This piece is fun to listen to without the animation which was designed by an award winning Hungarian team of filmmakers for a World Wildlife Fund awareness campaign. I chose it firstly because it has no dialogue as I didn't have the time or patience to deal with ADR and actors, even if I have a good ear for dialogue, love people and encourage their best performances in and outside of acting, and secondly because it really, like any good story or song, has good rhythm, a palpable climax and seemless flow.
In hindsight, the fact that almost no compression or audio plugins were used blows my mind now that I have finally strapped down and almost went deaf trying to discern the minute differences in tweaking an infinite combination of parameters and knobs of these digital devices to explore their unique ranges of effects in order to manifest sounds as imagined. I realize now why there is an almost addictive dependence on these amazing tools of signal flow; however, having to literally use paper, critically and abstractly fish through the maze of soundbanks, actually play an instrument, and rely on clever editing and layering to achieve the flow of sounds for this piece lay down a foundation for my workflow that reflects the proportion of analog and digital I aim to recreate, much like the original Star Wars ability to use digital magic to amplify one of the most resonating stories out there, not substitute us in our own journies of artistic exploration as the misuse of AI and other technological aids risk in our human development.
I am only sad about how the practical inaccessibility of a Dolby calibrated studio to playback the original 5.1 surround sound stems prevents us, including myself, to hear how the original sound design actually sounds, and feels. I remember sitting in the Vancouver Film Festival Centre hearing the bubbly trails of schools of fish circling the entirety of the theatre and the literally ground shaking French horns penetrating chests from the length of LFE speakers. And during the making, commanding the D-Command from the control tower mixing console with flying faders as if playing Captain on deck of a star ship. Thank Heavens for memory and imagination!