An Interview with Tim Vindigni
WRITTEN BY BOOM BOX POST

Tim was recently challenged with designing a factory and construction site for a series of shorts that had a lot of on-screen action. Had the clients not very smartly requested these ambiences have a rhythmic quality to them, these builds could have easily become a distraction from what was happening on-screen. Without the rhythmic backbone, both of these builds risked muddying up the mix.

What was your brainstorming process?

For the construction build I started by gathering a bunch of common construction sounds: hammers, saws, wrenches. Then, I organized these sounds into different groups. My next step was to color code these groups so that if I wanted to turn up or turn down a specific sound in the full build, I could easily do that.

The factory build was a little different of an approach. Since the factory’s conveyer belt would be shown in the establishing shot, I started by grabbing different on-screen moments to keep the sounds consistent. I then decided on what I wanted my sequence of events to be. The goal was to create an assembly line of sounds, bringing order and rhythm to the repeating steady.

Did you run into any challenges when designing these builds?

I went through a handful of different sound combinations before I landed on the final sequence for both the factory and construction builds.

The factory ambience was much more challenging because I wanted to incorporate different on-screen elements in hopes to design a more cohesive build. Even though the steady would not be synced with picture, it was important that the sequence of events matched the types of machines/actions seen on-screen later in the short.

I also tried a variation of speeds for each build. Since both builds were designed for a short, I wanted to keep the tempo relatively fast so that I could optimized the limited time I had.

How did you make this build unique?

I think when designing new ambiences, it’s really easy to get caught up in using preexisting steadies. There were plenty of awesome factory and construction ambiences in our library that I could have spliced up to create a rhythmic steady, but the best way to make something unique is to build it from scratch.

Any tips for editors looking to recreate this build?

“Make sure all of your layers are distinct from one another so they don’t sound muddy with the other layers. Try and think about frequency spectrum as well as the quality of each sound. For instance, if you have a lot of mid-range conveyor belts in a factory rhythm, try adding higher-end steam releases or machine whistles as well as low end impacts and levers.” - Tess Fournier, Supervising Sound Editor.

Also, it should go without saying, but staying organized is very important when it came to designing rhythmic ambiences. Make sure all the different layers were tidy in the timeline so that the build can be easily looped.

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