Listening, Identifying, Perceiving

Sound Design 1

Developed for RMIT Media Arts

CONSCIOUS LISTENING

Sound is all around us just about every moment of our waking day. Whatever we do will make a sound, no matter how small or soft the action. Most of us are generally unconscious of the sonic activities and events which surround us - but when it comes to putting together a soundtrack to a film, we must become conscious of everything we might have previously ignored. In short, we must learn how to LISTEN to rather than simply hear sounds.

A good place to start is to spend some time listening to the sounds around you.

ENVIRONMENT

Pick a space or place where you currently spend a lot of time. Go to it, and think of the following questions - sometimes with your eyes open, other times with your eyes shut:

General characteristics:

Is the space indoors or outdoors?
How big or small is the space?
What is the surface of the floor/ground?
And the walls and ceiling?
Does the space let in sounds from outside or not?

Specific sensations:

What sounds can you hear in the space?
Are these sounds loud or soft?
Are they continual or do they occur occasionally?
What is their rhythm?
Can you specify a 'texture' to them (ie. harsh, smooth, bright. etc.)?
Are there a range of sounds happening or only a limited few?
Does the sound in the space feel congested or sparse?

Impressions:

What do you feel when you hear these sounds?
Is there a certain emotional effect or do you feel indifferent?
Do the sounds you hear remind you of other spaces/places?
Are the sounds irritating or pleasurable?
Do the sounds sound different at all now that you focus on them?

CONTEMPLATIVE LISTENING

OK. Now go to a space or a place you haven't been to for some time - like a long time. Repeat the questions above - but then add on the following:

Memories:

Do any of the sounds take you back in time?
Do any of the sounds emotionally 'trigger' you to feel something?
Do your emotions and/or feelings match or contradict the sounds (ie. could a happy music box make you feel sad, etc.)?
If you felt anything specific about listening to sounds in such a personal environment, you are involved in CONTEMPLATING those sounds. Most sounds we hear are echoes of times and events when we previously hear those sounds. Sometimes our memory has retained them; others times we have long forgotten them. But sometimes a host of memories and vague feelings can be recalled or 'triggered' once we hear a sound again.

This demonstrates that sounds can make us feel things because they remind us of other times and other places when things happened, which made us feel in a certain way. Sounds of your childhood function this way - but so do sounds to do with either tragic or exhilarating situations you have lived through.

MEANINGFUL SOUNDS

Once you start to become more aware of how sounds are affect your personal activities and feelings - through CONSCIOUS and CONTEMPLATIVE LISTENING - it is helpful to start listing those sounds which are most MEANINGFUL to you.

Try carrying around a notebook which can be used to jot down a 'sonic experience' when it happens to you. It might be the ring of a bellbird in the forest; the lapping of waves near a pier; the cheer of a football crowd heard from 4 block away; the faraway drone of a street cleaner; the rattling of an empty soft drink can rolling along asphalt; the whistling wind prior to a thunder storm; the click of your favourite boots walking down a wooden corridor.

These are the type of sounds which have a poetic ring about them - sounds which you can use to help specify a feeling or sensation you might be trying to get across in a scene in your film.

SOUNDS IN FILMS

When you put a sound in a film, you can use it to draw upon and 'trigger' the audience's memories of being in certain places at certain times. Consider the following sounds which appear in films many times and which audiences 'recognize' as both information and emotional 'triggering':

Church bells
Gun shots
Screeching tyres
Ocean waves
Smashing glass
Wind
Tap dripping
Birds chirping

All these types of sounds will give a certain slant on a dramatic situation in any film. For example: picture someone sitting in an office. Now add the sound of a clock ticking. Or try some Muzak. Picture someone entering a room of people. Now add the sound of thunder. Or try the silence of everyone suddenly stop their conversations. Picture a kid sitting on the steps of a some flats playing with a doll. Now add continual distant police sirens. All these examples demonstrate that the STORY is told BY HOW THE SOUNDS AND IMAGE WORK TOGETHER.

CATEGORIES OF SOUND IN FILMS

In films there a variety of sounds (bar the music score) which live on the soundtrack:

Sound effects

Simply, these are sounds and noises which occur 'naturally' within the film. In other words when we hear such sounds we can clearly and unproblematically relate them to our experience of a similar reality (eg. traffic rumble when we see cars; running water when we see a forest river; etc.).

These sounds can happen ON SCREEN or OFF SCREEN. Very often we don't have to SEE what is making the sound.

Sound effects are also usually SINGULAR in some way - like a door bang, gun shot, etc.. If someone has to go out and record such sounds, they usually can do so without seeing the images they must match. Later, these sound effects are then editing into place in the film - sometimes matching ON SCREEN action, other times being left to occur as OFF SCREEN sounds.

Atmospheres

Whereas sound effects are SINGULAR, atmospheres are COMPLEX. This means that an atmosphere is a recording of a whole spatial environment within which individual sound effects occur. For example, a fork hitting a china plate is a sound effects by itself - but when we see an image of a crowd at a restaurant, the sound of the fork on the plate is multiplied into many people eating and talking, etc. The recording required for this image would be the atmosphere of people at a restaurant.

Atmospheres generally don't match any ON SCREEN action, because mostly we would be looking a foreground action, so the background location and its sound tend to fill in the scene rather than determine the action.

Atmospheres also tend to be mixed at a low volume so we can hear people speaking - but you always have the options to change this for dramatic and psychological effect (ie. loud atmosphere to convey a character feeling oppressed by the noise of everyone around him/her, etc.).

Dialogue

Strait forward enough - but it is worth noting how an actor's voice contributes to their character. Consider things like accent, tone, projection and phrasing. These are all ways in which actors and their characters SOUND different from each other. Consider also cartoons where voice characterizations are very important. THE SIMPSONS, for example are all drawn the same, but their real individuality lies in their voices. VOICE-OVER NARRATION also deals with such characteristics.

Dialogue can recorded on location (SYNCH) or added on afterwards (POST-DUBBED). Most naturalistic TV dramas tend to SYNCH recording, but most films use a lot of POST-DUBBED dialogue for one reason or another. If you watch a video you know well and shut your eyes, you will possibly be able to hear the changes in recording quality from SYNCH (in a noisy location with boom mikes) to POST-DUBBED (in a quite studio with different mikes). Spaghetti westerns and Kung-Fu movies, for example are very dependent on the POST-DUBBED voices to give the films a very theatrical and stylized feel.