{"id":10745,"title":"S For Southend - my role as sound designer for a film by Aaron Shrimpton and Focal Point Gallery","description":"I WAS dead chuffed to do the sound design for this film about the High Street, called S For Southend, by the talented filmmaker Aaron Shrimpton. Check his work out @new_waverley_studios on Instagram. This film was produced by Focal Point gallery and commissioned by Historic England, for a country-","content":"

I WAS dead chuffed to do the sound design for this film about the High Street, called S For Southend, by the talented filmmaker Aaron Shrimpton. <\/p>

Aaron - under his production company New Waverley Studios<\/a> - has produced films for Ai Wei Wei, Anne-Marie, The Guardian, Fatboy Slim, Chanel, Stik and most recently documented the London Borough of Culture\u2019s Brent Biennale.<\/p>

S For Southend was produced by Focal Point gallery and commissioned by Historic England, for a country-wide project about the future of the high street in England.<\/p>

Aaron asked if I'd like to do the sound design and the audio mixing. It was the first time I had mixed audio for film - very different to mixing music - so that was new, and an exciting challenge! <\/p>

For this film I created and\/or placed the environmental sounds mainly by sampling tiny snippets from some wild tracks of the high street recorded by Aaron and one of his producers, Eden, ie; cars going by, scooter going by, buggies being pushed, chatter, laughter, seagulls, etc etc. Some of the sounds I created from scratch, for instance, the clock and the whirring of the moving advertising boards. There was already some background \u2018high st\u2019 noise within most of the vox interviews Aaron did, so I needed to balance that out with some of the placed real environmental, ambient sounds and created sounds. <\/p>

In the brief Aaron gave, he wanted a soundscape made using real sound more than a score, subtle embellishments of the interview, with more \u2018digital\u2019 sounding highlights to correspond with the animations (the patterns laying over the film which the interviewees drew to represent the high street), and some other scenes. We landed on the \u2018hisssss\u2019 sound for the patterns. <\/p>

I feel it works with the \u2018S for Southend, S for sea etc\u2019 line.<\/p>

He felt the film was stronger without music, so the underscore consists only of some very subtle barely there chords, only here and there.<\/p>

\ud83c\udfa7 best, if listening on phone.<\/p>

I just loved being part of it. <\/p>

Here's the link to the film.<\/a><\/p>

Do check it out.<\/p>

If you\u2019re from Southend you might recognise some of the voices in it. <\/p>

<\/p>

-- K-A-B <\/p>