Born In Poland, Living In London, Creating Noises, Recording Sounds

Hi, I'm Marcin Pawlik, an award-winning sound designer with over 10 years of sound postproduction experience. I create sounds for films, documentaries, motion graphics, cinematics, promos, commercials and anything that requires creative sound design and mix. I'm currently employed by multi award wining sound post production company 750mph where I constantly expand my insight into more creative and effective narrative via sound.

Sound awards and nominations

  • Cannes Lions Bronze Award for Film Craft in Sound Design for Vanish titled “Me, My Autism & I” directed by Tom Hopper
  • Creative Circle Silver in Sound Design for Vanish titled "Me, My Autism & I"
  • LIA Silver in Sound Mixing & Editing for Vanish titled "Me, My Autism & I"
  • Immortal Commendation in sound for Vanish titled "Me, My Autism & I"
  • Music and Sound Award finalist - best sound design in a television programme for Nike "New Heights" documentary

The Journey

My career into sound design isn’t something I found, it was something that found me. I’d always been interested in storytelling whether that’s through film, books or music but I never really thought about having a sound/music related career. For the most part I didn’t know what to do and arbitrarily ended up studying English Language and English Literature as I thought it would be great to be able to watch films in English without the subtitles. I came to London after graduating and worked in a record shop which is when a thought occured to find passion which could be turned into a career. At the time a friend of mine happened to introduce me to post production and I got some work experience through him. I started my journey as a runner at around 26 years old which is quite late but I was hooked immediately and I’m still curious to this day, always looking to learn more.
My skill set lies in short form - trailers, promos, brand films, cinematics and commercials. These projects usually have quite a quick turnaround so I have to work in a very efficient way. I’ve also worked on many short films, documentaries and feature films and with these I have much more time for experimentation. A work of art is never really finished, you can always keep polishing snd crafting but you need to be aware of your time frames and sometimes very aggressive deadlines and that’s the big challenge with short form. It’s important to work on both though as I learn new things and expand my skill set through films and other long form projects which I then apply to the short form content I work on.
I wish people knew how much the product of my profession can engage the audience, how potent it can be and how intricate sound design process is. Let’s take the sound of an explosion for example. You think of it as one sound but it's usually made up of layers. There’s the energy that explodes, the build-up, the debris and very often a wild animal's roar calling out to create a scarier effect. Most people don’t realise how much it can take to create and craft something that will eventually be perceived as just one sound.