What is Sound?

In scientific terminology, sound is the result of the oscillation of an object which causes changes in air pressure. This creates longitudinal sound waves that reach the ear drum and causes this to oscillate also.

Some things associated with sound that are important to consider when recording sound for video or picture include:

• Wavelength
• Amplitude
• Frequency
• Period
• Envelopes
• Transients
• Reverberation
• Room tone/atmosphere
• Mono, stereo and surround sound

All of which I will discuss further in this blog.

The First Uses of Sound

Sound has been a significant part of film for thousands of years, whether this is digitally conducted or made physically with special equipment. In 3000BC specialist machinery was used in theatrical productions, which was one of the first instances of sound being used to accompany performance. Since then, other methods have been developed such as thunder machines back in the 1st Century BC, and ways of imitating sounds such as pistols and horse hooves in 1558-1603. Recorded sound was first introduced in 1837 when a phonograph was used to play the sound of a baby’s cry during a theatre performance.

Since 1977, technology has developed so that many more sounds can be created and used in TV as well as just performances or theatre settings. For example, Ben Burtt created the sound of the light saber for ‘Star Wars’ by recording the humming sound from an old projector and layering this with feedback from a microphone and TV set to achieve the perfect sound. Furthermore, another great example of sound being used effectively in film is ‘Das Boot’ where Mike Lemare used creaking and muffled rumbles of water to enhance the tense effect of the scene where a submarine is diving deep into the ocean whilst under attack.

Sound in film however does not just consist of just real recorded sounds. Anything from and including dialogue, foley sounds, special effects and ADR (automatic dialogue replacement) are often used in film today. Throughout this blog I am going to be discussing the use of these techniques and experimenting with them in my own recording of sound for picture.

My Blog Will Be…

Throughout the future of this blog I am going to update my process of undertaking 2 tasks. One of these will involve dubbing sounds over a 3 minute movie clip, and the other being recording dialogue and video together.

I will decide between the use of diegetic or non-diegetic sound, synching audio appropriately to video, as well as introducing necessary equipment such as DAWs, a variety of different microphones, audio hardware and plug ins whilst utilising a pre-production, production and post-production method throughout.