Thunder sounds or explosions are suitable for me – Leszek Daszkowski can´t hear his own project

Leszek Daszkowski has not made his disability stop his dream to study at the Icelandic Film School. Creative technology happened to be his choice and now he has finished the project that one might imagine being almost impossible for him to solve.

A deaf polish student at the Icelandic Film School happens to speak no Icelandic and therefore communicates through an interpreter. In his studies he was confronted with a challenging project working sound. Being expected to hand in a solution with a minute long sound file representing a feeling or an event did however not cause him til give up.  To enable himself to cope with this project Leszek wisely choose avalanche as a theme.

Having chosen Creative Technology as my field I am mainly aiming at cinemagraphy and editing as a future career. This course however also concentrates on sound in films so understandably I was not too taken with that part of the course. Anyway – Me and Olafur Fannar, head of Creative Technology had a good talk and later I sat down with Gísli (Magnús Torfason) who is in charge sound-technology and the computers at IFS and he tought me everything I needed to know, how to work out the computerprogram etc. No less important was being able to rely on my translators help to realize some of the sounds and I´m very grateful for having her insights to assist me.

Understandably Leszek found not being able to hear his own results in the project to be the hardest part.

Still, if there is a bass sound I can rather feel that then for example two people having a conversation, something I can hardly work with. But loud sounds and bass I can deal with. By holding my hand on a loudspeaker I can sense the vibration.

Having good descriptions of sounds in the collection of sound files in IFS was  a great help for Leszek. He was of course only able to use sounds properly registered.

Using all that made it possible for me to choose the most suitable sounds for my project and things looked good from reading the sound meter alone.

Only under such constrictions working on sound-projects will be possible for Leszek again.

Working on thunder sounds or explosions are suitable for me. I admit that coming to my first lesson I did not feel particularly amused by the idea of working on sound. But after Gísli started teaching me I grew confidence and started enjoying the whole experience. He also kept a good eye on me and showed up every once in awhile to guide me. Apart from that I worked on the project on my own.

It took Leszek a whole week to finish his work and the results are really impressive.