Diana Kuls was awarded Gold for her submission in the Student Recording Competition Sound for Visual Media category.
Tell us a little about yourself. Where are you from and what do you study?
My name is Diana Kuls, I'm 23 years old and I'm from Warsaw, Poland. I study sound engineering for film and television and also choir singing. I work in a dubbing studio where I do audio quality control.
What initiated your passion for audio? When did it start?
I was raised in a family with musical traditions, so I guess music and sound is a really big part of who I am. My parents always wanted me to become a professional pianist but I knew I wanted to do something more dynamic and diverse. I started thinking of studying sound engineering when I was around 16 or 17 years old. I found out that there's a major which connects music with technology and I thought that it can actually fit my interests and abilities.
Tell us about the production of your submission. What is the story behind it? What inspired it? How long did you work on it? Was it your first entry?
My submission work - Identity - is a 5-minutes long animation movie by Alireza Salehi (Iran, 2019). It's a fantasy story of a man who looks for his lost face inside of a mirror. I liked the story and the universal message it carries. I found the original picture on YouTube while searching for something to work on at my university film sound classes. My job was to create all the sound layers from scratch. Because of the studio renovation, it was much more difficult to record foley effects than it was in previous years so the majority of the effects I used originate from the sound library. It took around 4 months to finalize it. This was my second attempt to the Student Recording Competition - first one was last year, during AES in Dublin.
What/Who made you join AES?
Many of my university colleagues were already members of AES when I joined. I could see how much fun they have at conventions, so finally I decided to go and experience it myself.
Tell us about your favorite experiences at the 148th AES convention online.
As a final year student, I was very busy at the time and simply couldn't take part in a lot of provided online events. I really enjoyed the Student Recording Competition and the form it was made in. It was cool we could listen to each other's works on headphones and exchange opinions on a group chat. I know that this way of organizing the convention provided the access to a bigger group of listeners, but I really missed the physicality of a "normal" event. You know, having a beer with friends while exploring the city after the whole day of lectures... There's no online way to replace it.
Posted: Tuesday, July 21, 2020
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