3 Common Mistakes Young(er) Sound Designers Make –Part 2

Please enjoy the second installment of guest blogger Nathan Madsen.

Avoid islands of sounds surrounded by silence.  Silence has its place in media, sure, but you don’t want to over use it. By only supporting obvious events and elements in my early trailers and media I was ending up with this effect:

sound ----- silence ----- sound ----- silence ----- sound ------ silence

This wasn’t helping my media move forward with momentum. It was like a car sputtering along the road trying in vain to make it to the goal. How is that going to help sell the story and create a rememberable experience? Now that I'm more experienced with sound design, I notice this same issue when evaluating young (or new) sound designer's work. When working with media try scoring sound elements that are of various layers: up close sounds, distant far away sounds. The goal of your sound design is to create an experience where I can know most of what’s going on without the visuals. I can understand the mood, environment and most of the actions by just hearing the sounds. Different people have different work methods, so I’m not going to say one way is right over another but I will tell you how I work through a project. I divide the project into section and tackle either the big moments first or take on those spots that really inspire me and give me a clear vision of what I want it to sound like. After I’ve hit the milestones in that section, I go back and fill in the rest of the audio experience. I fill in the gaps with ambient sounds as well as see how I can create tension and relaxation that fits the pacing and events of the film. These works well because I’ve identified the big moments, created and synced sounds for those events and then know where my high points in the sound will be. Now it’s easier for me to make sure that my other audio doesn’t steal the show or get in the way of the events I want to draw focus on.

Example:  http://www.madsenstudios.com/Vexille.swf

(music placement, sound design and voice over production by Nathan Madsen)

Take note of how the sound design continues, in some degree, during the many text slates as well as helps with some of the visual changes. Without any sounds happening on the text slates there would be many gaps in this trailer and it would seem to drag on much more. I’ve also started the sound design before several changes to help the visual anticipate the change. Two key spots are ocean ambience before the scene change and the dirt sounds of the “vehicle” driving. Another element that was actually shared, in a way, was when the “Jags” burst out of the ground, fly up then in the next scene when the window breaks. This helped create an increasing pace to make the later part of this trailer more exciting.

Side note: For this trailer I actually arranged the music and voice over as well and many of the same principals apply as well. Some of the dialog happens before the change of a scene to help bridge various parts of the trailer together. The music changes as the main mood and intensity of the trailer changes as well. It’s interesting to see how music and sound design often work in tandem to help support the visuals. If you happen to work on both music and sound design for media, don’t forget this.

In the final section of this article, Nathan will discuss constructing sound design like a piece of music as well as share some final thoughts.