Bill Black is a musician who also casts and directs voice actors and performs sound effects design.
Early life
Bill Black (real name William Thomas Blackwell III) was born in Long Beach, California. August 18, 1960. He started out in music on bass guitar in the Los Angeles clubs with a rockabilly trio, James Intveld and the Rockin' Shadows.[1][failed verification]
Black left and was replaced by Patrick Woodward. The band split up when Ricky Nelson asked drummer Ricky Intveld and Woodward to join his backing band. All were killed on 31 December 1985 when the plane in which they were travelling crashed in De Kalb, Texas less than two miles from a landing strip at approximately 5.14pm. In 1983 Black joined the Huntington Beach pop punk rock group "The Earwigs"[2] and stayed with them until they split up in 1987.
Career
In the late 1980s, Black was contracted by Activision to create audio and MIDI tracks for their games. In 1995 he began sound design & casting & directing character voice over for video games under the name Big Fat Kitty Productions (later Bill Black Audio Video). He worked with Geoff Farr to design sound for Gina & TL, a 2002 Sundance Film Festival pick for animated shorts. The same year, Black and composer Paul Chiten created the sound that opens and closes the Tokyo Stock Exchange.[3] Black is now the CFO of Buzzart Enterprises Inc., the publishing company of Buzzy Linhart. Black currently lectures regularly at USC Viterbi School of Engineering and is also voiceover casting and dialogue director.[1]
Television and film
Black's musical compositions have been used in Law and Order and the Showtime series StreetTime.[4]
I-76 German Activision 1997 Dialogue post-production
Asteroids Activision 1998 Sound effects design
Battlezone Activision 1997 Produced and co-directed voiceover, Dialogue post-production Sound effects design Mixed Cinematic Cut scenes and Dialogue post-production on Japanese Version
Screaming Demons Activision 1998 Casting, Producing, and Co-Directing voiceover in English & German, Authored the Script for All Radio Segments, Sound effects design
Jade Cocoon Crave Entertainment 1999 Dialogue post-production, Cut scene Mixing
Call To Power Activision 1998 Casting, Directing, Sound effects design, Italian, German, French Castilian Dialogue Editing, Recording, Futzing, Mixing
Jet Ski Crave 2000 Dialogue post-production voiceover Actor
Dark Reign Activision 1997 Sound effects design Dialogue post-production Mixing German, French, and Spanish
Call To Power II Activision 2002 Casting, Directing, Sound effects design, Dialogue post-production Mixed Cinematic Cut scenes for Italian, German French, Iberian Spanish