Paula Fairfield


Paula Fairfield is a Canadian sound designer and supervising sound editor who is based in Los Angeles. She is best known for her work on the series Game of Thrones, where she has been nominated for five Emmy Awards. Fairfield has also been nominated for her work on the television series The River and Lost, where she received three Emmy nominations.

Life in Canada

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 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 's Studio D. Fairfield then moved to Toronto where she co-managed Charles Street Video, a non-profit centre run by artists. Her art resides in collections including the National Gallery of Canada.
Fairfield worked at SoundDogs, the Toronto-based production 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.

Life in the United States

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 setup for Dolby Atmos and uses an Avid Pro Tools S6 console. She left Los Angeles for the Coachella Valley after a divorce from her wife and losing her 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.'"
She says of her job, “I’m super excited by what I do, which is to create weird sounds.”

Awards and nominations