Directions unit lecture with Simon: Sound

Sound lecture: Simon

What is sound desgin?

Sound designer

Sound layers: sync, ADR, etc

The mix

The art of sound design

What is sound design?

'Point Blank'

Hallway walking, builds the tension, carries momentum, helps pass the time, replicating a ticking clock/heartbeat/gun shots

Sound design is essentially the capturing and layering of diff sound elements to create one single soundtrack for the project. Just as you would shoot and edit the image part of a film you would do the same for the sound, it occurs at all stages of the production but is essentially a post-production phase. The process is also called the sound edit. Sound is most often the biggest department.

The sound designer

Originally the sound editing of a film was completed by a sound editor or a team of sound editors. These were technicians who had little to no creative input in the project. In the '70's demand for increasingly complex sound-tracks created the need for editors to have creative input into the design of the sound track. This led to the role of the supervising sound editor. This position became known as the sound designer, the first person to get credit for it in a film was Walter Murch in Apocalypse now.

Sound layers

The job of the sound designer is to assemble a number of layers or tracks of sound which re then mixed together to form one who, commonly there will be between 5 to 20 tracks but on some there could be around 50 tracks of sound for mixing.

There are about 7 diff types of track:

Dialogue- All the recorded dialogue from the actual shoot. Voice over would be on a separate track.

Sync- This is the recorded sound from the shoot that is NOT dialogue. Someone walking across a room or getting into a car.

ADR (Automatic Dialogue Replacement)- All the dialogue re0recorded or dubbed after the shoot. Nearly all the Hollywood films use ADR for the whole film. This is to make it sound cleaner and nicer then when it's recorded on set.

FX-  Certain sound effects for elements such as a car engine, a computer, or an explosion. These will be recorded specifically for the production or more commonly they will come from a sound FX library.

Foley- Recording sound in a sound booth at the same time as the image

Atmos- The sound elements that make up the atmosphere of a particular location. This could mean weather elements like winds and rain, or room elements like the creak of a house. (Once upon a time in the west)

Music- this is all music in the film, both diegetic and non- diegetic (the score) (Miller's Crossing)

There could be any number of these tracks

The sound edit

Through this phase the sound designer and his/her team will compile all the tacks, editing the various sounds to the picture, making creative decisions all the time. The sound is cut just like the picture and can be done in final cut pro, but more commonly will be done using specilsd spund eiditing softerware. On larger productions individual tracks are handled by one person/team. That's where thesound desinger is ost importnent ensuring that all the eiditors work together.

The mix

Once thr track have been comiled and then edidited to the locked picture, the sound edit goes to the final pahse (the mix). It's wher the sound desinger along with a mixer and other key members in the production such as the director and the producer mix all the separte tracks of the sound together to form one complete sound track.

The art of sound desing

The art of sound design is to add depth, feeling and emotion to the pictue, not about making it sound LOUD it's aboutmmaing it feel right so the audeicne believe what they are seeing. Even if it is set on an Aliene world it should feel/sound right. Great sound desing can add details to the adueince that theyb can't actually see. A clock or a dog in the background add depth and detail to the picture.

'Breaking bad'

Silence is golden

You can still hear things when it is silent…you hear the things that you wouldn't normally in ordinary circumstaces.

Keeping it real

Large part of aounde design is about making the image come to life

"Heat'- using real gun fire it allowed them to get the echo off of the buildings

Atmosphere

Dding depth and emotion doesn't always mean adding music, it ca be done with sounds.

Music only atmos

Sometimes a single track of music of music can convey very complex ideas.

The cut

When you need to create a specfifc emotional moment such as horror, fear or live can be done with sound design. A classic edit in a horror or thriller is to cut from the image of someone about to scream to the image of a trin or a alarm clock. 'Godfather'

A production might spend 7 weeks shooting a film but often double in the sound design. You can have the most beautiful, clever and striking images ever captured on film but if you have crap sound all the work will be undone. Always think about what your audience will hear too.

Tips

Always get a close as possible to the mic

If windy try turning actor to the wind

Always, always, wlays record a buzz track. A min of location sound so you can lay this in under your scene to help the edit.