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Sound Design for Cinematic Filmmaking | My Process
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- Audio plays a huge role in how a film feels, and sound design is a big part of that. It helps shape the flow and pacing of a film, adds depth to the edit, and connects the viewer to what’s happening
- on screen in ways they might not even realize. It’s what makes a scene feel immersive, whether through subtle ambience or dramatic sound effects. As filmmakers, it's easy to fall into the
- trap of obsessing over our visuals. But sometimes, in that process, we forget that audio is just as important. Just like lighting or color grading sets
- a visual mood, sound design does the same—but on a deeper level. But where Do We Start?
- the vocals are usually the most important sound in a video which can be dialogue or voice-over, carrying the story and information
- which you don’t want to get lost in the mix by being too quiet or overpowered by other elements. Next we might have some background music which is super important to help set the foundation
- of the pacing and overall mood of the video. And I personally sometimes like to find the music before I even start shooting. And while this approach might not work for every type of video, this can
- help me visualize the overall feel and energy of the project and even influence how I decide to shoot. And once those are in place, I start focusing on the sound design elements, beginning with…
- Ambience or Environmental Sounds Ambience is often the first layer of sound design that I add to the timeline
- and it's the background noise used to help establish the environment the scene takes place in and make your scene feel alive and immersive. It shouldn't be overpowering,
- just be there in the background. Depending on your scene, it could be things like wind and subtle city noise, or lapping water and some birds chirping. They’re subtle but crucial
- for grounding your audience in the setting. Then we layer in our sound effects which I like to group into two main categories.
- First, there's sounds that come from the actual environment like a car door closing, footsteps, or just anything in your scene that you feel would make a sound.
- Just like ambience, these don't necessarily draw much attention to themself but they are essential for creating a solid foundation.
- Foley also falls under this category which is when you record the sounds yourself, specifically for the project to sync to the on screen actions.
- Then we have the creative sound effects which are added as a creative choice rather than realism. It can be anything from whooshes, impacts and risers or just any other sound
- you can think of to elevate your scene or story. Whooshes are incredibly versatile and I use them to make cuts, transitions and movements feel more intentional.
- And risers are a powerful tool for building anticipation and suspense. One of the most common uses of risers is building up to a reveal or smoothening out the cut to a
- different environment or energy level. Which leads me to the next point The absence of sound is just
- as important as the presence of it. Just like blending fast-paced handheld movements with static shots gives an edit room to breathe,
- we can apply same principle to sound design. Instead of filling every second with layers of sound, Silence, or even just a quieter moment,
- builds contrast and makes the returning of the sounds or music even more impactful. The fun thing about sound design is that it doesn't have to be literal. Just because you
- see something on screen doesn’t mean you have to match it with the exact sound it would make in real life. Instead, think about how you want the audience to feel and experiment
- with different sounds to reinforce that emotion. I could make it sound like rain outside, or like someones playing music outside my door, when in reality I don't even have neighbours.
- Also, if I want a tuk tuk to sound like a sports car, I can. Before we jump into some sound design techniques I just want to talk about the place I always go
- to when searching for high quality sound effects, which is Artlist. which was also kind enough to sponsor this video. They are an all in one website for all kinds of assets
- you might need for your filmmaking process. I’ve used their music and sound effects since the start. And their sound library is seemingly endless so whatever sound you’re looking for,
- there’s a good chance you’ll find not just one, but multiple options that could fit your scene. One of my favourite additions to their music library especially when it comes
- to sound design is that many songs include stems. That gives you as an editor creative freedom to build the perfect underscore for your story. If there's some distracting instrument in a song,
- you can just mute that track and make the song to fit your video. Apart from their extensive SFX and music, they have stock footage, video templates, an AI
- voiceover generator, LUTs and they are constantly updating and adding new things for us creators to use. So it will be an exciting year ahead. They have several different subscription
- plans to fit your needs, all cleared for commercial use. So if you want to dive more into sound design or anything else to make your videos come to life I have
- a link in the description that give you 2 months for free if you decide to sign up. Thank you, Artlist, for supporting the channel. Let’s move on to some of my favorite sound design techniques.
