Attention to sound design will pay dividends [OPINION]
Photo by Peter Zakhary / Tilt
Last week, Adam Nelson’s “Sea Odyssey” won the Verna Fields Award at the 62nd Motion Picture Sound Editors Golden Reel event. It is the first time a SCAD film has won the award, which is among the highest sound editing honors for a student film, despite SCAD films having been nominated several times in the past. In many ways, the win says the attention we sound designers have received lately is paying off.
At last year’s Savannah Film Festival, the sound design department enjoyed an unusually stacked program of audio-related panels, presentations and screenings. Not only did these events keep us listening to and familiar with contemporary works, but they also familiarized us with the names behind the works.
So, when the SCAD sound teams of “Hominid” and “Sea Odyssey” came to the cocktail hour of the Golden Reel event, we recognized established professionals such as Eric Norris and Will Files, who had previously spoken at sound panels for the film festival.
The school’s sound club, the Professional Audio Student Organization, also provided another front for students to meet higher-up sound designers. SCAD’s sound faculty, along with PASO President — a first-year sound design graduate student from Atlanta, Georgia — Melissa Terry’s initiatives this year, brought several other industry professionals to the school.
For the school to go from only nominations to taking two slots of the Verna Fields contenders, to finally winning a Golden Reel speaks volumes about these recent efforts from students and professors.
Put this in context with the acquisition of Meddin Studios and subsequent sound rooms and you’ve got a trajectory set to see recurring visits to the Golden Reels.
Other recent changes include the Hamilton Hall surround room upgrade to 7.1 and the purchase of new plugins.
The editors responsible for the award-winning work on “Sea Odyssey” are skilled and deserving. For example, the film’s sound supervisor, sound design graduate Beau Jimenez from Delray Beach, Florida, also worked on the college Emmy winner “I M Possible.”
But the crew’s talent alone didn’t take them there. As Jimenez said in his acceptance speech, “The facilities are excellent. We just had these awesome tools…this is because of SCAD.”
That isn’t to say the relationship between SCAD and the sound design department is perfect, but the recent love given to sound design — with improvements to the extracurricular program and facilities — is a welcome investment, and sure to provide returns in the near future.
