Sound Design For Visual Media

Sound Design for Visual Media
A planned pre-production phase follows, during which

these initial creative ideas are assembled:
• What role does sound play in the piece overall?
• How should the sound-effect design convey the world?
• What role does music have in the production, and what
are appropriate styles and genres?
• What role will dialogue have in the production? How many
characters are there? Is the piece light or heavy on
dialogue? Are the voices effected in any way?
Sound Design Style
• Start to build yourself a style guide.
• Creating a style guide is a process where you try out
different ideas to determine which ones work the most
effectively.
• This might entail creating a number of small movie
sequences that feature different sound styles and music
genres
BRIEF AND DETAIL
• Decision to make: how much detail needs to be added?
Or to put it another way, how many sounds should you put
in to reinforce the visuals, and how much sound is too
much?
• If you let the music do all the work required to carry the
piece. This is not a music video: if you fail to inject
sufficient sonic detail, the finished piece will seem sparse.
• If there are too many sounds vying for attention, it's really
difficult to bring the right things to the fore; similarly,
there's much more potential for frequency clashes and
Focus on the Requirement
• If there are a lot of characters on screen or a number of
similar events (a regiment of soldiers marching, for
instance), it's not necessary to laboriously spot sounds for
each and every event.
• our brains may be able spot bad sync'ing, but they're not
cynical
• in a battle scene, with different details coming to the fore
to suggest that more is going on. Any more, and once
again we run the risk of creating a distracting cacophony.
• in a real battle, the intensity of sound would disorientate
Sound Layering
• Create tracks in DAW that relate to each sound-effect
group.
• Typically, you might assign three or four stereo tracks for
atmospheres, five or six mono tracks for Foley, and five or
six more mono and stereo tracks for spot effects.
• Colour-coding these, if your DAW allows, can be a great
help when it comes to mixing. The mixing stage becomes
much more manageable if you bus these tracks together
to subgroups for atmospheres, Foley and spot effects,
and there's no harm in doing it.
Other than music and dialogue, contributes to one of
three layers:
• atmospheres (or 'atmos'),
• Foley and
• spot effects (SFX).
3 Layers
• The atmospheres create a sense of place, time and
location, and are usually subtle signals that you hear
pretty much subconsciously.
• The Foley is intended to add a sense of realism and
believability to characters and their immediate
surroundings. It includes things like footsteps and clothing
noise.
• And spot-effects are exactly that — crowd-pleasing
special effects that take centre stage. Let's take each
layer in turn.
The usual convention
• Sometimes, though, the most interesting sound design
defies this convention.
• Study Disney/Pixar's 2007 animation Ratatouille for some
great examples of using sound design to emphasise
character perspective.In the 2007 Disney/Pixar animated
movie Ratatouille, the main character, a rat called Remy,
is often placed in situations where the sound designers
use his diminutive size as a focus.
Example
• In one kitchen scene Remy is scurrying across the floor, and
each of the obstacles he meets features sound design that
enhances its scale, making everything seem larger and more
ominous: we hear exaggerated interpretations of meal trolleys
passing by, with wheels that squeak and grind menacingly.
• The detail in the sound subtly draws the audience closer to the
action. In another example, the burners of a gas oven fire into life
as Remy runs underneath.
• To Remy, these burners sound like an inferno, so the design
exaggerates the fiery sound to great effect. This focus on sound
from the perspective of Remy himself helps to characterise him
further as a small character in a large and sometimes dangerous
world, which really enhances the story.
Contrast the visuals with the sound
• In Michael Clayton film, the opening scene features an audio monologue delivered
by an unseen character, set to shots of a law firm at night, and to music that slowly
escalates in intensity.
• Night-shift cleaners vacuum the floors and a trolley is pushed through empty
corridors before entering a busy boardroom, where a hive of activity is revealed.
• Next we hear a phone conversation, both voices are audible but we don't
immediately see who is taking the call. The camera slowly pans forward until,
eventually, it focuses on a character.
• From there, it becomes apparent who he is and what the call entails. Voices are
heard in unrealistic ways and perspectives are skewed, but this great piece of
sound design contributes directly to the dramatic and engaging opening of this
movie.
Introducing sounds early or
letting sounds play over a visual
edit for a few seconds — can be
extremely effective.
We often see this when a
character opens a door on a
vehicle or building, we hear the
handle turn and the door swing
open before we see it, so that
when we cut to that scene the
door is already open, and
perhaps dialogue commences.

Sound Design For Visual Media

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Sound Design for Visual Media

A planned pre-production phase follows, during which

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