On this trailer I handled both sound design and music, and everything was built around paranoia. The challenge was to make the presence of something you can’t see feel real. I leaned heavily on Serum for the reversed tones and those uncomfortable layers that sit just under the scene. They’re not loud, but they make your skin tighten a little.
Because this was during the pandemic, I was stuck at home and had to get creative. I started recording random things around me and stretching them into something new. Insect sounds, tiny grains of salt dropped on surfaces, anything that could create a strange transition when slowed or sped up by a few hundred percent. None of it was “sci-fi” in the classic sense. It’s all real audio, just warped until your brain can’t quite identify it.
That’s why it works. Your mind thinks the sounds are real, even if they don’t make immediate sense. It’s tension built from reality, not from a big plugin stack. Just small sounds turned into something uncomfortable and alive.
