So everyone is telling you to hire a sound designer on your next project, but what does a sound designer even do? At their best, a sound designer brings an audience into your world — immerses them in your story — in ways that are often taken for granted, and more often underutilized. Maybe the best way to understand the basics of what a sound designer does is to understand the vocabulary.
Here is a quick rundown of some basic terms that will help you communicate with a sound designer or — if you’re doing it yourself — help you communicate basic sound design principles to your team.
READ MORE: Watch: Here’s How the ‘Jurassic World’ Team Created Realistic Dinosaur Sounds
Foley: Foley is any sound that needs to be recorded and performed to picture, for instance, someone walking or scribbling on paper or putting on a jacket. Rather than pulling files from a sound library, these sound effects work so much better when you can watch a screen and perform the sound over and over again until you get it exactly right. Foley work is very precise. If someone is putting on a jacket, you have to consider the type of material the jacket is made of, how much force they’re using to put on the jacket, and with how much speed. The interesting thing about Foley effects is that you might not discern or focus on these types of sounds in real life. Your brain often filters them out as unimportant. But a good sound designer uses these effects to push and pull the audience’s attention around the screen. If you want your audience to pay attention to that man in the crowd who’s bending down to tie his shoes (what’s he up to?), use Foley effects to help direct their attention.
Hard Effects: Hard effects are often pulled from sound libraries. These sounds can be more percussive, like an explosion, a punch, or a slamming car door. Of course, all of these sounds have to be recorded at some point, but they can be synced and modified over and over again for multiple purposes. There are tons of sound libraries out there (some of my favorites are Boom Library, Hiss and a Roar, The Recordist and Rabbit Ears Audio), or you can start building a library of your own.
Cerebral Effects: These are the effects you’ll use to bridge the gap between sound effects and music — and the possibilities are endless. While all sound design helps tell your story, cerebral effects do the most blatant work. They’re emotional. When the big revelation happens at the end of Act Two, you might hear a cymbal scrape or roll. The audience might not be aware of the sound, but they’re aware of the emotion it creates. Cerebral effects are a shift in thinking: from realism to hyperrealism. Your decisions are based more off of how you want your audience to feel. The sun shimmers on the ocean, and you hear it shimmer, which makes you feel the shimmer. In a dark environment, something trembles or rumbles. You feel the darkness.
READ MORE: The Keys to Music and Sound Design from the Sundance Lab
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