SOUND USING SMARTPHONES
CLASS ABOUT AUDIO
Audio is really important. 80% of film is sound
Live sound is very different than recorded sound. In real life we are marvelously able to cut out (from our hearing) any extraneous sounds and focus on single sounds...
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Imagine a noisy party in which you are having a conversation with one person. This becomes very difficult to do as a listener of recorded material... that's where audio editing comes in... you must mimic
What is sound?
It is basically a pattern formed in the vibration or movement of molecules of air. When a sound is made, air molecules move out from the source in waves. The waves radiate out 360 degrees and in 3 dimensions from the source until it dissipates.
Sound is intentional vs. noise which is unwanted or unintentional
In very general terms, a sound wave has two important characteristics: intensity and pitch
Intensity
Intensity = wave amplitude = volume = loudness
This is a measurement of the height of the sound wave. Measured in decibels = dB
The human ear responds to a great range of sound intensities from 0dB *threshold of hearing) to 135dB *the threshold of pain)
VU meter in sound production is a volume unit measure
Look for examples
Loudness / in post/production, the audio levels are between -12 an -6 dB. “0” should not be reached. In live production, 0 is considered the maximum desirable sound level. 0 is also called “Unity”
Pitch = frequency
Refers to the characteristic of the sound. Refers to how often the wave repeats itself in one second
Measured in the number of cycles per second = Hz.
The lower the number the deeper or more bass the sound
Pitch
Audio theory, recording equipment, sound recording techniques.​
Audio is digitalized, two factors come into play: sampling rate and bit depth. The more samples per second, the better the audio quality.
Acoustics
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Most sound booths incorporate different types of soundproofing materials
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Hard walls < tile floors will allow too much reverberation.
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Reverb - sound remaining after the original sound stops.
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Too much soundproofing causes a dead, lifeless sound.
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Ideal room for recording and listening has free/standing, sound/absorbing items (furniture, rugs)
Temporal items
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A sound or sound event has a structure and temporality
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The initiation of the sound is called the attack
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This is followed by a sustain> how long is it held? How long is it at full volume?
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Finally the sound fades away = decay.
Types of sound in film
3 main types of sound:
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1. Voice: dialogue, interview, narration, voice over.
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2. Sound effect: sound design, noise. It add realism to a scene.
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​Synchronous: sound matches what we see (ie. Someone playing the piano, the sounds of a piano are heard)
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Asynchronous: we don't see the source of the sound (ie. The sound of an ambulance is used as background sound while the image portrays an arguing couple).
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3. Music: Background music adds emotion and rhythm. Not meant to be noticeable
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Provides a tone or emotional attitude toward the story and/or the characters depicted.
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Could foreshadow an event, an approaching menace, etc.
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Can be used to links scenes (ie. A motif for a particular character)
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Presence
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Provides a continuous sounding background
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May smooth pauses in dialogue and give the feeling of life in a deadened studio recording >> Otherwise we would perceive there to be a failure of the sound system
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Theory
French sound theorist Michel Chion has described
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Casual: The most common form consists of listening to a sound in order to gather information about its cause (or source)
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The source can be visible or invisible with similar effects on us
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Think of a phone ringing... it can be in the scene or “off screen”
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Can also be more ambiguous in that what we recognize is only the general nature of the sound's cause
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For instance we may (unconsciously) tell ourselves “that must be a mechanical sound”.
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Semantic listening: refers to a code or a language to interpret a message: spoken language as well as other kinds of codes
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It is something we interpret in aid of the narrative
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A spoken word is not abstract... it has a linguistic meaning regardless of tone or accent.
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Reduced listening. A mode of listening that focuses on the traits of the sound itself, independent of its cause or its meaning .
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It takes the sound — verbal, musical, sound effects or whatever — as itself the object to be observed instead of as a vehicle for something else.
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The descriptive inventory of a sound can’t be understood in one listening
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- often used for ambience or presence or more unconscious effects
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- very important in relation to “Sound Art”
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Microphone
There are different types of microphones, but they all do the same thing. They transform acoustical movements (the vibrations of air created by the sound waves) into electrical
vibrations. This conversion is relatively direct and the electrical vibration can then be amplified, recorded or transmitted.
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Deciding on kind of microphone to use depends on what you want and there you are recording
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Omni - will pick up 380 degrees around it therefore doesn’t emphasize any one direction or location
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Cardioid - will not pick up very much sound from behind it. Used for concerts, speeches.
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Hyper-cardioid
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Shotgun - microphones will pick up the voices of the xx with a comfortable amount of the surrounding ambient sound. Unlike 0​​
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Bi-directional
Sound and image
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They have a very complex inter/relationship
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They are both illusions constructed within a system of production
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We all participate in an audio-visual contract — one we learn in order to watch films, videos, TV.