(Task 15) RESEARCH - Why is sound so important in a film?

THE IMPORTANCE OF SOUND IN A FILM

Sound is used in films to establish the 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 suspended belief to create realism for the viewer to heighten their experience of the film.

Before we analysed the importance of sound in a film, we defined the following words:

• Sound
• Soundscape
• Sound design
• 'Suspending disbelief'

Sound is simply everything that you hear in a film.
A soundscape is a combination of sounds.
Sound design is the process of generating an audio.
Suspended belief is putting aside disbelief to believe.

In the lesson, we looked at different sound terminologies.

• Wildtrack - An audio recording intended to be synchronised with film or video but recorded separately.
• Ambient sound - The background sounds which are present in a scene or location.
• Diegetic - Music represented as coming from instruments in the story place.
• Non-diegetic - Represented as coming from a source outside the story place.

The class then did the unity of image and sound task and watched a title sequence twice. The first time we watched it without sound and then we watched it with sound.

WITHOUT SOUND:

When watching the title sequence without sound, it felt awkward and boring after a while.

WITH SOUND:

We then later watched it with sound. It created a better understanding of what was going on to the audience.