Field Recordings & Sound Effects
A strange thing happens when you work with sounds that you are familiar with; and have recorded yourself. I find that a bit of personal significance effects the way you treat the sound and you can feel the (and hear) the results in the final mix.
Here are a few of my favourites! Please download them for yourself, if you end up using them I’d love to know - and if you’re willing to donate, well then even better!
Isle Of Wight 2022
In 2022 I went to visit a friend on the Isle of Wight. In the day while she was working, I hiked the perimeter of the Island and recorded along the way. Here is a small library of what I recorded at the time.
There are different persectives of the Costal Path, with difference distances from the shore. There is a good amount of blustering wind. Recordings on the cliff by The Needles and the harbours of Yarmouth . And as a little bonus the Rlystone brassband playing their theme in the park.
My personal favourite recording from this trip was recorded in the Ventnor Botanical Garden, sat on a bench completely engulfed in the bamboo of it’s Asian Garden. The crisp leaves of the bamboo as they are gently disturbed by the Coastal wind create a familiar, glissten foliage. Gentle but present.
This recording alone has been used in A Tale of Two Hoards, Not Yet Dark, Custer Wolf and Mango Skin. With other recordings of the library being used in Crab Day.
Orford Ness 2022
During the production of A Tale of Two Hoards, director Jack Bradley, cinematographer Helena Gonzalez and I raced from Beaconsfield to Suffolk against the dwindling summer sun to shoot some golden hour landscapes of the Suffolk estuary in Orford Ness; ahead of a two day shoot with the Ipswich Metal Detecting Society and Two Hoards contributor Shane Meadows.
Orford Ness didn’t make the cut; but I was quite enamoured by the percussive chime of the shored boat’s sail cables clanging against their masts to the tempo of the tidal gusts.
Some of these recordings were used in A Tale of Two Hoards, and the ‘brush footsteps’ are to be featured in an upcoming fiction project.
NFTS Sprinkler Tank 2023
Dive is set largely in the saturation diving chamber of a offshore oil rig. This meant that all the casts movement around and interations with production designer Darya Naumchenko’s impressive wooden set build would need metalic replacement.
This library is a collection of impacts and scrapes from the National Film and Television School’s decommisioned sprinkler tank; recorded with a Zoom H6, MKH50 and LOM Geofon.
The slightest knock against the tank offers a catherdral-like reverbation.
The recordings can be heard in multiple of the metalic impacts in Dive, giving heft to the pressure sealed doors and occasional knocks on the exterior hull. But the best use of these recordings was as a impulse responses, running through a convolution reverb, lending the sprinkler tanks ring to the dialogue and effects inside the saturation chamber.
About:
Simon is a sound designer, dubbing mixer and field recordist. His work spans across fiction, documentary, animation, commercials and podcasts. He graduated from the MA in Sound Design for Film at the National Film & Television School in 2023.
Simon’s approach to sound design is always in service of the storytelling. His ambition is to weave his soundtrack into the fabric of every project. As such he is dedicated to field recording during production, collaborating across departments and is keen to experiment with new workflows and techniques.
In 2023 Simon was awarded the MPSE Verne Fields Golden Reel for Outstanding Sound Editing in a Student Film for his design and mix of Dive.
In 2024 Crab Day, which Simon was the Sound Supervisor for, won the BAFTA for the Best British Animated Short as well as the RTS Award for Best Postgraduate Animation, where Simon’s sound design was also recognised for an RTS Craft Award.
He has also sound designed films that have won at the British Animation Awards and been nominated for Young Arrows and Best Short at London Film Festival.
Alongside his film work Simon is a regular mixer for the Financial Times podcasts and has worked with brands such as Google Pixel, Channel 4, Burt’s Bees, Herd and beyond.
He is proudly an assosiate artist of Brain Audio.
Simon is a sound designer, dubbing mixer and field recordist. His work spans across fiction, documentary, animation, commercials and podcasts. He graduated from the MA in Sound Design for Film at the National Film & Television School in 2023.
Simon’s approach to sound design is always in service of the storytelling. His ambition is to weave his soundtrack into the fabric of every project. As such he is dedicated to field recording during production, collaborating across departments and is keen to experiment with new workflows and techniques.
In 2023 Simon was awarded the MPSE Verne Fields Golden Reel for Outstanding Sound Editing in a Student Film for his design and mix of Dive.
In 2024 Crab Day, which Simon was the Sound Supervisor for, won the BAFTA for the Best British Animated Short as well as the RTS Award for Best Postgraduate Animation, where Simon’s sound design was also recognised for an RTS Craft Award.
He has also sound designed films that have won at the British Animation Awards and been nominated for Young Arrows and Best Short at London Film Festival.
Alongside his film work Simon is a regular mixer for the Financial Times podcasts and has worked with brands such as Google Pixel, Channel 4, Burt’s Bees, Herd and beyond.
He is proudly an assosiate artist of Brain Audio.