Sound Design by Radium Audio

Having seen our work with liquid nitrogen in the Macro Kingdom series, RKCR/Y&R tell us they think we’ll be a great fit for the Fire Safety project, given our organic and finely detailed approach to crafting sound and creating music. After talking through the script, we immediately understand that a “foley on steroids” approach is needed for the audio to infuse the piece with a strong feeling of impending danger, aiming to inspire a sense of hyperalertness in the listener.

We start with a foley session, focusing on capturing the sound of melting plastic as a narrative for the clock action in the piece … painstakingly annihilating by fire a variety of objects such as bubblewrap, fizzy drink bottles and old computer casings in the process. We then obtain some more combustible objects including various old metal electronics components and a bunch of fireworks and experiment with recording these – the sparklers being the top performer giving us some fantastic popping, hissing sound effects which become very prominent in the final edit.

These recordings are then layered in to create a feeling of being physically very close to the listener, sonically infusing the piece with a sense of kinetic movement and urgency, crafting a simple yet hyperreal, unnerving sound journey.

Finally, we choose to include a background of mundane traffic noise with a hooting owl, to contrast the calm and peace of an ordinary night in an average house while everyone is sleeping, with the domestic armageddon of heat, smoke and fire destruction which can follow in only a few short minutes, driving home the real importance of the fire safety message.

Recording Fire Safety Viral

Radium Recording Fireworks