Welcome to the Portfolio! Here can be found various works completed by PJ Belcher.
Testimonials:
Martin Hollis – Creator of GoldenEye, Founder and Director of Zoonami:
“PJ has that oh-so-rare combination of craftsmanship and technical understanding. I don’t believe many composers can install an operating system on hardware that isn’t intended to run it, and I don’t believe many hackers can compose music in three genres and deliver sound design compatible with a game’s heart. He is also ambitious, energetic and aspires to the best work he can do.”
Chris Delay – Founder and Director of Introversion:
“PJ is an extremely talented professional audio designer and we are delighted with the work he provided for us…. the work he turned in was astonishingly well crafted.“
Richard Brooksby – Founder and Director of Otterly:
“PJ becomes a great team member, with a real understanding of the whole project that goes far beyond the audio. This makes him a great person to work with; you can trust him to come up with excellent contributions with little direction.”
Jehyeon Kim – CEO of Blissoft:
“Working with PJ was a wonderful opportunity and experience for us. Over the couple of months spent working on Rat Fishing (our latest iOS title), PJ showed great enthusiasm, passion and effort. His care and attention to every single detail definitely helped bring out the best in our work. PJ’s warm and friendly character made us feel very comfortable while he worked with us. We definitely look forward to working on our next project with PJ.”
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All audio, including music and sound design has been composed, performed and produced by PJ Belcher.
Follow the sub menu under portfolio to view some of the Games PJ Belcher Pro Audio has worked on.
A high quality showreel can be sent out on request. Any questions please get in contact.
Audio-Visual Pieces:
Movie Trailer.
This is a movie trailer for which I re-scored the entire soundtrack, including composition and sound design.
The music was scored, arranged and produced from scratch, merging the typical epic Hollywood sound with metal guitars and abstract synths.
The sound design came from a variety of my own recordings, sample libraries and synth programming. This was then coloured with large amounts of DSP to achieve the wanted sound.
The VO dialogue was supplied by Lindsay Abbot (http://www.lindsayabbottvoiceover.com/) which was then arranged and mixed by myself into the score.
The original trailer can be viewed here;
http://www.traileraddict.com/trailer/9-feature/the-count-trailer
[Acker 2009] Focus Features.
Generative Music System.
Subversion is the highly anticipated 5th game from Introversion. I worked with them designing the procedural music system now in game. Procedural game play is a large part of the game’s design, and the music system slotted in nicely.
“I hired PJ to produce music and sound effects for the “Subversion” game prototype, and the work he turned in was astonishingly well crafted. We worked together for several months on the project, during which time PJ developed a tense main theme in keeping with the high-tech-stealth nature of the game.
This was no ordinary game audio project though – each element of the track was played independently within the game engine, with its volumes linked to game properties such as suspicion, danger, curiosity. As the game progressed different elements of the music would fade up and take over, creating an audio environment that was always unique, and crucially gave the player subtle clues as to the state of the world and its inhabitants. As security guards became suspicious of your behaviour the music would shift to match that change, and the player would know instantly something was wrong. ”
- Chris Delay: Founder and Director of Introversion.
The video above shows Chris Delay demonstrating the system in some of it’s early stages. The music was produced by myself and is based on a series of pre-composed segments that interlace based on the games progression. This is then “flavoured” with a series of additional musical gestures that are directly related to the player’s interaction with the game, and the games reaction to the player.
Rat Fishing game Trailer.
Rat Fishing is a game developed by Blissoft and is available on the App Store for all iOS devices.
I was asked to come on board as Audio Designer for this project and was given a great amount of freedom, something I didn’t neglect. The style of gameplay was a great base for Carl Stalling style arrangements and the real time music systems I’m becoming known for. New for this project though, I was given the opportunity to score music (and sound design) for an in game cut scene.
Floe game Trailer.
Floe is a game developed by Otterly and Published by Chillingo under the Clickgamer label. It is now available on the app store for iPhone and iPad.
I produced all the music and sound design for the game, the trailer demonstrates some of this, although musical elements have been removed not to clash with the theme. An article I wrote on the audio development process can be read here.
Cartoon.
