Showreel encompassing most of my tenure, including in-depth behind-the-scenes material
My mission, create outstanding soundtracks for your work.
Let your ears embrace the unexpected with an overview of my past works, blurring the line between reality and art, reflecting the standards of the discerning modern cinemagoer.
My sound design workflow pattern
What clients are saying about me
What clients are saying about me
First, every sound, dialogue and ADR cue is identified (or, for silent clips, every potential audio cue is envisaged and adapted).
Each sound cue, their respective time codes, and cue numbers are recorded onto a ‘spotting sheet’, one for sound effects, another for dialogue and ADR.
I refer to Walter Murch’s ‘Dense Clarity, Clear Density’ theory, as well as using my own piece of mind, to categories each sound effect into layers. The stronger the linguistic significance of a sound is, the louder they will be heard in the mix, and therefore, these are the sounds the audience must subconsciously connect with.
After colour-coding each track based on their layer, the source recording is then translated to whatever equipment, plugins and automation are available to recreate that sound to a professional standard.
Mark down any additional recording, mixing or microphone data for confident and optimal foley performance.
— Phase 1: Pre-production
I tend to first record ambience beds and details first - using a shotgun mic - so I can engage with the acoustic environment in the film clip. This can help me establish the best order of foley effects, spot FX and dialogue cues to record afterwards.
Afterwards, dialogue and ADR are recorded with actors, through the industry-standard Shure SM7b and Sanken COS-11D mics, with the recording director coaching the actors through to the sound booth. Actors must strictly work according to the original dialogue cues for professional voice recreation.
Foley and spot FX are performed and recorded using individual props, equipment and software I have at my disposal, through the portable Zoom H4Essential mic.
All recorded sound files are embedded with Adobe Audition metadata, and have gain increased to avoid increasing too much gain using laydown software.
More complex foley effects undergo many signal plugins in both Logic and Pro Tools, including EQ, reverb and others, to achieve the desired sound textures.
Files are categorised into coloured sound category folders, according to the Universal Category System guidelines.
— Phase 2: Production
Using Logic Pro X, sound files are placed onto individual tracks to sync with the film’s audio, then crossfaded at the start and end to remove any unwanted clicks, pops, or other recorded data.
Dialogue recordings have one or several of the most superior regions chosen to be the final sound, which are comped, crossfaded and blended to sound continuous.
The tracks of audio files are placed into ‘stack folders’ and ‘sub-stack folders’ so that they categorise with one another, for swift navigation among similar sound and dialogue recordings. They are then colour-coded for clear track/region distinction.
Extensive processing from plugins like EQ, compression, overdrive, GRM plugins and others are used to finalise each sound and dialogue recording to sound as close to the genuine article and/or the film’s audio as possible.
Referring to the coloured ‘layers’, all tracks are mixed down, either through automation modulation, gain reduction/boosting, or both, so each track responds seamlessly to its corresponding visual cue, and with each other, for a coherent, balanced mix.
Tracks are panned (static or modulated) across the full stereo and surround fields before being exported to 24-bit, 48KHz video files for your listening pleasure.
