Sound

Sound is a very important part of films. The sound design of a film will help to fully immerse the audience in the universe of the film. If the sound design of a film is poorly done then it can distract the audience from the narrative.

A very important part of sound design is Foley. Foley sounds are recorded separately from the visuals, and are used to make the actions being filmed feel more realistic.

Below is an example of a fight scene with Foley compared to the same scene without, to illustrate the difference the sound makes.

When recording the Foley sound effects, we first focused on the fight scene as we knew that it would contain many different layers. These layers and how we recorded them are shown below:

• Slap - slapping a melon
• Thud - hitting a pillow with a wooden spoon
• Crunch - snapping and biting a carrot
• Crack - snapping some celery
• Punches to the tactical vest
• Tactical vest movement
• Clothes movement
• 'Squelch' - hitting, with a wooden spoon, a pillow with a lettuce leaf, covered with a damp cloth
• 'Whoosh' - waving a wooden spoon past the microphone

Once we had recorded these layers, I then layered them in varying, appropriate amounts to achieve the high quality sound. Obviously, some layers were not necessary for all punches, e.g. the 'punches to the tactical vest' layer was not needed where a punch was seen to connect to the face. Alternatively, the 'clothes movement' layer was used for the whole fight scene, as each punch or step would result in clothes moving.

We also used some footstep Foley sounds, which we recorded by aiming the boom-pole at our feet, while walking on the various terrains - grass, concrete etc.

Once these sounds had been recorded, I recorded the sound of my phone vibrating and unlocking to use in the antagonist's phone call. After this, I recorded the sound of me dialling a number into the phone, to be used when the protagonist is dialling the number of his superiors.

The phone calls, as well as most of the other Foley elements, were recorded with a RODE Videomic Pro, as it is a condenser microphone, meaning it has a wide frequency response and so can pick up all of the frequencies the human ear can hear. The phone, vibrating and unlocking sounds were recorded with a Shure SM58 dynamic microphone, meaning that it had a lower frequency response. I used this microphone as the RODE was unavailable at the time.

When recording the fight scene Foley elements, we created a sound booth of sorts out of a mattress and a bed sheet.

This blocked out the noise from outside of the booth, in order to achieve as high quality sound as possible. All windows remained closed, to reduce noise from outside. 

Blocking out as much of the background noise as possible helped to blend the sounds with the piece as I could then decide how much background noise to blend in to the project.


Recording the Fight Scene Foley

Recording the 'whoosh' sound

Preparing to record the 'tactical vest movement' sound

Recording the 'tactical vest movement' sound

With all of the Foley recorded, I then recorded two minutes of plain background noise from our location to blend all of the elements together. I then moved on to scoring the opening.

Score

When composing the score for our film opening, I aimed to build anticipation for the fight scene. 

The score can be found below:

During the fight scene, when John is being strangled by the antagonist, I decided to include a string ensemble that would get louder, up until the point where John hits the antagonist with the rock. This was so that the audience would feel that John's situation was becoming more and more pressured as he ran out of time to get out of the choke hold. 

When John first hits the antagonist with the rock, I decided to alleviate the music, to connote that he had overcome the situation. I then included music during the final shot to connote that he was about to go to find whomever ordered him dead.


Nathan