersive headphones.
“We are creating our 3D sound technology with headphones so that people with perfectly normal headphones can have a completely immersive experience and hear sound coming from all directions. There are already some solutions on the market, including those from Apple, but they are all still being I leave a little to be desired because it is a very complex problem. Each person has different ears, with different shapes and our brain has been trained to recognize the acoustic signature of our ears, that is if I really want to trick that person’s brain. I have to see what your ear is like to know how I am going to trick your brain, more than a hundred doctorates have been done in this area and still no one has been able to completely solve it, however, in our case, at the moment we already have evidence that clearly indicates that “Our solution works much better than any of our competitors and we are putting the finishing touches on it,” he revealed to TSF Nuno Fonseca, CEO of Sound Particles.
For now They don’t want to be associated with any particular brand.but he admits that some may want to have this type of technology in their headphones.
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“For this we plan to license our technology, but our idea is that it be something much more democratic and that anyone can enjoy the sound even if they do not have headphones from a certain brand,” explained the CEO.
The path to the biggest Hollywood film productions
Nuno Fonseca always had two passions: sound and computing. And he was divided between the computer classes he taught at the Leiria Polytechnic and the musical technology classes at the Escola Superior de Música de Lisboa. Seven years ago decided to combine these two passions in a single software that could be used in major film productions. From there Sound Particles was born.
“It started with a really crazy idea of wanting to create a program that could create thousands of sounds at the same time and that was it. It was a bit of a free time project that grew. Until at some point I went to Los Angeles. Before going In Los Angeles I sent emails to five or six people in the industry saying that I worked in this area and that this could be interesting for big productions. The first response we had was from Skywalker Sound, who invited me to give a talk there and In the span of six months I ended up giving talks at Warner Brothers, Universal, Paramount, Sony, Fox and then at Disney, Pixar, Apple and Google, among many other places,” he recalled.
The software revolutionized the industry by allowing us to do in ten minutes what before, in the field of sound, was done in eight hours.
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“Essentially what we did was create, in sound, the equivalent of computer graphics, that is, in the same way that with computer graphics we simulate worlds to create animations and special effects, here we use this power of computer graphics for the sound. you want to create a battle, instead of taking a sound editor and start putting in an explosion, another explosion, a gunshot, another gunshot and, after eight hours, I have 50 sounds playing at the same time, with our software the person who “We can say in ten minutes that we want ten thousand sounds spread over a square kilometer, import 400 war sounds and in ten minutes have 50 sounds instead of ten that took eight hours,” said Nuno Fonseca.
There are already many films and video games that use Sound Particles technology, but for Nuno Fonseca The most special project so far is “obviously Star Wars.”
“In addition, when they used Sound Particles in the eighth film they did not give us permission to publish it, but then in the ninth they gave us permission. It was a project that had a special flavor,” confesses the CEO.
At the moment They already have two people working outside of Portugal full time. One in London and one in Los Angeles. Something that allows them to have even closer contact with the main film and video game studios.
“The use of our software on Oppenheimer was possible because Richard King, a sound designer who has already won four Oscars, wanted to use Sound Particles for Oppenheimer, but needed someone to give him some advice on how to use the software. “Have someone there. We said that the next day in the afternoon we would go there and give a presentation of the software. “All that makes things a lot easier,” he added.
Source: TSF
