There's still a great deal of confusion going on here and I'm not sure why. All the professional directors and producers I've worked with over the years had anything from a relatively poor to an excellent ability to employ sound design. I say "relatively" because even those who weren't so good at employing it still had a reasonably good understanding of what sound design is.
Most are still talking about individual sounds, which is Sound Effects Design or Foley, not directly sound design. It's like everyone is talking about eggs, flour, sugar and milk and the importance and number of all the different types and varieties of these ingredients. Meanwhile, I'm trying to discuss the experience of eating a cake! As a serious cake maker, the first question I need to ask is; what do I want my customers to feel and experience when they eat my cake? Only by answering this question can I start to narrow down the potentially infinite number of variables; ingredients, proportions of ingredients, methods of combining them and ways of baking them.
Using the given example of a restaurant scene. Not thinking about sound design, just sound, our options are endless: A wide variety of walla, different boiling, frying and cooking sounds, all sorts of cooking utensils being used in all sorts of ways, all sorts of sounds of plates, glasses, cups and condiments containers being moved, used or put down. Cutlery sounds on plates, in cups, on saucers, on tables, bottles being opened, chairs scraping the floor, dishwashers, coffee and other food prep and drinks machines, customers and staff walking around, background music, background traffic or other "outside" sounds and, an almost endless variety of nearly every one the above potential "ingredients". Where do we start? We could just pick a few random ones, which we happen to have handy to throw into the bag, add a further few which are sync'ed to some foreground or background visual action and then move on to the next scene. Alternatively, should we wish to make an engaging film, we can think in terms of sound design rather than just vaguely appropriate sounds to support the visuals. We need to start with some questions:
First, what's the story? Not what's the dialogue or what's in the script, but what's the underlying story? Regardless of what words are coming out of the actors' mouths, what are their underlying intentions and emotions or, more pertinently, what do we want the audience to know of their intentions and emotions? Another question we have to ask is how do we want the scene to play? Are we talking quite light hearted, does it need pace and energy or should it be thoughtful, suspenseful or intimate? A well designed scene wouldn't be static, it would have changes in pace, mood, motivation and/or undercurrents. And lastly, we need to think about the context of the scene, what went before and what is coming next. For example, the contrast of a big loud action scene cutting to a quiet intimate restaurant scene would be quite shocking and would slow the pace of the film right down, maybe that's what we want the audience to experience or, maybe we want something entirely different. Only with these questions answered can we actually start the sound design because sound design is the craft/art of using sound to achieve these answers!! There, we now have a definition of sound design! Now we have these answers/goals, what next:
Consider these two facts: 1. When we sit in a restaurant in the real world, many of the potential restaurant sounds I mentioned above happen randomly but film isn't the real world. We can make something that appears to be random but isn't! 2. Different sounds create different emotional responses. For example, the pleasant chink of wine glasses, gentle laughter at another table or, the harsh unpleasant sound of a knife scratching on a plate, the screech of a chair dragged on the floor, the crash of mishandled plates, etc.
Combining these two facts, we can start to address some of our answers above. Maybe one of our characters has a line which appears innocuous but we want our audience to be aware of some potential undercurrent or threat. In our restaurant ambience there could randomly (sic) be more of the harsh, unpleasant sounds and less of the pleasant ones. Having said this, maybe we want the audience to really feel the intimacy, in which case there maybe virtually no background ambience at all or we might gradually arrive at a point where only the characters' dialogue and their personal Foley can heard. In practice we can vary the relative amounts and density of our background ambience throughout the scene, to build pace, tension or intimacy and to reduce it, to give our scene shape. Without shape, a static scene where nothing much happens, our audience is rapidly going to loose interest!
There are of course countless other sound design options. For example, when thinking about shape, a reset might be required. Maybe an extended pause before a change of mood or subject or perhaps more dramatically, maybe someone drops and smashes a plate or pile of pans. These types of sound design requires the film to be designed for the sound though, the characters have to respond and/or interact with the sound otherwise it simply won't be believable or effective. In general, characters, the camera or the lighting, etc., interacting with sound provides the richest/most powerful audio visual experience and is a backbone of modern filmmaking.
