Lecture on sound week 1, session 1, day 3.

Week 1, day 3.

Sound principles and terminology

Sound is one of the primal senses developed first. We use sound and visuals together, to create meaning, and make sense of the world. Our brains naturally tries to make sense of what we see and hear.

Elements of sound:
- Dialogue
- music (foreground or background)
- Foley ('realistic' sounds of characters and their actions)
- Sound design

You can only use 2 and a half type of sounds at a time, other wise it becomes overwhelming.
 Sound can be used to suggest a mood
Set a place
Indicate a geographical location
indicate a historical period
clarify the plot
define a character
connect ideas, characters, places or moments
heighten ambiguity or diminish it
heighten realism or diminish it
draw attention to detail or away from it
indicate changes in time
smooth otherwise abrupt changes between shots or scenes
 empathises transition for dramatic effect
exaggerate action
startle or soothe


Loudness = amplitude, volume and lain measured in decibels (db)

DB = How loud the wave is.

Sounds can have long/short attacks (attack is the loudest part of the sound), and long/short decays (how long it takes to fade away.)
The length of the attack and the decay of a sound is called an envelope, different sounds have different envelopes.
Reverberation, reverb for short, is how sound waves is effected by the environment.
Reverbs of sounds gives us information about the area we are in, for examples sounds that bounce off a tall building echo.
In film, a reverb that does not match the area is more of metaphorical distance, for examples flash backs.

Frequency is pitch measured in hertz (Hz), humans can hear a range from 20-2000 hz.
We can hear certain  pitches more because our ears are more sensitive to certain frequency's.
However some peoples hearing is better than others, making loudness subjective.

normally, things that are smaller have a higher frequency, and larger things have lower frequency.