MPSE Wavelength

48 I M PS E . O R G Outstanding Achievement in Sound Editing Student Film (Verna Fields Award) THE UNKNOWN The National Film and Television School Supervising Sound Editor: YIN LEE Sound Designer: YIN LEE What challenges did the team face and how did the sound add to the overall experience? YIN LEE, SUPERVISING SOUND EDITOR: The story of the animated short fi lm—The Unknown is about a journey in the afterlife. The protagonist visiting different stages of the afterlife through one continuous shot was the biggest challenge for me. There are four main stages of the afterlife in our fi lm, and each reveals different levels of the circle of life, so the soundscapes have to not only enhance the interpretation of the concepts for each level but also establish distinctive worlds sonically to emphasise the progression of the protagonist's comprehension. Furthermore, since it's a visually abstract piece and also due to the nature of the camera movements, there is plenty of space to bring sounds into full play. And personally, I thought it might be interesting to play around with the connections between images and sounds, so I tried experimenting with letting the audience hear more visually unrelated sounds as much as possible, while only providing a few hints of the texture of the seen objects, as well as the feeling of the space by sounds, and at the same time, I still had to make sure that the sounds conveyed the story and the concepts to the audience clearly, which was fairly challenging but full of fun! Why are the MPSE Awards important to you? YIN: The MPSE is an organisation full of professionals from the industry, and I feel extremely honoured that our student fi lm could be watched and judged by those amazing sound lovers from the sonic perspectives. Moreover, the detailed categories of the MPSE Awards really impress me! The awards really value each department of post-production sound, as well as sounds in different types of media, which I appreciate a lot! It's already not that popular to have a 'best sound design' award in festivals; not to mention for student fi lms. On top of that, the MPSE is keen to support the new soundies and strengthen the environment of the sound industry, so the journey of being part of the MPSE Awards, particularly the 'Speed Mentoring' session for the student nominees this year, has been not only enjoyable but also extremely helpful! All in all, the MPSE Awards mean a lot to me as a new graduate student from a sound design course, and winning the award is especially a huge encouragement for me since I am always struggling with my self- doubts. I am so grateful that the MPSE Awards made me braver in sound editing! Was there anything specifi c within the story that infl uenced your decision to take on this project? YIN: The director (Stephanie Marshall) and I are big fans of horror, thriller, and mysterious genres, so when she had the initial idea of The Unknown, she came to me at the very early stage before the production, and I was fairly excited about this fi lm. The Unknown was inspired by the short story Steph read many years ago—The Egg— written by Andy Weir. When I fi nished The Egg, I literally got goose bumps, and I couldn't wait to see how the animation could express the abstract concept. In addition, the core idea of the story is "You are everyone and everything, and you experienced and will experience everything," so the elements to develop this idea could be worldwide. And I found it precious that it was a unique opportunity for me to integrate my cultural background into The Unknown via sounds since as a foreign student coming from Taiwan to the UK, it was quite rare to have a chance to apply Asian ingredients into a British fi lm unless the story itself is originally related to Asian background. Therefore, it was pure excitement and pleasure for me to work on The Unknown! How did the pandemic change the way you and your team worked on this project? YIN: We were really lucky that we fi nished our fi lm around the beginning of the pandemic, so there wasn't severe infl uence on the post- production sound process. However, it has hugely changed the viewing habits for festivals as they tended to have online screenings instead of showing the fi lm in theatres, which was a shame for the sound department since festivals were the most common path for student fi lms to have a proper screening to the public in theatres and we expected our fi lm could be watched with cinema surround sound systems. Hopefully, there will be more festival screenings in theatres for The Unknown coming later after the pandemic so that the audience will be able to have a different experience of watching the fi lm! Was your vision seen through from initial spot to fi nal mix or did any interesting new perspectives arise along the way? YIN: The journey of making the soundscapes for The Unknown was just like the story itself—full of exploration and enlightenment. With the beauty of an abstract story,

• Cover