Do you hear what I hear?
By Bill Buzan, sound designer/ sr. technical director
photo credit: jekert gwapo
Did you see that? That explosion, foot step, door slam, etc.? Sure you did. And I’m pretty sure you heard it too. When something prominent happens in a movie, TV show or commercial, it’s hard not to notice it; visually and audibly.
How about something happening in the back ground? If you saw it happen you probably didn’t think about the fact that you also heard it, and how odd it would have been had you not heard an associated sound. For instance, if you were watching (and hearing) someone hammering a nail, and in the back ground you saw a dog barking, without hearing a bark, you might think it a bit odd. Wouldn’t you? That’s Sound Design for video.
One of the biggest things that attracted me to sound design was the way sound can be used to help tell a story. For example: Let’s say you’re watching a scary movie. In a stormy late-night scene, while the camera is on the actress playing the teenage babysitter, we (and she) hear a car pull into the gravel driveway, the engine shut off, the car door close and then footsteps walking slowly toward the front door. The actress reacts to the off-screen sounds as the music intensifies. We don’t need to see the car or the feet walking to the door to feel the anxiety welling up in the actresses character. Animation and motion graphics bringing on text, a logo or as an effected transition from one scene to another, has more impact when a “whoosh”, “ping”, “vroom” or “eeow” is added.
Another way that sound helps to get a message across is, simply, from a point of clarity. Let’s move from the professional world to the, for a lack of a better term, non-professional world. In this age of You Tube, people have become accustomed to “it is what it is” quality video. Audio isn’t allowed the same luxury. If the viewer can’t understand what’s being said, the message is lost and the video serves no purpose. I’ve spent hours trying to pull a voice out of a sea of noise. Sometime successfully, sometimes not.A good rule of thumb for the amateur videographer: Listen with headphones while you shoot. If you can’t understand what’s being said, no one else will either.
Something I always get a kick out of is using one sound to represent something else. Many years ago I needed to create the sounds of a busy street. I had sound effects CD’s with city sounds that I liked, but something was missing that I though needed to heard: a jack hammer at a construction site. I don’t know why I wanted it, but I just did. I looked through my library of effects and found a jack hammer, but it just didn’t fit in the mix. I don’t remember exactly why. Whether it was recorded too close or too far or it didn’t have the right pitch; I don’t remember, but it was wrong. So I began listening to any sound I could think of that could possibly double as a jack hammer. I found conveyor belts, Model T Fords, WWI airplane engines starting up. Nothing was quite right. The perfect sound turned out to be an automatic garage door opening and closing. The way it nestled into the cacophony of city noise was perfect.
I’m sure no one noticed the “jack hammer”, let alone that it was really an automatic garage door. Maybe they would have noticed if it wasn’t there.