Print Article
BookMark Article
10 newest articles RSS
Background Sound Effects Cutting For Movies And TV Shows
Author : Doron Feldmann
Submitted : 2011-07-06 15:34:52 Word Count : 670 Popularity: 53
Tags: Sound Effets, free, wav, wave, mp3, downloads, libraries
The 3 main types of sound we edit in films as well as tv shows are referred to as hard effects, Foley, and background sound effects. The difference between them are primarily their length. Hard effects will normally short sounds like gunshots, light switches, a big slap on face, glass breaking, and so forth. Background sound effects generally start at the beginning of the scene and carry on all the way to the finish of the scene. For instance, if a scene we cutting is staged at a city park, we'll almost always contain sounds like birds chirping or singing from the starting of the scene all the way to the finish of the scene although birds are usually not seen all of the time or in a lot of cases, not seen in any way.
Why do we have to have a background sound ?
If you ever before check out the footage of a film as it had been recorded on location you'll realize that it's fairly dead as much as background sounds. For example, when you see a scene inside a bar you will see lots of men and women talking but you will only hear the dialogue of the main characters. The way this really is done is the fact that the people who you see talking are actually pretending to be speaking or speaking in fairly low voices. Clearly, this really is highly unnatural for us to watch considering within real bar there really are a great deal of people talking. If the men and women inside the bar were talking normally, that would have made it hard for the mixer to blend it in a way that the viewers can easily comprehend the dialogue of the main character (which is at all times the most important).
In order to make it much more natural, the sound editor can add in a sounds of people speaking (sometimes called "Walla"). He will also add other sound to help the scenes sound more real such as glass cups clinking, drinks mixing, room-tone, maybe an off stage pool game and more.
What is room tones? In almost any space you enter you'll hear some type of noise. It might be from your air condition, it can be because the city traffic outside, it could be from a refrigerator and some thing else. You will not always notice it but our brain is quite use to hearing those sounds all the time. So to make the movie as natural to our ears as real-life, you always add room-tones on internal scenes. When scenes are external, we have the choice of adding traffic or wind. Also to making the film appear more natural by adding those sounds, those sounds are also helpful for the dialogue mixer because the dialogue coming in to the mix stage may well have times that a background noise in the dialogue recordings have noticeable changes or holes. A background sounds are helpful to mask those holes.
But, the most important reason we add sound effects is to make the film or Television show richer. The backgrounds are excellent for setting the mood that your director wants the audience to experience. As an example, it is possible to have two different movies which might be shot at the precise same location in the city, let's say one romantic movie and one suspenseful. In a romantic movie we can place light city traffic elements, almost no horns, wind in the trees, as well as birds. At the suspenseful film we can add very heavy city traffic, other people honking , police siren, nervous people voices, Police helicopters, and so on. Along with music, the background sounds are amazing tool of setting the atmosphere for a movie.
Have fun cutting
David Mann
Author's Resource Box
David Mann is a sound designer leaving as well as editting in Holliwood California, David is also the owner of http://www.freshcutsoundeffects.com online royalty free sound store.
Article Source:
Articles Alive