Working In Sound: “There were baby elephants and falling redwoods in the sound design”

As one of the participants in our recent Working In Sound course, Heather Niven looks back on a learning-filled 10 weeks of sound design, DAWs and dinosaurs…

I had the privilege of taking part in the 10 week-long online Working In Sound: Beginners sound design workshop, which took place this spring and was supported by SIGN.

The reason I wanted to take part was that I am involved in developing a new audio location triggered drama app called GeoStories, which entails producing soundscapes to accompany the stories. As a small startup we are trying to do as much as we can ‘in-house’ and so knowing how to construct the soundscape around our stories is important to us!

My background is more strategic and less operational and so I felt an amount of trepidation in starting the course, however the organiser and facilitator took a great amount of time to reassure participants that we would be in a safe and supported space to learn and that we would be given a voice. This was really encouraging.

We had a small group of people meeting weekly on a Tuesday night online (which was great for me, living in rural North Yorkshire and miles from anywhere.) The first session was focused around introductions and getting to know each other. There were many backgrounds and interests in the room, from musicians to film-makers, and we all had our own stories and reasons for being there.

Some of the sessions were pre-recorded and we had time to listen and learn and complete the homework set in our own time. The first homework was to understand how the sounds of the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park were designed – fascinating! There were baby elephants and falling redwoods in those sound designs, all within one roar. It was hilarious to find out that dinosaurs probably didn’t even roar at all, but only gurgled, however it wouldn’t have been quite the same film if the dinos only made sounds of indigestion!

By week five we understood the inner workings of a DAW and how to layer sounds, how to work with tracks, fade in and make things move from one headphone to the other. We learned about foreground, mid and far away sounds and how ‘atmos’ needs to exist in all situations or the sound becomes dead.

I had managed to produce my first video by then. Here it is:

I shared this with the group which was quite scary, but everyone was really supportive.

We had a guest speaker from the industry and they shared their experiences which was insightful, if a little over my head. It was great to see how this sort of work is used in the industry, though.

The final week was the ‘show and tell’ week and the results of 10 weeks of learning and work was ready to be shared. I was really excited that night and happy at what had been learned and the new people I had met and experienced this learning with.

I would be lying if I didn’t recall feel a bit gutted then at the end that we ran out of time before I got a chance to share my final piece; so if you will indulge me, here is the culmination of my learning on the beginners’ programme to share with you.