A great way to understand the importance of Sound Design is to realise that most of the sound that you hear in TV and Movies is NOT actually being made at the time the scene was filmed.
This is because you need to record CLEAN dialogue, without background sound, so that you can edit different 'takes' or 'angles' together and make the sequence seamless.
Take this scene from Good Will Hunting (Van Sant, 1997)...
Task 1.
Note how the background atmosphere remains the same and is uninterrupted not only as they cut 'shot, reverse shot' on the people at the bar, but it also maintains it's level when they first cut to Matt Damon who is further away.
This is because on the edit timeline there is -
One seamless track of background music.
One seamless track of background bar atmos (or atmosphere)
and there will also be -
One seamless 'wildtrack' (we will talk about wildtrack in the recording section).
And all of these are laid below the separate dialogue tracks.
LEVELS in the Audio Mix:
Note also that the music track is maintained until the rising conflict between Affleck and the patronising Harvard student intensifies - and then it all but stops just as Damon steps into the conversation.
Note that the atmospheric foley of people talking in the bar is very subtly lowered as the tension between Damon and the Harvard student rises.
So, in this scene, the MUSIC, the sound of PEOPLE TALKING in the background and the general bar sounds, are
ALL
RECORDED
SEPARATELY
and ADDED IN POST - this is called Foley Sound.
Each sound is recorded SEPARATELY so that each element can have it's own track and be SELECTED and CONTROLLED individually.
Foley sounds are invented - planned - recorded and mixed to create an illusion.
FOLEY SOUND is so named after Jack Foley who was a sound recordist who worked for Universal Studios for 33 years from the time of the early 'talkies'.
Jack invented the technique of recording and adding sounds in post production, to create the illusion that make audiences feel like they are 'in' the story-world of the film.
Task 2.
Watch the following film on the foley work of
Dawn Lunsford (Whiplash, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1, Transformers: Age of Extinction),
Alicia Stevenson (The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1, X-Men, Transformers: Age of Extinction) &
Gary Hecker (Django Unchained, Hancock, 300).
TASK 3.
Watch this next clip and note how the foley artists and mixers work with the script to understand the emotional NATURE of the scene and the NATURE of the characters, in order to DESIGN the sounds...
Not all foley is recorded in a studio - often it is recorded 'in the field' or on-location.
Task 4.
Please make a note as you watch this next compilation -
How the sound recordists are using DIRECTIONAL rifle mics to capture sounds
The RANGE of different ways in which they record the SAME subject (this gives the mixer/editor OPTIONS)
NOTE: We do NOT encourage you to record moving vehicles in the manner depicted in the film...
And finally, here is the famous collection of sounds that became the Millennium Falcon Hyperdrive Malfunction from Star Wars (Spielberg, 1977):