In March, the organisers of Airwiggles (an online community for sound designers) started a month-long challenge called March Through Sound. They hand-picked 31 video clips from a variety of sources and genres, and every day for a month, members of the community took a shot at designing sounds for these videos.
I participated and managed to do 20 of them. I tried to loosely stick to the recommended time limit of 45 minutes, and most of my designs were made in a time of about 40-60 minutes.
Depending on the video, that can be quite ambitious, as there might be a lot of stuff to do and you really have to set priorities. That means that I ended up not being happy with how some things sounded, or that certain sounds were missing, but you do what you can within the time limit.
I’ve made one convenient video in which I’ve collected my designs for the event.
Conclusions
Overall, it was a really fun and educational experience. I’ve learned some valuable lessons on how to get better results quickly. My biggest conclusion had to do with style, however. I realised I tended to go very literal with the sounds (i.e. use sound effects that sound like the thing you’re seeing). Now, this might just be because of the time limit, but I feel I missed the opportunity with some videos to be a bit more musical (chimes, etc…) abstract, or muted/soft. It would have complemented the aesthetic of some source material a bit better. This is something I’ll be keeping in mind for my next designs 😊.
Thanks to the folks at Airwiggles for hosting this challenge!
I’d love to work on your game, animation, or art installation as a sound designer.