Hello everybody my name is Elliot, I am from Under The Ledge and welcome back to a new blog. Today we’re talking about sound design. Sound design is one of the least talked about things in the film industry, yet it is one of the biggest factors when it comes to creating a film. So why don’t people pay as much attention to sound design as they do to visuals. Today we’ll cover why sound design is so important, how you can use different sounds and volumes to convoy different emotions and how to record sounds.
People often ask, what is more important, visual or audio? I’ll let you decide. First I’ll play a video with great audio but bad sound and then a video with good sound but bad visuals. Here’s the first one (Play video) and now here is the second one (Play video). Now I don’t know what you thought, but most people will agree with me that the audio is more important. If you are watching a YouTube video with slow internet, YouTube will actually sacrifice video quality for audio.
So now you know why sound design is so important, but what use is that if you can’t use it. Now, I’m going to explain how you can use sound design to help tell your stories, using different sounds.
The first type of sound is a rise, they help build up a scene and often have an abrupt end to lead into the next scene. Secondly there are Drones & Atmospheres. These give your audience information about how they should be feeling emotionally in that scene. This could be an intense scene or an uplifting scene. Next is a slow motion sound, where you hear time slow down and then quickly speed back up. Opposite to the last one, is a time-lapse. This conveys the rush and speeding up of time. The next category is probably the most common and is the Transitional elements, like whooshes, suck backs and hits. These exist to help show movement and transition between different shots. Finally, there are Ambient sounds like a forest, city, beach or abyss. These are used to create an environment and help build the setting and location.
Thanks for reading,
Elliot
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