The Sprint: Press Start

The Sprint: Press Start is the second episode of the third season of The Sprint. It focuses on the development for the first cutscene of Halo 5: Guardians.

Transcript

• Announcer Sprint : Making a game on the scale of Halo takes hundreds of people with different skills, a singular vision and time. Lots of time. But before a game reaches store shelves, the team must create thousands of assets that are tracked in two-week deadline, we call Sprints. 343 Industries invites you to join us on our journey, creating Halo 5 Guardians from the ground up, one painting, sound and line of code at a time. This is The Sprint.

• Brien Goodright : Did Jen Taylor tell you?
• Damon Conn : What?

January 28, 2015

• Brien Goodright : Cortana predicted for the Superbowl.
• Damon Conn : No.
• Brien Goodright : Cortana predicted the Seahawks will lose.
• Damon Conn : That's not good.
• Brien Goodright : All right so last day shooting. We'll get this right now. Let's show the previews here. Perfect. Osiris, the light is green.

Burbank, California

• Mike Colter : Fireteam Osiris, light is green.
• Brien Goodright : We’re go, ok. This is the first thing that our players’re going to see when we start the game.
• ? : Your head will explode when you see the full rendered piece.

SEASON 3, EPISODE 2
PRESS START

• Kazuma Jinnouchi : So we are at my apartment in Bellevue Downtown, this is where I have my home studio. It's a really tiny room that I have. Audio usually is the last thing that puts the experience together. When I play the game I try to catch what the sound effects are doing, what the dialogue experience is like and I think that's the music that makes sense. That's the thing I go through every day these days. So this is the opening scene, the clock's ticking. When I was developing Locke’s theme I just thought about Locke’s character. I felt like there was a lot more complexity to the character development, so I didn't want it to sound very straightforward. Being able to express that complexity was my first goal, so the melody goes… So if you put your base note on E, so you have this major/minor thing going on at the same time, so that's really the foundation, it sounds a little more ambiguous whereas Master Chief is… When I said the clock's ticking already for the team Osiris, this is the instrument that represents that… So this arpeggio here is very setting the background but it's there to keep the rhythm going. So that it's not a comb see, it's building up for something that's big.
• Darren O’Hare : Fireteam Osiris. Over the last 72 hours five colonies have experienced identical events. Massive destruction, Forerunner in origin.
• Brien Goodright : So on “forerunner origin” that's kind of your cue to kind of pay attention to that, that's interesting to you. Okay, tracking online.
• Laura Bailey : That's when I use my tablet!
• Brien Goodright : You leave your tablet down.
• Laura Bailey : Then what’s the point of this *bip* thing?
• Brien Goodright : I know, sorry. So tracking is this, right? Just look at the arm all right?
• Laura Bailey : Affirmative.
• Brien Goodright : Copy that. We're building the opening sequence here for interior of the Pelican. Eventually this data will be packaged up and sent to our good friends at Axis in Scotland. They'll be doing all the finishing work on here, materials, lighting, rendering, visual effects. So let's walk through it, we’re gonna bumble through this a few times until we get it. What's this for?
• Greg Towner : She's gonna grab the rack.
• Brien Goodright : So she's going here. It's a choreography we do here ! How's Buck gonna grab this helmet? Hopefully by then our friend Vale is gonna be here. And again this is a briefing so you know, pay attention to this but also pay attention to this, find moments to turn.
• Mike Colter : Light is green.
• Brien Goodright : Then you go.
• Greg Towner : Vale first at the door then Tanaka, and Buck hands the helmet to Locke, he goes, Locke has his moment, he goes.
• Brien Goodright : You're gonna have a moment here by yourself kind of take a look at the empty Pelican, put the helmet on and then you go… I knew he couldn't resist.
• Brien Goodright : One more day.
• ? : This is the foley stage here Warner Brothers Stage 1, 1 of 2, this is really the most fun job I think anybody could ever have, which about 450 people in the world do this job.
• MaryJo Lang : Ok, here we go!

