Watch/listen closely during the Hannity interview section for the “ear candy.”

Zombie Reagan Raised From Grave To Lead GOP

I spent longer than I want to admit on the sound of Zombie Reagan’s leprous ear. (It’s actually two noises: his ear ripping off and the sound of it rolling down his suit, but it’s a pretty subtle effect and sort of lost in the final mix.  Oh well.)

Again, all the non-dialogue sounds were done in post production.  The zombie noises themselves were made by processing the actor’s screams through pitch-shifting, time expansion, and formant-modifying effects.  I recorded the more subtle grunts, snorts, and lip smacks myself in my bedroom one morning. (I was actually just coming down with what may or may not have been H1N1, so I had the right mucousy quality to my voice–which I also processed through the same effects.)

Also, I’ve started triggering certain sounds through a sampler rather than manually lining them to specific visual cues. So during the “press conference” scene, for example, instead of pasting individual camera sounds to each flash, I just “performed” the sounds directly from my keyboard (musical, not computer). I imported a few different camera sounds into the sampler, then set the sampler to slightly vary the pitch, tone, and duration of each camera sound. The result sounds more convincing–like a herd of photographers at a press conference–AND it took less time to create.

Lastly, I want to give a shout out to The Onion News Network’s graphics team.   Almost all the scenery in these videos is green-screened, and it’s really cool to see the visual effects evolve from story-boards, to mock-ups, drafts, and then the final version.  Their motion graphics in particular have been really good lately, and as a sound designer I’m always looking to work with those little visual cues.