Crafting Cinematic Symphonies: A Sound Designer's/ Video Editor's Odyssey Through Visual Storytelling

"The Art of Sound Designing: My work as a Sound Designer" I have been a Sound Designer for a few of my projects such as "Kidney Krisis", "Cookies For You", "家", "Project: Mercy" and also "What Was I made For"

My journey as a sound designer at Temasek Polytechnic has been a captivating rollercoaster, brimming with emotional highs and lows stemming from technical hurdles and diverse collaborative dynamics. Yet, amidst the challenges, I've gleaned invaluable insights, mastering a spectrum of skills—from adeptly maneuvering various sound equipment to refining the art of audio post-production mixing.

My journey started with my first short film project - Kidney Krisis. Honestly, during the pre-production, I assumed I was well prepared as I had charted my moodpboard for my artistic vision of the sound design for the film. I had also prepared a list of equipments I needed for the shoot date itself.

However, due to the late bookings we did not have any sound equipment and so being adaptable, I used a rode shotgun microphone and attached it to the camera. Unfortunately, more problems arose as during the post production, I realised that for the party scene, there were a lot of cans on the floor, so the sounds of the cans hitting the floor was overlaying with the cast voices.

Throughout the editing process, I did what I could to salvage the audio we had and also used tools such as DeReverb and Denoise which are functions on Premier Pro to clean the audio up to the best of my abilities. Luckily, I was able to get a better, cleaner audio compared to the raw version. In the end we submitted the film and also won the Crowbar awards coming in third place which was a big achievement to me.

Another project that I had difficulties with was the short film project 2. It was difficult as we had a lot of technical difficulties that we had to settle and in the end I felt like I gave it my all and produced what I considered to be one of the best projects that I had worked on.

This time the problem came during the post production side of the film process. As we were switching between the editor and the sound designer, there were files that went missing or some that would not be relocated when we were passing the project file from premiere pro back and fourth. I also realised some of my audio files that I had saved were missing during our exchanges and this posed as a challenge for me as I had worked so hard on it but not all hope was lost as I went to troubleshoot and relocated my files and I had to piece by piece place or the files back on the project timeline but in the end I made it in time and was so proud of what I achieved.

We have also created an Instagram account showcasing our works and our behind the scenes of what we do on set and what to expect from our film and also the trailer of Cookie For You.

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For "家" and "Project: Mercy" I felt that the processes were normal as these were some of my friends passion project that I helped as a sound designer. Through these 2 projects, I felt that I have grown from my previous school projects and so it went smoothly and I was able to use my skills that I have learnt and learn new things on the way. I also managed to meet new people through the shoots and bond with them and these helped me get connections as well.

"Frame by Frame: Mastering the Art of Video Editing"

For Job Threat, I was mainly the editor for the film and I felt that it was a good change of environment from what I would normally do as a sound designer. Job Threat is a passion project that I helped my friend with. I felt that the video genre was a different pace to what I would normally handle as it is an action film. I planned to use the editing skills from premiere pro that I have attained from being a sound designer and also learning new editing tools and terms.

Since it was an action film, there were a lot of fast paced shots and fast cuts were also being used so editing the film posed as a challenge to me. However, I followed the shots and lined them up perfectly to show the punches and hit that were being made.