This is the first scene from “Going! Going! Gosh!”, a cartoon from Warner Bros “Merrie Melodies” featuring Wile E. Coyote and Roadrunner (Jones, 1952)
I have completely re-composed the soundtrack to emulate the style of Carl Stalling, whilst maintaining an original score. The sound design is partly made up of original samples taken from other episodes, and partly my own construction.
Soundtrack.
This is an excerpt of the first 30 seconds of “Persona” from Swedish director Ingmar Bergman (Bergman, 1966). I have re-designed the entire soundtrack in a style completely different to that of the original, with the objective of still producing something fitting.
Most sounds heard are produced from materials found around the house, which I recorded, and then heavily altered to produce the sounds heard.
Animation.
Soundtrack by PJ Belcher. Animation by Criag Dockerill and Ailwyn McGeoch.
© Copyright 2010. All Right Reserved.
The animation was a dissertation piece created by two students. At the last minute I was asked to compose a full soundtrack, including sound design in the two days prior to submission. This is the finished product.
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My SoundCloud profile can be found via the link for additional audio pieces.
My YouTube profile can be found via the link for additional visual projects.
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Audio:
On this page can be found various audio examples, including pieces I have written and samples of projects I have worked on.
Examples of professional work are not published on the site for ownership reasons, but these can be demonstrated in person.
All pieces (including some others not listed here) can be listened to on my SoundCloud profile alternatively.
Ambience and Music Montage – “Sacrifice”
Sacrifice was a game I worked on as part of Brains Eden 24 hour games jam. It had a clear 3 section layout, whereby the art style and level of camera zoom altered a 3 equal intervals as the player progressed throughout the game. I decided to design my audio to fit this system and help re-enforce the time limit the player was working to (see my blog post on Sacrifice for details of game design).
Firstly I designed a musical soundtrack that had 3 clear sections, which each section being capable of seamless, rhythmic looping. The audio engine would then loop the 1st section until the player moved into section 2, at which point section 1 music would cross fade to section 2. Section 2 sported a more intense, faster paced (although technically at the same tempo) sound, and section 3 even more so, building the intensity of the game, and serving as a auditory reference of each players progression.
For the ambience I developed on the system I designed for Floe, whereby the ambient soundtrack is comprised entirely of singular assets, that are arranged and generated in real time, providing the sound scape heard in game. (For details of the system please see my post here.) I further developed this by having a clear system of 2 long background samples that cross-faded randomly between each other while a further 4 samples would be triggered over the top. In addition to this there were 4 bird samples that could be triggered at any time, and space dependent sounds, such as flies around meat and the crackling of a campfire that could be heard in game when you get near to them. The ambience was then split into 3 sections to match the game, with each section sporting its own set of ambient assets. These would then cross-fade into eachother as the player progressed through the sections.
Not section dependent but time triggered was the sound of the voice over. This is the eerie face-less voice that read out how long you had until your imminent doom in 1 minute intervals, until the final 10 second warning. Finally the last 10 seconds had a digital countdown sound for added pressure.
Thanks to Steve Thomas and his royalty free SFX pack for some of the ambient recordings, acquired via Hywel Thomas, his son, and man responsible for coding the audio management engine in Sacrifice.
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Monster Montage – “Sacrifice”
It wasn’t long into the production of Sacrifice that I decided I would have to give the monster some sounds to back up it’s personality. I had learnt from working on Floe the value of using real vocal acting as a starting point for any character’s sounds. There are nuances and certain complex tonalities that can only be produced from recording actual voice. Our lead artist on the project, Angel Dimitrov decided he would be best for the task, and so using a vocal dynamic mic I had brought along I recorded straight into logic via the built in pre-amps on my external soundcard. Some heavy editing and a little Logic magic, et voila! monster sounds.
From this I had around 15 individual samples that could be played back in game for certain events. These included, anger at not being able to pass a gate, the sound of him eating, walking and general slobbery. These are all included in the sound file featured with the addition of the level complete sound at the end of the track. It was this sound that saw the monster fall into the “flaming pit of sacrifice”.
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Musiqie Concrete:
An early experiment to produce a piece true to the style of Musique Concrete. All of the sounds heard were recorded using a dynamic microphone and are of everyday items, such as switches, glasses and paper and have no DSP on them, aside from a little mastering reverb and very subtle compression. This is a great exercise since it demands flawless recording technique and a great skill for arrangement to produce a piece worthy of listening to.
