When Michael Fewkes first started attending Salt Lake Community College, he planned on just getting his math credits, but he stayed for the audio recording program.
Fewkes had been creating video games since age ten but never believed it could be a practical field to go into. It wasn’t until he began taking classes in the music recording program relating to sound with music and video games that he became familiar with the technical side of the way audio is processed.
That is when creating video games switched from a hobby to a career.
“I don’t think I would be doing sound if I didn’t come here [to SLCC],” Fewkes explained. “I was excelling [in those classes], and it was very clear: this is something I was natural at and something I enjoyed.”
Following his graduation, Fewkes began working with the Royal Shakespeare Company as a technical sound designer, providing him with firsthand experience using the virtual reality format on the production “Dream.” With “Dream,” all of the actors wore motion capture suits to play virtual characters. Everything in the production was rendered in the Unreal Engine, which is an advanced 3D creation tool used for immersive experiences and photoreal visuals.
“If this were a movie, they would film it and then later add all the sounds, but we can’t do that live,” Fewkes said.
To explain the dynamics of how live audio production was used in the virtual play, Fewkes gave an example of a scene with one actor who played a tree. The crew would put a tracker on the actor’s arm, so when the arm swung as though it were a tree branch, the tracker would create a sound in response to what the actor was doing.
Fewkes enjoyed his time with “Dream” and its unique experience of bringing theater to life using video game technology. He credits his professors at SLCC for helping him turn this interest of his into a career.
“I’ve gotten so much support and sharing of knowledge, and they’ve always been there to help me reach my specific goals … and they made sure I had all the resources I needed to succeed,” Fewkes said.
Former faculty members Craig Ferrin and Jon Clark, who were part of the Performing Arts program at SLCC, followed Fewkes’ career and are impressed by his accomplishments. Ferrin, a retired music professor, says he’s not surprised in the slightest.
“If anybody could figure out how to make it happen through just good solid work, it’s Michael,” Ferrin said. “When we learned [of Michael’s success] we just grinned … we were just so happy for him. He was a student that paid the price and deserved to have this success.”
Ferrin explained how in the music or performing arts industry, you have to be an independent contractor and a small businessperson in order to make a living using these skills. Fewkes did just that.
“He’s made these connections. People are going to hire him job by job and pay him well,” Ferrin said.
Jon Clark, who recently retired from SLCC’s music department as an associate professor, taught many classes in audio and sound design. He was equally excited for his former student and believes Fewkes has a great future ahead of him.
“My background was in theater and video game production, so to have Mike be successful in those particular areas is really gratifying,” Clark said before his retirement.
Clark explained how Fewkes was interested in everything that he was teaching, from music to theater to sound in film and, then, to sound in gaming. He was excited to have a student so dedicated to learning everything there is to know about sound, who is now making something of himself out in the world.
Following the production of “Dream,” Fewkes got a full-time position as a technical sound designer and audio programmer at Studio Wildcard, an American video game developer based in Seattle. Since then, he has been living in Seattle and now works for the audio research team at Meta as an audio experience prototyper.