- One of the most important sound design techniques to make your sounds more realistic is to use panning to position sounds either to the left speaker or to the right speaker.
- Here's a shot of us cycling in Japan without any panning and with panning.
- Subtle panning can make your soundscape feel more dynamic and realistic. a great way to smooth out your cuts and to make them feel more seamless when transitioning from
- scene to scene, is to use a J-cut. That means that the audio from the next clip starts playing before the visual cut happens. you do that by extending the audio to the left and gradually
- fade it in before the clip appears. Being able to hear the sounds before the cut really helps to hide the cut and make it feel motivated. And to also let the audio of the previous scene linger
- as the visuals change is called an L-cut. These techniques make edits flow a bit better. Even if the cut is to something completely different. Here's the audio timeline from my japan video
- and here you can see all Jcuts and Lcuts of the blue ambience tracks fading in and out. There are a few ways you can enhance sound effects and tweak them to make
- them fit into the environment better. In most editing programs there's a bunch of built in audio effects to choose from but there are three that I tend to use on every single project.
- The first one is reverb which is used to create a sense of space and atmosphere, making sounds feel like they actually belong in the environment. For example, a small room should only have a tiny
- amount of reverb, while a large church would have a much bigger and echoey sound. The size of the space determines how much reverb you need.
- Or if a certain sound effect sounds a dry and abrupt you can use reverb to make the sound feel larger and more fluid. Reverb can also help push sounds further into the background. Right now these birds
- sounds really weird and up close, but the more reverb you add the more it sounds like the waves are coming from a distance.
- EQ is also something I use in every single project which you can use to both decrease or increase different audio frequencies. It's a great tool for enhancing voices
- But you can also use it to create room for different sounds. For example, if I have a music track and a voice over track that uses a lot of the same frequencies, I could remove some of those frequencies of the voice from
- the music to make the voice be more prominent. Another use of EQ is to create a high pass or low pass filter. High pass will cut out the low frequencies of your audio and low pass
- will cut out all the high frequencies. You can use this effect to mimic for example different speakers, like this phone speaker or you can make a the audio sound muffled or like
- it's underwater. Here's how a normal waves sound effect sounds like when I add the low pass filter. Now we've come to the last step of the process which is the mixing, where you wanna make sure
- that nothing is too loud or too quiet and that the levels are consistent throughout the video. After you've added a bunch of sounds to the timeline, it's easy for the audio levels
- to start creeping into the reds. If your audio is clipping, it will not sound very good once you export the video. But let's say you're happy with your overall mix but the levels are
- still too high, then you can just lower the master volume which in this case it Bus 1 to make sure nothing is peaking. A quick tip if you use Davinci, is in the deliver page under audio,
- and audio normalization we have the option to normalize our entire mix to meet different audio loudness standards. So I usually tick this to prevent additional audio compression from Youtube.
- Before you press publish it’s a good idea to listen to your film in different speakers to make sure everything sounds like it should. Sound design is a super powerful tools for
- creating more immersive videos. And it can be a little bit terrifying when you see someones timeline and it's like hundreds of audio tracks stacked on top of each other.
- And also since sound design can be so abstract. You can basically do whatever you want. But by just watching your clips, figuring out what sounds that are present in those
- specific environments, and what feelings you want the audience to get when they watch it, then you've already come a long way. And sometimes don't need
- more than one or two layers of sound. I know sound might not be the most fun topic to be talking about, and if you made it this far that means you're still awake, which is great.
- And I hope this video has inspired you a little bit to experiment more with sound design as it's such an crucial part of the viewers experience. And don't forget the 2 additional months of an artlist subscription linked below.
- Thank you so much for watching, see you in the next one.