Remember (Co-Sound Designer)

Over the last couple of weeks, I have been assisting with the sound design of a grad film from the LCC Film Practice course. Tackling this project has been a bit of a learning curve in the sense of I have yet to properly approach a more formal sound designing role. The story of this short film focuses on an old couple where the main character has a degree of hearing impairment and uses a hearing aid. With this, I have had to explore how to respectfully represent these sorts of impairments, this is very important to me. More often, in films approaching these sorts of thematics, the representation is dramatized in post-production to create more attraction to a film. rather than respectfully representing it. With this, I was able to find individuals who experienced hearing impairments and gather from them what the experience of sound is like for them personally. Taking these experiences, I approached the design with a foundation of knowledge of how I can mimic this experience through post-production. With my co-designer, Kat, we have had to navigate a bit of an exchange of skills in terms of, she has much more on-set sound recording experience vs. I have much more post-production knowledge. We began our project in Ableton to execute the creative details and gradually moved over to ProTools to approach the denser sound files. My tasks were more so to approach the tones of the hearing aid and the bodily noises of what sound does passing through the body rather than hearing it with your ears. I’d say the most challenging part we have met thus far is achieving what a voice may sound like from an impaired perspective. There are lots of bodily noises and vibrations you must take into account. Absorbing sound through your body is very different compared to absorbing sound through the ears, you must take into account the vibrations of someones voice, how it would phase differently through different bodies and objects. With this, my co-sound designer and I went about the details very carefully and respectfully while still being able to be creative in how this sort of impairment would actually affect the story. This project has introduced me a much more formal way to approach sound design for film; working directly with the director and producer in order to achieve the vision they have. Moving forward, I can take this knowledge into account when looking for post-university projects and how exactly I am to function within post production. Though taking the sound design path is not my peak of interest, I know it would be dumb not to take this knowledge and make something out of it when the opportunities arise. With these connections I have made through this project I am confident that if I wanted to dip my toes into more vigorous sound designing for film, that I could.