by Will Long

After my last film, Life In North Korea, one of the main comments I received was how people wanted to hear the natural sounds of the place, so I kept that in mind whilst editing Patagonia. Unfortunately the iPhone has a notoriously poor microphone and, as of yet, I don’t have a separate sound recorder so I had to add the sound effects in post. Being authentic to Patagonia was important to me, so I spent a few days sourcing sounds that were actually recorded in Patagonia.

Whilst layering the sound effects I would refer to the sound that my iPhone picked up so that I could get the volume levels, and all of the sounds, as close to the original as possible. The only sound effects that I took liberties with were those of the avalanches. Unfortunately I couldn’t find any sound effects of avalanches recorded in Patagonia. Whilst my girlfriend and I were there we actually heard the avalanches before we saw them and thought that we were hearing thunder. So to recreate the sounds of the avalanches I used the sound of thunder that had been, yet again, recorded in Patagonia

 For the music, I wanted to use something that would reflect the peace of the place. My brother, the film’s composer, wrote this piece of music that ‘breathes’, which allows the sound to reveal itself in the quiet parts of the music, revealing Patagonia to be a living, breathing place.