BFI Academy Day 3 - Sound Production and Engineering

This week, our masterclass was on sound production and engineering. We had two speakers come in to talk to us about their experience in the industry, where they started off and what their jobs entailed. We first spoke about the importance of sound and music in film - sound makes up half of our sensory experience when we are watching a film, and so it's incredibly important to match it to the feeling and emotion of the scene, as it can make it 100 times more effective. To illustrate this point, we watched one of the training scenes from Rocky - first, without the sound, and then with it. Watching it without the sound made me personally see the scene as a lot more flat - it was very hard to feel any strong emotions because there just simply wasn't anything to drive them.

Next, the location sound recordist told us about what he does. We learnt that a person in this role is basically responsible for recording all of the sound on location, which will then be used in the film. He taught us about the different types of sound that is typically recorded - e.g. ambient sound (background noise), dialogue (talking), and diagetic sound (sound inside of the film world). We learnt about the importance of good quality on-location sound through simply sitting in silence for around 30 seconds, and listening to all the noise that is actually present in a seemingly silent room. You have to be very careful when recording sound on-location, as if it's inside, you will have the hum of everything electric - lights, air-con, camera equipment, etc., and if it's outside you might have birds, traffic or wind noises in the background. Therefore, a good location and good equipment is necessary when recording on-location, as if you don't have it the ambient sound will cause a lot of noise, making your final product sound fuzzy.

Then, we learnt about a sound designer's role. A sound designer is responsible for anything from the sound effects (created in post), to the music choice/editing, to dealing with the ADR (Automated Dialogue Replacement). He then spoke to us about the pros and cons of using ADR. One good thing about ADR is the fact that if you can't salvage the on-location dialogue, you can just get the actors back to do it again, and the audience most likely won't notice. This is good for scenes with a lot of background noise, or where you are filming from quite far away, as often in these situations dialogue won't be picked up very well. However, ADR isn't favourable amongst many filmmakers. This is because it is very expensive to do right, and it can sound very fake - since there is no depth to the sound, and the volume isn't relative to the placement of the object making the noise, it can sound quite flat. The sound will be good quality, but it will probably sound overly emphasized and fake.

For our main activity, we were shown a 30ish second long video clip without any sound, and then given a number of objects. We were then told to create Foley sound to go overtop of this. Foley sound is basically the reproduction of everyday sound effects, which are created and added to a clip in post. Foley is especially good in things like fight scenes - you can't actually punch someone in the face (hard) or cut someones head off, so reproducing these sounds using other objects is the best way to create those sounds.

We divided into two groups to create the sound - one group did the diagetic sound, and the other group did the non-diagetic sound. My group was responsible for the non-diagetic sound - the music, the emphasized sound effects, etc. Therefore, we created our part by playing a few chords/notes on the piano (in a minor key to emphasize the mood) and we recorded a heartbeat using a drum. The other group created the sound of someone being punched in the face by hitting a watermelon with a baseball bat, and they also did other sounds like footsteps, and heavy breathing.

I think the final product was actually very effective, considering the amount of time and the limited number of objects we had. We didn't have much time at the end to arrange the sounds exactly as we wanted to, and so it probably could have sounded a lot better than it did, but for our first time doing Foley, it sounded a lot better than I thought it would. Overall, this session was incredibly helpful in understanding sound in film - I learnt that it can be very effective to re-record certain sounds, and if you do it with different objects they can often sound better than the original.