Latest / Indie Film Podcast / Crafting Fear with Sound: Indie Film Sound Design Secrets

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Crafting Fear with Sound: Indie Film Sound Design Secrets · Indie Film Podcast

• 0:00
  Welcome to Indie Film Podcast. I'm Vic.
• 0:02
  And I am Chuck for the month of October.
• 0:04
  We're talking about horror films, obviously.
• 0:07
  And this week we're going to be talking about sound effects,
• 0:10
  sound design, and why that is so important for your indie film
• 0:14
  and why that can make or break a horror film.
• 0:17
  And Chuck, as an audio engineer, I know you've spoken rather
• 0:20
  passionately about this topic on some past episodes, but can you
• 0:25
  tell us a little bit about how sound design actually impacts a
• 0:30
  film of any genre? I think sound of a sign is the
• 0:32
  most important aspect of the film.
• 0:34
  Obviously you need to have a camera, but the sound design can
• 0:37
  paint a scene just as well. And I do want to add 1 caveat to
• 0:41
  your statement. I'm not an actual certified
• 0:43
  audio engineer. I am a self trained indie film
• 0:47
  sound mixer. So take everything I say with a
• 0:51
  grain of salt because I am going to be talking about some
• 0:54
  frequencies and things like that and they may not match up with
• 0:57
  somebody that has a degree in actual engineering, but I think
• 1:00
  they will. To be fair, somebody who works
• 1:03
  as a location sound recordist, a location sound mixer, and a post
• 1:06
  production sound mixer. And a musician.
• 1:10
  I'm going to just call you an audio engineer.
• 1:12
  OK, Well, I don't know, because that's faster.
• 1:14
  I don't know what requirements are needed for that, but maybe
• 1:17
  you'll find out if I do qualify for that.
• 1:19
  Because what I did to show everybody that sound design is
• 1:22
  important is I made a sound only 32nd scene that was horror
• 1:28
  inspired. OK, so hopefully you can gather
• 1:31
  what's going on in the scene. This is just just audio.
• 1:34
  So if you're on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, don't worry about it.
• 1:38
  You don't need to see the YouTube video.
• 1:39
  This is just audio. And for clarification, this is
• 1:42
  something that Chuck has written and is ready to play live here
• 1:47
  that I have not heard before. So it is going to be a testament
• 1:50
  to whether or not any of us know what this story is and if we can
• 1:55
  tell what's happening and what he's created with this FX
• 1:58
  library. Because you didn't record any
• 2:00
  Foley, you didn't do any voice acting, none of that, no.
• 2:02
  I just used 100% the sound effects library that I've
• 2:05
  purchased over the years, so this is just a horror scene that
• 2:09
  came to my brain and hopefully you can follow along with what's
• 2:11
  going on. Beautiful.
• 2:12
  I'm very excited about this. Here we go.
• 2:47
  Nice. There it is.
• 2:49
  OK. So I believe, yeah, I believe
• 2:56
  that sounded like a woman panting.
• 2:59
  Yes. Has come up to a building or
• 3:02
  home yeah that is dark on the inside.
• 3:05
  She's trying to light a candle or something or like her
• 3:08
  lighter. It's not working.
• 3:11
  She cannot see but does hear a low growl somewhere in the
• 3:15
  distance. She takes out a gun to maybe
• 3:19
  shoot it and tries to like oh is it cocking a gun is.
• 3:23
  It no, that was a that was a the sound effect of a of a chain
• 3:26
  light. Turn on.
• 3:27
  Oh, I definitely thought it was like a gun thing.
• 3:28
  Yeah, well. You got you got the rest of the.
• 3:30
  Scene. I assumed that the lights didn't
• 3:32
  work at all. Yeah.
• 3:34
  And that's why she was going to lighter first, because when I
• 3:36
  walk into a building, I don't go to lighter first, mainly because
• 3:40
  I don't know that many people who still carry a lighter on
• 3:43
  them at all time. Well, you know, I'm over 40, so
• 3:46
  I do remember those days when I had a zip, a lighter.
• 3:48
  They're handy. They are, and I own one.
• 3:51
  They're hard, but it is in my kitchen drawer.
• 3:53
  Yeah, they are you basically. Can't blow those things out.
• 3:56
  It's very. Very.
• 3:57
  It's very difficult. The lung capacity required isn't
• 4:00
  OK and then the monster obviously yes, wins.
• 4:03
  Yes, the monster wins and that one, and I was going to do some
• 4:06
  blood splatters. I was trying to keep it to 30
• 4:07
  seconds because I didn't know how much would be interesting.
• 4:11
  Well, I mean, it could turn into like a cool little radio play on
• 4:13
  the podcast. That's kind.
• 4:14
  Of fun. So I did.
• 4:15
  When I was a kid, I used to listen to Imagination Theater
• 4:17
  all the time, Which, if you're not familiar with that, that was
• 4:20
  a radio show that was. Definitely not familiar with.
• 4:23
  Fantasy. And so they were like 30 to 60
• 4:25
  minute long episodes apiece. They used to come out on
• 4:28
  individual, like one CD was an episode, so you could pop that
• 4:32
  into your CD player and then listen to an episode.
