I recently attended a Masterclass with the “Guru” sound designer Randy Thom at the Danish Film School.

It was incredibly inspiring to go through Randy’s entire career and discuss sound design for film.

We watched many sequences from films, accompanied by in-depth talks and analysis.

One important point it touched me and I would like share. Randy says in his workflow method when he´s designing a sequence cutting sound effects, he emphasize writing the beginning, development, and ending of each sound. Because sound design for film is storytelling; so, in his method Randy think to write a story with the sound for the picture.

I completely agree with the statement “Sound design for film is storytelling.” However, I haven’t consciously structured sounds with a beginning, middle, and end. I say “consciously” because, due to the language of cinema and its rhythm, I probably did it unconsciously. I want to be more conscious about this; so, from now on, I will write the beginning, development, and ending of a sound.

It should sound different writing Who – oØ- sh! rather than just Whoosh.