Sound Design

The first week of classes, the professor for my music technologies class, Dr. Ivica Ico Bukvic, asked us a question (or brought up a topic for discussion). Of course, this isn't an exact quote and his delivery was a bit different and I apologize if I'm butchering his words, but the general question/topic is the same:

"What in life, other than music, gives you goosebumps? Has any of you ever gotten goosebumps from looking at a painting? I've never gotten goosebumps from looking at a piece of art, but I do get goosebumps from listening to music."

This really got me thinking. He's right. I've never looked at an extremely well designed poster or logo and got the same kind of feeling that I get when I listen to music. Even watching unbelievable motion design or animation with the sound on mute doesn't give me that feeling. I thought a bit more about it and realized that there are pieces of music that I listen to that were from a movie soundtrack or a live performance that at the time gave me goosebumps, but out of context was nice to listen to and that's it. Then I had an "epiphery". For me, it's the combination of audio and visual that gives me goosebumps. For example: there is a moment in the movie Requiem for a Dream where Jennifer Connelly has her head underwater and she screams at the exact moment the music picks up. The audio or the video by themselves are great, but together they send chills down my spine.

Although each one of these movies represented below has amazing visual effect, they wouldn't be nearly as effective without great sound design. Maybe, in a later post, I will reveal my obsession with Tron: Legacy, but for this post, we'll keep it general. These videos are by Michael Coleman, who is a producer and editor for Soundworks Collection and started Coleman Media Group. Amazing stuff (Seriously, click on the links and check it out).


Here's a video about the composer, Zack Hemsey. He's done several works for movie trailers and various ad campaigns. More recently, he did the music for the movie trailer of Inception.



The most interesting thing to me about Zack Hemsey and his work is that he never had formal training for music composition and that his work is done out of his own studio inside his house in NY. All of the audio samples are prerecorded and he just does all the composing, mixing, and editing to get to his final product. This relates very closely to what was discussed in our reading last week (Chapter 2 of Networked Publics by Kazys Varnelis) about blurring the lines between professional and amateur work and technology revolutionizing various industries.


Next up are two videos exploring the sound and audio work for the movies Tron: Legacy and Transformers: Dark of the Moon. It's really interesting to see the differences in approach to sound and the new technologies of 7.1 Surround Sound and 3D. Enjoy!