“When one person teaches, two people learn”
One of the wonderful privileges of supporting students as they pull a sound topic together for their thesis, whether it be for a bachelor’s, a masters or a Ph.D., is the variety of approaches to the emotional impact, and affect, sound design can play in evoking specific and intended feelings in a listening-viewer.
This is my particular area of academic research and professional practice, so I’m already open and interested in considering the hypothesis the student presents; but always – always! – there are interesting aspects of their research question that excite me on their behalf, as they begin their journey through a comprehensive literature review and we discuss the methodology that might be employed to best investigate their proposition.
This week I held my first supervision session with a new student in Georgia, USA; and a whole, new world of emotional possibilities opened up before me, thanks to the student introducing me more intimately with the messages within Japanese anime.
I’m not sure who was the most excited by the end of our first session: the student, or me!
(Another of my charges, a Ph.D. student in Australia, is researching emotional sound design for interactive VR applications; which is equally engaging!)
For those interested in the powerful, yet readily applicable aspects of emotional sound design, my 2021 book ‘Sound for Moving Pictures’, published by Routledge and with a foreword by Walter Murch, is intended as an accessible companion guide book for new, emerging and experienced film professionals.
It’s in most university libraries, or you can find it here at Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sound-Moving…/dp/0367517787
If any of this arouses your interest, do get in touch… I am delighted to offer affordable 1-to-1 tutoring and group coaching sessions.
