SFX EDUCATION

Audio director PAUL WEIR on making No Man’s Sky sound out of this world

- Luke Kemp

Sound design, music composition, voice direction… Paul does it all, and pretty much anything else to do with audio that you can think of. He’s a free agent with experience in games, film, radio, advertising, and more; and he’s currently singlehandedly working on No Man’s Sky’s audio for Hello Games.

Paul had an unorthodox route into the game industry. Using a BBC course in TV directing as a springboard to radio work and composing, he went for a job interview at the now-defunct Perfect Entertainment, mainly for job interview practice. He didn’t get the job, but while he was there, he passed a tape of some of his self-written music to their composer. A week later, Paul signed on for unemployment benefits. An hour or so after this, his phone rang. It was the composer, who’d found him a job. Paul describes his break as very lucky, but also points out that sustaining his work as a career is “where the real work is”.