Having majored in jazz piano in undergrad, Yunhye Kim dreamed of being a composer and started her master’s degree at AAU in the spring of 2018. But during her first semester at AAU, she began to yearn to do sound design; it was time to change her major. She took so much joy from thinking about which sounds should go where on a silent video, and quiuily fell in love with sound design. For Kim, adding a sound that doesn’t exist in the world always presented a new challenge. To overcome this challenge, she always needed to understand the storyline of the piece of visual media she was working with to find its most important points.

The sci-fi short film “Box-In-A-Box,” where Kim served as Sound Designer, was prepared to be shown at film festivals in 2020. In the process of developing the film, she had a lot of conversations with the film director for a better understanding of the ambiguous parts of the work so that she could create a unique and harmonious sound.

The sci-fi short animated film “Durak” is one of Kim's favorite projects. It looks a bit like an ordinary animation, but the story of the film is bizarre and strange. She finds that the most important character in the scene is the flying fairy. According to the movement and presence of the flying pair, the story is unfolded as well as the sound. There is a scene in the movie where the street light goes out when the flying fairy is hit by someone. Because Kim wanted to make the scene stand out more, she made a pointed effort to find the perfect sound for that moment.

The film “Blackline” was a very meaningful project in which Kim participated in all sounds, including music. She thinks of it as a great project that could showcase her musical talent as a sound designer and composer. Kim focused mostly on mixing and mastering for this project, because it was more difficult to balance the overall sound than to create the sound and music of each scene. She also met the new challege of incorporating many musical aspects, from sound design to Foley to music scores.

The animated film “Wall Rat Ratatouille” was a group project where Kim was involved in all sounds from beginning to end. It represents, for Kim, a closer approximation of working in real-world teams than any other project she worked on while at AAU. While collaborating with a team, she felt the pleasure of striving towards something great with other people. Also, she realized that great teamwork can bring the opportunity to make better sounds than an indiviudal could have created on their own.

Kim's career goal is to be a sound designer who can reflect her own colors and convey human emotions to many people with a single sound. It is hugely exciting for her to imagine that she can become a professional sound designer, and she hopes that her reel will excite you in the same way!