Why You Must Speak The Language of Sound
As a filmmaker, you definitely need to care about sound design. In fact, every sound can hold a meaning; sound science and art, and both of these are pivotal for your film. People, the audience, go to the movies to be able to feel something. Sound, as we’ve covered in previous articles, is one of the two main senses people experience when they go to the cinema to watch a film.
Therefore, the sound is one of those elements that filmmakers have in order to help craft and deliver an emotion, allow the audience to understand or see something that is not on the screen or make them feel something in particular. Sound helps support the story and drives the storytelling. It enhances every scene, as every sound possesses or lacks meaning. Audio elements in general help set the location of a particular scene by incorporating sounds that are foreign or are not in a specific frame (for example, background ambiance).
On the other hand, poor sound and poorly conceived audio elements can destroy the experience, taking the audience out of the whole cinematic experience by reminding them that they’re in a theater watching a film.
Sound and audio can influence the audience on the most primitive and subconscious level, and that is where sound turns out to be more effective than the moving images. Audio and sound can craft and create the illusion of something that was not there during the making of the film, and filmmakers can even completely manipulate these elements during post-production: they could, for instance, completely alter the words spoken by the talent, changing the meaning of the dialogue.
How much sound in a film is captured during the making of the film and how much is created or added during post?
It really depends. It can be anywhere from zero to 100%. The vast majority of modern films have all sound effects added at a later stage in post-production; however, filmmaking movements such as The Dogme 95, spearheaded by Danish directors Thomas Vinterberg and Lars Von Trier, claim to not use any sort of sound or audio manipulation during the post-production stage.
Oftentimes, the environment or room sounds are captured on set, either before or right after filming a particular scene and blended later with the dialogue lines. But even in a project such as documentaries, the final sound is traditionally crafted and manipulated in order to help drive the storytelling factor and tell the story that the director or the filmmaker wants to say. It’s normally not composed of “real” sounds captured during the shooting of the project. In fact, if people were to be shown the real sounds captured on the set, the would probably never return to the movies.
Now entering: Stock sound effects assets
First, we’ve got to define what stock assets are. Stock assets commonly refer to work that has been produced or developed to be used by others. These assets can range from simple images to stock footage (video); from fonts and 3D models to sound effects. Generally speaking, sound effects are what the industry calls “royalty-free”, which means that filmmakers can pay for them once and use them as many times as they desire, in any way they want, without paying extra money on royalties.
This is particularly good for indie filmmakers or filmmaking enthusiasts. Given today’s technology, anyone can pick up a microphone and a camera and shoot an indie film, but to get it right, it is of the utmost importance to understand the basic sound theory and also know how the different types of microphones work and how to use them.
So, if you are looking forward to shooting and direct your first audiovisual project, bear in mind that audio and sound will always be the cornerstone of your story. And although you can of course work with an audio post-production studio at a later stage, sound assets will help you define what is it you really want in your film, which will help you get the most out of your time working with audio professionals at a later stage.
As a creator, you can explore using sound effects assets in order to find what works best for your film and your scenes. The vast majority of indie filmmakers and film enthusiasts start testing a lot of generic/common things such as thunder, wind, and footsteps. That way, given the fact that indie filmmakers often work with tight budgets, testing these “little things” before jumping into post-production will help them focus on what’s really important.
Recording your own sounds and shooting your own movie is cheap, but you need the right equipment and the right knowledge, which is not always cheap: if you don’t have a budget, aim to use these sound assets beforehand so you don’t spend everything in post.
