Five Questions with Rob Plowman, Director of Audio

BY: NICK IANNITTI  |  Five Questions

Rob Plowman puts the “multi” in “multimedia” here at Fuel. Over his time here, he and the Fuel Sounds team have completely reinvented the way we do audio, and our quality has improved dramatically thanks to his experience in composition, recording and sound design. Our Fuel Sounds division is currently under his jursidiction, and it couldn’t be in better hands. Today we sit down with Rob and find out what makes our head audio genius tick.

1. What is Fuel Sounds, and what do you do?

Fuel Sounds is the audio arm of Fuel Industries. We are currently facilitating every audio need for Fuel, which can be multi-faceted–everything from sound design, composition and stock music selection to hiring talent for voice-overs. We mix, edit and produce them for the entertainment that Fuel creates. We have a particular fondness for projects that allow us to create our own original music, but understand that budgets and timelines sometimes don’t allow us that luxury, in which case we have a relationship with some of the best stock music suppliers in the world.

2. Why does Fuel need a whole division related to audio?

In a perfect world, everyone would have a whole division related to audio. Audio is crucial–can you imagine watching the shower scene from Psycho without Bernard Herrman’s terrifying violin shots? Because of the magnitude of the projects that Fuel undertakes, having to outsource all the audio simply would not be feasible. The fluidity that goes along with having our video and audio department in the same location as our creative conception allows us to elevate our products to a higher level; it basically gets everyone in the same barnyard at the same time, meaning that everyone can witness the progression of a project, and make comments and changes as necessary.

3. What’s different about producing audio for online entertainment versus traditional media?

The learning curve when I first started with Fuel was very interesting, because of the emerging technology that comes with all internet-based entertainment. In traditional producton for broadcast and radio and television, compression issues aren’t a big deal, so you don’t really have to address those issues in your strategic planning, whereas with internet based content, you really have to do your homework to anticipate filesize issues–striving to get the best possible sound quality without a massive group of sound clips. This makes it imperative to work very methodically when dealing with music, sound design and voiceovers. As great as a piece of entertainment might sound, no one’s going to enjoy it if it takes 20 minutes to load. Another aspect, particularly for game development, is that a sound effect that’s tied to a character’s action, like jumping, will come up over and over, so the effort to make those sounds original needs to be that much greater.

4. What’s coming up for Fuel Sounds in the next few months?

Apart from the numerous upcoming projects, we’re really excited about developing a independent presence for Fuel Sounds. My wish list includes a demo site, a sample song library for Commercial, Soundtrack, and Experimental music, and a dedicated musician’s network where players can communicate with other players from across the world for the purposes of shared creativity.

5. Which of the seven dwarves most closely resembles your personality?

I’m somewhere right in the middle of dopey and grumpy. You got a problem with that?