16. The Importance of Sound

The Importance of Sound in film

Sound is used to establish tone, atmosphere and to help give the audience clues about the plot, characters or to identify the Genre of the film.

It is also used to help 'suspend disbelief' to create realism for the viewer and heighten their experience of the film.

There have been many developments in sound and sound design over the course of film history and we now have the technology to ensure that a film's sound is a 3 dimensional experience that makes the film enjoyable to hear as it is to watch.

Sound is what we hear and the soundscape is a piece of music considered in terms of its component sounds, sound design is the process of specifying, manipulating and generating audio elements.

The unity of image and sound - SOUND IS 50%

During this lesson, we watched a title sequence twice; once with and without sound.

1. What we discovered from this is when they played the sequence without sound there was no excitement. I felt as if i was getting distracted away from the film and it was quite boring and confusing as i didn't understand anything that was going on.
2. When watching the sequence with sound, there was a significant difference as it was more entertaining and i was interested as the sound interests the audience and is more engaging and informative. It was easier to understand what genre the film was based on the music being played in the background, also the dialogue of the characters etc.