Foley Recording

• John Roesch : Great thing about foley is that you don't have to actually use what it is you see on camera to make the sound. In other words, yeah if we're gonna open up a bag of potato chips, we probably use a bag potato chips because that's a sound we all know. If a vampire is getting a stake through its heart than almost instantly turn to ash, how do you make that sound? We've been asked to do that. In the game, we've got a couple of classes, one being the grunts and the grunts well they're kind of slimy, if I can use that term. We have to add to a grunt just a little bit of wetness, so your everyday average chamois and that'll be one part of the overall sound for the grunt. We have some armor sound, all those things combined once they're all there together and put in appropriately, hopefully it'll sound like hey that's a real grunt.
• Alyson Dee Moore : So this is what I use for grunts because, he's got really patty feet so these are barbecue gloves.
• Robbie Elias : When it comes to doing footsteps for foley, it seems like that really might be the easiest thing to do but actually probably the hardest, because to give a unique feeling and sound to each character that's the key, even just the scientists or Marines. We're trying to give them each a different feeling of flavor.
• John Roesch : What are you doing at work today dad? Playing with a chamois!
• ? : Twist. Step out over to one side, over the other side.
• Brien Goodright : All right can we get a circle up here real quick. We’re about to go shoot the 000 opening sequence. This is the first thing that our player’s gonna see when we start the game, right, so let's really bring our best stuff with this one, okay? For you, this is the gravity of like, you know this is like in Tokyo, London, Los Angeles, New York, gone. Right? That that's kind of the idea at the top of that thing before you get into the nuts and bolts of the mission. It's time to go, right, so everybody needs to be getting ready to, we're about to jump in, right, so let's tighten that up, all right? Tighten it up. Let's go.
• ? : Let’s roll!
• Brien Goodright : All right, and action! We're flying, flying, flying and…
• Darren O’Hare : Fireteam Osiris. Over the last 72 hours five colonies have experienced identical events. Massive destruction, forerunner in origin. Dr. Catherine Elizabeth Halsey has managed to contact us. She claims to have information on these attacks. Good luck Spartan Locke, Infinity out.
• Mike Colter : Tracking online?
• Laura Bailey : Affirmative.
• Cynthia McWilliams : Say, before we make this jump, anybody want to say a few words?
• Travis Willingham : I figure if God can hear how scared I am so can everyone else. Locke, you buying the first round when we're done?
• Mike Colter : You asked, you buy. Fireteam Osiris, light is green.
• Brien Goodright : Cut there. One note overall: volume, right? It's… you know, so don't scream but just get a little… projects, projects, okay?
• Mike Colter : Fireteam Osiris, the light is green!
• Brien Goodright : And cut. It's that's not a bad take return. It's that's not a bad take. Let's do one more for safety, that was good, same deal. Alright, and we're flying, action!
• Alan Meyerson : They think that sometime before Stradivarius there was an ice age, and because of the ice age the trees where Stradivarius was getting his wood from, the yearly ring had gotten much thinner, so they feel that when he harvested, the wood that he harvested as a result of that ice age had a particular grain content to it that created this incredible wood for making stringed instruments. Yeah, it's like one of those ridiculous facts you find at 3 in the morning when waiting for assistants to set up another cue.

June 18, 2015
Santa Monica, California

• Alan Meyerson : This is our fifth and final mixing session for the project. Today's the first day.
• Brien Goodright : That awesome!
• Alan Meyerson : It’s got a little bit more out of that Halo thing, not quite done yet but it's good right?
• Kazuma Jinnouchi : Yeah, it's sound great!
• Alan Meyerson : I want to really hit that Halo, you know, it's like I'm backing everything down a little bit, keeping it up and eight bars before that just, I pull everything down one dB and then just go back up that on dB on the logo, I think it's gonna like… so that's sort of like you know a lot of this when you have stuff that really, really emotional cinematic stuff like this, you're just listening and looking for ideas where you can make a tiny bit of a shade of a difference. If I can make like a one percent difference. And if it helps, then it’s worth it. See like that voice thing is really nice but I can hear it turn on, so I'm going to fade it up a little bit, so that I can't quite hear it turn on.
• Sotaro Tojima : That's great, right there!
• Alan Meyerson : Monty, you did it! You did it Monty!
• Kazuma Jinnouchi : Thank you!
• Sotaro Tojima : We are almost there to finish the game. It's not only music that makes up the audio experience, he needs to work with the sound effects. Sound effects makes the characters and weapons come alive. And ambience gives each level the feel of the real place. I really can't wait for the fans to play the game and experience it for themselves.
• Laura Bailey : This is my high-tech tablet. Bottom, place hands here. I don't know what this is actually for! I'm gonna play Angry Birds on it!