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Did any of you really read the article which Jax linked to, or did you just scan over it? Consider the paragraph which followed the one I quoted previously:
In order for that edit to be possible, Lievsay needed the footsteps of that young woman close at hand. He needed not just any footsteps, but ones that sounded like they were made by a low high heel of roughly the sort that women would wear in the mid-1970s crossing a wooden stage. ...
When Lievsay reached for that girl’s footsteps, he wasn’t going back into some old library – he was reaching into the library of Foley designed and created specifically for Cheadle’s film.
Question: If Lievsay had those bespoke Foley footsteps sitting there all the while, why weren't they already in the mix? Why did Cheadle stop the mix? The answer is sound design! Lievsay had eliminated the footsteps from the mix, even though it corresponded to a visual action, because he was trying to create intimacy, focus the audience's attention solely on the protagonists but Lievsay had misjudged the intent of the scene and Cheadle's explanation of what he wanted the audience to experience caused a re-design.
Let's be very precise. There was no "Sound Design" role in traditional film titles.
Traditionally there was NO "Sound Designer" credits until Walter Murich and Ben Burt. They were responsible for creating "soundscapes" or special effects in Apocolypse Now and Star Wars.... Walter was the first to receive the credit, but Burt made it famous.
To be honest I don't think that is very precise! There was no one credited as Sound Designer before Murch but there certainly was sound design long before. Soundscapes and SFX were employed by many great filmmakers, starting decades earlier with Hitchcock and Welles. What Burtt and particularly Murch did which was so different to what went before is that they took sound out of the murky post-production closet and brought it into pre-production. What Murch did for Apocalypse Now wasn't solely about designing sound for film, it was at least as much about designing the film for sound!! That is what is so revolutionary about what they did. While directors like Hitchock, Leone, Lumet, Kubrik and others certainly designed and shot their films with sound design in mind, Murch (and Burtt) took it to a whole new level. Murch actually re-wrote parts of the script of Apocalypse Now during pre-prod, he worked closely with the director and cinematographer throughout pre-prod, to modify the shotlist, angles and what would appear in the frame, all to maximise the effectiveness of sound design and ultimately, of maximising the audience experience. Let's not forget, prior to Star Wars, all directors were effectively limited to mono sound. Surround Sound bought a whole new level of complexity to sound and a whole lot more creative options and opportunities to manipulate the audiences' experience. The film business has always been highly competitive and the most successful directors are the most successful because they use every means at their disposal to maximise their audiences' experience. With the newly available audio technology, it was just a matter of time before specialist sound designers helping to design the film for sound became standard practice.
Because that is sound design's entire purpose: being able to tell the story without the visuals ...
Can't agree with this statement at all. Film sound design is not about being solely responsible for telling the story, that road leads to the sound fighting the visuals! Sound design is ALL about the interaction of sound and visuals, to create a unified storytelling experience.
I'm not interested in 'mood.' I want natural lighting with minimum shadows. I want as close to 360 lighting with the 4 lights I have. I can' afford to think about 'mood.' If the 'mood' in my movie is wrong, so be it. I'll think about it a little, and then I'll stop thinking about it, because I have a scene to finish shooting, even if it is the wrong 'mood.'
Why are you making films? What is your purpose, what are you trying to achieve? I'm not trying to be combative, I'm trying to understand.
I recognize the need for good lighting. I recognize the need for good sound design. But you're making things more complex than they need to be in my situation.
Huh? Get an iphone, find someone with a cute kitten and film it until it does something stupid. There you go, you've dramatically simplified your filmmaking and you'll get millions of more views on youtube than you've ever had before! I ask again, why are you making narrative films?
G
. The help I need cannot be received on most internet forums.