Ello frens :3 On January 1st I put out this post outlining what I’m working on for this year, and wanted to give updates as to how that’s all going. Hint: not very well, but for good reason!

Taika Modular

This has effectively been put on standby. I don’t have time to manufacture modules, and I can’t seem to find reliable help locally. As such, they’ve sat, stagnating, newer modules coming out that do similar things, me finding less and less use for a modular system in my work, and thus losing motivation to try to get this off the ground.

You see, I’ve been slowly pivoting my business from sound design to cinematography for the last year, and by this point operating a camera is easily my most in-demand skill right now. Helps to live in New York for that I guess. More of my time is spent on set or editing videos than anything, but I do still regularly fall back on my library of samples for SFX in what I shoot. It’s big enough now that I don’t need to create new sounds, hence the modular sits untouched.

Sound Design Videos

You’d think, then, that pivoting to video work would be beneficial for making my own videos on sound design. Issue is, sound design videos are much more involved. My “daily” work mostly involves pointing a camera and mic at a person as they do something in a space. Little more artistry and technique than that, but that’s basically it. Then I go home, ingest the footage, and edit it.

Making sound design videos requires screen recording, a lot of trial and error because what my subject matter entails isn’t easily nailed on the first go, plus thinking of ideas and implementing them well in video format is… not my strong suit. Which is basically just a bunch of excuses saying my job is kinda hard, I realise. I do currently have two videos in the works that will hopefully be finished next month.

Sound Design Book

This is actually coming along nicely! I have several chapters complete and the main section of how to create various sounds is probably halfway done. Good timing. And no, I’m not using AI to help write it. Too inaccurate for this kinda technical literary work.

Class

I said this won’t happen in 2023 but it’s becoming much more likely to happen in 2023. I was originally turned down at several schools because it’s not an in-demand subject, so we’ve reworked it a bit and now I actually have a school heavily considering me personally to teach my own class on synthetic sound design – to the point where their trustees already approved it. I spread the class out a bit to be more generally a combination of movie editing, including SFX design, use of a DAW, and a bit on animation and CGI, which I do pretty regularly in Resolve. I’m having to learn a lot for that, but if I can nail the final interview which is basically a test class for other faculty in the department, there’s a decent chance I’ll have my own class.

Studio Tour

Studio is still a mess and I’m actually selling off a few things and swapping in other things. No tour until it’s somewhat finalised.

Blogging

I set up a calendar entry to blog every month, and I have been! Doing well so far.

Reel

I have been assembling a reel! Issue has been clearing NDAs takes forever when you were contracted to work for a large company and said large company takes 3-5 days to respond to anything.

So yeah, that’s where I’m at. How about you? Keeping up with your goals for the year?