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Sound Design for Film

Missing Persons
Missing Persons
2024
Written and Directed by Jack Kison
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This Thriller short film follows Hannah, trying to get to the bottom of her wife's disappearance, and picking up the piece of her own life.
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My primary goal in designing sound and composing music for this project, was to ground the soundtrack in Hannah's psyche and emotional journey. I was inspired by the psychology in Gavin De Becker's Non-Fiction book The Gift of Fear, and used it as a blueprint for designing and cerebral soundscape.

Click here to view the full short film
 
Threat and Danger
This scene opens the film, and it was important for me to establish right away a soundscape that conveyed danger and threat from the perspective of April (pictured). Her footsteps walking in careful rhythm on pavement, as well as the keys she is holding as a weapon, are mixed vividly present in the mix to give a vulnerability to the character.

The ambience was constructed in extreme detail, being made out of several tracks that crossfade around one another. Emergancy sirens, crows, distant voices and barking dogs are layered among dry, early spring Suburban ambiences in low populated times to convey an uneasy desolation, in order to delicately convey this sensation of danger.

In keeping with the vivid design, there is even sound when the camera maneuvers around the car, conveying an unseen presence of threat, by using an amorphous rise and fall of low frequency noise.
Anxiety
Violence
Missing Persons contains three instances of onscreen physical violence, and one of my design goals was to make these moments nasty, ugly and painful. And I did so with foley elements refered to in the industry as "fresh ingredients", that is to say with fruits and vegetables.

For the two scenes when a character gets a blunt force object to the head, I recorded myself smashing cantaloupe with a wooden and aluminum baseball bat respectively, as shown in the first and third examples in this showreel.

During the fight scene at the end, the sound of Lawrence getting a fork stabbed into his shoulder was made with a cooked beer brat, the sound of him getting kicked in the groin was a combination of a pillow being hit and processed with heavy compression as well me smashing two grapes in my hands. The latter was especially useful because the impulse is so sharp that it delivers the pain factor, while the pillow conveys the weight of the kick and material of the pants. The final shot to the head is made up of several elements in addition to the cantaloupe. But of particular interest are a metal doorknob falling on the floor to get a suitably painful metal hit to characterize the bat and ripping apart celery to convey damage to the skull.
An crucial component to this film is the treatment of Hannah's mental health and how it is affected by her wife, April's disappearance. It's treatment with sound and music is shown here in 3 instances throughout the film.

In the first instance, she reflects on the last voicemail she received from her and experiences a light downward spiral. The sound of April's voice message begins in a diegetic manner, with the quality treated to sound like it's coming from a phone speaker, but then transitions to sound like it's inside Hannah's headspace and then rattles around disorientingly in that space when she stops the message. A heartbeat is also heart throughout this and ramps up in speed as her agitation grows. Further abstract sounds are used to support the visual element of the background distorting, representing her equilibrium out of balance.

In the second example, when she talks to Sergeant Crowe and he tells her he's halting the investigation into April's disappearance, I wanted to use sound to make it sound like the air had been sucked out of the room. I did this by subtly increasing the ambient sound of the room and then having it whoosh out. I also used Izotope plugins to take the reverb off of the voice recordings. The effect isn't a clean one, but has unnatural and disorienting artifacts, but I used those imperfections to the advantage of the scene.

In the third instance, Hannah is at her lowest point and the sound is the most abstracted, with each sound represented with a heavy, deep, distant quality. Characterizing her world in that moment as an internal one of distorted anger, confusion and grief. But the world around her comes back to her when she sees her mother.
The Gift of Fear
In Gavin De Becker's The Gift of Fear, he raises the point that true, genuine fear is a feature of evolution that we use in moments of extreme and immediate danger to guide us to safety and is often confused with worry or anxiety.

