"I am a sound designer myself, and what that really means is that I am a storyteller," said Mitch Gettleman, SCAD chair of sound design, addressing an enthusiastic audience at SCADshow for GamingFest. "I believe that sound and sound design are where the emotion lives for the experience of the audience. There's really no bigger part of storytelling process and sound design than the voiceover performance."

Gettleman, whose professional credits include supervising sound editing on TV shows "Scrubs," "Californication" and "Lady Dynamite," was hosting "The Art of the Voiceover," a key panel during SCAD GamingFest, a two-day convocation of industry luminaries, working professionals and student talent to examine the evolving world of game design and development.

Joining Gettleman on stage were four leading industry creatives who through sound design and voiceover performance bring games to life: Dave Fennoy and Brian Bremer, voice actors of "The Walking Dead" game, Ariel Gross, audio director of QC Games, and Jeffrey Umberger, voice talent agent for The Umberger Agency. The panel shared their experiences, expertise and wit with a captivated GamingFest audience.

"The importance of characters in video games is that they're the human connection element," Gross remarked. "Voice acting is probably the most important thing in audio that we do in games."

Fennoy and Bremer lit up the panel with character riffs and charm. As trained actors who rely on talent, voice control and imagination to deliver performances that enhance the player experience, Fennoy and Bremer advised those interested in joining the world of voiceover work to take improv classes, acting classes and become familiar with the numerous resources, coaches and studios.

Hosted by SCAD, GamingFest is the newest professional engagement program through SCADFILM and highlights SCAD's support of Atlanta's growing gaming landscape. SCAD is the first and only university to offer a B.F.A., M.A. and M.F.A. in sound design. Over 2,800 SCAD alumni currently work in Georgia's entertainment industry.

What do a flying dumpling, an irate mob, and an asteroid striking Earth have in common?

The answer, of course, is Erik Aadahl.

As sound designer on “Kung Fu Panda,” “Argo,” and “Tree of Life,” Aadahl created the aural experiences for those on-screen events. On Friday, October 29, at the Savannah Film Festival, sound-savvy SCAD students and intrigued festivalgoers packed the SCAD Museum of Art theater as Aadahl discussed his work with host Michael Coleman (SoundWorks Collection).

SCAD, the first and only university to confer B.F.A., M.A. and M.F.A. degrees in sound design, provided the ideal venue for Aadahl’s insights.

“Think of sound like painting,” explained Aadahl. “If you use too many colors on your canvas and smear them together, it turns brown. A lot of times the trick is simplicity and imagining beforehand what you might be going for.”

Having worked with directors as diverse as Michael Bay (the “Transformers” series), Terrence Malick (“Tree of Life”), and Gareth Edwards (“Godzilla”), Aadahl pinpointed commonalities in his process: “It begins with the script. Read the script and start a discussion with the director. A lot of times filmmakers won’t even hear the sound until they get to the mixing stage, which is terrible. As soon as a scene starts to get cut together, do a pass on the sound and get it into the Avid. That allows sound to evolve with the picture. Sound affects the emotion of the scene, it affects the tempo. It helps inform the rest of the process.”

Aadahl enhanced his “Creating the Sound for Hollywood Movies” presentation with audio and film clips, emphasizing the interplay between sound and image. Running a serrated plastic knife down the tracks of a rubber tire, he revealed, led to one of his team’s most terrifying monster movie motifs.

“One thing we really enjoy doing is trying new things. A lot of experimentation went into creating the sounds for the characters from ‘Godzilla.’ We pulled in hundreds of props and played with them. One technique was using high-resolution microphones five times the range of human hearing. So there’s all this invisible sonic information in those recordings, but once it’s slowed down it becomes audible.”

Aadahl often records small things to massive effect, whereby “micro becomes macro.”

“In ‘Transformers’ we’ve got these enormous footsteps. One of my favorite ‘footsteps’ is made by slamming the door of my dryer at home. Slow it down and beef it up and it becomes huge.”   

A ripple of delight ran through the theater when Aadahl screened the “Kung Fu Panda” sequence where pupil and teacher grapple over the last steamed dumpling. Every chopstick click and slurping tongue sounded epic.

“When Po catches the dumpling and tosses it and says ‘I’m not hungry,’ then Shifu catches it and throws it off-screen,” Aadahl pointed out. “We were finishing the film and screened it for the Chinese distributors. They said, ‘That’s very disrespectful to throw away food.’ It was a big cultural issue. So we added the rrring! sound of a dumpling landing in a bowl off-screen.”

Sound decision, master.