Sound Actually Makes Videos Better and Other Surprising Discoveries

When people bring up "visual mediums", you hear the usuals like painting, ceramics, and whatnot. But, also, you hear filmmaking thrown in there a lot. I find this very telling about how sneakily important sound is in film.

I learned this early on while studying film (thanks professor Haack) and also while working on my first handful of short films.

In Honey Bunches, the driving force of the film was the soundtrack. It was essentially a blue print of when to cut which drove the pace of the film. Not every visual moment is going to be particularly impactful on face value. Tension, pace, and impact have two channels to reach audiences. Visual and Auditory. Really developing the sound of your piece is an opportunity to create emotional beats where otherwise an audience might be waiting for the next visual development.

In Sesame Chicken, I attempted to utilize sound as a voice of its own rather than to purely fill in where the visuals are lacking. The soundscape we designed mimics the frantic internal monologue of the main character while also (like before) providing impactful beats to otherwise pretty static shots.

Translating that into day to day work in media production, it is particularly important in the social media landscape. I'd say I spend just as much time grading, sequencing, and cutting the visuals of a video as I do designing its sound.

In one of our recent instagram posts, we could've just filmed that sequence with our 360 camera and called it a day. But, by utilizing Foley sound to make the crunch of the juice box and its eventual toss and landing more impactful highlights and elevates those simple actions.

For instance, when having William look over the final moments of the video, he noted that the toss of the juice box was kind of lost in the fast paced visual mishmash. Therefore I brought forward some of the Foley sounds and recorded "woosh" sounds to lead the viewers by the ears to see the juicebox fly over his head.

Ultimately, not taking the time to design the sound for your videos is kind of a flop. While relatively simple, it gives you another lane to communicate to your audience and craft a feeling and story.