I carefully constructed sound here to convey the immediate danger from Lawrence and the transition of Hannah's worry and anxiety becoming true fear. I performed and designed the foley myself, with the kitchenware having a present, sharp quality conveying danger, but also representing Hannah's subconsciousness cataloguing details around her to be used to protect herself, even down to the texture of the glasses in front of her. The sound of Hannah sneaking the fork off the table is of particular importance because it amplifies the delicacy of the moment. It's loud enough to put the audience on edge because they don't want Lawrence to notice it's sound as they do. Innocuous things like a knife clattering on the table and a champagne cork popping are also designed to sound heavy and dangerous to reflect Hannah's perspective on the moment. Her heartbeat also underscores this moment in a motivated way, starting present with an increasing rate and becoming distant and reverberant to reflect the ground beneath her being swept away when Lawrence confirms April's death and his role in it. It then slows and becomes present again to denote her becoming focused and deciding that now is the moment to act. Even the background ambience is given attention, beginning as diegetic and realistic before being removed entirely when Hannah discovers her unwelcome, uninvited guest in her kitchen. When she sits down to dinner a new, surreal ambient bed is mixed in, further conveying the presence of danger.
Behind the Scenes
Ring of Steel: MTU v. NMU Theatrical Sword Fight
Ring of Steel
2019
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Tyler Quinn: Director of Photography, Camera A Operator, Editor and Sound Designer
Ryan Nicklas: Camera B Operator
Christopher Plummer: Camera C Operator and Faculty Consultant
Aaron Christianson: Sound Recordist
Ring of Steel Combat Theater: Fight Choreography
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When approaching sound for this project, my goal was to create an immersive and feverishly disorienting experience that would place the audience into the chaotic, violent action. All combatants were recorded after the fight separately so we could get their isolated sword hits. This allowed us to use clean, isolated recordings for each set of fighting partners as they appear on screen. The sound design shifts to a sickly quality partway through the evoke stress and fatigue as the fighting comes to a head and combatants begin to die. I chose to use "Milk Lizard" by the Dillinger Escape Plan as a backing track because of it's provocatively aggressive energy to convey a feeling of bloodlust.

The Twins
Also Composer for this project

the Twins
2022
Written and Directed by Tim Geib
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This animated series pilot is centered around the mystery of two Twins, separated at birth, working for governments of separate countries, that are both assigned to fight the threat of an emerging terrorist cell.
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This piece was truly approached like an animated film, in the fact that all sound was handled first and visuals followed suit. My design concept for sound was to support the very vivid world building, the kinetic and playful overarching tone and the strong emotional beats.

Click here to view the full episode
 
This scene depicts The Russian task force arriving via private plane to the Secret underground Bunker in Switzerland.
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This excerpt demonstrates the most intricate single moment of sound design in the entire project. I initially tried to pull existing royalty free recordings of plane landings and arrivals, but they proved scarce, and paid recordings were not budget friendly for this project. In the end, the plane sound was created entirely from recordings that I took in my house. Pieces that make up the sound include a pedestal fan, contact recordings of a bicycle wheel being spun (and the accidental friction of the wheel against the cable for wheel skids), white noise processed with a phaser for the engine and pressing against the side of a clothes dryer to characterize the metal paneling of the plane. The movement of the plane in the film was  evoked with several layers of automated editing.
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In addition to the plane, the mountain ambience of the bunker was created with white noise generators, actual recordings of an intense winter gale whistling through my windowsill and the foley sounds of me pressing against ventilation ducts in my basement
In this moment, Vera has just finished weapons training and goes to find her romantic partner Kristina, only to be ambushed with a barage of mock knife hits, in an impromptu extension of her training for the day.
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This excerpt demonstrates a taste of the large amount of foley work I did for this project. The knife swipes are the sound of paint brushes being vigorously swung near the microphone and the hits are amplified recordings of me jabbing my pointed fingers into my own ribs. All footsteps in the Twins were recording in real locations that were similar to those described in the script. The footsteps in this scene were recorded in my grandparents's pull barn. For the duration of this project, I decided to mostly used room tone that I synthesized from the ground up. I did this with a pink noise generator, a filter resonantly sweeping slowly across small bands of low or low-mid frequencies and ran them through convulution reverbs.
This scene depicts the heart wrenching moment during the confrontation between the Twins and the Blank Slate when their leader shoots Vera in the chest.
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This moment has the most expressionistic use of sound design in the project. Leading up to the shooting, low swells of subbass are used to punctuate the tension and room tone is taken away in places to evoke an uneasy "too quiet" sensation. The sound design during and after the shooting plunges the audience into Jessica's horrified perspective, by mimicking sensations in her body and mind. The shot of the gun is sustained and descends in pitch to simulate the sensation of her blood running cold, the low whooshing is blood rushing at a quickened pace in her brain, and the ringing in the right channel is her experiencing hearing damage from the sound of the gun. All sound around it is further filtered and reverberated to further evoke a sense of disorientation.
Personal Experimental Films
Third Shift Coming Home
3rd Shift Coming Home
2023
This film was created to process and evoke the psychological turbulence I experienced as a result of working a third shift manual labor job. To do so, my design approaches sound in a way that combines a poetic, impressionistic and confrontational approach.

INDUSTRIAL DRIVING REVERIE

This vignette of the film begins in a perspective of pensive isolation at the beginning of the drive home, with a deep wintery atmosphere and an AM Radio that obfuscates any semblance of a human voice. As the drive progresses, crumbs of industrial clamor are sprinkled into the ambience as whispers to evoke the remnants of the labor. As these sounds progress the viewer is enveloped in a growing anxiety with sounds of an oppressive low tone and fluids churning in the brain.

