Seminar on The Art of Sound Design 2011 @ ICAT, Chennai

ICAT Chennai witnesses a captivating and insightful seminar by yet another industry professional, renowned sound designer Mr. Anand Krishnamoorthi on 13th May 2011. Anand started his career as a child artist. Films like Anjali and May Madham goes up his sleeves. Later in his life he found his love and passion in working behind the camera. He did is Masters in Television and film production from University of Bristol, he is now one of the best On-location sound recordist in the industry. With the experience of working in many Tamil and Hindi movies, he shared his knowledge with the students here at ICAT.

The seminar started with technical and theoretical discussions on sound and then it proceeded with Tones, frequencies, timbre, decibels and various other technical aspects that govern sounds were explained to the students. Clips of various films were shown to the students and deconstructed shot by shot. The technical knowledge shared by Mr. Anand, was helpful to the students who are now grasping the details more actively and comprehensively. Students realized the importance of sound as an important story telling tool. Mr. Anand then gave an insight on the on-location sound recording techniques. He also talked about a very important aspect of signal to noise ratio. “If story demands for clear sounds, then the signal to noise ratio would be more; and vice versa if story demands for noise” said Anand.

The seminar then moved on to practical exercises. Students found those exercises very interesting and creative. Students recreated the sound of fire in the seminar hall. A simple sound of fire was deconstructed into various layers. The gentle hissing sound was recorded by a cellophane bag, the crackling sound was done with twigs and the fuzzy texture to the sound was given by a handkerchief.

He also recorded a few sounds in the hall and explained the physics of those sounds like Sound of coin flick, sound of pen scribbling on paper, sound water splashing inside a bottle and finally the sound opening a soft drink can. The depth, the texture and the effect of distance in the quality of sound were also discussed with the students. Overall this seminar was quiet interesting among the students.