Paula Fairfield

In May 2021, she was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from her alma mater, NSCAD University. She also has 5 golden reel awards and 20 nominations for her work from the Motion Picture Sound Editors guild.

• Name — Paula Fairfield • Birthplace — Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada • Occupation — Sound Designer

Fairfield was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1961 and grew up in a nearby town called Bridgewater. She attended college at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University (NSCAD) in the early 1980s studying art history and photography. After graduating with a BFA, she moved to Montreal for two years where she worked as an artist and did a training program at the National Film Board of Canada (NFB)'s Studio D. Fairfield then moved to Toronto where she co-managed Charles Street Video, a non-profit centre run by artists. Her video and film art was exhibited all over the world and resides in several collections including the National Gallery of Canada. Fairfield worked at SoundDogs, the Toronto-based post production sound company. She said, "I just wandered in one day and they had just lost their effects guy and they took a chance on me. I had a lot to learn, but I loved it." This is where she learned how to edit sound and sound design for television and film.

Fairfield moved to Los Angeles in 1998. She established her company, Eargasm, Inc, in 2014. She has a studio in her home — a sealed garage with highly insulated walls. The studio is set up for Dolby Atmos and uses PMC monitors and an Avid Pro Tools S6 console. She left Los Angeles for the Coachella Valley after a divorce from her wife and losing her brother, sister and father to cancer. According to The Desert Sun, "the desert’s spirituality and solitude keep her centered as an artist. After an intense day of sound editing, she simply steps out of her studio and into her home space, a quiet desert sanctuary she describes as 'Bliss.'"