PN.26.036. Multimedia. Studio project, 2026.
Foley for Imaginary Machines
Eighteen sounds for things that do not exist, including a lift arriving at a floor that is not there.
The brief
Show range in sound design, with no recordings.
The idea
Foley is the art of making sounds for what is on screen. These are for what is not on any screen. A polite teleporter failure. A refrigerator of the future, thinking. Each one is a tiny piece of comic timing.
Decisions
- Titles do half the work, and each sound has to earn its title.
- UI sounds are included alongside the jokes, to show the serious version of the skill.
- A confirm rises by a fifth, and a decline falls by a semitone.
- Waveforms on the soundboard show what you are about to hear.
How it came together
- Wrote the titles first, as a list of jokes.
- Built each sound from oscillators, filtered noise and the reverb from the EP.
- Measured every file for level and clipping.
How it works
One script renders eighteen files using the same synth as the EP. The soundboard reads their saved peak data to draw waveforms.
Want something like this?
Tell us what you are making. A few lines is enough to start.
Hanging nearby
Tape Hiss for Slow MorningsA five-track EP, about fourteen minutes long, composed and synthesised from nothing but code, with no samples.PN.26.019. Audio tracks, Sleeve artwork.
The ProofreaderA short film from script to animatic. On a newspaper's last night, the machine has made no errors, so the last proofreader adds one.PN.26.006. Screenplay PDF, Storyboards.
DeadwaxA music player where you flip through a crate of sleeves and drag a real tonearm to seek. It plays the studio's own EP.PN.26.020. Interactive prototype, Sleeve artwork.