Best Sound, 2000
Theme Park World |
So, who is Mark Knight?
At 34 years old, I've been working within Video Games Audio for 15 years.
My first complete job was a contract for the developer Mindscape, re-arranging the orchestral score for Wing Commander, onto the Commodore Amiga. This soundtrack was recognised as being ahead of its time, attempting to recreated an orchestral soundtrack within the confines of the 4 channel sound chip. The soundtrack was also fully interactive.
I then took a full time job with Mindscape, as sound co-ordinator. During this time, I worked on many skus, including Captive 2 - Liberation ("one of the best soundtracks of all time"), the classic platform game, Out to Lunch, and the critically aclaimed Warhammer, Dark Omen. I stayed at Mindscape for 5 years, until the development team was shut down.
As a short job fix, I then went back to freelance work, to work on Duke Nukem for the Playstation. This involved remixing 11 of the PC tracks, and creating another 20 original tracks, in the space of 4 months.
Straight after Duke Nukem, I was offered a position at my favourite games developer, Bullfrog Productions. Suffice to say, with Electronic Arts' takeover of the company, this quickly changed into a position at EA. Initially working as a composer on titles such as Populous the Beginning, and Dungeon Keeper 2, I then took the position of Audio Lead (in charge of audio), for titles such as Quake 3 (ps2), Formula One, and Shox. As part of the EA sound team, I also won a BAFTA for Best Sound, with the game Theme Park World. My role was specifically implimentation of the sound into the game.
I left EA in January 2003, to work with the chart band Massive Attack, creating string parts, and violin effects sounds (now you know what the "madfiddler" references may stand for). I hoped that this would lead to further work, unfortunately it didn't, so I decided to go back into freelance audio - thus keeping my options open with what developers and bands I work for.
I moved up to Dundee in Scotland in 2004 to build an audio department at Visual Science, run by Russell Kay, but sadly in February 2006 Visual Science became yet another statistic when a project was cancelled and we couldn't continue as a company.
In April 2006 I was proud to get the opportunity to go back to EA, all be it at a different studio in the North West of England. So we moved, again, promised of a 'job for life'. Um, well, in October EA shut down the studio so I'm again back on the freelance market for audio design and composing within the media industry.
In October 2006 EA decided to close the North West studio so again I faced moving somewhere else for work. This time I decided to stay put since, I had enough of moving around the country for work which may last 6 months or less.
I have decided to go freelance again now. Not only offering sound design, composing, and implimentation services for the games industry, but to also offer composing services for the film and television industries. I am also boosting up my session work on the electric violin and fiddle, and am teaching music production for the South Lancashire Arts Partnership in Chorley. I can also offer location recording for music groups, be it a full band or a solo performer.
Stay tuned for more
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