Directions - Sound Design Workshop

Sound Design Workshop

What is sound design?

• Sound design in film and tv essentially describes the process of capturing, layering and mixing of individual sound elements to create one single track.
• Just as you shoot and edit the image part of the project, you also shoot and edit the sound part too.
• It occurs at all stages of production, however, is focused for post-production.

The Sound Designer:

• Originally, all the sound editing of a film was completed by a sound editor or a team of sound editors.
• This new supervising sound editor position became known as The Sound Designer.
• The job of the sound designer is to assemble a number of layers or tracks of sound, which are then mixed together from one whole.

sound layers:

There are about 7 different types of tracks. These are:

1. Dialogue: This is all the recorded dialogue from the actual shoot. 

2. Sync: This is anything recorded in a piece of the action, but is NOT the dialogue. (This is anything apart from the dialogue).

3. ADR: Automatic Dialogue Replacement. This is all the dialogue re-recorded or dubbed, after the shoot. Nearly all Hollywood films use ADR for the whole film.

4. FX: Certain sound effects for elements such as a car engine, a computer, or an explosion. These will be recorded specifically from the production or more commonly they will come from a sound FX library.

5. Foley: These are sound effects that are created by a Foley Artists, for example for stage fighting, breathing, walking, or running

6. Atmos: This is all sound elements that make up an atmosphere for a particular location. This could mean the weather elements like wind and rain, or room elements like the creak of an old house, or landscape elements, like the countryside, or city or jungle.

7. Music: This is all of the music in the film. Diagetic, music on the radio or someone playing an instrument in a scene, and non-diegetic, which is the score of the film.

The mix: 

• Once the tracks have been compiled and then edited to the locked picture, the sound edit goes into its final phase.
• The mix is where the sound designer, along with a mixer and other key members of the production such as the director and producer mix all the operate tracks of sound together.

The Art of Sound Design:

The art of sound design is to add depth feeling and emotion to the picture. It’s not about making something sound LOUD, it’s about making it feel right, so the audience believes in what they are seeing.

Great sound design can add details the audience can’t really see. A clock ticking in a room, a bird high up in the tree.

Silence is Golden:

To make a scene seem silent you must add some sort of sound that you would only hear when you’re silent such as, a fly, wind, breathing, and a heartbeat.

The Cut:

• When you need to create specific emotional moments, such as horror, fear or love, this can be done with the sound design.

A production might spend 7 weeks shooting a film/programme, but they often spend double that amount on the sound.

Sound recording tips 

• Always get as close as possible with your mic.
• If it’s windy, try and position the actor with their back to the wind.
• Always, always, always - record a buzz track. This is an apron a min of location sound so you can lay this in under your scene to help the edit.

Our Task:

Our task for this workshop was to think about sound design and how much of a thought process goes into a short clip. We were given an edited clip from Jetsam, however, all the sound had been taken off. We were put into pairs and had to think about what type of sound design would suit best for the scene. Ewan and I first thought about the environmental sound that we would be able to hear. So, in the scene she follows him through a city and then woodlands area. Once we found all the sound we wanted to build up our world, We then thought about maybe there would've been music there, so we decided to have a heartbeat throughtout the clip to create a bit of tension. At the end we decided to have a little fun with what we was given as we had full freedom with the clips.

After our task was complete, we watch a Coen brother classic No Counrty for Old Men, which took sound design to a whole new level. All together the film only had 16 minutes of music in the entire film and thats including the credits. Watching this film made me realise how important sound design by showing all the little details that i might've missed out on in my production and it's made me think of potention ideas due to my film being locatde near a docks i could think of distant noises coming from there.