MENTAL BREAKDOWN

This portion of the film represents the most intense moments of mental flux, evoking stress, anger and irritability. It begins with a sonic representation of hearing loss I temporarily experienced during a particularly difficult week of working, and from there opens the sonic space to sonically portray intense processes in the Nervous, Endocrine and Circulatory Systems. This portion comprises 3 major components: A heartbeat, raw recordings of liquid flowing (original recordings captured with a hydrophone), and sounds of electricity (original recordings captured with an electromagnetic microphone). As the heart rate increases, the pumping of the liquid grows more intense, and the electricity crescendos into an aggressive caterwauling to evoke the sensation of out of control brain activity. These sounds are lyrically paired to visuals of waves crashing destructively on naturally formed ice barriers against the pier of a beach, a destination I routinely passed on my drive home.

TROUBLED DREAMS

After brief relief from the intense Mental Breakdown chapter of the film, this section pairs the continued anxiety with an audio visual illustration of an erratic sleep schedule and an observance of time passing from a perspective of depression. A field recording of my former workplace was processed to sound dreamlike, to act as a sonic bed for this chapter, but the focal point is a literal recording of me tossing and turning in and out of sleep. Stress from activity interfering with my rest are heard including footsteps overhead, and the vibrating of my phone at my bedside. Additionally the noise of a fan is used in an almost musical fashion, with me pointing a shotgun microphone away from it during ebbs of calm and toward it for increases in anxiety. Continuing from the Mental Breakdown chapter are the heartbeat ebbing and flowing in rate, and the ringing of tinnitus. All of these audio components are leveled in and out to convey varying cycles of sleep and wakefulness.
Migratory Impulse
Migratory Impulse
2022
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This micro-short film takes what would otherwise be a serene moment of meditation at an idyllic landscape, and uses unconventional means of sound and image capture to pervert it with the anxieties of decay, uninhabitability and threat.
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The audio was captured digitally in high definition, I then bounced it to a tape deck onto a blank cassette tape and back to a digital file. Then I took the "tapified" digital file and transferred it to the blank cassette yet again. I repeated this process until I had nearly seven generations of digital to tape transfer. Each time I did this, the recording became more and more obfuscated with imperfections, creating the cursed-sounding quality of the seagulls, and creating a quite literal audio portrayal of decay. This sound is seasoned with additional recordings of analog artifacts.
Abyssal Communion
Abyssal Communion
2023
This film was created to spontaneously during an afternoon walk. Inspired by the evocative atmosphere, I took the initiative to craft an equally evocative sound design that would plunge the viewer into a still, haunting horror.

VIVID ATMOSPHERE

Each of the six shots that make up this film are given their own rich ambience designed specifically for them, even if they exist in the same spatial location. The overall quality combines an approach that uses a romantic scope and impressionistic fidelity. The sound of the air is created using a hybrid of synthesizers and field recordings. Detailed hydrophonic recordings are also used to give the ambience a perturbing level of detail that is uncanny and otherworldly.

GHOST VOICES

After the beacon reaches out to the Nether with a mysterious signal, a mysterious presence is revealed with the sound of whispers floating in the air. These voices are actually recordings of water from the sink, from isolated drips, to a constant deluge, that have been slowed to less than 1% of their original rate.
Sound Redesign for an Excerpt from "ghost in the SHell"
College Projects
2016
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With this project, I drew upon the more lighthearted anime shows of my youth, particularly Dragon Ball Z, when designing the sound. Around this time, my sound design class had discussed mainstream action sound. We specifically looked at Transformers and the loud mixing and dense construction. I figured it would be fun to include the two designs, and I ended up with a goofy, over the top action film sound design.
"Django Unchained" Foley Rework
Sound Redesign for "Mirror"
2017
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A collaboration with my good friend and talented colleague, Yannick Christensen. We found the original sound design to be unimpressive, and sought to create a thick, otherworldy and deeply unsettling atmosphere. I also did the voice work for the character who stumbles upon the mirror as well as the monster.
2016
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This was a project as part of the coursework for my sound design class. I was given this clip from Django Unchained as a completely silent video. I recorded and performed the sound effects of objects and surfaces being interacted with. The Foley toys were all objects that I either borrowed from Michigan Tech's prop storage, or objects I found in the studio. Such toys include an old broken banjo for the rifle, a squeaky stool for the saloon doors and an old metal desk lamp used for the spring and clicking of the pistol.  
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