Jay Jennings Builds the Worlds You Hear on Screen
Jay Jennings BM '92
Image courtesy of the artist
Over his three-decade career in sound design, Jay Jennings BM ’92 has created everything from everyday textures to fantastical effects. “My job is to create everything you hear in a film except for the dialog and music,” he explained. “Think spaceships, otherworldly creatures, vast planetary landscapes, and everything in between.”
In post-production, Jennings builds the aural realism that pulls you inside a film’s world. “What you hear in the final mix of a film is hardly ever what was recorded on set,” he said. “Talented sound editors and designers replace or enhance at least 90 percent of the production audio.”
To create a believable soundscape, Jennings often turns to unbelievable sources. “My sounds come from everywhere and anywhere: custom field recording, twisting existing sounds into something completely different, or using normal sounds in new and interesting ways.”
Project Highlight: A Minecraft Movie
To sound-design the fifth-highest grossing film of 2025, Jennings relocated from Los Angeles to New Zealand for nine months. “Being in New Zealand presented me with some pretty unique recording opportunities for this film,” he said in an interview with Warner Bros. “We have a scene in the film where they’re flying through canyons wearing these wing suits, and we wanted to establish the sound of the wind rippling through their clothing.” In the notoriously windy country, that meant he simply had to step outside with a microphone.
Translating the sound of the video game into cinematic audio involved creating sounds for characters that did not exist in the game—like Iron Golem, whose vocalizations Jennings made using a transducer speaker on metal. Other times, he altered them to satisfy his expert ear: To improve upon the audio for Dennis, a non-verbal wolf, he recorded his own dog, Winnie. “She made the most amazing vocabulary of whining sounds,” he said.
As a teenager growing up in Maine in the ’80s, Jennings was drawn to progressive rock music and the movies that would come to define the decade. After graduating from Berklee with a degree in music production and engineering, he moved to Los Angeles in the late ’90s to pursue a career in film. He did multi-year stints at places such as E2 and NBCUniversal Media before landing at Warner Bros. Entertainment in 2021.
Jennings has worked on films such as The Meg (2018), Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019), Space Jam 2 (2021), and the Oscar-winning Letters from Iwo Jima, for which Jennings and his team were awarded a Golden Reel Award from Motion Picture Sound Editors (MPSE). He now has a total of seven Golden Reels, along with 13 MPSE nominations and three Emmy nominations.
Behind those credits is a level of dedication that has kept Jennings in demand. Reflecting on his work on Terminator: Genisys (2015), he said that “it required 110 percent of my effort, focus, and creativity every day, even in the face of 16-hour days for weeks at a time. But being able to consistently deliver on time is what’s expected.”
Inside Sound Design
Five takeaways from Jay Jennings’s three decades in film sound:
- Sound design is not Foley. “Foley artists perform live to picture, while sound designers spend hours, days, or weeks crafting the soundtrack.”
- Capture is key. “Great sounds come from everywhere, but you have to be able to capture them. Buying a quality microphone and recorder is the best investment you can make.”
- Keep it simple. “Fancy plugins and software are not the silver bullet to great sound design! Finding just the right singular sound is often the best approach. For example, Darth Vader’s breathing is a single recording of a man breathing in a scuba mask, slightly pitched down.”
- Meet your heroes. “Most of the time, they are more than willing and eager to take time out to talk, mentor, and help newcomers make needed connections.”
- Be open and listen. "Great ideas come from everyone in the room. Humility and a willingness to listen and learn are the best traits to cultivate."
While his focus is on feature films—his next project, the A24-produced supernatural horror film Passenger, is out in May—Jennings designs sound for just about every entertainment medium. “I’m currently working on a AAA video game, an independent short film, and a national commercial campaign,” he said. “In my career, I’ve found it imperative and creatively satisfying to be well-diversified.”
Follow Jay Jennings on LinkedIn and Instagram, and see his full list of credits on IMDb.
Laura Gurfein writes about Berklee alumni and their multifaceted careers across the global music industry. She’s a digital media professional with more than a decade of editorial experience.
