RESEARCH: Why is sound so important?

Pursuant to Google, sound is vibrations that travel through the air or another medium and can be heard when they reach a person's or animal's ear.  Sound is very vital in films as its used to set tone and the atmosphere for the audience to help give them visual clues as to what the plot , characters or genre would be. The technique of adding sound also creates suspend belief which elaborates on realism for the audience and gets them excited for the film.

A famous director whom was responsible for the Star Wars Franchise called George Lukas, says that sound is 50% which basically means if you don't include sound you only have half of the finishing product thus it won't come out as good as it should do.

Overtime, sound has progressed and developed over the years due to the impact of technology. Sound has now become three-dimensional and visceral  which makes it even better for us to hear while we watch the film.

In class we were played series of title sequences , with and without sound to see the impact it has on the audience. The first clip we watched was the title sequence without sound, what I gathered from this is that the title sequence looked very pointless and boring , and it certainly didn't engage me to keep on watching. The title sequence felt like it was 10 minutes and became uninteresting after 15 seconds. It was also confusing because I didn't feel informed about the plot so I was just there clueless; it also felt like it was a bunch of images passing by rather than just a continuous title sequence. Afterwards, we were shown the same title sequence but with sound. The genre became more clearer as the music was "Jay-Z - 99 problems " which gave me an idea that this was film was Action/Drama . The title sequence felt like it was shorter and I was more engaged with the title sequence to analyse the visual effects and sound effects during the title sequences. I even had the chance to grasp the actors's credits e.g. Denzel Washington whereas in the first title sequence I didn't care to watch the credits because I was so bored.

From this research , I've gathered that sound is very important to a film as it determines the level of engagement and enjoyment from the viewers. Sound makes the film a lot clearer and obviously doesn't make the viewers feel like they are going to see a good film and not waste their time nor money.

In the second task, we were given a series of soundtracks without film to try guess the film genre.

The first sound design I heard was definitely Western as I could hear horses and cowboy sounds. Following that we heard noises that sounded like I was in space so I assume that the title sequence is a Sci-Fi based film. Thirdly, from an instinct I knew this was an action movie because of fast tasting cars and the fast-tempo music causing excitement. This comes from the famous Fast and Furious film. Last but not the least, the final clip was definitely a rom-com , the music was very girly and quite cute. The title sequence is from the film "Legally Blonde" which I haven't watched!

I will attach the sounds below so you can have a listen to the sound clips.

A soundscape is a "piece of music considered in terms of its component sounds". A sound design is "the process of specifying, acquiring, manipulating or generating audio elements. It is included in film making, television production, theatre, sound recording, live performance, sound art, post-production, radio and video game software develop."

There are important definitions that we must know when learning about sounds which I will further explain. (All of these definitions were from Google.)

1. Wild track - Can also be known as wild sound/lines and it's an audio recording intended to be synchronised with film or video but recorded separately.

2. Ambient sound - This means the background sounds which are present in a scene or location, this could be birds, crowds etc..

3. Diegetic sound - Sound whose source is visible on the screen or source is implied to be present by the action of the film.

4. Non-diegetic sound - This is represented as sound coming from the a source outside the story space.

5. Score - Original music written specifically to accompany a film.

6. Song - A short poem or other set of words set to music or meant to be sung.

7. Voiceover - A piece of narration in a film or broadcast, not accompanied by an image of the speaker.

8. Dialogue - A conversation between two or more people as a feature of a book, play or film.

9. Dubbing - Mostly for translating foreign language films to the audience's language. When a foreign language is dubbed, the translation of the original dialogue is carefully matched to the lip movements of the actors in the film.

10. Foley - The addition of recorded sound effects after the shooting of a film.

11. Synchronous - Sound that is matched to certain movements occurring in the scene , this can be recorded on a tape or magnetic film.

12. Asynchronous - Sounds not matched with a visible source of the sound on screen.

13. Sound bridge - One of the most common transitions in the continuity editing style, one that stresses the connection between both scenes since their mood (suggested by the music) is still the same.

14. Sound motif - A sound effect or combination of sound effects that are associated with a particular character, setting, situation or idea through the film. The sound motifs condition the audience emotionally for the intervention, arrival, or actions of a particular character.