Jiwoo sat cross legged in her wheeled leather chair, one hand holding her headphones in place while the other fiddled with the levers and buttons in front of her. Her eyes were stuck on the large screen that was showing the scene she was working on. I was a character walking along a desolate field of where her childhood home used to be.

As a sound designer, it was Jiwoo’s job to add ambience noise and breathe life into the whole sequence, complementing the visuals to bring a true audio-visual experience to the audience. Jiwoo had already added the sound of grass being tussled by the wind, the cracking sound of twigs and dry leaves under the character’s feet as she walked — courtesy of the foley artists — and even the sound of the birds chirping in the distance. However something did not feel quite right. Frowning, Jiwoo replayed the scene and set it on slow-motion, her eyes darting across the screen to catch anything at all that felt muted and neglected.

In that moment, Jiwoo paused the video just as the camera did a close up of the character.

“Longing… nostalgia… memories.”

Mumbling the words under her breath, Jiwoo turned towards another screen, opening the file that had the character description and background information.

“Older sibling and baseball. Ok.”

Opening yet another file, Jiwoo typed in key words and shifted through piles of stock audio in search of what she was looking for. Eyes squinting as she selected a couple of samples, the girl carefully layered the audio on top of each other. She then adjusted the timing and a final layer of filtering before taking her headphones off and playing the scene with the large speakers of the studio.

Unlike earlier where only sounds that could be seen in the frame were present, as the character’s eyes looked into the distance in search of what was no longer there, the sound of a bat hitting a ball echoed from one side. This was then followed the the giggles of children and the rhythmic sound of jogging, all in tune with the character’s stable footsteps.

Jiwoo made sure to make this new added sounds as faint and quaint as possible, something that if you are not careful enough you might miss it or question whether it was all a figment of imagination. After all, this was all extraction on her part from what she saw in the character’s eyes, the emotions that oozed from her stare. It needed to be something subtle and delicate, and not mislead the audience into thinking that there were kids playing baseball for real.

“Damn that came together real good.”

Twirling her chair around, Jiwoo gave the intruder an empty stare.

“What do you need Henry.”

“Why are you assuming that I need something?” Henry exclaimed in fake offence. “But yeah, Amber and I can’t decide between fresh cabbage or celery for the sound of breaking bones so we need a third pair of ears.”

Nodding, Jiwoo followed Henry into the recording studio next door. Compared to the one that she worked in which resembled a more traditional recording studio, the one that Henry and Amber worked in was much larger and was always filled with random items and barely any space to walk in. As foley artists, the two colleagues were in charge of recreating sounds and make it as realistic as possible, as well as making sure that it was timed perfectly with the motions and movements on screen. Amber and Henry however were known to be highly mischievous and always creating more chaos than necessary. This was why once Jiwoo stepped into the room, she had to hold back a gasp of horror.

“Why does it look like the torture dungeon of salad fingers in here.”

“That reference doesn’t even make sense,” Amber snickered as she kicked a piece of broken celery to the side. “But yes, a lot of celery and cabbage were sacrificed for this scene.”

Jiwoo struggled her way to a corner and put on the headphones, giving a thumbs up to show that she was ready to listen. Henry typed on a keyboard and soon the large screen in front of them started playing an intense chase scene where a masked male kicked over an