Sound Effects

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Any sound that could not realistically be made by one of the characters onscreen can be considered a sound effect, such as the sounds of cars , boats, and planes. Sound effects have a powerful impact on the way viewers react to a movie or video. Since they are not recorded during filming , they can be altered to change the mood or pace of a scene. In this way, they become part of the creative design of a film or video.

NOTE

SOUND DESIGN

The term sound design refers to the creative aspect of recoding and mixing audio. Just as a film has a "look" to it, it also has a "sound" that is consistent throughout the movie. Creating the sonic texture and character is the job of the sound designer. Usually there is a sound designer credit given in movies, and sound designers can even win Oscars.

Sound design has become a staple of filmmaking , television, and even commercials. Usually, music provides the first clue, but a sound effect could also be what first tells you what show you're watching. Whenever you hear that hammer - hitting effect on TV, you know one of the Law & Order series is about to come on.

There are three basic categories of sound effects; the following subsections will describe each category.

Ambience

Ambience is the background sound of a scene. If you filmed in an open field, you would expect to hear the sound of a gentle breeze and maybe some crickets and a bird or two in the distance. Well-executed ambience tracks can really help create the effect of envelopment and "being there" for the viewer.

Bigger Than Life Sounds

Explosions, explosions, explosions Most explosions you see and hear in the movies and TV don't sound the way explosions do in real life. Real explosions are usually dull thuds that don't have a lot of drama to them other than the destruction they cause. In a movie, the audience needs to feel the power of something like that without actually being there. Augmenting these sounds so they are bigger than life can help the drama become real to the viewer. Take, for example, the movie Backdraft . The sound of the fire in that movie is not realistic at all. There are sounds of wolves and bears mixed in with other things in order to create the sound of a living creature out of the fire. Even though the fire is not alive , the sound designer wants us to think of it as evil and menacing, thereby heightening the drama.

Imaginary Sounds

Sound effects can also be imaginary, like ghostly sounds, laser blasts, and rockets that make sounds in space. They can also be enhancement or augmentation of sounds that characters might make. Consider the machine-like sounds of R2-D2 in Star Wars. As we don't know what a real robot might sound like, his sounds are, in essence, imaginary. However, they also function as the foley sound of R2-D2's character. I would consider them sound effects first, rather than foley. The lines are blurred in a case like this, but for the purposes of this book, let's consider any imaginary sound to be an effect.

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