E221 - The Art of Sound Design with Paul Davies

This is episode 21 in our second season of The Directors Take Podcast.

In this week’s episode your hosts Marcus Anthony Thomas and Oz Arshad are joined by Paul Davies, the legendary Sound Designer who is best known for being one of Director Lynne Ramsay’s closest collaborators, with their relationship spanning all the way back to her first feature film, Ratcatcher. He is exceptional in his own right however and his unique style has landed him work with directors such as Stephen Frears, Yann Demange, Rose Glass, Steve McQueen and Guillermo Del Toro amongst countless others. 

Sound is as important if not more so than the image itself, so we are super excited to bring you a conversation with one of the absolute best in the business. This conversation covers:

 

-What is Sound Design?

-What was his journey into the industry like? 

-The importance of mentors? 

-How did he come to meet Lynne Ramsay and build that relationship? 

-Why do people keep coming back to him? 

-How to sync up the process between sound and the edit? 

-How does he approach character and perspective with sound? 

-What are the mistakes that directors make when working with sound designers? 

 

Our wonderful sponsor for this episode is THE NATIONAL FILM and TELEVISION SCHOOL.

We’ve also partnered with SCRIPTATION to offer our listeners an EXCLUSIVE DISCOUNT on their software, which you can find on the link below… 

http://scriptation.com/thedirectorstake 

 

Paul’s Bio

With a background in music recording and composition, Paul Davies graduated from the sound department at the National Film and Television School (UK) in 1993. After graduation Paul worked as a freelance sound record recordist, sound editor and re-recording mixer on a variety of feature, broadcast, and corporate projects. In 1995 Paul joined the sound post production company VideoSonics as a sound editor, rising to become head of the sound editorial department. Whilst with VideoSonics Paul continued to hone his craft on a large range of feature film and television dramas. In 2000 Paul left VideoSonics to become a freelance supervising sound editor and Sound Designer and continues to work in these roles to this day. Notable directors he has with with include Stephen Frears, John Hillcoat, Lynne Ramsay, Guillermo Del Toro, Steve McQueen, Hideo Nakata, Rose Glass, Bart Layton, Anton Corijn, Saul Dibb, Julian Jarrold, Nick Broomfield and Julien Temple amongst many others, on films such as The Queen, Kinky Boots, You Were Never Really HEre, American Animals, Hunger, Mrs HEnderson Presents, The American, The Proposition, We need to Talk about Kevin, Saint Maud and Mogul Mowgli. 

 

In addition to his work in sound production, Paul is a regular visiting tutor at the National Film and Television School in the UK The Baltic Film School in Estonia and the IFS in Cologne. Paul has also held Sound Design workshops at the School of sound, BAFTA, CPH Dox Festival-Denmark and The Sound of Story in Brighton UK. Paul is a voting member of BAFTA and AMPAS and a past chair of AMPS the UK’s film and television sound craft guild. Paul has received nominations from BAFTA and The Royal Television Society for his sound design work in 2018, and won a BIFA for his Sound Design in You Were Never Really Here. 

 

Nugget of the week

 

Paul: Beth Gibbons - Portishead lead singer & the strength of performance.

Oz: Godzilla Minus One

Marcus: How Liquid Death’s Founder Started a $700million Water Brand | Found Effect

 

Credits

Music by Oliver Wegmüller

 

Socials

Paul Davies: Twitter (X) & Instagram

The Directors' Take: Twitter (X) & Instagram

Marcus: Twitter (X) & Instagram

Oz: Twitter (X) & Instagram

 

If you have any questions relating to the episode or have topics you would like covering in future releases, reach out to us at TheDirectorsTake@Outlook.com