Sound Design in Film

Description

Sound design is the craft of combining every piece of audio in a film—including film dialogue, sound effects, ambiance, film score and film soundtrack—to create the film’s soundscape. Sound design is one of the main reasons why any film feels big, sound design makes your film come to life. Sound design is a broad medium comprising various factors that all play into the process of creating a cohesive sound. 

There are several non-negotiable elements of great sound design:

Ambiance: Ambiance refers to an environment’s overall atmosphere. Background noises like a slight breeze or falling leaves provide information without overloading the audio. It’s often the most subtle sound element that sets a film scene.

Film Dialogue: The actors’ words are one of the things that make a movie a movie. Sound designers record dialogue during principal photography with boom mics or lapel microphones (placed on the actors), or using automated dialogue replacement (adr) in the postproduction stage.

Sound effects: Footsteps echoing on pavement, paper tearing, rockets launching, basketballs dribbling on a court—all of these are audio effects. Often serving as another layer of ambiance, film audio effects can range from sounds we hear daily to uses blasting into space.

Foley sounds: Foley sound effects are recorded during postproduction on a soundstage. Foley artists watch the film’s footage and use various materials to recreate specific sounds.

Music: Music where the song composer and sound designer collaborate. Music is also a sound; it’s a significant part of filmmaking. From preproduction to postproduction, creating and applying sound to a film is a tedious process.

Hiring the sound production crew: The on-set film crew of the sound department includes head of the sound team, the boom operator (responsible for microphone positioning) and the utility sound technician (assistant to the production sound mixer and boom operator), all active during principal photography. The postproduction crew includes the dialogue editor (focusing solely on dialogue), sound editor (involved in editing sound effects) and re-recording mixer (responsible for combining and leveling audio tracks organized by the sound editor).

Capturing audio during production: It is the production sound mixer’s responsibility, usually with the help of a team of boom operators and sound assistants, to record all the sound on film set. This includes dialogue and room tone.

Assembling audio in the editing room: This is where the sound editor compiles and tweaks all of the best audio including dialogue, ambient noise and sound effects into a cohesive whole to pair with the visuals. This is also the stage of the process where the team records any additional audio needs such as ADR and foley.

Sound mixing: The re-recording mixer takes the sound editor’s build and adjusts the individual tracks so they fit together seamlessly. This involves balancing audio levels and frequencies, so that all of the sound is working in tandem.

Film scoring: This part of the process involves more than just the movie composer. The music department also consists of a music supervisor and sound editor. While the composer produces the film score, the music supervisor oversees all phases of the scoring. The editor is in charge of compiling, mixing, and synchronizing the film music.

Sound design is a team effort and usually consists of a sound designer leading a film crew of audio engineers, supervising sound editors, music editors, dialogue editors, and  song composers to bring the art form together.