If you’ve been reading the monthly-ish updates on my ‘now’ pages, you know that since last summer I’ve been actively studying and practicing the art of Sound Design with the hope of making it a career (or at least a side job).
One of the ways I’ve been training myself is by practicing sound redesigns 1. I took some time to compile these into a video for easy presentation:
Not a reel
So you could call this a reel (a centerpiece of your portfolio as a film or sound professional, and the thing you would apply to jobs with), but at the moment, I’m not really comfortable with actually calling it that.
I think it’s because for me the goal was mostly just to compile, and I have aspirations in terms of presentation for a real Reel that aren’t met here. I’m still working that out. But for the time being, I’m calling it a compilation.
A lot of the clips from the compilation I got through a bunch of lovely online sound design communities that organize challenges, and they are one of the sources of the clips from the video. They’re lovely ways of practicing, and you can learn from peers and professionals.
I still have an article planned on things that helped me get started, including a list of Youtube videos. I hope I’ll get to that after our move has completed and the dust has settled.
Part of the website
For the last year or so, I was rather cautious to say anything online about my ambitions as a sound designer just in case I wasn’t sure if it wasn’t just a temporary obsession (that happened sometimes).
However, about 10 months in and I’m convinced this is what I want to be doing! So now comes the process of updating my website and consolidating these multiple facets of my interests. There’s going to be some more work in the future 2 but for now… my secret sound design website is no longer secret or separate. Instead, it can now be found on marcohamersma.com/sound!
- A redesign is the process of taking clips from games, films, or series, removing the sound, and creating new sounds for the things that are happening in the scenes. In practice, this means creating new sounds for things like magic, vehicles, and weapons, but also filling in the rest with foley (footsteps, clothing) and ambient sounds like wind and weather.↩
- Getting to a point where both my history as a web developer/designer and my new sound design aspirations are neatly presented, without being confusing for visitors or potential employers is tricky. I’ve been dreaming up some architecture and design changes, and my last post about the new frontpage was the first step in this process↩