Game of Thrones sound designer, NSCAD University alum, gets Emmy nod
Paula Fairfield designs the dragons' roars on the hit HBO show
It's not the Iron Throne, but it's pretty close.
A Nova Scotian has been nominated for an Emmy for her work on the HBO fantasy drama Game of Thrones.
Paula Fairfield, a self-described "sound hoarder," creates the dragon roars and the sounds other imaginary creatures make on the show. She grew up in Bridgewater and went to NSCAD University.
Fairfield says she doesn't use synthesizers for her work, instead she mixes "real found sound."
"I always say my job is to bring people to the threshold of believability," she told CBC's Mainstreet from her home in Los Angeles.
"If you have something on screen that's already not real, you have to find some way to ground it in something real so we as a viewer can relate to it."
Fairfield is nominated for outstanding sound editing for a series, for the Season 5 episode Hardhome. The pivotal fight scene includes moments with the mythical race of White Walkers. Fairfield oversees their sounds.
"They're just so cold they freeze everything around them," she said. "Sometimes sound design is about removing sound, not adding."
For the young dragons on the show, Fairfield combined 10 different animal sounds. As they aged, she added more.
"When I do a sequence I always tell myself a story.… There always has to be an underlying logic," she said of sound design.
Fairfield says she notices sounds everywhere.
"I notice the extraordinary in the ordinary. If a car drives by and theres's a loose nut in the wheel and it's rattling, I'll notice that because it's different. That loose nut tells a story, somehow it got in there," she said.
"I can geek out on that."
Fairfield says it's the same with animals. She tunes in to the different sounds they make, like her dog's nose whistle.
"Weird little things that I notice like that I put into work," she said. "A dog barks and a dog growls but then a dog does a million other sounds. That's my fascination."
The nomination is Fairfield's third Emmy nod for her work on Game of Thrones and her seventh overall. The show garnered 24 Emmy nominations this year — more than any other TV show this year.