Case Portman Interview: Sound Design, Audio Gear, and Creative Career Tips

We had the pleasure of chatting with sound designer Case Portman about the craft of building audio, finding inspiration in everyday noise, and turning little moments into something memorable. From recording streams and birds outside to banging on old metal and broken doors for the right effect, his approach to sound design is creative, playful, and full of personality. In this interview, he shares his journey, the tools he loves working with, what keeps him inspired, and the goals he hopes to reach next.

1. Tell us about being a Sound Designer

Sound design is walking past a stranger emptying their house junk into a skip and me sheepishly asking if I can “borrow” that old metal pipe and the half destroyed shower door. Fast forward 30 minutes and that same person seeing me in the distance going to town on said door with said pipe, equipped with a microphone and headphones on. Sound design is also being sat next to a small flowing stream with aforementioned headset and microphone held towards relaxing trickles, subtle splashing and tweeting birds in the background.. Meanwhile, folk walk past with their dogs wondering why this strange fellow is interviewing a river.

2. What has been your biggest success story as a creative so far?

I’ve worked with incredibly cool and talented people in the past with a lot of friends made along the way so to me, success isn’t just about raking in the dough and working with big names. I believe a good success story is one that makes you happy so my biggest success story really is my creative work allowing me to buy a house, get married and do what I love the most to make a living. To give you a more direct answer, though, I have worked on Nitrome’s newest upcoming release “Mouse Work” for almost the last year and since they have been a HUGE inspiration throughout my development days, when I got that email I hit a pretty big high, and they are such a lovely team to work with.

3. What advice would you give to new sound designers? Equipment recs, career advice?

There’s a sort of yinyang to sound design in my opinion, both opposites but both work in tandem. If you’re watching a movie, video or playing a game on mute and your brain fills in the gaps you’re on the way, but combine that with the other counterpart of hearing a random sound out on your day-to-day life and think “oh damn, that’d make for a great SFX” then I think that’s telling you’re destined to be a sound designer.

In terms of equipment, I’ve held my Zoom H5 Portable mic dear to my heart for many years, it’s so versatile and (for the audio nerds out there) allows you to switch mic modules for different captures – shotgun for close range, xy for more ambient/roomy sources etc. Honestly it’s an amazing bit of kit! I mix my recording almost exclusively in Cubase 14 Pro which I’ve jam-packed with a load of VSTs and plugins over the years to process sounds in my own ways.

The main problem I hear folk have is not having material to apply audio to so a good exercise I often do is to take existing trailers or animations, strip the sound and “re-dub” it with your own. Don’t be afraid to contact developers and ask if they have any animation / videos you can use as practice, more often than not they are more than happy to share. My best advice though is to just keep those ears open, experiment, iterate and learn what tickles your brain.

4. What are your goals as a sound designer?

That’s a good question actually, something I’ve not thought about too often but I tend watch in-house “behind the audio design” videos of companies such as Mojang and Blizzard and their little close-knit audio team seem to always be clinking and clanking around a room full to the brim with junk they’ve garnered over the years. I would like to have an entire studio dedicated to the craft and create a team for other like-minded folk as there’s nothing that motivates me more than the idea of providing jobs for others.. Especially in this climate!

5. What inspires your work?

I follow a lot of audio people over on Instagram and they always blow it out of the water with their creations, whether it be real audio captures or abstract digital synths. Also, seeing a good amount of process videos on social media got me making my own which is ridiculously fun to do. I’ve had a few people reach out since posting my own process videos saying they inspire them too so we’ve come full circle.

6. Where can folks support your work?

I’m pretty much all over the place but I have all my links nicely laid out on my website which is www.caseportmanaudio.com. People can find and contact me via X, Instagram, Bluesky, Youtube, Tik tok, Myspace, Teletext, Carrier pigeon.. Okay maybe not those last 3, I’m just showing my age.