The Essentials of Sound in Film

 

Source: SourceBinder.com

Recently, my media studies class was given the opportunity to experiment in the world of audio storytelling and how it completes films. To learn the exact effects audio had on conveying a message and the details you had to include to convey it accurately we were assigned 2 projects: the first in which we were tasked with creating an entire 1-2 minute audio story only using foley and online SFX. It had a 7 spoken word limit to challenge us to tell our story without relying on words and traditional communication. The second project was structured so that we would add sounds and foley to our video project.

SOUND PROJECT 1: AUDIO STORY

I had been planning out my 3D VFX Dinosaur project for later this year when we were assigned this project, so I decided to stay in a similar vein. Instantly, I had formulated an idea to have a protagonist run away from a dinosaur in a prehistoric forest. I made the story a little too complicated at first, having the character jump into a lake, run into a cave, start a fire and find a different dinosaur in that cave, so my teacher recommended I cut down to ending the story at the lake. She also said it would very hard to tell the story without visuals. But, I persevered and decided my final story; Character accidentally wakes a dinosaur by exclaiming after being bit by a mosquito, the dinosaur finds him and chases him until he jumps off a cliff and lands in a lake, safe from danger.

Source: Jurassic World, Universal Pictures (2015)

I started the story outline, breaking the story into a few pieces and adding some sounds that I wanted included. I took inspiration from the film Jurassic World as there is a scene in which 2 characters jump into a lake to escape a dinosaur and the audience goes underneath with them. Planning the project was super useful as I had an exact plan for what sounds I would find or record and I had an idea of how the underwater effect would be completed. I sourced my sounds mostly from Epidemic Sound and recorded a couple of my own to create the soundscape, edited together in Premiere Pro. 

Source: Jurassic World, Universal Pictures (2015)

I am super proud of the project because I used a lot of effects such as low passes and filters to create a sense of distance and allow the audience to be in the shoes of the main character. I threw a heavy pool object into my backyard pool to create the big splash of my character jumping into the water and used a low pass filter to cut out the high frequencies in the sound effect and make it seem as though the audience was really underwater. I also spent a lot of time on leveling and adding the right amount of reverb to every SFX to make it sound real. 

I believe my strong suits were the bed of sounds I laid for the setting (birds chirping, wind in trees, water running later on) and my mixing of the dinosaur SFX to really show its distance across the film and really encapsulate its size. I could've done a better job at detailing the character jumping from the ledge as most of the important SFX (a woosh sound, speeding up footsteps, an exclamation from the character as he jumps) are hidden by the dinosaur sounds. Still, the falling sound effects I added (shaking a pair of jeans to symbolize clothes rippling as they fall and a growing wind whistle I created with my mouth) sound incredible in context. Next time, I would need to focus on some audio leveling to make sure some SFX don't cover up others and muddle the story.

Here is the story planner I made along with the project itself. Hope you enjoy!

  

SOUND PROJECT 2: VIDEO + AUDIO

This next assignment was built to see how we would translate the sole audio storytelling to a previous assignment and learn how that creates a better experience for the audience and aids in the telling of the story. The video project I would be adding sound to was our first video assignment (which I forgot to blog about, oops). The video consists of an arrogant student and an organized student preparing for and taking a test. The arrogant student did not study because he thought he would be fine without it and received an F, while the organized student studied and received an A+. 

To create an accurate soundscape, myself and the partner I had in making the video project in the first place looked up all sorts of florescent light hum, classroom chatter, and air conditioning SFX as possible. This would serve as the background sounds so that our scene would feel real and accurate. Then, we recorded some pen scratching SFX for the note and test taking along with gathering paper moving, footsteps, and a school bell for a transition we put in the story. Once we had gathered our sounds, we split up, as per the assignment, and built the project in our own different ways.

The outcome of my project was not as quality as I had hoped. I had missed a couple evident sound effects that you could see on screen but couldn't hear and my leveling and mixing was not successful enough in helping tell the story as some sounds were not mixed well. Other than those issues, the sound was able to successfully tell the story in the original project and didn't subtract from the overall experience.

Here is the second project with completed sound editing.

Sound Project 2

WHAT DID I LEARN?

Through these projects and the class notes, I learned about the importance that audio has telling a story and I gathered several techniques to aid in telling that story better. I learned about the different kinds of audio and uses for audio in a film such as diegetic sound (happening inside of film) and how motifs (recurring sound bite or musical phrase) can be connected with a feeling, place or character. I learned that sound is meant to give dimension to a film so the audience can be emerged, using standard necessary techniques such as synchronized sound (sound that directly matches what is happening on screen) and sound perspective (sound changes as objects or camera movements alter what would be heard in the setting as though one was actually there. I especially liked the idea of a sound bridge (sound that plays as a transition between two clips that is included in the 2nd clip) as I do a lot of fast paced entertaining editing and that is a very useful technique I can use for my later projects. 

Overall, I've found that I've enjoyed the audio storytelling lesson and I've gained a lot more respect and appreciation for the medium.