Sounds are Part of the Story
A while back, I wrote about how Music is Part of the Story. I want to complete that thought and talk a bit about how Sounds affect the story — and “Sounds” is plural on purpose. I grew up playing music — guitar mostly (I was lucky enough to work for Paul Reed Smith Guitars in the very early days) — and so sound is something I naturally focus on.
When it comes to the audio side of a project, I like to envision those audio elements in layers. There’s the surface layer: the dialogue. Right under that is the music and any overt sound effects, i.e., a whoosh for a logo moving or a swish for a quick pan. The mix of these bits is critical and must be done with as much dynamic range as possible–we need to hear the music, but it must not compete with the dialogue. And those overt swooshes and swishes should not startle (unless your goal is to startle).
The next sound layers are where the real fun kicks in. Those bits and pieces of sound that we push into the background. I love looking for moments where we would expect sound, but that no sound was captured on set–or maybe the sound we got wasn’t that impressive. I think it’s the hunt and auditioning of weird sounds in the search for the right bit that’s so satisfying. That “something” deep in the background that just brings the whole moment in the video to life.
No project of mine illustrates sound layers better than a graphic novel short film I was hired to edit — Breaking News. Cary Anderson, the director/writer, came to me with a script, somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 illustrations, and the raw audio files of actors in a studio playing the parts.
The audio files were professionally recorded and sounded great, but they were in a studio. They were too perfect. They were not out “in the world.” Cary gave me a budget for music and sound design, and he gave me a ton of freedom to build the world in sounds as I saw fit.
Getting traffic into a scene with two characters walking and talking down a busy city street was an obvious must have. But it was the little pieces that truly made the difference–a bottle being popped, a door opening, that sorta thing. And of course there’s picking the right music. We had a lot of fun working on that project.
Here it is if you’re interested. Run time is around 18 minutes. And if you do hit play, wear headphones if you have them.
And where do we get these sounds? There’s the obvious: sound effects libraries. There are a ton of options here — from license one sound to purchase a collection to pay-monthly access. But the most fun is to create your own sounds. Get out into the world with a recorder and mic and get stuff. Go back to the location where you shot the project and walk around–this time only listening. I’m lucky in that I get to work with a lot of subjects who make things. When you have a lot of cutting, welding, and hammering going on, you get opportunities to capture great bits of sound.
