ABOUT…
About The Four Sound Areas
Are your soundtracks BADLY letting down your picture editing?
Are you apprehensive about the audio aspects of projects?
Would you like to ‘deep-dive’ into sound design?
If you said ‘Yes!’ to any of those questions, we’re here to help!
We won’t claim to be able to turn you into a master sound designer overnight – or shortcut the years it takes to fully acquire the necessary knowledge and experience to achieve such standing… The truth is, as clichéd as it might sound, you never stop learning!
But by studying The Four Sound Areas framework you will not only learn a new approach to sound and sound design, you will more fully appreciate how audience emotions and audience engagement are affected by moving picture soundtracks. You will also learn to use a logical, flexible and practical model that will enable you to more easily plan, create and communicate your soundtracks and give them greater emotional significance, impact and meaning.
The Four Sound Areas framework is also a brilliantly useful tool for providing scholastic insight to those involved with teaching soundtrack theory and practice; and it has significant relevance for those who are studying or researching the wider topics of film studies and screen writing and wish to deepen their analysis.
About
The Academy
The Sound for Moving Pictures academy is built around the best-selling book Sound for Moving Pictures – the Four Sound Areas by Dr. Neil Hillman and is designed as a response to the increasing demand of students, teaching professionals and experienced practitioners who are all looking for new ways of engaging with structured learning.
For instance, we recognize that one important part of our purpose is to help the many students and industry newcomers who are increasingly taking the initiative to fund and build their own areas of professional development; studying at their own pace, with a view to obtaining a more relevant working knowledge of their chosen field.
To this end, the academy combines a set reference work with guided tutorials and practical exercises and also acts as a virtual campus: a place where both new and experienced picture professionals can meet with sound professionals; students are allowed to learn about sound at their own pace; and teachers can find methods, structure and resources for teaching sound design theory and practice.
About
Dr. Neil Hillman
The Sound for Moving Pictures academy is lead by Neil Hillman MPSE, an award-winning Sound designer, Re-recording Mixer and Supervising Sound Editor with over 900 IMDb entries, who often acts as a single point of contact for Producers, operating as both a Production Mixer and post-production Sound Supervisor. He has extensive experience as a Sound Supervisor on sport Outside Broadcasts, too; being engaged for prestigious global sports events such as the London 2012, Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games and the Glasgow 2014 and Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games.
Neil is also a passionate teacher. His PhD concerning emotion in sound design was completed at the University of York and he has taught Undergraduate and Masters modules at the University of York and Birmingham City University. He has been an invited speaker at places such as the BFI, the Grierson Trust, the BBC Academy, the University of Staffordshire, the University of Gloucestershire and the University of Ulster; as well as the School of Audio Engineering (SAE Brisbane) and Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Australia.
For more than 25 years, Neil Hillman has written prodigiously: for trade magazines such as Studio Sound, Audio Media and Resolution; leading industry blog Pro Tools Expert; for the academic publisher Routledge and on the topic of broadcast sound for newspapers including The Daily Telegraph and The Birmingham Post.