By Michael Artuso

The Traveler first began making first waves on the indie horror scene in 2025, winning Best NH Short at the New Hampshire Film Festival. It was also nominated for Best Sci-Fi Short at FilmQuest 2025. But for me, in the lead-up, the film fundamentally changed how I saw experimental sound design take shape. The project gave me grander ideas for my work, as a sound designer, beyond features and into branded content and beyond.

Dave Wolfe, founder of Mr. Bronx, tapped me to work on the film at the behest of the director and writer, Matthew Scheffler. Immediately, the collaboration felt effortless. It was one of those rare projects where everything went smoothly, including a full sound design, Foley pass, dialogue edit and final mix. By the time the team came in for that last mix, the sonic language had already taken shape in a way that felt aligned and alive.

The Traveler — which follows the story of a woman with paranormal investigator parents who feels she’s being haunted — needed a sonic world that breathed and unnerved. My job was to build that world from the ground up in chilling sound, which made this film (and the wider horror genre) a perfect home for experimental sound design.

I approached “experimental” in two ways, one of which was a tad retro. I reached for acoustic physical objects and heavy Foley to get the job done. I achieved arm movements, prop shifts and more with toilet paper, napkins, a wicker basket, a table, pillows and newspaper… just about anything and everything with texture that I could grab while running around the office. My colleagues had a fun time watching me scramble.

For tense moments, I experimented with synths and changing their audio frequency and pitch to mess with the listeners’ psychoacoustics, using sound to subliminally influence the viewers’ perception of the situation. Basically, I like to trick the audience with sound. Foley, as mentioned, is a classic example. I might have used toilet paper to mimic rustling fabric when someone walks by, but without the visual cue of the paper, the viewer’s brain assumes the fabric made the noise in situ.

A Ghost?
With synths, I created specific sound patterns, overlaying them across each other and adjusting their frequencies to muster different effects. Through the second half of the film, there’s an invisible person (or ghost) inside the house whose existence is almost entirely created using sound. We were able to psychoacoustically create the sensation of danger with sound design. When the “ghost” is in the house, the protagonist hears banging coming from another room.

Using EQ and a low-frequency synth under the sound of the banging, we created a sense of unease and tension that rose as she slowly walked toward the sound — only to find that it was just a window she forgot to fully close. Once she (and the viewer) realizes it’s something completely harmless, we take out the synth and low-frequency layer, bringing everyone back into reality. This technique allowed us to let the tension breathe throughout the scene and subliminally tell the viewers they should get ready to be scared or, in this example, faked out.

The Woods
In a more abstract sense, during a scene where the protagonist walks through the woods and gets startled by a noise, all we see is just the empty forest. However, using sound design, we were once again able to create a sense of unease using drones, wind and synth textures. In a more abstract way of heightening the tension, I added an almost completely imperceptible layer that I recorded with a glass of ice. I wanted the tension of the scene to feel shaky and fragile, as if you could feel her subtly shaking in fear, so I used layers such as the ice to very, very subtly relay that feeling to the listener. The goal is to make it felt, not necessarily heard.

I think that experimental streak comes from my theater background. I spent two semesters studying shapes and colors as tools for sound design — an odd exercise that ended up sharpening how I think about sonic texture. I don’t have synesthesia in the traditional sense, but I do respond to people and stories in a sensory way. That’s part of why this project was so creatively fulfilling. Paranormal runs in my family, too, which makes the project closer to home. As it happens, my mom is a member of TAPS, The Atlantic Paranormal Society, a group created through the show Ghost Hunters. She also serves as director of Gotham Paranormal Research Society, the TAPS division for NYC/Long Island. In her books “Gothic Long Island” and “Gothic Hudson Valley,” she shares her investigation and findings of famous haunted locations in those areas.

Projects like The Traveler reaffirm the power of sound to redefine the boundaries of indie genre filmmaking, particularly in horror. When a team trusts the process enough to experiment, sonic landscape can elevate the story far beyond what’s visible on screen. As I continue my work across films and branded content, this experience reinforced my commitment to bold, unconventional approaches.|

Michael Artuso works at New York City’s Mr. Bronx. He joined three years ago as an assistant mixer before working his way up to sound designer.