Sound

Sound is very important, and film must have some sort of sounds to help it be more interesting or to help portray feelings/moods.

Different types of sound can have different impact on the audience. The types of sound are explained with examples below (click on the film icon to download and watch the clip)

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Music

In most films they will have an influential piece of music or many to help create an atmosphere of help to portray how the character or characters are feeling. An example of this could be a sad scene in a film where a couple have broken up, to accompany this the choice of music might be slow and sad music with lyrics relating to the situation. This can help to make the audience feel the same as the characters and be involved in the film. Music is an extremely powerful tool in film making, it contributes to the entire mood and feel of the whole thing. When working in professional film making the director is able to find a composer and instruct them to create a sound track tailor made for the film. When creating short film, or low budget films like I am, of course this isn't often the case. However luckily, a very talented musician in Sixth Form wants to improve his show reel, so he has offered to sit down with me and go through my own ideas for the film, and then he will go off and compose something that he sees fit. This is a great help, meaning I won’t need to trawl through none copy right music sites in order to find something perfect.

Personally I find that one of the first things I always think about when creating anything, is the music. When creating my AS work I found a bit of music that fitted well with my idea and background of the idea. The music was also composed in the time period in which the film began but also was recognisable. I found this was a good technique to involve the audience as some of the older viewers will recognise it and relate to it and its time period. Lastly the song lyrics were suitable and described the feelings of the character, this made it feel like the music was specifically composed for the film.

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Breaking the 4th wall

Breaking the fourth wall is speaking directly to the audience, including them in the situation.

Breaking the fourth wall and including the audience usually has the effect of taking them out of the play rather than bringing them into it. This gives the character the opportunity to express their thoughts to the audience, including them as a character.

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DIEGETIC/NON-DIEGETIC SOUND

Any voice, musical passage, or sound effect presented as originating froma source within the film's world is diegetic. If it originates outside the film (as most background music) then it is non-diegetic.

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DIRECT SOUND

When using direct sound, the music, noise, and speech of the profilmic event at the moment of filming is recorded in the film. This is the opposite of when sound is dubbed on top of an existing, silent image. Direct sound can also mean something other than the clearly defined synchronized sound of Hollywood films- some documentarist, improvisatory and realist styles record sound directly using basic microphones.This is used in Taste of Cherry:

CLICK ON THE FILM REEL TO WATCH THE CLIP

The result maintains the use of direct sound at the expense of clarity. Incidental sounds (street noise, etc) are not mixed, but left "as normal". Impression and mood are favored over precision and not every word can be heared. The final souneds are blurred and harder to understand, but arguably closer to what we perceive in real life.

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NONSIMULTANEOUS SOUND

This is when diegetic sound that comes from a source in time either earlier or later than the images it accompanies. Like in this clip from Women On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown:

CLICK ON THE FILM REEL TO WATCH THE CLIP

While Pepa's voice is diagetic and simultaneous, Ivan's voice is also diegetic, and yet it is nonsimultaneous, since it comes from a previous moment in the film. This is used to establish a conversation that never took place but it her mind creating the moment. This use of nonsimultaneous sound is often used to suggest recurrent obsessions and other hallucinatory states.

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SOUND PERSPECTIVE

The sense of a sound's position in space, yielded by volume, timbre and pitch. Used to create a more realistic sense of space, with events happening (that is, coming from) closer or further away. Listen closely to this clip from The Magnificent Ambersons as the woman goes through her door and comes back.

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As soon as she closes the door her voice sounds muffled and distant (she is walking away), then grows clearer (she is coming back), then at full volume again, as she comes out. Sound perspective, combined with offscreen space, also gives us clues as to who or where   is in a scene.

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VOICE OVER

When a voice, normally of a character in the film, is heard while we see an image of a space and time in which that character is not actually speaking. The voice over is often used to give a sense of a character's subjectivity or to narrate an event told in flashback.

In the title sequence from The Ice Storm a voice over is used to situate the plot in time and to introduce the subject while also giving an indication of his main character's ideas and general culture.

CLICK ON THE FILM REEL TO WATCH THE CLIP

While a very common and useful device, voice over is an often abused technique. Over dependance on voice over to vent a character's thoughts can be interpreted as a lack of creativity. But voice over can also be used in non literal or ironic ways, as when the words a character speaks do not seem to match the actions he/she performs. Some avant garde films, for instance, make purposely disconcerting uses of voice over narration.