Wayne:

Hi, my name is Wayne Pashley.

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

Generally, when people talk about atmos, it's the same as saying backgrounds, as we mentioned before, or environments.

So, it's trying to create those worlds that your characters are in. If it's a horror, like we talked about, how does the haunted house feel?

That is the atmosphere. If it's on a, if it's on a planet in a distant galaxy, what does it sound like? What do you imagine it sounds like? How are you going to create something from all the various libraries that are available?

For students, whereas you got a lot of free stuff, or if, like what we do, we come up with brand new sounds, where we're using synthesisers or real-world sounds, we pitch down and manipulate and stretch out and slow down.

Or whatever it might be. You know, it's what you're trying to do with the world that your characters are in. It's, actually, to be honest with you, it's the first thing I do.

Is build the atmospheres and the world of our characters.

Once you've got that down, it informs everything else. It informs how the sound effects are going to play, which we call, you know, 'hard effects' or 'spot effects.'

Whether it's a light sabre, or whether it's a, you know, a screeching car, and how, you know, what are the exhausts going to sound like of, in Mad Max, for example.

So, the atmosphere, the atmos, tells us what our characters' world sounds like. Is it a busy street in New York? But you may not see the street, but you can hear it. You know, is it a beautiful lush, you know, forest? Is it, you know, in the middle of the ocean? How is the ocean sounding?

It may not be just, you'll have a bit of water there, but it may not be just water.

It can be all sorts of stuff that you can get in there to where you'll throw the audience off a bit, but you give them enough information, they'll buy it.

So, I find, with atmos, wind is a really interesting thing, too, because wind, from its deep moaning, to its high-end whistles, there's a lot of emotional content in wind. So, wind is a good one.

And also, it can help clean up your dialogues, as well, frankly.

So if you got some, you know, problematic dialogue, put a bit of wind atmos in there, it helps. It helps smooth out the scene.

When we talked about dialogue editing, and keeping it clean and smooth and creamy, an atmos around that will help you get it clean and cohesive.

So that's why atmos is very important. Both on an emotional level, a story level, a character level and a technical level.