It might be tempting to say that Skip Armstrong's films are about kayaking, motorcycle stunts, or other extreme sports. And they are, at least on the surface.
But viewers of his award-winning films quickly realize they're more than just fodder for adrenaline junkies. Armstrong not only takes viewers on a journey to the middle of the river rapids or the dirt-bike track, he also shows them the more subtle sights and sounds around each shot.
"If you were in real life going to go down and see that waterfall or watch someone kayak off it, you would walk down to the river and you would get to an amazing viewpoint," says Armstrong. "But meanwhile, on that hike you would see all these incredible things—you'd see maybe the first autumn leaves changing on the bottom of the ground, or little driplets here and there. And one of the things I love doing is capturing all the cool things that I notice on the way to these places."
Armstrong, who won the Dolby® Audio Post Production Award at the Banff Film Festival in 2012, also appreciates the potential of sound in his films.
"When I won the Dolby scholarship at Banff, I was really excited. All of a sudden I had access to tools and people with incredible [audio] knowledge," says Armstrong. "Picture is really literal. Sound is much more subtle. It's creating the mood that the picture is feeding you. Sound is giving you more information that you wouldn't have from just picture."
Learn how Dolby encourages filmmakers like Skip Armstrong to take advantage of available sound technologies through the Dolby Institute.