Tell a story, or bring them on the ride.
Over nearly three decades, I’ve moved between Hollywood film sound, AAA and independent games, entrepreneurship, composition, public art, and emerging real-time technologies. My credits include Treasure Planet, The Matrix trilogy, Dead Space, Ori and the Blind Forest, and The Witness, alongside sixteen years leading Wabi Sabi Sound and interdisciplinary projects such as Escalier Forte.
Film and Early Career
I began in film sound, at Danetracks in Los Angeles during a period when the studio was contributing to some of the most ambitious films of the era. My work included projects such as The Matrix films, 8 Mile, and Treasure Planet.
Those early years shaped how I think about sound. My early mentor, Dane Davis, began with the script and designed first in his imagination. That approach stayed with me: sound establishes point of view, shapes emotion, creates space, and guides an audience’s attention.
Many field and foley sessions with mentors John Fasal (Below) and John Roesch (Left) taught me how performance and capturing sound can provoke an audience into anticipation.
In LA and later at Skywalker Sound, film also taught me the value of large-scale collaboration. The work depended on many highly specialized people contributing to a single creative result on compressed schedules—an experience that later informed how I approached both game development and creative leadership.
From Linear to Interactive Worldbuilding
Games introduced a fundamentally different problem: instead of designing sound for a fixed sequence, I was designing for systems, choices, and unpredictable player behavior.
At Electronic Arts I began exploring how the principles of cinematic sound could be adapted to interactive environments. That shift—from linear storytelling to systems that respond in real time—became one of the defining threads of my career.
Projects such as Dead Space, The Witness and Ori and the Blind Forest reinforced my interest in using sound not only to support a world, but to help build it. Interactive media opened the door to a different kind of authorship, where designers create possibilities rather than a single fixed experience. Later, I built my own games in Unreal and Roblox.
Building Wabi Sabi Sound
In 2008, I founded Wabi Sabi Sound, an independent audio studio that I led for sixteen years.
What began as a specialized sound design studio grew into an opportunity to build and lead teams of actors, audio programmers, sound designers, and musicians; direct creative work; manage long-term client relationships; and work across a wide range of productions and technologies. Our clients included Microsoft, Activision, EA, Sony, Amazon, Meta, Behaviour Interactive, 2K Games, and many others.
Wabi Sabi also allowed me to move fluidly between large commercial productions and smaller, highly individual projects. Our award-winning work included Ori and the Blind Forest, The Witness, and other projects where sound played a central role in defining the experience.
Running the studio changed the way I thought about both creative work and business. I was no longer focused only on making sounds; I built processes, facilities, products, and profitability, mentored collaborators, solved production problems, helped teams articulate creative goals, and created conditions in which good work could happen consistently.