Sound Design

What is sound design?

Sound design is the process of either creating a sound and recording it or manipulating a pre-existing sound from the internet to use for all types of media such as films, TV, advertising, music, video games, podcasts, audio dramas and live theatre. Sound designers will often do sound edits and create sound mixes in the course of their work playing an important role in the creative process such as recording sounds to use for a production in a studio or on the field, create mixes of sound design palettes and individual cues beforehand that are played during a production. Sound design also processes audio recordings using different effects like equalisation, compression, reverb, delay, distortion, phasing and vibrato which fits under sound editing too.

Sound design is needed because it helps enhance storytelling, set-up an atmosphere or mood and build an immersive world for the audience. Through the use of sound, creators can establish settings, suggest off-screen actions, and develop characters. The sound of a car revving up could lead to a chase or being the getaway vehicle from a bank, while the creak of a floorboard can indicate someone's stealthy approach. While visually, a character can attract attention, sound can give that character a voice but if they're injured, you can hear them groan in pain or scream out, showing different types of characterisation. 

Sound is also used to create an atmosphere in the world and for the audience, such as if there is the sound of people crying, it can create a sense of sadness or another negative emotion where if you have children laughing or giggling, the mood of the scene is much happier and fun in comparison. When it comes to sound, a key objective for it is to help the audience become immersed in the characters or scenes. It can even make a video game world seem real and lived in by adding depth into said visual elements, having audio come from each step you take, each breath you take, having your clothes blow in the wind. Immersion can make a good project even better if you use sound design to its best ability.

At the start of the video, you can hear the doors swing open and hit the wall with a wooden knock and the sound of footsteps tapping against the marble floor, creating an echo in the empty hospital. The only noises made come from the character, like their breathing, footsteps, their clothes brushing against itself as the character moves. The quality of the sound is crisp which makes you feel closely connected to the character you're playing as. The unfolding of paper from opening the map, hearing the paper bend under the character's grasp. A tool they've used to create clearer sound and it's called EQ (equaliser) which is essential for removing background noise and making sounds more clear, helping the audience fall deeper into immersion.

In the distance of the hospital, you hear the clanging of metal and the doors creaking far away which makes you more tense, leading you to believe someone else or something is in the hospital with you. To create these sounds that are in the distance and the sounds the character makes with their footsteps, they lowered the volume on these sounds and used reverb, to make that echo effect, which is used perfectly.

However, that changes at 0:21, a sudden noise catches the player off guard when they walk into the room, there's a rush of wind and papers flying onto the floor. However, the sounds change due to the small room and the carpet on the floor. The footsteps don't echo, they create a light thud and the speech is closer due to the voice bouncing off the carpet, making the sound trapped and have less room to move. To create these sounds the character makes when they're in the second room, I believe they've used a carpet in the studio and had people stepping on it, recording that sound for this room.

The role of sound design in this scene is to make you feel isolated with all the sounds mostly coming from your character. The breathing, the footsteps, the clothes brushing against each and that there is no other sound except the noises in the distance, leading you to believe you're not alone in this abandoned hospital. All these sounds lead to the creation of an unnerving atmosphere as the character is walking around the hospital.

Today, I looked up how to make Foley sounds on a budget. For example: 

Rustling newspaper in hands to create rustling leaves/bushes.

Sizzling bacon in a pan to create rain.

Cracking celery to create bones breaking.

Kissing your own hand to make kissing sounds.

Swinging bamboo to create sword swoosh.

I started going around the theatre to create these sounds on my own and record them. To record, we used an ediroll which recorded the sounds in high quality so I'll use them as examples.

Ediroll Sounds

Phone Recordings

For my project, I would like to do an audio experience where the audience sits in a dark room and they just listen to a bunch of different sounds to create a scene but with no actors or sets or props.

For my sound experience, I was thinking I could do different genres such as horror, action, sci-fi, and an apocalypse. I also thought of doing different areas like a beach, a city, train station, volcano or a café.

After discussing my idea with my class, I'm going to focus on just doing a horror sound experience in the woods with a chase scene. So maybe adding a creepy atmosphere with wind billowing, have owls hooting and bats flapping. I also want to add crunching twigs, leaves, maybe even a fall, a broken bone from using the sounds of cracking sticks in half. I could maybe use stabbing a watermelon to have the sound of someone being stabbed.

