SEVENTEEN: Sound Design

I love doing sound design. To me, its one of the most important parts of post production, as it has the potential to transform a awkward, amateur film into a natural, cohesive work of art. Or at least it would, if your film wasn’t a comedy cowboy film. Even so, if done right, it adds a sense of naturalism to a film, and can work alongside the rest of the production to solidify an atmosphere

My sound design choices

Carriage scenes

I wanted the scenes in the carriage to feel as if the characters are completely isolated in a woods, so I placed a bird chirping sound effect under all the dialogue that takes place there. I made sure to get the levels right, as good sound design should be invisible. If you notice a sound standing out, then it should be tweaked until it blends into the background. I added a little bit of wind to the day scenes but boosted it up a little bit for night scenes. This creates a cold atmosphere, which is perfect for immersing the viewer further into the scene.

Intro music

This is the studio version of “Thank God I’m a Country Boy” by John Denver. I think the frantic energy and subject matter of this song fit perfectly with my film, and it’s been my number one choice for intro music since we thought of the film. It was too long for the scene, so I found a point where I could naturally cut right to the ending.

Meeting Lizzie scene

I left this one mostly untouched, but I added in some “old western town” ambient noises as he opens the door just as a subtle effect to subconsciously hint to the viewer that this is taking place in a different time, even though it’s not. This was tricky to mix, as it needed fading in and out as he opened the door, and Jeffery starts speaking before the door is fully closed, meaning I had to boost Jeffery’s audio so that it wasn’t drowned out by the effect.

Computer scene

Some scenes work better with little or no sound design, and I felt like this is one of them. The only sound I added was a few beeps and whirrs to the computer to really drive home the awkward pauses.

Public scenes

I added nothing to these, apart from the song, which is called “Big Iron”. There’s already quite a lot going on, so I didn’t want to overwhelm the viewer.

Jeffery shooting Poppy scene

I had the aforementioned wind running beneath everything, and then on top I added the gunshot sounds, some birds flapping away, and the sound of a body hitting the floor.

Flashback

For the transition into this scene I used a file called “reversewhoosh3.mp3” This is a sound used in hundreds of films to transition smoothly between 2 scenes. I have it quite loud, and I think it works well.

I lowered the voices by an octave using the “change pitch” effect, and added reverb using the “convolution reverb” effect. This adds a dreamy feeling to the scene, which when coupled with the slight Gaussian blur on the video, creates a simple, but powerful effect.

Ending song

I was struggling to find a song that fit this scene, so I asked my friends for suggestions. Jeffery suggested a song called “Mammas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys”, which I thought fit really well, so I used it. I plan on changing the entire ending scene though, so this song could change.

Sources

I got almost all my sound effects from a file I downloaded a few years ago called “1000 sound effects”. It’s simply a collection of sound effects for use in films like this one. Another great source is https://freesound.org/ .

Homemade effects

Some effects I recorded myself on location. I used a Zoom H4n Pro, pointed at whatever I was recording. The two main ones we did were the twig snap and the body falling on the floor. We recorded 4 twig snaps, and I used 2 of them. We tried recording Poppy falling over, but unfortunately she’s too small and light to make much of an impact, so we recorded Frederic falling over instead, which sounded much better.  We also recorded a little bit of birdsong, but it didn’t work very well, so I just used the birds chirping effect from the collection.

Some effects, such as the digging of the grave, were just straight from the camera. This was mostly due to me forgetting to use the zoom, or lack of available sound effects online. They actually sound completely fine, which surprised me somewhat.