Surrounded By Sound

Music changes everything. For that matter, sound can create its very own world within the cinematic universe. Mundane images become alive, dynamic, and overall more interesting. An image on the screen may be beautiful and colorful within its own right, but may very easily loose attention. But add sound to those images, be it music or a designed soundtrack, the image instantly engages with the audience. As any film student learns in the most basic of classes, music tells people how to feel about the image. But sound does not just involve the use of music. The subtle nuances of sound design, the quality of one sound over another, the level of different sounds, can create an entire world all unto themselves. Remove image from the soundscape and you could still determine your general location and perhaps even some activity happening in the scene. But lay the created soundscape over an image and it comes alive. Images can also be made to stand out when the sound and image do not match one another.

It was extremely interesting to read Acoustic Ecology. I do not think it is often in the everyday that we stop to pay attention to the sounds around us outside. The birds, wind rustling the leaves, water running, frogs croaking. Then there are the man-made sounds that punctuate the natural soundtrack. Cars, sirens, air conditioning units, the Clock Tower. It was not until recently when working on sound for a class project last semester. It seemed there was something not right about the video, even though it was in the final stages of editing. Some of our interviews had been shot with people in the surroundings as well as outdoors. It was the ambient sound that made the image lacking. When the problem was corrected, we found our project much better. Or at least as good as an intro class video can be!