My idea for the horror sound experience, I want it to start off with a car driving up and having two people getting out and walking into the woods, with sticks and leaves crunched under feet. They laugh and drink. After that, they walk away but they split up. 

The main character goes to check on the other characters after waiting too long and getting freaked out by a bunch of bats or a fox or something. However, they can't find the other person and start walking around. 

However, another pair of footsteps can be heard and then chase happens with rushed breathing and running sounds, the leaves getting crushed louder and faster.

The character then hides behind a tree or something and they have heavy breathing but everything goes silent. Before suddenly, a man lets out a muffled yell and slashes her.

I told my teacher about my plan and he said that it was good but would need the start to be clearer as the audience might get confused so to make it easier, I'll add a police section at the start to lead into the character entering the forest and the chase scene for a clearer experience. The sounds that I would like to add is a police siren, people muttering, police radio chatter, body bag zip, stepping in a puddle and walking on hard ground.

I then wrote up a list of all the sounds I am going to add for my sound project. I even added which ones I'm going to create using Foley and ones I'm going to use from the Internet. With the sounds I already have, I put a time of when I should chop the audio out and have it start faster so with the heart beat audio, I wrote down the times when it has the slow heartbeat at 0:00 and the fast heartbeat at 0:05.

Photo of list:

Having collected all of my sounds, I was putting them all together when I realised I needed to add more to extend my horror experience so I thought about adding a news report talking about another murder in the woods. I would also have to add news intro music and another sound to cut the segment.

News Report Script:

In the latest news, unfortunately, police have discovered another female body was stabbed to death in the upper woods. No leads have been found yet but police have been on the lookout for any witnesses or any clues to be found. But as a warning, they have told everyone to stay away from the forest. So stay safe and vigilant if you are to be heading anywhere near the woods.

Sound Cue: 

The role of sound design and how it helps the narrative - The goal of my sound design is to create a scary atmosphere with just sounds but to also have a story progress throughout the entire sound experience. At the start, I wanted to add a news section so I put a news intro, the news report that I spoke and the TV shut off sound to create the story at the start and set up the main experience.

For the rest of the sounds, some of them are played together like 5, 6 and 7 with 8 being played later to create the effect that someone is walking through the forest at night.

Images of the Horror Sound Experience

Feedback for the Horror Sound Experience:

The feedback that I received from the audience of the horror sound experience was that they could tell it was telling a story with only a small amount of dialogue and that it's not reliant on dialogue to carry the story of the audio performance. The audience also said that they did feel scared and uneasy of the darkness, it really helped the creepy atmosphere with the sounds.

However, the criticisms were that I needed to use smoother transitions and to be more clearer with sounds to not confuse the audience. For example, they thought the woman running was the sound of a horse running. So, to improve from these criticisms, I will reuse the forest walking sound and speed it up since the original running audio sounded like they were running on the street so they must have gotten confused. I will also reuse the heavy breathing sound and the heartbeat as the person is getting chased to add to the atmosphere. To have smoother transitions, I will have the sounds play in order and have some of them fade in or speed up and maybe add in an atmospheric audio file that goes over the entire performance to further the haunting feeling.

A criticism that I have for myself is my bad time management. I was very bad at giving myself enough time to plan out everything and create an actual story and I was only able to create the start of a short film and rushed through the ending. To improve, I need to write a timetable of when I should get certain objectives done like planning, sound collection, sound editing.

The sound I would like to add is a louder scream to scare the audience. Another sound to help the audio experience is a wolf howl to tell the audience that it is night. I also feel like I should change the stab sound to something more recognisable like the stabbing sound from Scream. I would like to make sure the audio file is straight forward and can tell the story much easier such as adding multiple same sounds of the walking or the heavy breathing to help the audience follow along.

LInks:

https://scoreascore.com/blog/what-is-sound-design/

https://www.descript.com/blog/article/what-is-sound-design-elements-practices-of-sound-design

https://www.jumbla.com/news/why-is-sound-design-important

https://pinglestudio.com/blog/the-role-of-sound-design-in-immersive-gaming-experiences