Notable Sound Designers

The sound designer for a movie is a very crucial part of the success surrounding it. For example, the music in Steven Spielberg's "Jaws" when the shark is approaching is extremely iconic and is the most recognisable thing about the film.

Walter Murch

Walter Murch is an extremely credit-worthy sound designer, having worked with legendary directors such as George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola. He worked on George Lucas' "THX 1138", "American Graffiti" and worked on Francis Ford Coppola's "The Godfather Part I & II", "The Conversation" and "Apocalypse Now" for which he won an Academy Award in 1979.



Notice the sound of the rotor blades from the helicopters panning from left to right as they fly past (especially effective on headphones), and the combination of the sound from the blades combined with the image of the ceiling fan.

Ben Burtt

Ben Burtt is an incredibly famous sound designer who has worked on films such as "Star Wars", "Inavsion of the Body Snatchers", "E.T. The Extra Terrestrial", "Wall-E" and the "Indiana Jones" series.





The iconic sounds of the lightsabers amongst other small things were all created by Ben Burtt.

Verbal Vilgilante 

Jode Steele and David Wainwright, A.K.A. "Verbal Vigilante" are two sound designers who specialise in huge percussion and orchestral scores for film and TV. They have a section on their website outlining their projects on movies such as "Skyline", "Shark Knight 3D", "In Time", "Dream House" and "Tremors".

Lon Bender

Lon Bender is the Supervising Sound Editor/Designer for movies such as "Shrek", "The Butterfly Effect" and "Drive". His work on "Drive" is what brought him to my attention, as one of the most brilliant things about the film is the sound. It is an extremely stylish movie without a massive amount of dialogue, so the non-diegetic sounds like the ambient music are relied upon to carry scenes, and is extremely effective and sometimes almost surreal. There is also a lot of retro-esque music in the film, which when combined with subtle things such as the bright pink font of the titles, really give off a 1980s Miami feel, whilst still sporting a stylish modern day vibe.

Sound Effects, Sound Libraries and the "Doppler Effect"

Sound effects and sound libraries are used all over films and it is pretty much guaranteed that there will be at least one instance of this in every film and TV show you watch.

Jack Foley is widely known as the initial founder of adding post-production sound effects to film. The reason this process takes place is because some sound effects could be hard to record on-set and need to be more distinguished, need to be taken from the sound of something else or need to be edited to achieve the desired sound. People who record sound effects separately from the film are known as "Foley artists".

Here is an excellent example of Foley artists using many different things to emulate sounds from a film.

You can see that they are experimenting with many different objects to achieve a fitting sound for the movie, whilst watching the film to keep it in time.

An example of a sound being taken from somewhere else is the process used to create the laser blast sound from George Lucas' "Star Wars" movies. Sound designer Ben Burtt climbed a radio tower and used a hammer to strike one of the guide wires whilst recording it to produce this famous sound.

Another example of this lies in Peter Jackson's "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring". David Farmer, who is the sound designer for the Lord of the Rings movies, used a cinder block scraping along a wooden floor at varied speeds to create the sound of the Balrog's movement, and the crackling sound which accompanies the roar of the creature is created using a mixture of rocks crashing together.

 

Ben Burtt (mentioned previously), who is the sound designer for the Star Wars movies, used a very interesting method for creating the famous sounds of the lightsabers in the films, as explained in the following video.

The sound of the lightsaber moving when a microphone is waved past the sound source is created by the scientific principal known as the "Doppler Effect". This is the apparent change in the frequency of a wave caused by motion between the sound source and the observer.

For example, if you were to stand at the side of a road and a car drove past you, the sound waves given off by the car as it approaches are compressed against the front of the car making it appear to be higher pitched. Then when the car passes, the sound waves at the back of the car are flowing off of it and are spaced further apart, making the sound appear to be lower in pitch.

 

This is a visualisation of a sound wave. The further apart the waves are, the lower the sound, and the closer together the waves are, the higher the sound.

Here is a video of the practical experimentation of the Doppler Effect using the example I explained earlier.

Non-Pitched Atmospheric Sounds

Non-pitched atmospheric sounds are used in film making to create a similar feeling to what the score tries to establish, but in a more subtle fashion. They aren't usually very noticable unless you're looking for them, but will still have the effect regardless of if you're aware of a sound being played.

