Sound Designer • Production Sound Mixer
Crafting immersive sound experiences for cinema, streaming platforms, and international productions.
Beforeyouseethestory,youhearit.Soundisthefirstframeofeveryfilm.
About
MANOJ YD is a sound designer and production sound mixer whose work spans more than twenty films across Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Hindi and French cinema — from the streets of Vada Chennai and Kaala to the epic scale of Marakkar: Lion of the Arabian Sea, the international canvas of L2: Empuraan, and Jacques Audiard's Palme d'Or-winning Dheepan.
Across a decade in film and advertising he has recorded and designed sound for features, streaming series and documentaries — and shaped over 200 television commercials. Along the way he has worked alongside artists including A.R. Rahman and Ilaiyaraaja.
His craft begins long before the mix — listening for the emotional truth of a scene, capturing performances live on location, and building sonic worlds that audiences feel before they understand. Whether a whisper in an anthology romance or the roar of a naval battle, the goal never changes: sound in service of story.
Disciplines
Selected Credits
A decade of sound across feature films, streaming originals, and international productions. Swipe through the reel.
The sound of a legend, reborn.
A grandmother's world, warmly miked.
Small-town life, finely recorded.
Featured Work
Feature Film — 2025
Shot across three countries, Empuraan demanded a sonic palette that could move from whispered political intrigue to full-scale action. Every environment — Yemeni deserts, London interiors, Kerala monsoon — was given its own acoustic fingerprint, mixed for Dolby Atmos.
Feature Film — 2021
One of Indian cinema's largest period epics. Recording sound for naval battle sequences meant capturing cannon resonance, ship timber stress, and ocean swell as separate emotional layers — then letting them collide.
Feature Film — 2019
Thiagarajan Kumararaja's anthology weaves absurdism with intimacy. The sound had to honour both — hyper-real domestic textures sitting beside cosmic abstraction, with dialogue captured live to preserve raw performance.
Behind the board
Collaborations
A decade of sound built alongside some of the most distinctive voices in Indian and world cinema.
Sound × Technology
India's first-of-its-kind NFT music project: thirty minutes of performed, programmable art produced by Metapurse and premiered at New York's Terminal 5 during Dreamverse — the world's largest NFT exhibition. Woven from nine layers of music, the master track reassembles itself into 19,440 different combinations — no two listens quite the same.
unique combinations
musicians & artists
premiered in NYC
world's largest NFT show
Beyond the Feature
years in film & advertising
films
TV commercials
Chennai Int'l Film Festival
Documentaries
Live & Concerts
Advertising
The Craft
Understanding story and emotion. Every project begins in silence — reading the script, hearing what the scene wants to feel like.
Creating sonic worlds. Location recordings, foley, and designed textures layered into environments the audience can inhabit.
Editing, layering, refinement. Dialogue carved clean, dynamics sculpted, every transition tuned to the rhythm of the cut.
The final cinematic experience. Mixed for the theatre and the living room — Dolby Atmos, stems, and deliverables ready for the world.
Contact
