Follow me on a moderately lengthy trip through the Jeff Schmidt Wayback machine. 

For clarity, I use the word COULD in this article to mean a question leading to exploration - and SHOULD to mean a command.

What COULD something be? vs the way it SHOULD be?

I have long preferred and thrived on creative projects where I'm free to explore what "COULD" - rather than follow the rules based on "SHOULD.”

ONWARD!

After the great financial bamboozle came crashing down in 2008, I began looking at other options for an audio career. I was fortunate to have a good job as a Creative Director in radio, but everything felt very precarious as many of my colleagues were shoved out of work.

I investigated audio work in film and video games. Getting work in video game audio was quite a bit easier than getting film work at that time. I just had to prove my skills, and I was able to start working on reasonably well-known games. Unfortunately, the Film Post industry was not at all like that. 

After a few years of freelance sound design in video games, I thought it was time to get out of Radio and into a full-time J-O-B in games. I was offered a full-time opportunity, but it required a 25% pay cut from what I was making in Radio (no joke), and I'd have to move to Irvine, CA.

If you've never been to Irvine, hmmm - > 

Irvine also had the distinction of being just as pricey as my Northern California digs.  So, I had to pass.

PEW, PEW, PEW!

Shortly after that, in 2011, I learned about a local opportunity available at the game studio formerly known as "LucasArts." 

I applied and got an interview. Next, I had to perform a sound design test. 

The test was to create sounds for a video montage of game footage. That was the standard template of game audio sound design tests at the time, and it was precisely the kind of demo I started my game audio career with by re-designing the sound on a BioShock trailer.

Anyway, when the test package came over, I opened it and was horrified. It was all from a Star Wars game. Now, I should have suspected that was going to be the case, the studio being LucasArts and all, but LucasArts also had a history of other titles like the Monkey Island series and Grim Fandango. But no, I had to design Star Wars. I can already hear you - “Jeff, what was your problem? I’d kill to sound design Star Wars sounds! “

Good question - what was my problem? 

It was clear that the purpose of this test was about how well I could create "Star Wars" sounds. 

Blasters (Pew, Pew, Pew), Lightsabers, Tie-Fighters, Vader-like characters, and all the well-known sounds of the Star Wars universe were in this 2-minute video. This test was about meeting the expectations of the Star Wars franchise. The franchise had already deeply established the ways this material SHOULD sound. Of course, the studio claimed they wanted to see how imaginative applicants could be within that framework. Fair enough, Star Wars was their primary business, after all. But that "framework" felt like an awful lot like "formula" to me. 

My work on that test was passable but hardly extraordinary, and it’s no surprise I didn’t make the cut. Nevertheless, this was an eye-opening moment. It was the first time I knew the kind of work I didn’t want to do and why. I loved the opportunity to develop the COULD in things, but not interested in following the SHOULDS of other people’s work. This might be the same reason I never performed in a cover band, but I digress. To continue the history, within a year, Disney acquired LucasFilm and shuttered the LucasArt studio. That gig was not meant to be anyway. 

Based on the sheer tsunami of Star Wars content flowing into the world over the past decade, many talented people do not share my views about this. That's perfectly fine. I don't begrudge them one bit. If it works for them - great. That kind of thing doesn't work for me, and I'm grateful to know that about myself.

The most interesting thing for me is that Star Wars started with COULD. 

What COULD a dogfight in space look like? 

What COULD a Samurai in space look like?

What COULD a laser sword sound like?

Ben Burtt (Star Wars' original sound designer) had the privilege of discovering for himself what a lightsaber COULD sound like. The entire Star Wars sound came from his work. Asking "what could…?" allowed Ben to follow his curiosity and imagination, resulting in some of the most iconic sounds in film history.

Imagine if Lucas had told Ben that Star Wars SHOULD sound like 2001: A Space Odyssey. Yikes.

That said - after the tremendous success of Star Wars, all those COULD questions were solidified into SHOULDs. Tie Fighters SHOULD sound like this - Light Sabers SHOULD sound like that. Of course, there have been iterations and interpretations, but as far as I could tell, they all stayed clearly inside the lines of SHOULD.

As a side note - toxic fandom is obsessed with the SHOULD of it all.

RADIO - A VERITABLE SHOULD FEST

I constantly faced SHOULD in my radio work. This station SHOULD sound like every other station with the same kind of programming. I always rebelled. And while I had a few victories over the years, more often than not, the baseline expectation - was to meet expectations. Bow to the SHOULDS!

NOW ENTERING THE SHOULD-FREE ZONE - PODCASTS!

That is why I jumped at the chance to work in podcasts in 2015. It was all new and wide open. Public Radio had a LOT of SHOULDS - but PODCASTS didn't!

The primary thrill for me (and still is really) was figuring out what podcast sound design COULD be like. 

That led to lots of experiments and unconventional approaches. Some didn’t work, but a few did, namely the approach I happened upon in collaboration with Mark Ramsey on "Inside Psycho." 

I refined and used that approach on numerous other shows covering business, history, undercover DEA agents, jazz greats, and more. The approach was even adopted by Wondery, which rolled it out on countless more shows. Some of which I worked on. But I could never stay on any of those projects beyond the launch.

WAIT, WHO LET THE SHOULD IN HERE?

After a bit, all the COULDs turned into SHOULDs. The same was true for the investigative mini-series on which I worked. For example, Dr. Death S1 was all about COULD for me. S2 was about SHOULD as I had already established what that show sounded like. I respectfully declined to work on S3 or beyond.

These were all cases where even my own COULDS became SHOULDS. That didn’t matter. I enjoyed the COULD part tremendously and hated when it crossed over into SHOULD.

In creative work, SHOULD is a demoralizing word for me. When I see it in producer notes, it’s a shut-down. "This SHOULD be like that" means a decision has already been made. Even if it’s based on something I originally discovered by exploring COULD - SHOULD turns creative work into task work.

SHOULD does not inspire me.

MINOR REALITY CHECK

I acknowledge that we all have to perform a certain amount of SHOULD task-based work in our professional lives. I'm not extreme in my avoidance of SHOULD task-based work. There is an efficiency to SHOULD that we can’t ignore. We don't need to reinvent the wheel on everything. And when that’s clear, SHOULD is perfectly acceptable.

Of course, it’s not always black and white. Most projects are not all COULDs or all SHOULDS - there are often a lot of potential COULDs lurking between the SHOULDS and lots of SHOULD lurking amongst the COULD.

Additionally, there have been fun projects with long-standing SHOULDS where the teams were genuinely looking for new COULDs. Those can be fun, too. We only really know once we try.

Ultimately, it's about knowing what ignites your creativity. I'm grateful to have learned this bit about myself, even if it was a bit later than ideal.

Here's hoping that in 2023 I continue to work more from COULD than SHOULD.