Sound design is an essential part of the filmmaking process. It can be a time consuming process and most of the professional films you see today have outsourced studios dedicated to just this element of filmmaking do the work. Not everyone’s budgets can account for this so here are the 6 essential things you need to know for cinematic sound design.
Using Sound Effects
Sound effects are a critical component to creating cinematic sounding films. What sound effects do for our films is add realism to our visual content and set the mood for each moment within our story. There are a plethora of techniques for using sound effects but a couple of the most important are layering and using ambience.
Layering sound effects together is an easy way to make your films sound unique and original. You can use layering to add more depth to your sound like adding transient sounds to match a visual such as footsteps.
Using ambience sounds can make a sequence of shots feel more coherent with each other. If you are filming deep and close in a city filled with traffic, capturing what your characters hear immerses your audience within the scene. Using the sounds of gridlock traffic up close is a good starting point into doing that.
Adding Background Music
Use background music to elevate the story you are trying to tell. Background music is used to evoke emotion especially in the absence of dialogue. It sets the mood of a scene and can be used to represent a character’s feelings and emotions. Background music is also a great tool to alert the audience of things unseen or unknown by your characters in the story.
A good rule of thumb when sound designing is to score first. Setting up a foundation with the overall framework or rhythm of your sequences with music or other sound effects used for scoring purposes can allow for all the other elements of sound design to fall into place naturally. It ensures that every beat and impact hits where intended!
If you have a scene with no background music, you can still score the scene with clever sound effects. Using repetition of sound effects can give the illusion of a score and keep a consistent theme within your piece.
DIY and Foley
When you don’t have or can’t find the right sound to portray the certain emotion you want to portray, record Foley yourself during post-production or create sounds using custom plug-ins offered in your video editor or a DAW. Foley itself is a great way to add realism to the sound of your film.
You don’t have to be an expert to add custom foley into your projects. Try recording everyday sounds or sounds that peak your interest and enhance your work with truly one of a kind sound effects.
Another way to DIY your sound design is to use effects and plug-ins to modify existing sounds. Pitch shifting a sound for example can be an effective way to change the mood of a sound. Generally, pitching sounds up will make them sound more serene, while pitching sounds down can make them sound more intense and terrifying.
Dialogue
Dialogue is the main motivating factor that keeps audiences captivated in your films so it should be your top priority when sound designing.
Keep your dialogue as clear as possible. Be mindful of background noise when recording dialogue and choose to record lines of dialogue in isolation from each other. It’s best to use post-production to your advantage in this case to stitch together pieces of dialogue with fades. This way, you have full control over every line spoken and can make the dialogue flow seamlessly.
Another tip when working with spoken dialogue is to use an equalization plug-in to enhance the vocal frequencies. Many plug-ins tend to have presets built specifically for this!
Effects and Plug-ins
Modifying sounds with effects and plug-ins are an important part of sound design ‒ even if the intended outcome is subtle. Using techniques such as increasing the intensity of a sound, panning a sound from ear to ear, or adding reverb to a sound can enhance the sound of a film tremendously. All of these can be done by using effects and plug-ins!
A riser is a specific type of sound effect that builds intensity with sound. You can create a riser with a consistent tone just by starting with the volume low and then raising the volume exponentially. Doing this when leading up to a climactic moment in your film can be an easy way to fully immerse your audience and raise their heart rate.
Panning sounds such as foley or dialogue can be a good way to add depth to your films. Let's say a car is to drive past the frame from right to left. Using foley sounds of the car driving past adds to the realism of the sequence but if you also pan the shot accordingly to move the sound in 2D space from ear-to-ear, you can effectively increase the realism of the sound even more with minimal effort.
Adding reverb to sound effects can alter the scale of the sound at a dramatic scale. Reverb increase the scale and distance of a sound. Use it wisely to add weight to your sound.
Focus on Telling a Story
Sound design as a whole is a tool filmmakers use to tell their story. It’s one thing to add matching sound effects to a sequence to simply add realism to your work, but it’s another thing to add sounds that portray the mood of the film purposefully throughout a sequence. So at the grand scale, always have sound design in mind before starting production.
Try to look for the right sound effects, music, and foley that match the mood you are trying to portray. The feeling of your scene is what matters the most when it comes to cinema! An example of this is using powerful hits of sound (also known as an impact sound) to punctuate an impactful moment within your story.
Conclusion
And those are 6 of the most important tips to keep in mind when sound designing cinematic films. Use sound effects, background music and ambience to marry your visuals with sounds that fit the mood you are going for. When in a bind, look to creating sounds yourself and using effects to enhance existing sounds. And lastly, always keep your dialogue clear and always prioritize what story you are trying to tell when choosing the perfect sounds for your film.
Written by Zeeshan Khamis
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