Recordings of Events from 2023-2024
Video recordings of all our events from January 2023 – June 2024 are now available in our Shop.
Anyone who purchased a ticket to one of these events has unlimited access to the recording. You’ll find it under My Recordings in your SOS account.
Suggested Books
Here is a list of titles by those who delivered talks in the last year along with some by other practitioners.
Sound Principles:
Creative Game Audio Production & Direction
by Rob Bridgett
Based around the series of talks Rob gave at The School of Sound, Sound Principles brings together, and expands upon, three main themes; sound in a software development environment, ludic sound that delivers gameplay information to a player, and the early involvement of sound in defining pillars and principles for audio direction in video game projects. The book also includes extended discussion and conversations on the topics and themes raised in each of the three talks. With a foreword by Larry Sider
Sound Principles is available as paperback or pdf e-book from Blurb.
Interview with Rob Bridgett about Sound Principles.
Wild Track – Sound, Text and the Idea of Birdsong
by Seán Street
Wild Track is an exploration of birdsong and the ways in which that sound was conveyed, described and responded to through text, prior to the advent of recording and broadcast technologies in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Street links sound aesthetics, radio, natural history, and literature to explore how the brain and imagination translate sonic codes as well as the nature of the silent sound we “hear” when we read a text. This creates an awareness of sound through the tuned attention of the senses, learning from sound texts of the natural world that sought – and seek – to convey the intensity of the sonic moment and fleeting experience. To absorb these lessons is to enable a more highly interactive relationship with sound and listening, and to interpret the subtleties of audio as a means of expression and translation of the living world.
Order from Bloomsbury Press
Other books by Seán at seanstreet.com
Sound Design for Film
by Tim Harrison
Sound Design for Film offers an in-depth study of one of cinema’s most powerful storytelling tools, exploring the creative landscape and powerful storytelling tools, exploring the creative landscape and proposing a variety of contemporary approaches to audio design. Opening up a hidden world of narrative techniques, experienced designer Tim Harrison provides key insights into how sound works on audiences to guide them through stories. Topics covered include: the creative process from script to delivery; visualizing your design ideas; developing characters and settings, and using motif and metaphor. Also covered is recording foley and sound effects along with editing and manipulating audio and the final mix. Serving as a tool for creative reflection and development, this unique book offers invaluable approaches for enhancing your storytelling skills, wherever you are on your filmmaking journey.
Order from The Crowood Press
See other books by Tim at t-harrison.com
The Audiovisual Chord: Embodied Listening in Film
by Martine Huvenne
This book is a phenomenological approach to film sound and film as a whole, bringing all sensory impressions together within the body as a sense of movement. This includes embodied listening, felt sound and the audiovisual chord as a dynamic knot of visual and auditory movements. From this perspective, auditory spaces in film can be used as a pivot between an inner and an external world.
Order from Amazon
Michael Chekhov’s Acting Technique: A Practitioner’s Guide
by Sinéad Rushe
Intended for actors, directors, teachers and researchers, this book offers an exceptionally clear and thorough introduction to the renowned acting technique developed by Michael Chekhov. Sinéad Rushe’s book provides a complete overview of the whole method, and includes illuminating explanations of its principles, as well as a wide range of practical exercises that illustrate, step by step, how they can be applied to dramatic texts.
Part One provides an outline of the ideas that underpin the work, which help to prepare practitioners to become responsive and receptive, and to awaken their imagination. Part Two charts a journey through the foundational psychophysical exercises that can both orient an actor’s training routine and be applied directly to the development of a role. Part Three focuses on more specific and elaborate methods of scene work, characterisation and the art of transformation.
Order from Bloomsbury
Other writings by Sinéad at sineadrushe.co.uk
Production Sound Mixer: notes & thoughts
by Edgar Iacolenna
Edgar Iacolenna takes you on a discovery of the profession of production sound mixer. This book represents the ‘journey’, in a figurative sense, that he wanted to undertake in order to discover the various ways of understanding this profession; the various ways of approaching the profession of production sound mixer and, therefore, the recording of sound on set. He had the opportunity to interview seven top international sound engineers chosen by him and ask them twelve questions.
Order from Amazon
3 books by Budhaditya Chattopadhyay
Between the Headphones:
Listening to the Practitioner
Sound is a new area of interest in the Arts and Humanities. The study of sound in cinema has only recently been established in Film and Media Studies. Furthermore, so far, attention has focused on Hollywood and European cinema in this regard. Reading sound from other world cinemas, particularly those from the global South, remains underexplored.
As India is currently the world’s largest producer of films with a formidable global presence, this book bridges the gap with a collection of interviews, introducing leading film industry sound practitioners from the subcontinent. The book examines historical developments from the advent of the talkies to present-day digital cinema productions, providing an embodied understanding of the unique Indian film sound world with new perspectives on cinematic narration in the practitioner’s own words.
Order from Cambridge Scholar
The Auditory Setting:
Environmental Sounds in Film and Media Arts
The Auditory Setting introduces and investigates how narrative and a sense of place are constructed in film and media arts through the reproduction and mediation of site-specific environmental sounds, or ‘ambience’. Although this sonic backdrop acts as the acoustically mediated space where a story or event can take place, there has been little academic study of sound’s undervalued role in cinematic setting and its production. The aim of this book is to question classical assumptions about sound in film and media arts (e.g., image-based relationships) and shift the focus towards the site and its sonic environment, whose presence is often carefully constructed in a film or media artwork’s diegetic world as a vital narrative strategy.
Order from EUP
Sound in Indian Film and Audiovisual Media:
History, Practices and Production
This book is the first ever systematic attempt to study film sound in the Indian subcontinent by artistic research. The book aims to fill the scholarly void on the issues of sound and listening in the Global Souths’ cultures. It develops a comprehensive understanding of the unique sound world of Indian film and audiovisual media through the examination of historical developments of sound from early optical recordings to contemporary digital audio technologies.
Order from AUP
Sound for Moving Pictures
by Neil Hillman
with a forward by Walter Murch
Sound for Moving Pictures presents a new and original sound design theory called the Four Sound Areas framework, offering a conceptual template for constructing, deconstructing and communicating all types of motion picture soundtracks; and a way for academics and practitioners to better understand and utilize the deeper, emotive capabilities available to all filmmakers through the thoughtful use of sound design. With a forward by Walter Murch.
Order from Routledge
X-Raying Sound with Izotope RX
by Simone Corelli
The text is suitable for sound technicians interested in a quick, simple, and clear approach to the famous iZotope RX restoration system, which is increasingly appreciated and used worldwide.
Order from Amazon
Pro Tools in un’ora (compressa la pausa caffè)
Pro Tools in an Hour (including the coffe break)
by Simone Corelli
Order from Amazon
Dialoghi, Musica, Effetti: il Suono nell’Audiovisivo
Dialogues, Music, Effects: Sound in Audiovisual
by Simone Corelli, Stefano Mainetti, Gilberto Martinelli
with a preface by Claudio Strinati
Il volume tratta in modo approfondito il suono nell’audiovisivo nei suoi aspetti tecnici ed espressivi, principalmente per film e documentari. I tre autori, noti professionisti del settore, affrontano sia i lati produttivi che postproduttivi, fino all’ascolto dello spettatore, trattando anche la musica per film. Il saggio è impreziosito da una dettagliata cronologia sull’avanzamento scientifico e tecnologico correlato al suono, e da grafiche e fotografie originali. È un’opera per esperti ma anche per appassionati e studenti di cinema. La prefazione è di Claudio Strinati.
Italian Kindle edition
Order from Amazon