The Creative Power of the Rough Pass
When I say “sketch,” I mean laying something down quickly, intuitively, with the understanding that it’s not final. You’re getting a sound idea into the cut that points in a possible direction without worrying about whether it will stand up to scrutiny in a dark theater with a thousand ears tuned in, or in an picture editing room with a critical director tuned in.
 
This isn’t laziness. It’s strategy. A rough pass gives you:
 
Something to react to.
Something to refine.
Something the rest of the team can feel, rather than just imagine.
 
And most importantly, it gives you the chance to surprise yourself.
 
Why Precision Can Kill Creativity (at First)
There’s a paradox in sound design: the more you chase precision too early, the more you limit what the scene can become. The “perfect” whoosh or the “ideal” gunshot locks you into a version of the moment that might not actually be the best one. You start designing for a narrow target instead of exploring the emotional space the scene actually needs.
 
One thing I’ve learned in my painting hobby: if you’re painting a portrait, you don’t start with eyeballs and lashes, you start with shapes and shadows—a messy suggestion of what the thing might be. Then, gradually, as the structure emerges, you finesse the details. The same principle applies to sound.
 
Sound Is a Living Part of the Scene
Here’s the other thing: film is fluid. That scene you’re designing today? It might get recut tomorrow. The pacing could change. Dialogue might be swapped out. A close-up could turn into a wide shot. If you’ve already spent five hours designing the microscopic sound of a multi- faceted lock clicking into place, and the lock ends up off-screen… well, congratulations, you’ve just wasted a good chunk of your creative energy on a ghost.
 
A sketch lets you stay in sync with the evolving film. You’re not nailed down. You’re dancing with the edit, not dragging behind it.
 
How It Actually Works in Practice
Let’s say I’m working on a scene where a character slowly opens a creaking warehouse door. High tension, very little score, lots of room for sound to do the heavy lifting.
 
On my first pass, I won’t go hunting through libraries for the “cleanest antique door creak in stereo with natural reverb.” I’ll grab something—maybe a field recording I did years ago, or something wildly inappropriate. I may stretch it, pitch it—whatever makes the moment feel alive and sets it apart from things I’ve heard before. The goal is to capture a vibe, not perfection. Then I walk away.
 
I let the rest of the track build. I come back a few days later, rewatch the scene, and suddenly that creak either feels spot-on or like it’s wearing the wrong coat. Maybe now I know it should be quieter, or have something closer to a vocal-like groan. Or maybe the creak needs to begin before the shot cuts to the door. That’s when I start making more precise choices.
 
Letting the Scene Tell You What It Needs
Sound design is often less about what the object “should” sound like and more about what the moment wants to feel like. And guess what? You don’t always know what the moment wants until you’ve spent some time with it.
 
A rough pass keeps the channel open. It lets the scene start talking to you.
 
Some of the best ideas I’ve ever had in sound came from throwing something half-baked into a scene and realizing, “Wait, that actually works better than the thing I thought I was supposed to do.” One of the best examples from my own work is from the Bob Zemeckis movie “Contact.” The Jodie Foster character is listening on headphones for a pattern that suggests communication from alien beings. I needed to come up with something fast for that signal to put into an early temp mix. I quickly modified a series of recordings of metal impacts by minimizing the transient at the head of each impact and stretching the rest of it. I spent about twenty minutes on it, and that’s basically the sound you hear in the movie. I spent way more time later trying to improve on it, but Zemeckis loved that first try, and I can’t tell you how many people have told me that they thought it was perfect. I’m still not convinced, but I can’t complain much, cause it clearly worked.
 
Collaboration Loves a Sketch
In my experience, most directors and editors love to respond to sound. If you show them a sketch—something expressive, but clearly still in process—it opens the door to collaboration. They’ll say, “What if the sound felt scarier here?” or “Could we build more tension before the bang?” And now you’re building the moment together, not just handing over a product.
 
This is the way directors work with every other craft. They don’t expect to see perfectly rendered images immediately from VFX, Costumes, or from any other department.
 
Sound Is a Sculpture, Not a Snapshot
Think of sound like clay, not like a photograph. It’s malleable. It’s responsive. It wants to be shaped. But if you treat every new scene like a final exam, you rob yourself of that joy.
 
When you let yourself design loosely—instinctively—first, you give your own brain the chance to be a listener rather than just a technician. You notice where things land emotionally. You hear what’s missing. You allow space for the sound to evolve.
And isn’t that what filmmaking is, at its heart? A series of evolutions?
 
Final Thought: Do Go All Out on A Few Sounds Right Away
Not taking back anything I’ve said so far, but I DO advise you to choose a few strategic sounds to put a lot of energy into right at the beginning. If you can blow the director’s mind with a couple of sounds, then they’ll be even more open to your presenting most of the others as sketches. It’ll give them confidence in your ability to take all the sounds to that high level.