Familia Flores

My 94 year old father (at the time) narrating his favourite book - from his own first copy he owned as a child. It's the one story he regularly told all his offspring and has come to define a part of each of our childhoods.

Be it grandparents or children, we all change over time. Digital sound doesn't fade and can be enjoyed anywhere at any time, even in the dark...sometimes especially in the dark!

Sound design elements are sketches for you to base your visuals on but they should just be hints. Good art is collaborative - it invites the observer to engage with their own interpretation through imagination. Audio presented like this makes that easy and accessible. It has the ability to be both precise and ambiguous, personal and universal.

In Dad's case he has always relished the line "...but round the end of the cucumber frame, whom should he meet but Mr McGregor...". You can then hear the ensuing chaotic chase around your head as his narration continues uninterrupted. In mixing this spatially, we discovered you can have multiple events happening in different physical locations without it confusing or crowding the narration.

Imagine being able to tell your great great (etc!) grandchildren a bedtime story and they get to hear not just your voice but have the space around the words come alive with your version of that story. It's easy to forget that being able to record audio at all (with a microphone that could capture the full range of a human voice), and play it back is only 100 years old - while Thomas Edison revealed the first sound recording that could be played back in 1877, it didn't become mass market until the advent of electrical recording in 1925 and record players started appearing in 1926. Dad is part of the first generation to have grown up with the ability to record and play back sound, and until the last 20 years or so it was generally the domain of professionals only because of the cost. But now a new form of intra-family communication is possible.

If you are a parent, maybe you want to tell your future child something as a peer - that they listen to when they are the same age you were when you recorded it.

Perhaps you want to record something for your future self, to be heard years later when you have reached a different stage of life.

Or simply you want to record a gift for your parent or grandparent so you can read them a bedtime story too, storytelling doesn't just have to be one way!

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It is a blueprint for a series - to help your clan grow its understanding of the characters and histories contained within, and to share with whoever you want.

If you would like to record a loved one and have the environment come alive as they read it then please get in contact and let's see if we can preserve some magic.