As a continuation of my sound design research, I was fortunate to attend a talk with sound designers Paul Davis and Joel Beal at BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television).
This was my first time attending the BAFTA building and I was blown away by their facilities It provided me with a great substructure to begin my networking journey – crucial for furthering sound design research and practice.
The talk began by showing pieces of work from both sound designers. Both are very different pieces of work; Beal presented his work for Chernobyl the HBO series whilst Davis resented some work from the Harrow Film Saint Maude. Despite both showing juxtaposing pieces of work they both focussed on the sound design rather than sound fx.
They talked about their sonic relationship with the score and music when designing – something I found intriguing. Both proclaimed that although both the music and sound design are different opponents of sonic storytelling they can weave and work together beautifully. Both took the approach to blend and dissolve the sonic barriers between music and sound design – to which the audience or listener can not tell the difference. This is my personal favourite approach when it comes to listening to sound design and their technique and skill set explained to achieve this were found to be extremely beneficial.
Despite the director Victoria for my up-and-coming project Where The Sea Does Not Follow still being unsure of whether or not she wanted her piece scored – I still took both Davis and Beal’s advice on board for my own personal approach to the film. If she does decide to have a score then I know I will work alongside this by pitching my design to the music and keeping an aesthetic sonic house style to the piece. On the other hand, if she does not use score I shall create more compositional design work that can carry the job of both score and sound design together. The talk at BAFTA helped me consolidate my thoughts behind the relationships between sound design and score – paving me advantageous for my future and projects ahead.
