About Goblins and other Mythical Creatures

Co-founders Gabrielle Haley (left) and Ana Betancourt (right).

“It is 2017 and two graduates of the MSc in Sound Design by the University of Edinburgh were exchanging ideas as to how they could improve their workflow. Suddenly, an idea; wouldn’t it be great if we could have a product that allowed us to spend more time doing the creative bits of sound with our clients, getting them involved in the process without having to go over all the technical aspects of it?”

“In the beginning…”

Back in July of 2017, both Gabby and I were about to graduate from the University of Edinburgh and were working on our dissertation topics. From our first field recording trip in 2016, we thought about forming a partnership, embarking in new sound adventures and growing as professionals.

Initially, we thought about creating sound libraries; the idea appealed to us for a variety of reasons. First, compiling a wide variety of sounds means that we could fulfil our dream of adventure, being outdoors and come up with ingenious ways to record sounds for their editing and packaging into usable libraries. Second, it meant that we could be creating a set of sound effect collections which we could use for our projects as well, which we loved doing anyway. It was a no brainer.

Armed with a new found courage, we made an appointment with our university’s business advisor team and, pitched our idea, although, quite frankly, we didn’t even know what “pitching our idea” meant back then. 

After our now business advisor, Ross McLennan, asked us what the name of our company was [and not having an answer], we went back to my flat and, in what was maybe, the most methodic creative session ever, we started scribbling and joining words that made sense to us; and there it was, our favourite colour and what both Gabby and I agreed was the most fascinating mythical creature, the Goblin. And out of a perhaps absurd yet increasingly meaningful amalgamation of things we both love just as much as we love sound, Black Goblin was born. 

Ana Betancourt and Gabrielle Haley on the Set of "Anna", 2018

“The Sound Journey”

Just after graduation, both Gabby and I were set to conquer the world with our love for sound. Alas! It seems that our specialised services and sound libraries ALONE could not get the job done. Many of our clients were coming too late to see us; we did have a couple of instances where these same clients were afraid to “talk sound”, and even looked like they didn’t care, but it wasn’t that, not at all; it was frustration. 

Language that was commonplace for us [jargon], meant nothing for the brilliant independents we were being lucky enough to work with and ultimately, our work felt disconnected from a lot of the creative process that visual experts who hired us were part of. Talking to much more established audio professionals at the time, people that were working with big industry names and, international production houses, they all seemed to agree: “More often than not, sound is an afterthought, and it is a reality we need to live with”.

But we saw something different, there was a rise in the independent sector, and yes, I call it A RISE! and it was about to change it all. 

“The Rise of the Independent Film Industry”

More and more we saw that independent, small-budget films were winning awards, and, being part of the film industry was no longer a far away dream. Although a very difficult profession, those with all sorts of backgrounds could dare to create their own content; there were amazing products like Adobe Creative Cloud, professional digital cameras at a fraction of their usual cost, and a plethora of educational video content out there that taught from the very basic methods of video editing, up to how to create the most astounding visual effects from the comfort of your living room, using only your computer. All of these made content creation far more accessible for a lot of people. 

Soon, we started looking at what was out there for sound production, and let’s be honest, there is a lot! And we love everything, we use it; we love AVID, iZotope, Waves, everything you can imagine. We love the great advances in technology that our local Edinburgh-based audio fellows are doing, as well as many others creating audio products around the world; we use these products and will continue to do so; so, this part of my post is not a burn towards them!

However, while we, audio people love what is out there, those who initiate content, script writers, directors, film editors have no clue how to approach current sound equipment and software. In a way, we are still in what is called the “middle-ware” stage of our sector’s technology development.

So, while companies like iZotope and Adobe are offering Machine Learning powered features, they still revolve around the same layout that mimics analog gear and consoles; the same happens for plug-ins, the design has also remained somewhat constant. There is a reason for this, don’t get me wrong, and that is, to ensure that people like me can transfer their knowledge easily into any audio product.

But again! The industry is changing. To make a successful film you no longer have to partner with Warner Brothers. In fact, film is not the only form of audiovisual entertainment we consume; we have games, social media content, web series, vlogs, twitch, etc. I could fill a page with what is out there, encouraging us to create; not only the offer, but the demand for content has exponentiated over the last 10 years, and yet here we are, audio software companies still cater only to us, sound professionals; but sound experts don’t start projects [by the way, we should, but that is a whole other post], we come in later, after someone came up with a great script, or a visual idea. And we no longer are the only ones taking audio-related decisions; the smaller the team, the more overlaps there are, so the approach of us, sound professionals coming into a project later is no longer working. We need to capture our clients sooner, and to do this, we need to make them part of our process.

“Subversive”

Turns out that talking to people who are not sound specialists about sound yielded a lot of information we were not aware of. The reality is that, when you talk to filmmakers, independent or working for big corporations, they all agree that they want to hire a professional to do the sound work for them. The problem is, a complete lack of knowledge on sound does not allow them to participate in its conception, therefore, prompting filmmakers to leave it to the very last minute [as we do with everything that scares us or that we dislike because it is too difficult, stressful, etc.] thus, negatively impacting US sound designers as much as the project is negatively impacted too.

Enters: Subversive. Subversive is the culmination of our journey to redefine sound and its rightful place in the creative process.

The product is a powerful collaboration platform between visual artists and sound professionals, encouraging creativity, long-term partnerships, and giving access to a plethora of tools that streamline the process of sound’s involvement on a project, from script to release.

“So, what to do now?”

Black Goblin is all about magic: the folk, the legends; in a nutshell, we are all about storytelling, but, as sound people, we have felt as outsiders when it comes to the storytelling process in film, just as much as filmmakers from other departments have felt like outsiders when it comes to the audio workflow. So, Black Goblin and its Fellowship are working on changing the way creatives work with sound, not only through Subversive, but in many other ways. 

If you look around our website you will see that we carry on rendering specialised sound services, and we also have a wide array of educational content focused on sound; but it is not all about sound professionals. If you check our “Introduction to Sound for Film Trilogy” for example, it is aimed at filmmakers and visual experts. On it, we argue that all filmmakers should acquaintance themselves with audio professionals and with the basics of the sound creation process to use it from the pre-production phase and up until the release of their projects.

We reinforce this idea with our own consulting clients, insisting to be part of a project’s planning as early as possible, but most importantly, making sure that we “talk sound” in an artistic, fun way. We are also creating tools, like Subversive, yes, but also others to ensure that both sound and visual experts can collaborate and feed from each other’s work. 

This is what Black Goblin is about. It is about all the characters in a story that add to the narrative; about Goblins and other mythical creatures that make the myth more compelling, more memorable. This is our story, our journey; one that we hope you will join us in for the long run.