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52 I M PS E . O R G and her experiences on films like La La Land, Maze Runner and Wild, it made quite a huge impres- sion on me. Growing up in Singapore, it's not easy to make a living as a filmmak- er or in the arts in general. More- over, the sound industry is very much male-dominated, so that can sometimes feel very intimidating or isolating. Listening to their work, seeing their sound achieve- ments and that high level of dedication to their cra was really inspiring. It made me feel that with hard work, I could also one day get to a level I want to be. WAVELENGTH: What was your inspiration behind the story of Build Me Up and can you tell us a little about that experience and your team? GW: Build Me Up is a story about two sibling robots, Vera and Sprocket, who aer the loss of their father and creator, must learn to work together to survive in a treacherous, icy world. When I was approached by di- rector Steve Lawson to work on his animation, his pitch scared me. It was very ambitious and the genre was not something I was familiar with. Since it was going to be my last film at the NFTS, I really want- ed to challenge myself, to see how much I had grown in the last two years and how much I could grow with this. e team had a very go-big-or- go-home attitude, so amidst a pan- demic, we decided to also remove dialogue, throw in a snow storm, record a live orchestral piece to an- imatics and mix it in Dolby Atmos for the first time. I threw myself into research, writing my MA dissertation on Creatures Sound Design: eir Voices and Emotional Impact in Film. is was invaluable because I was able to learn from sound gi- ants and what they did when they had encountered similar problems. ere was a lot of experimenting with the voices and their move- ments. Due to the lack of dialogue, every sound they made had to be carefully chosen to highlight their characters and convey the emotions they were feeling. e decision to voice both characters myself came aer realising that I needed a very huge palette of source recordings which was hard to get from voice actors during the lockdown. With the move- ments, I had experimented a lot with plugins and they were just not working, so one day I went to the prop store, gathered all the toys and metallic bits that rattled or squeaked and recorded them. It then started coming together because sometimes, a movement can say much more than a vocal- ization. Collaboration was also really important. I worked closely with composer Moritz Wanger. He was going for a really magnificent John Williams-inspired orchestral score. He would play me a short scene and I would play him mine and we would discuss how that made us BMU post crew L-R: Supervising sound editor Grace Wong, producer Emma Hanson, editor Oli Bauer, director Steve Lawson, and composer Moritz Wanger