Sound design/composition work comes my way now & then. Audio is a hugely important part of my own work in film. In general I create my own soundtracks, so I’ve developed something of an ear for it.
Over time it’s become a transferable skill & I do enjoy making sure that sound is properly looked after.
I’ve been working on a sound design job for a short film called Peter In Radioland. This 10′ documentary, directed by a focussed, talented film maker called Johanna Wagner was produced by Rebecca Day for the short documentary film scheme Bridging The Gap.
I’ve worked with Bridging the Gap previously on four very different films: Andrew Henderson’s The Rest Is Silence, Alice Nelson’s A Difficult Case, Hazel Baillie’s The Truth About Tooth & Astrid Bussink’s Ruckenlage / Upside Down.
(You are free to speculate as to whether there’s any significance in the fact that I was invited to work on films about death, schizophrenia/possession, tooth manufacturing & Nazi plots.)
All of these films are available to view online (click the film titles above).
Johanna Wagner’s Peter In Radioland is a beguiling, gently comical & unsettlingly piece of film making.
Ostensibly it’s an observational documentary about Johanna’s father Peter. It explores his love affair with analogue audio technology (radios in particular) & articulates his scepticism towards the unstoppable technological advances made by digital.
However, his frustration with the encroaching digital technology & his low level panic at the inevitable disappearance of the analogue soundscape seem to be symptomatic of a deeper psychological crisis.
‘I was Peter with a capital P, you know?’ he declares at one point. ‘I personally feel very small in this world. I can feel I’m shrinking’. Continue reading “Peter in Radioland”
Matt Hulse 