Components of Soundtrack

Filmmakers can include spoken words, sound effects, music and silence in the soundtrack. Each may be used in the usual manner, but each may also be used in surprising ways.

Dialogue is usually dominant and intellectual, music is usually supportive and emotional, sound effects are usually information. Their uses however, are not inflexible. Sometimes, dialogue is non-intellectual and aesthetic, sometimes music is symbolic, and on occasion sound effects may serve any of these functions. Any of these elements may be dominant or recessive according to the sharpness or softness of the sound and the relationship of the sound to the image.

(Murch, "Sound Designer", 298)

Possible Soundtrack Components

SPOKEN WORDS

• Dialogues and monologues, including vocals that convey meaning. For example, "hmmm" = "I dont know", "Let me think about that", or some other meaning depending on context.
• Narration = spoken comments on subjects on screen or off.

SOUND EFFECTS

• Sounds made by objects. Example: a falling tree crashing into an asphalt pavement.
• Sounds made by people (other than spoken words). Example: a person walking on gravel.
• Ambient sound = typically, usually unnoticed sounds of a place. Examples: the wind blowing through bckyard bushes, indistinct conversations at a party.

MUSIC

• Instrumental sounds

- Electronic. Examples: Moog synthesizer, Theremin, computer-generated music.
- Non-electronic materials. Examples: wood, plastic, glass, a combination of materials.
- Electronic and non-electronic combinations. Example: selective use of the Theremin and elsewhere orchestral music in The Day and Earth Stood Still (1951)

• Vocals. Examples: singing, chanting, humming, rhythmic grunting, rhythmic forced laughing, whistling, yodeling, the throat singing heard in the documentary Ghengis Blues (1999).

• Instrumental sounds and vocal combinations.

SILENCE
No Sound. Example: an astronaut tumbling lifelessly through space in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

Use of Sound in Films

During the 1986 Academy Awards ceremony, a clip from Chariots of Fire (1981) was shown of young men running on a beach accompanied by the sounds of feet splashing in water. Although the soundtrack may have been true to life, it was uneventful. Then the same footage was shown with the film's famous title music. The effect was so different that viewers felt as if they were seeing different footage.. The runners gained the grace of dancers, and action became special, more than life. It illustrated the importance of sound to the creation of vibrant cinema.

In movies, sounds usually seem lifelike. However, as with visuals, what seems true to life is an illusion. If you study sound in movies, you will notice that sounds we would normally hear are often omitted or replaced by music In movies, we do not question such sounds. (yet another movie convention). What are a few of the many ways that film sounds are created, how are film sounds often used, and, most important, how do they affect viewers? Lets check out the kinds of sounds used in films and their uses:

Spoken Words

• In films, spoken words may take the form of dialogs, monologues, or narration.
• Overlapping dialogue can create or reinforce a sense of nervousness, stress, and isolation.
• Spoken words, such as those by Darth Vader, may be distorted for effect.
• Dialogue is invaluable for revealing a character’s ideas, goals, and dreams, though often it does so more concisely, obliquely, and revealingly than conversation in life does.
• Although spoken words can be extremely expressive, many films and many film scenes rely heavily on visuals and use only limited spoken words.

Sound Effects

• Sound effects consist of sounds that objects make, sounds that people make other than spoken words, and ambient sound.

• Some of the many possible uses of sound effects are to help create a sense of location, intensify a mood, enhance a humorous situation, or conceal an action.

• Sound effects specialists have many options in manipulating sounds, such as playing them backward, playing them faster or slower than they were recorded, constructing them, and blending them in different proportions.

A still from the movie The Sound of Music

Music

• Film music may serve countless functions, such as to mirror a film’s central conflict, direct viewers’ attention, establish place and time, suggest what a character feels or an animal is like, and cover weak acting.

• Film music may reference earlier film music. Sometimes the same music is used; other times an approximation is composed and used.

• In large-budget movies, sometimes the film music is selected with an eye to future recorded music sales.

Silence

• Possible uses of silence in films include during dreams, to suggest dying or death, or to interrupt the regular rhythms of life’s sounds.

Transitions

• There are many possible ways to use sound between shots, such as to have the sound of the first shot end as the shot does.

• Sound transitions between shots are used to reinforce continuity or contribute to discontinuity. and dreams, though often it does so more concisely, obliquely, and revealingly than conversation in life does.

Sounds in narrative films may come from on-screen or offscreen and may derive from a source in the story or outside the story.