2024 · Short film soundtrack

Richter

Richter is a short film about an earthquake. I wrote its score and built its sound design around the dialogue.

Sound design and score · REAPER · Zoom H6 · field recording · synthesis

The film’s opening shot: rock formations and a stack of boulders above a hazy valley

Field recordings and synthesis

I built the sound effects from my own recordings and synthesis, without commercial sound libraries.

Synthesizers carry the earthquake’s low end. Stretched door creaks, pallet impacts and concrete scrapes add the sound of materials breaking above the rumble.

Richter with my score and sound design.

Keeping dialogue above the earthquake

Parts of the speech disappeared under the earthquake. I cut the rumble in the same frequency range as the voices and turned it down whenever the actors spoke, so the earthquake stays heavy and the lines still come through.

Schematic of the mix priority, not measured fader levels.