Sound

Sound plays an important aspect in film. Throughout the history of film sound has played a part one way or another. Even in the silent era films had some sort of backing track. Music plays a huge part in sound. Music stimulates emotions through either lyrics or the composition of the instruments. Using music to help convey the emotion of a scene is a technique that is both effective, and has been used throughout the history of film. Along with music sound effects and dialogue are an essential part of making a movie both interesting and believable. Imagine watching a movie with a car speeding by and you didn't hear anything. It would take away from the drama of the scene, and it would make the scene far less believable. Film is about taking a viewer into another world. They follow the lives of another human or creature, and through the film are taken away from their reality. If you didn't make the film realistic enough to convince the viewer of this other world then you have failed the audience. We paid extra attention to David Lynch in our last class. He just so happens to be a director I am quite fond of and had studied in a class the previous week. David Lynch believes that sound is 50% of a movie and is well known for his excellent sound. He uses the perfect mix of all types of sounds. He pays special attention to ambient noise in his movie, which is was usually helps set the tone of his films. He has an ambient noise play throughout Eraser Head which helps give every scene an unsettling tone. Even in his college days Lynch paid close attention to sound, and had his creepy fascinating way of filmmaking. There's a video he made called The Alphabet when he was in college. It was a statement piece about his disliking for the educational system and how he felt they forced education down your throat. If you haven't seen it I suggest you do so. The Alphabet .It's a very terrifying piece, but it's the sounds in the piece that really make the whole thing come together. From the strange moans, to the children's voices wording the alphabet, and the very windy ambient sound in the back. I feel without any of these sounds the piece would lose a lot of the emotion it’s trying to convey. I feel if you can close your eyes and get at least the gist of what the movie is about from the sound alone, then it's been done right. It's important to know when there are too many sounds going on though. Which is why there is the 3 worlds of sound. Non-diegetic, on-screen diegetic, and off-screen diegetic. If while you edit the sound of a piece together you keep these different worlds in mind it's more likely you won't overdo or under do it. Keep in mind what you're seeing on screen and add sound accordingly. But don't forget what could be going on to the right of the screen, to keep the realistic flow I spoke of earlier. Then of course your music to increase the emotion of the scene.