Assembling and capturing the sound effects for battles on the scale of World War II is a daunting task, one that Sledgehammer Games’ audio director Dave Swenson and his team are taking on for Call of Duty: WWII. From camping out to capture sloshing water in rivers to bashing up bits of trees and timber, Swenson’s hunt for the perfect auditory sensations takes him to interesting places. One of the more interesting captures for Call of Duty: WWII happened on a golf course. “One of the cool things I did… I love planes. Especially WWII planes, they sound really great. They’re hard to get though – not everyone has a WWII bomber that’s functioning and flying around,” says Swenson. “So I was reading the newspaper and there was a day where a whole bunch of WWII bombers were flying in and going to be doing a lot of takeoffs and landings at the airport." "I called the FAA and they wouldn’t let me on the airport grounds because it was too dangerous, so I checked out Google maps. I saw at the end of the runway there was a golf course, so I went and bought a round of golf. I stuck my recorders in my golf bag and camouflaged them, and went out to the third hole and played it all day long – it was right at the end of the runway. So when a bomber took off, I got amazing bomber flybys and recordings, I did that all day.” While the team could use sounds from captured footage, every effort is made to capture the sounds in the wild from their natural sources, from tank engines to blistering bark. Source: Game Informer
