Notes on FILM SOUND

There is no limit to what we can hear in a film: just about any sound in nature can be recorded and when don't like that "natural" sound or can't find it, we can just as easily make one up. There is in the Star Wars films a distinct "laser" sound. Actual lasers have no sound but that, of course, wouldn't be very interesting in a film. We need laser guns to make sounds. So, the sound designers for Star Wars went to a junk yard and began banging things to see if they could produce a sound that might "feel" like a laser. Similarly, if a person were to actually hit another person, there's very little sound involved. But, again, this wouldn't be very interesting on film so we create an artificial sound to replace real action. The point here is not that sound has to be accurate or realistic, it only needs to fit in with what we want to see.

 Background

 The Jazz Singer Links to an external site. is the film most often cited as the "first" sound film. This isn't entirely true. The Jazz Singer might be more accurately refered to as the first major film to feature synchronized talking. The first piece of film to incorporate sound came from the Edison studio run by Thomas Edison. In what is now titled The Dickson Experimental Film.

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The two men are seen dancing as a violin player accompnies them. In 1926, there appeared Don Juan Links to an external site., a feature-length film that contained an embedded sountrack. This was a huge draw for theater goers outside of New York and Chicago. Most often, people would see films accompanied by a piano player. Having a soundtrack was the first opportunity for many Americans to hear a fully recorded orchestra while watching a film. The breakthrough of synchronized talking in The Jazz Singer was less about technology and more about technique. To direct a film that had sound required an entirely new way of thinking about films. In other words, the ideas had to catch up with the technology and that didn't happen until 1927.

Sound Categories

 All sound can be broken down into four basic groups:

Diegetic Links to an external site. means that it's a part of the story or part of the world of the story. For example, if a character turns on a radio, the music that comes out is diegetic because it exists in the world of that scene. However, if there is background music playing to create emotion, that would be non-diegetic. We can hear the music but it doesn't exist as part of the world. Think about the famous theme from the film Jaws.

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Everytime you hear the music, you know the shark is coming but, of course, no character in the film can hear the music. So, again, that would be non-diegeticsound. Most non-diegetic sound is off-screen (Type 4). You usually don't see an orchestra playing when the background music starts. In rare cases, you can have an on-screen, non-diegetic (Type 2). For example, if you hear what a character is THINKING to him or herself, that would be Type 2: you can see the source of the sound (the person thinking) but what that person's voice is not part of the film world since no one else can hear it.

When a character is speaking to another character and you can see that person talking, then that would be diegetic AND on-screen. In other words, TYPE 1 sounds are sounds where the source is visible (the person talking) and it is part of the film world. If those two people talking hear a third person shouting from the distance but you can't actually see that person, then the shouting voice would be Type 3 -- diegetic, off-screen.

Sound techniques

Most dialog in a film is recorded live, while the filming is actually going on but almost all background sounds are recorded separately. For example, in a crowded night-club scene that has lots of music and people talking, the set is actually silent when they are filming. The only people making any sounds during filming are the main characters who are talking. The sound of the crowd and the music are all layered in later. In many outdoor scenes where the environment cannot be fully controlled, an actor will come in after filming and overdub her or his voice. So, if there's a scene that involves a baseball game and you hear a player yelling out, "I got it, I got it" the chances are that the actor had to go back into the studio and add those lines.

In his classic film, Nashville, the director, Robert Altman, creates complex crowd scenes in which voices come in and out. Because all the voices were recorded in a studio, he is able to manipulate the sound mix like a music producer would. Just as a music producer might turn up the drums in one section of a song and then raise the guitar in another part, Altman plays with the sound balance to create this mixed effect. In the following clip, a performer has just been shot on stage and the entire crowd is a bit stunned. Notice how Altman pulls in and out of certain voices throughout this clip:

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The other major studio recording (besides music) is known as FOLEY RECORDING. If you're familiar with the film Beverly Hills Cop, you may remember that Eddie Murphy's character is named Axel Foley. That name is taken from the foley recording technique. Most sounds you hear in a movie have been artificially added. When someone slams a door, for example, that slamming sound does not come from the actual door in the scene but is recorded using fake doors inside a studio. Sometimes very strange techniques are used to create those foley sounds. If you see someone walking through the snow and you hear the crunch of the snow, the foley artist creates that sound by putting shoes on her hands and then crushing corn flakes with those shoes.

Below is an excellent example of Foley recording techniques. 

Foley Artist Gary Hecker Links to an external site.

In most situations -- especially in the classical Hollywood style -- sound is always synchronized. The way the words are heard have to match the mouth's movement. When a gun fires, the sound of the explosion has to match what's on the screen. Sometimes, however, directors will purposefully choose asynchronous sounds to create dramatic effect. For example, imagine a scene in which two people are yelling at each other. Rather than playing the actual sounds of the people arguing, the director chooses to insert the sounds of battle -- tanks, guns, bombs, etc. The sound doesn't match up with the actual action but the director chose this technique in order to emphasize that these two people are at war with one another.