Robert Schumann Hochschule Düsseldorf

Olaf Mierau
Assistant Professor for Sound Design

olaf.mierau(at)rsh-duesseldorf.de
www.olaf-mierau.com

Olaf Mierau, born 1959, received his first major music education at very early age. While being in school, he played in orchestras, rock- and jazz bands as a drummer and orchestra-percussionist. In 1980, he passed his exam at Berlin's Hanns Eisler School of Music. Soon after, he toured Eastern and Western Europe, the United States and Brazil. His 'free time' during the day while touring, he used to work as a freelance journalist for numerous city- and trade journals in health and socio-politics and, later, in economic crime (for Arzt heute, Die Neue Aerztliche and Stadtzeitung Muenchen).  

Tired of hotel rooms, he switched the tour bus with offices jobs at several Munich-based sound production companies. These were the launching days of private radio stations in Germany and Mr. Mierau wrote and produced numerous radio commercials. In 1988, he founded Münchner Giesing-Team Tonproduktionen GmbH with his partners. He worked as a managing share holding director and chief producer. He moved on to work at their subsidiary company GT-Sounds Munich Incin Los Angeles. Olaf Mierau produced and directed lots of international and national, award-winning commercials, TV- and motion picture productions, On-Air promotion and radio plays (Grundig, McDonald's, Kabel 1, Mediamarkt usw.).

In 2004 an urge for change lead his way to Mainz, where he managed the music department of ZDF Fernsehspiel.

In 2005, Olaf Mierau moved back to Babelsberg and 'back to the roots', being half happy and half sad. He took the managing director position at Studio Babelsberg Postproduction GmbH. His main assignment was the modernization of the sound department. After the company was sold, he left Brandenburg to work as a freelance music and audio postproduction supervisor as well as product and environment sound designer in Berlin. 

Olaf Mierau is looking back on a large range of experiences gained at Studio Babelsberg: Die Nachrichten (music supervising), Jenseits(sound supervisng), Black Box - Das Experiment (music production und special audio sfx supersvising), Die Fälscher (sound supervising), Dolphins (sound supervising) und Voodoo-Mounted by the goods(postproduction sound supervising), just to name a few.

Olaf Mierau teaches at several film schools (Filmakademie Baden- Württemberg, ifs Köln, etc). Since 1996, Mr. Mierau is a member of the Art Director's Club, Germany.

Since 2007, he teaches Sound Design at the Institute For Music and Media, University of Music, Duesseldorf.