When you talk to Tendai Tasiya, you encounter a creative full of life. Tendai’s open personality, is just the same as how she approaches creative pursuits. Although she says “sound” is her one true love, she has her hand in many different parts of the filmmaking process.
Depending on the day Tendai can be a sound designer, video editor, creative writer, or videographer. With a CV that has seen her work for companies like Pixelogic Media and TBWA, you might not know her but there’s a chance you’ve come across her work.
When I was asked what I wanted to be when I grow up, I always used to say a cartoon. I don’t know what that little girl was thinking, but when you do sounds for animation you’re basically a cartoon. So I made the dream come true.
From an early age Tendai had dreams that drew her towards creative pursuits. One of these dreams was becoming the next Beyonce. Although she’s now withdrawn from it because it was mostly for the vanity of being famous, the sound designer still sings.
Growing up Tendai was also an avid reader. Something that fueled her to become quite the creative writer at a young age. So much so that she got banned from the library. This was after one of her fictional stories had been deemed a little too intense for her age.
As she tells it, sound is something that simply fell into her lap. A twist of fate that brought her to something that she felt she was always meant to do.
I went to study live performance only to get there and they told me that you get to do live performance for the first half of the year but for the second half you have to do film. So I had to pick two mediums in film. So for you to pass music – live performance, you have to pass stage performance. I literally failed stage performance by like two percent, so I automatically had to go to the film side. So film kind of just fell into my lap.
Film became the gateway, for nearly all of Tendai’s current creative pursuits. Sound Design, Video Editing, Creative Writing, Motion Graphics, Videography and so forth. If there’s an opportunity to learn something adjacent to film production and sound design, Tendai is eager for it.
As she describes it, film is the best thing to have ever happened to her. From initially wanting to be the star in productions she’s fallen helplessly in love with being behind the art. Tendai sees the studio as her happy place and in the future she hopes to do more work in audio and visual post production.
Tendai was also recently part of NGUWOapotheca’s Art Residency program in collaboration with the British Council. An experience she described as surreal.
The program, which was directed at SDG5: Gender Equality, saw Tendai creating her first entirely solo project. The soundscape she came up with, which was an audiovisual concept, was driven by her desire to see women being free to be themselves without judgement.
I believe for us to have a tomorrow as women, the first thing we need to do is just to let go, like just be you, just be yourself. Whatever that looks like.
In terms of the future, Tendai wants to continue learning the art in the audiovisual space. She wants to be more than capable in utilising the global standard audiovisual equipment and she hopes to reach the point where she’ll be brushing shoulders with the biggest names in the industry.
Tendai Tasiya is part of ‘Tha Plug In’, a Creative showcase by the British Council in partnership with #enthuse Magazine.
