Directions Unit - Sound Design

Today I learnt about sound design and how adding pieces of audio as one soundtrack can heighten a piece of film. If you are shooting and editing a piece of film from the image side you also will shoot and edit the sound as well concentrating on specifics like footsteps, gun shots and announcements.

A sound designer would originally be a team of editors that had no creative input in the project but after the 1970's the demand was higher due to better sound quality so it became a more important process with a sound supervisor overseeing and being mainly responsible for the films sound design. Some productions would require as many as 50 different tracks throughout a film for example action genres but more commonly they require between 5 - 20.

There are 7 Main types of tracks and the first is Dialogue. This is all the spoken parts recorded from the shoot itself unlike a voice over that would be on a separate track.

Sync is all the sound recorded from the shoot that isn't dialogue for example somebody walking.

ADR (automatic dialogue replacement) is all the dialogue that is re - recorded after the shoot. A lot of high paid Hollywood films will use ADR to make their dialogue more clean and crisper although some films don't use it to seem more authentic.

Sound FX are elements added in post to heighten what we are seeing on screen. These can be something like a car explosion to a creaky door closing.

Foley artists are people who record live sound effects using props and items to recreate the sound shown on screen for example if a horse is trotting, coconuts are usually used to bring the sound out rather than the sound on film.

Atmos is short for atmosphere. This is sound helps to heighten atmosphere from a particular location. An example of this would be a rumbling background noise and tension built by sound effects.

Music is key in almost every film. Its used mainly as non diegetic and composed to help the audience feel what they are meant to be feeling. It can also heighten emotion for example a sad part of the film will have soft strings which will add to it and can even make the audience cry. It can also be used as diegetic by music coming through a radio, record player or car stereo.

Sound is edited together just like images used on editing suits like Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premiere or on more specialised suits like Pro Tools or Nuendo. In the final stage The Mix takes place where all the seperate tracks are mixed into one final track completing one sound track.