When did you first discover your passion for sound?
It think it comes straight from my love for music. A combination of being a bit of a geek and having music teachers for parents combined at around the age of 14 when I started messing about with computer music and recording my high school bands.

What are the projects that you’re most proud of and why?
Most recently (as of 2010..) I would say that the TV series This Is Not My Life, and the short film Munted would be my biggest achievements to date. In both cases that's due to being given a lot of creative freedom from the directors, as well as both of those projects being made with provisions for sound to do a lot of story-telling. Those times when you can blur the lines between sound design and score and really start to play off the characters' headspaces are the most rewarding for me, and I got to do a lot of that with both.

Did you study? How long have you been in the industry?
Yes I studied audio engineering and music production for two years at MAINZ in Auckland. A great place to soak up as many hours in the studio's as you can, and the place where I fell in love with early 80's synthesizer's. Straight after that I spent a year in Brisbane moving mic stands and pushing the odd fader at a music studio called Blackbox, then when I came back to NZ I became involved with post-production pretty much straight away. I've been at IAS for about 3 years now, for the most part sound designing / fx editing and then mixing when I'm not making the sounds.

What type of projects are you working on now?
Right now I'm sound designing a telefeature called Bliss which is about Katherine Mansfield. It starts in Wellington, so there's wind. It's quite a challenging one in that I have to describe the period with things that we never see; horse-and-cart, trams, london omnibus, etc. Beautiful interior locations are easy enough to find but early 20th Century streets aren't.. so sound plays a big part in this one.

 
Tell me about your own passion for music composition.
I basically spend all day on ProTools at work, and then go home and play with ProTools some more. There's a big crossover of skills so both things inform the other. I find that mixing approaches and philosophies that work for one can usually work for the other, after all they are both about delivering sound to your ears in interesting ways that make sense. Plus, the music-making helps keep me sane, and I don't play in a band at the moment so I don't have to share.. yes it's all about me..

Tell me about your Qantas Film and Television award winning project Kaitangata Twitch.
For Kaitangata Twitch the challenge was to create a personality for an island that embodied a chief, who also happened to be a cannibal..!There were lots of heavy vocalizations and the occasional stomach grumble that shook the neighboring town. George Henare who plays Lee Ka (the man charged with keeping the island happy) was the voice of the island as well. Tom Miskin had George in the studio and pitched his speech and breathing way down, and was able to play this to George in realtime so that he could hear the effect and play with it live. The big FX were fun, but my favorite part was creating ambience for Lee Ka's shack, which was a really beautiful piece of set design and looked like it had lived there for years"