University News Last updated 08 November 2023
MMus graduate Sylvia (Yen-Ju) Chen and her team recently won a prestigious Taiwan Golden Bell Award in the ‘Best Sound Design for Television Series’ category.
Built from the ground up by six friends, Sylvia’s company SoundMe Studio provides music and sound post-production services for film and game.
For this particular project, ‘Reclaim My Summer’, the company undertook all sound postproduction, with Sylvia working as the Sound Designer and looking after ‘Foley’. In filmmaking, ‘Foley’ is the reproduction of everyday sound effects that are added to films, videos, and other media in post-production to enhance audio quality.
‘Reclaim My Summer’ focuses on 17-year-old Xuan, who grew up in a recycling yard, and the only opportunity she gets to hang out with her friends is when she goes out collecting recyclable items from her neighbours.
The film has also been nominated for Best Short Film by Golden Horse Film Festival this year.
Sylvia graduated with Commendation from the MMus Music Technology programme in 2017.
In a social media post, she thanked Royal Birmingham Conservatoire’s Music Technology team for giving her “the opportunity to study, and to teach her to spread her wings and build her confidence”.
Head of Music Technology Dr Simon Hall said: “We’re incredibly proud of Sylvia’s achievements. She really developed over the course of her two years study with us, and I’m sure that this award is likely to be the first of many more to come.”
Pictured: Sylvia (far left) at the Awards.