The Ultimate Guide to Sound Effects
Movies and audiovisual projects are full of nuances, and the vast majority of them are crafted through sound. Sound effects, also known as ‘SFX’, are sounds that are used in different formats of media aside from human sounds or music.
What are Sound Effects?
A sound effect is a type of sound that is artificially created or digitally enhanced, used to accentuate content of films, TV shows, video games, animated series, music, and other types of media.
These belong to a more overarching phase of the filmmaking process called sound design.
Sound Effects Types
Every film requires a sheer array of sound effects. Depending on its nature, a filmmaker and the audio crew can use different types. Here’s a list of the most common types of sound effects:
Special sound effects
Special sound effects include sounds that are crafted in order to be used for objects, situations, and moments that exist only in hypothetical scenarios or the audience’s imagination. Think of the lightsaber, for example.
These types of sound are especially common in cartoons, animated series, science fiction audiovisual projects such as ‘Star Wars’, where the amount of special sound effects is easily noticeable — spaceships, blasters, beasts, creatures and more.
Isolated sounds
Isolated sounds encompass the vast majority of the sounds we’re used to, such as car horns, traffic, doorbells, mobile phones, and more. These are sounds that exist in life as we know it and are used to provide audiovisual projects with authenticity.
Foley sounds
Foley sounds are sounds created by Foley artists. These aim to recreate sounds that take place during some situations throughout the film.
Foley sounds are then synchronized with the visuals through a process commonly referred to as Audio Sound Replacement. The magic of this type of sound allows filmmakers to add an extra layer of authenticity and reality to their films, as it enables the audience to remain engaged throughout the movie.
Common Foley sounds include rain, punches, broken bones or windows, footsteps, and pretty much every sound we hear in a film that can be recreated during the audio post-production stage.
Background sounds
Background sounds lay out the basic environment for an audiovisual project. They are crafted in order to provide the film with all of those subtle atmospheric elements that make the audience feel like they’re part of the story. These are pivotal for enticing storytelling.
Sound effects in movies
In filmmaking, the use of sound effects serves three different purposes:
- To craft a simulation of a determined reality
- To add elements of a scene that are not there
- To create a specific type of feeling or mood
Simulating reality
The simulation of reality normally encompasses sounds that, isolated, might not seem really relevant, but when we see them as a whole in conjunction with the story, we understand their true importance.
Sometimes the reality derived from these sounds is so compelling that even though some situations clearly defy the laws of nature of science, the audience believes them anyway. Although we know for a fact that sound cannot travel or be heard in outer space, we’re always convinced by the authenticity of the sounds of intergalactic ships or space battles.
Adding extra elements
Directors and filmmakers sometimes desire to add an extra layer of emphasis on a determined situation that takes place in a film. Think of a public speech and the reaction of the crowd. Sometimes it is impossible for producers to gather enough people to make the reaction more vivid, so they add extra sounds later in post-production to make it more compelling and make the cheering and the applause more emphatic.
These are the kind of sounds that are crafted by Foley artists in order to enhance or amplify certain sounds that are not easily found in the vast majority of sound libraries. Be that as it may, directors will always value originality over anything else.
When dealing with idiosyncratic sounds, Foley artists recreate these sounds on their own stage, which is simply a production room full of all types of elements that enable them to craft the desired sounds.
The Foley sound creation process goes like this: a scene is played on screen, and the Foley artist matches the kind sounds the director or the filmmaker wants to accompany that specific scene. It could be a door being opened, rain, thunder, a bone being broken, footsteps, wood, crowds reacting to a specific situation, and more.
Creating a specific type of feeling or mood
Some scenes require an extra layer of sounds to create a more compelling and engaging environment. These sounds are normally created using musical sounds, such as discordant chords to generate tension; slow orchestral music to produce a great sensation of calm; or a jazz combo playing something bluesy to make the scene more enticing and credible.
