Wayne:

Hi, my name is Wayne Pashley.

I'm referred to as a sound designer, re-recording mixer, or supervising sound editor.

I started my career at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and over the years, became freelance and then started my own company. Had a really great grounding in sound work at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the ABC, because I was lucky enough to land in the drama department.

From there, I was there for about six years then started my own company called Big Bang Sound Design.

And from there, I was lucky enough to work with some of Australia's finest directors, and I got to work on a lot of big movies that are now in pop culture and one thing and another.

So, some of the films that I've worked on would be, Babe, Happy Feet, Mad Max Fury Road. And I've just currently finished with Bas Lumen on the New Elvis movie that's coming out soon.

Yeah, so across the sort of genres, if you like, I've worked on heavy dramas, horror, comedy, musicals, etc. So, and sound in all its capacity of those films is really, really important for the success of your story that you're making.

What is sound design?

So, sound design is a bunch of things, a bunch of elements that go into storytelling. So for example, you have a whole bunch of what we call food groups with sound design.

There is dialogue. Dialogue is always king. It is always the most important thing because that is your script. That is the act as the cast that you've bought in. The reason they're doing it in the first place is based on the written material.

So, the script, that's your dialogue.

Then I look at the other components.

What are the crowds doing?

How emotional are the crowds involved in the storytelling itself?

Then there's the, what we call the hard effects, the sound effects, whether it's a car pass, a door close, or a spaceship.

That's the sort of effects. Then there is what we call the environments or the atmospheres.

Now, the atmospheres also known as the backgrounds is kind of the world building.

Like what is the sound of world that your characters are in and what are you trying to say about the world? Is it post apocalyptic? Is it a horror? Is the house creaking? You may not see the house creaking or whatever, but you're hearing it. Are you in a forest? A magical forest? A regular forest? All those things.

So, it's all the backgrounds, the birds, the winds, the trees, the traffic. Then there is what we call foley. Now, the foley is generally recorded separately in post-production.

So, the foley is the footsteps, the clothes moves. Sorry about that, Mr. Mic. It's comes ups, comes up and down. It is all the small things that are manageable in a recording studio.

Now, what the foley does, it's similar to dialogue in that regard because it can tell character.

So for example, if you've got a character that has a cane and a bang leg, that cane and how they move, you recording the cane hitting the ground and how their footsteps are operational.

So, what happens is, or it could be a glamorous thing where there's a lot of jewellery involved or something like that.

So, the sound that's attached to the character is generally foley. And like dialogue, it tells a lot about the character that you are portraying in your story.

So, what we've done within a dialogue, crowd, effects, backgrounds, foley, and of course, the biggie as well which is the subtext of your story is music.

And generally speaking, I don't write the music, we generally have a composer on and I would mix the music.

So, mix the music, how loud, how soft, how it's going to play for the drama that you're telling. I

t would, drama or comedy or horror or whatever it might be. So, music is a whole 'nother thing because it really is the emotional sub textural layer to your story.

So, that's what sound design is. It's all those components that, yes, there's a lot of food groups there, but they all come together in what we call the mix.

Why is sound design important to the filmmaking process?

When I first started out, I started in picture. And I found that you go out, you shoot your story, you've got your actors, you've got your sets, and you're shooting and then you start editing it together, and from a close up to the wide shot and then maybe a bit of a pan of the car going by to get a bit of action and all that stuff.

So, as you put picture together, it's a known quantity.

Emotionally editing is incredible, what you can do with it, right? But sound is important because it's a layer that can really speak to the story where you have an unlimited sort of scope for your imagination, just like music.

And in fact, just because there's a door closed doesn't mean you have to have a door closed.

If there's rain, you don't have to hear rain all the time. The rain can start, but it'll start an emotional feeling and then you can take it away, in comes the thunder, take that away. And then all of a sudden, now you've got some rumble coming in.

You may not know, oh, it could be an air conditioner, and the air conditioner gets louder and louder and louder. And it its sort of like emotionally affects us in a different way with your hearing.

I mean, your hearing is the first thing when you are in the womb. Your hearing is the first sense that is active. And when you die, the last thing to go is your hearing. So, it's a very, very powerful sense.

But beyond what you see, your vision, or taste, whatever else, sound is very, very powerful. And I learned that having gone from picture into sound because I realised that the scope of it was endless.