Like I mentioned in my last newsletter, I think sound design is a wildly frustrating skill to learn. It certainly was for me.
It's esoteric, not terribly visual, and the typical advice to help up-and-comers is to “just do some sound design, I guess”.
And, as a result of this lack of clarity, basically no one out there is practicing their sound design skills. Even if we “know” that we should do the standard task of taking a scene from a game, stripping the audio, and then putting our sounds in, we rarely do it.
But, to make this whole process a lot clearer, there's a mindset we can get into before we even begin creating anything. Once we adopt it, everything becomes easier.
We need to put ourselves in the mindset of a storyteller.
Almost no one talks about storytelling when they're teaching sound design. As a result, we think everything just needs to sound “good” or “cool” and end up getting lost and frustrated.
So, to start you off, I have a PDF of some questions you can ask during your sound design practice to help you with your storytelling mindset. It comes from my upcoming Step-By-Step Sound Design course, but feel free to download it right here for free as a bit of a delicious sample.
As sound designers, we have to watch and listen for the potential to tell a story. Who are the characters? What are their hidden motivations? What can we subconsciously hint to the audience about the story through our sound?
Come at sound design with the angle of storytelling, and everything you do will get a ton easier, and you won't be designing in a void anymore.
And of course, if you want more guidance and direct, actionable feedback on your work, my online courses will be there to provide. Step-By-Step Sound Design will be released again in March 2025. It sold out in a few days last time!