Hinterlands

Foley and Sound Design by Radium Audio

Director Sean Stiegemeier asks Radium to create the sound for his short film teaser “Hinterlands”, an epic journey shot in spectacular locations with awe-inspiring cinematography, following a man on his quest to uncover the final lingering evidence of human civilisation amidst a post-apocalyptic landscape. Given the director’s commitment to maximising the use of stunning location shots in the film, we choose to focus the sonic narrative very much on the singular odyssey of the lone character, opting for a detailed sonic rendering of his breathing apparatus in operation to convey his vulnerable humanity dwarfed by the panoramic hostility of the environment he is attempting to explore and engage, and to track and underpin his journey through this fundamentally changed and starkly poignant world.

So we begin to scour all our known sources of surplus gear and second hand equipment, eventually tracking down a fighter pilot’s helmet from China and an Airforce fighter pilot suit from the USA. We’re happy to find that the communications equipment still remains inside the pilot’s helmet when it arrives although it is broken, so we repair and co-opt it as an added filter for recording live breathing sounds. Pete puts on the helmet and the suit and then we mike him up and have him move around the studio at various speeds, and echo the movements of the character in the visuals, to capture authentic passes and textures which we can use for the soundtrack.

We see the sounds of breathing apparatus as being a critical element to creating the immediate feeling in the trailer that although this looks like a familiar world, it’s clear that something has gone very wrong. The mechanical breathing electronic “bleep” sound gives a focus for this sense of forboding, and to create it we use source material recorded from studio camera equipment loading and flash recharge sounds. So we take all of our raw recordings, breaking them down to minute detail then layering them delicately throughout the timeline, carefully constructing a transparent soundscape which wraps around the visual journey and invisibly pushes forward the overall narrative, drawing us inexorably into the world of the Hinterlands.