A brilliant example of the effectiveness of atmospheric sounds is Orin Peli's "Paranormal Activity". Often throughout the film, when there is a silence, an extremely low rumble is used to create subtle suspense and a feeling of uneasiness in the viewer.

Note how the extremely low frequency sound stops as soon as the door slams shut. The sound is used to build suspense, to make the viewer aware that something is going to happen. This is very effective on high end sound systems such as those in cinemas where the subwoofers can produce extremely low sounds. Found footage movies like this generally have no score or non-diegetic sounds, so these techniques are usually relied on to keep it subtle and make it feel more realistic than high-budget blockbuster.

Another great use of non-pitched sounds is found in Darren Aronofsky's "Requiem for a Dream". This scene depicts two friends who are in a prison cell and one of them has an extremely infected arm due to heroin abuse.

The sounds in this scene seem to be some kind of highly distorted screeching, and are used in direct conjuction with the video (heavily shaking image) to create the feeling of overwhelming desperation among the two characters. Notice how the sounds get louder and the image shakes more violently as the characters get louder and more desperate for help.

My third and final example is from Danny Boyle's "127 Hours" which is a true story of a man named Aron Ralston who is trapped in a narrow canyon due a small boulder being wedged on his arm. After spending around five days in the canyon, he decides that he must amputate his arm in order to be freed, which is recreated in this scene.

The most obvious and effective sounds in this particular scene are the stinging screech sounds which are heard whenever he touches the nerve in his arm. These give us a feeling of something that is extremely unpleasant, and the noise is akin to that of nails on a blackboard which is known to make a person cringe, much like the thought of doing what he is doing to himself in this scene.

Musical Scores

A "musical score" is the audio composed to accompany moving images (movies, TV shows, short films for example). The score is an extremely integral part of the film medium and can greatly enhance the feel of what the image is trying to establish, or completely change its feeling altogether. Most films would not be viewed upon the same way without their music. Due to music being proven to alter a person's mood and emotions, it serves as an excellent method of excentuating story telling by involving the viewer further than what images alone could.

The following clip is taken from Frank Darabont's "The Green Mile" in which a man, whom we've come to grow compassionate for, is excuted for a crime we as an audience know he did not commit.

This scene contains extremely melancholic subject matter, and is reflected in the music which is a slow orchestral piece that ascends and grows more emotional as the character is getting closer and closer to death.

Another example of a film's score being used in an effective way is in the opening title sequence of  Steven Spielberg's "Catch Me If You Can". The movie is about a con artist who is being trailed by the FBI for cheque forgery amongst other things.

As you can see, the music is composed in way which is reminiscent of slapstick style espionage, whilst also fitting extremely well with the era in which the movie is set (around the 1960s). The images on screen are of animated cartoon silhouettes with a very distinguished art style, which again, is very slapstick in it's feel. It personally reminds me of the Pink Pather theme, and sets the tone of the film exceptionally well.

An example of how the music can change the feeling of a scene is this clip from Quentin Tarantino's "Reservoir Dogs". The scene involves a psychopath who tortures a police officer for no reason other than to torture him (boldly established earlier in the scene).

This is an example of a song which wasn't directly composed for the movie. The song playing in the scene is called "Stuck in the Middle with You" by Stealers Wheel, which is upbeat and is of a completely different nature to what is being shown on screen. The use of this music could  be viewed as a double entendre due to it changing the tone of the scene to something much less horrific, but it makes the character seem even more psychotic in the way that he dance to the music can nonchalantly torture a person. This is an iconic scene from the movie, in large part due to the music.

My fourth and final example of musical scores is taken from Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho". The following clip is one of the most famous scenes in the history of film making for a number of reasons, and the movie itself was a genre defining classic.

I was lucky enough to find a clip of the famous shower scene with and without it's score. The composition has clearly been created specifically for this scene due to the high pitched, staccato orchestra stings which are very much like the sharp and stabbing knife in the scene. This method of composition creates an atmosphere of panic, and is then immediately switched to low pitched droning after the woman has been killed, symbolic of her life draining away. This video shows that the effectiveness of this scene is utterly dependent on the score due to it being signficantly dulled and less efficacious to the viewer, with all due respect.