In this article, Ufuk Önen recommends that the first step into the world of audio post-production for film and visual media should be to get a good grasp of what kinds of sounds there are in films and their functions rather than diving right into the technical side. This article is especially for you if you are starting out in audio post-production.

What Is Soundtrack?

It all starts with this question: What is 'soundtrack'?

The popular answer would be to say the music contained in a film, but surely it is way more than that? The soundtrack is the entire audio content of a film or video. All components of sounds in a film are collectively referred to as soundtrack.

 Now, let's break the soundtrack down into categories.

The soundtrack has three essential ingredients:

1. Human voices

2. Sound effects

3. Music

1 - Human Voices

Human voices in a film are monologues, dialogs, and voice-overs.

Monologues are speeches given by one actor. Its origin is the Greek word 'monologos,' which means speaking alone.

Dialogues are conversations between two or more people. While every effort is made to record dialogues as cleanly as possible during the filming, a proportion of the location sound ends up being unusable because film sets can be rather noisy places, and are often chosen for their look rather than their sound!

When the tragedy strikes, the dialogue is re-recorded in the studio during the post-production phase with a technique called ADR (Automatic Dialog Replacement). Originally called looping, the ADR process involves an actor watching the image repeatedly while listening to the original production track on headphones as a guide and re-performing each line to match wording, lip movements, and emotions.

In this video, featuring veteran ADR mixer Doc Kane of Walt Disney Studio you will see that there is nothing automatic about ADR. It requires lots of talent and hard work!

Most actors don't like ADR at all, but some do! This next video is an interesting anecdote from the legendary film editor and sound designer Walter Murch about Marlon Brando.

The third and final sub-category of human voices is the voice-over, usually the narration which can be a powerful storytelling tool. The most common use of a narrator is in the documentary genre, to the extent that the use of narration in film can be forgotten. From All About Eve to Apocalypse Now, Trainspotting to Fight Club, there are countless fiction films that utilise voice-over narration.

2 - Sound Effects

In film jargon, the term 'sound effects' refers to an entire hierarchy of sound elements that are recorded or electronically/digitally produced. Any sound that is not a human voice or music is generally accepted as a sound effect.

There are four main categories of sound effects: Principal effects, background sound effects, foley, and designed sound effects.

Principal effects, sometimes called hard effects, are the 'what-you-see-is-what-you-hear' type of sounds: You see a car passing by on the screen, you hear a car passing by. You see somebody firing a gun, you hear a gunshot sound. These sounds are usually, but not exclusively, recorded outside the studio by field recording teams.

Background sound effects (BGs), also called ambient sounds or ambience for short, are the sounds that are present in a location, whether it is indoor or outdoor. Although we label them as background, this does not mean they are not important. On the contrary, they are an essential part of the soundtrack because they indicate the setting to the audience. Traffic noises, forest sounds, a variety of noises heard in a large department store are all examples of background sound effects.

Foley sound effects are live sounds that are matched with the action in the film. They are created by foley sound artists by watching the picture and mimicking the actions with appropriate props. Foley is a combination of creativity and performance. This technique, which is still used today, is named after Jack Foley, who developed it in the 1930s at Universal Studios. Here is a great video demonstrating the art of foley.

Designed sound effects are sounds that do not exist in nature, therefore that are impossible to record. Examples would be monster sounds or sounds that refer to futuristic technology. This category requires not only creativity but also high-level technical audio expertise as well.

In this next video, the prominent sound designer Ben Burtt talks about his approach and process of designing sounds for Wall-E.

3 - Music

We can break down music in films into three sub-categories: Soundtrack, source music, and score.

Soundtrack - Even though, as we said at the beginning of this article that all sounds in a film are collectively referred to as soundtrack, the term ‘soundtrack’ is also used for the songs featured in a movie and for a collection (album) of them. These are often existing songs; in other words, they are not created for that movie.

Source music is a song or a piece of music that is visually performed or comes from a prop, such as TV or radio. For example, in the film, in a bar scene, we see a band playing. That music is source music.

I saved the best for the last: Score!

Score is the music composed exclusively for a film by a composer. A score's primary function is to heighten emotions provoked by the imagery and provide an emotional or atmospheric environment or background to the action on screen.

Film music composers compose their music following what happens on-screen - minute by minute, second by second, and even frame by frame. Unlike traditional and mainstream genres, film scores do not have a specific structure such as verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, verse, chorus, and so forth. Film scores are not based on traditional musical forms but on what appears on the screen.

Factors such as economics and studio contracts have an influence when it comes to choosing a composer for a film. However, the crucial element is the relationship between the composer and the director.

To learn more about composing music for film, check out Walter Everton’s excellent article How To Compose Music In Pro Tools.

Most directors are not musicians. Even though some directors do not understand the music jargon, the director and composer need to be able to speak the same language without talking about music. When the director says, "I want something sinister sounding here" or "I need to feel everything is opening up here," the composer needs to be able to translate that into music.

Long-lasting professional partnerships based on this, as exemplified by Steven Spielberg and John Williams, Alfred Hitchcock and Bernard Herrmann, Tim Burton and Danny Elfman, Christopher Nolan and Hans Zimmer, and Luc Besson and Éric Serra, to name a few.

In this next video, Hans Zimmer and Ridley Scott emphasize the importance of the relationship between directors and composers.

What’s Next?

I hope you have found this article helpful as an introduction to film sound. As I explained in the introduction, the first step in getting into the world of audio post-production for film and visual media is not diving right into the technical side but getting a good grasp of what kinds of sounds there are in a film and their functions. Enjoy your journey…