So You Want to Be a Sound Designer ...

What does a sound designer do? He (or she) creates, well, sounds for use in movies, television and other mediums. That might mean the sound of footsteps as a character onscreen approaches; or it might mean the kerchunks, doinks and thuds used in coordination with quick cuts, as seen in the opening moments of this short film about sound design:

The subject of the video short is sound designer Ali Lacey, who we see, among other things, hitting an old metal bathtub with a mallet to get his desired noise. "A man standing alone in a shed hitting a bath with a mallet could be seen as mad," the clip's intro text suggests, "but in the world of sound design, it's the norm. Ali Lacey is an eccentric sound design artist, and this short portrait allows us a closer look into the world of sound design."

The clip makes clear that sound design is not full of glamour: "I love it, but sampling is tedious," Lacey says, "... hitting something over and over and over again."