I'm a sound engineer, who focuses in post production and mixing sound, with experience in audiovisuals recordind, editing, and mixing, as well as music recording and mixing, with 5 years working on it. I provide my own mixing room for stereo mix.
I'm a engineer, I have plenty experience to my age, and I can work on films, music, videogames and make editing, mixing and mastering of all that (though mastering is made only for music, the rest is only mixing).
My profile picture was rolling a short film en 2019, before quarantine. I also have my own home studio for stereo mixing (and I'm making a project so the studio becomes a 5.1). The mics I have for recording (if necesary) are a sennheiser mkh 416 condenser, and a shure sm 57 dinamic, with a focusrite saffire pro 40.
I come from the cimena world, wich is a great benefit to understand the storytelling beyond techique. Many times people get messed up trying to get the "perfect" compression, or the perfect noise reduction, and they forget about the main thing: get a story being told (even for instrumental music), and focus on the right feeling for it. How all diferent sounds work together so you can focus only in what is happening, and forget about "how well is the EQ" and the rest of the sound gets to a second place.
Down below I put a few songs mixed by me (the mastering was not yet done, so you can hear the mix alone).
I'd love to hear about your project. Click the 'Contact' button above to get in touch.
Interview with Martin Sampayo IV
Q: What are you working on at the moment?
A: A teaser of a film, I', working side by side with the editor of a shortfilm moving between editing department andsound department making news and better versions of the film, and I'm with a provisional script of an animation shortfilm, in order to make the sound to help to tell the story.
Q: Analog or digital and why?
A: Digital, because we can try over and over and over again, and it is more accesible for artists with lower resources.
Q: What's your 'promise' to your clients?
A: That I'll put all of me to make your story better.
Q: What do you like most about your job?
A: That I never live the same day twice. Every journey is an adventure, no matter if I'm exploring sounds or creating sounds in the studio or recording things outside. I always discover new ways that things can sound.
Q: What questions do customers most commonly ask you? What's your answer?
A: They ask how bad de movie is, and I always tell them that the creative process isn't finished, so you won't know that until the end. And many people will like your story, even if you don't.
Q: What's the biggest misconception about what you do?
A: That we can save anything in post that is bad recorded. We can make some work, but if it is well recorded, we won't spend time fixing things that will sound bad and we'll be more time helping you to tell a good story.
Q: What advice do you have for a customer looking to hire a provider like you?
A: If they know what a sidechain is, you'll know they'll work very fast. And many like me have our own libraries of sound collected among the years, so you'll know we take our job seriously.
Q: If you were on a desert island and could take just 5 pieces of gear, what would they be?
A: Microphone mkh416, tascam dr680, tape, headphones, and batteries. So I can be sure I can record things.
Q: What was your career path? How long have you been doing this?
A: I started making small excercises about filming or some small and brutal editings, maybe 1 good shortfilms a year, and after that I started to be each time more and more meticulous so I got to more than 10 short meters a year counting production and post production.
Q: How would you describe your style?
A: I'm trying to get the point of view focused, making a balance between "real" sounds (sounds designed but recognizables) and the characters feelings.
Q: Can you share one music production tip?
A: Sidechain. If I have a difficult choise in my life, I always wonder: what would sidechain do? And then I go.
Q: What's your strongest skill?
A: I believe it is consistency. I wake up everyday at 6.30 in the morning and if I have a job I start working right away (except on sundays). If I don't have a job I always keep my studio clean and ordered, ready to work, and after that I start investigating about some issue or I try new plugins, I also watch conferences about sound design and I'm always trying to upgrade my studio, even if it's with small things.
Q: What's your typical work process?
A: I always get dialogues first, clean and healthy, if recording was well I look for production effects that might be useful aswell. After that I take a full day recordind foleys and another full day editing them. When I'm finished with these two elements (which I consider the most important ones) I recreat the world around the characters. When music es brought to me y gather everything together and I make a mix focused on what is being told, with the guide of my client.
Q: Tell us about your studio setup.
A: I have a 2.0 audio set, with woofers size 5.25", and a Behringer sound target in an acoustic environment. I record sound FX, dialogues and else with a microphone sennheiser mkh 416 and a recorder Tascam dr680 mkII.
Q: Describe the most common type of work you do for your clients.
A: My clients ussually call me to recreat a natural universe that is being seen by a parturbated person. So I try to desarm and take off the elements that will destroy the idea of the film, so I can focus on new elements that work better for that.
- Dialogue EditingAverage price - $50 per minute
- Sound DesignAverage price - $75 per minute
- Post MixingAverage price - $100 per minute
- Game AudioAverage price - $100 per day
- Production Sound MixerAverage price - $150 per day
- Boom OperatorAverage price - $400 per day