• 4:34
  And it was just like that. It was people talking and then
• 4:36
  tons of sound effects in the background.
• 4:37
  And that's what the old radio shows used to be that people
• 4:40
  would listen to. Like the shadow knows and all.
• 4:43
  That, yeah, exactly like the Shadow Lone Ranger I think was
• 4:45
  originally on on radio. And so there's a lot of things
• 4:49
  that you can do to paint a scene with sound design.
• 4:51
  Like you basically got my visual.
• 4:53
  Yeah, more or less. And I just created that through
• 4:57
  audio only, yeah. And you can do that.
• 5:02
  And if you play somebody a visual without any audio, it's a
• 5:06
  little bit trickier because even the old silent films, you need
• 5:10
  to have somebody there to play music over the top of it to kind
• 5:14
  of get the audio vibes from what's happening on screen, and
• 5:20
  they need to match. Yeah, that does help.
• 5:23
  Which is, which is another thing and we were actually talking
• 5:26
  about that right before we started recording this episode.
• 5:28
  The importance of matching the tone with the visual, yes.
• 5:31
  And if you intentionally clash those two?
• 5:34
  It can be very interesting and oftentimes entertaining.
• 5:38
  Yes, hilarious if they if they don't match.
• 5:40
  Yes, and the example I was specifically referring to was,
• 5:44
  and I know that a lot of songs have have this.
• 5:47
  A lot of people will take music videos and dub them with
• 5:50
  different songs and because the rhythm can line up, it happens.
• 5:53
  But my example specifically was Childish Gambino This is America
• 5:57
  and how that has been dubbed over with a lot of songs that
• 6:00
  are nothing even close to that actual song, such as the
• 6:04
  American classic Carly Rae Jepsen's Call Me Maybe.
• 6:08
  They are very different songs with very different rhythms and
• 6:11
  beats, except still lines up pretty well.
• 6:14
  Yeah, they would be the same beat beats per.
• 6:16
  Minute beats per minute lines up fair, but the vibe of the song
• 6:22
  is rather different. Well, you can actually shrink or
• 6:24
  expand some of those songs to the beats per minute to make a
• 6:27
  match up with another song, and it doesn't distort too badly as
• 6:31
  long as you're within a certain realm of stretching.
• 6:34
  So you can fix some of that stuff in post.
• 6:36
  So like for example, the the monster, I've never actually
• 6:39
  made a monster roar at all before because we've never made
• 6:42
  a film where I needed to make a monster roar.
• 6:45
  This. Is.
• 6:46
  New, but for that, for that little demo that I made for
• 6:51
  everybody, the I, I leaned on the low frequency, right?
• 6:56
  And in order to do that, you, you can stretch it and then
• 6:58
  pitch it as well. So if you take an audio file and
• 7:01
  expand it slightly, it will lower the frequency.
• 7:05
  OK, that makes sense. Yeah.
• 7:07
  OK. And then that way, because the
• 7:10
  the lower sounds are typically associated with monsters that
• 7:16
  like Predator vibe. Yeah, not just the Predator in
• 7:21
  alien versus Predator. Oh yeah, yeah.
• 7:22
  But like, right. That's.
• 7:25
  Yeah, so Predator voice. That was actually done by a guy
• 7:27
  named Peter Cullen. Wait, that he there was a voice
• 7:30
  actor? For that, yeah.
• 7:31
  So you can go online and look at Peter Cullen's work, and he just
• 7:36
  did the Predator. It's crazy.
• 7:38
  He made that clicky sound. Yeah, so.
• 7:42
  That's just a guy doing that and obviously they did some work on
• 7:45
  it in post as. Well, that would scare the crap
• 7:47
  out of me if he was like my roommate or something to just
• 7:50
  like wake up in the morning and you hear, it's like hearing the
• 7:52
  chick from the ring. Yeah.
• 7:54
  And that like, yeah, yeah. So.
• 7:56
  He did he did a version he did a version of that for the the film
• 8:00
  the predator. So but but the the frequency and
• 8:03
  just so you know, if you do hear a dog Speaking of sound design.
• 8:08
  Speaking of sound design. That we have.
• 8:10
  We've added a friend. We're dog sitting this week and
• 8:13
  so if you hear Maggie in the background, sorry about that.
• 8:16
  So now I was distracted because we just had a dog barking and
• 8:21
  she's moving towards the camera. She's moving towards the camera,
• 8:23
  so it'll be very interesting. This will be exciting.
• 8:26
  Now, this is also the importance of sound design.
• 8:28
  Technically, nobody here has seen a dog yet.
• 8:32
  They've heard a bark, they've heard us talk about a dog, and
• 8:35
  they hear us getting very suspenseful and both of us
• 8:37
  looking right below the camera where the dog probably is.
• 8:40
  So like, I feel like that's another good example of building
• 8:43
  suspense, right? Technically, you haven't seen
• 8:45
  the monster. Not that Maggie's a monster, but
• 8:48
  you haven't seen the monster yet, so this is also kind of fun
• 8:51
  anyways. Laying down on screen below
• 8:54
  screen. Sorry, not on screen.
• 8:55
  So OK, now I'm totally distracted.
• 8:57
  Let's let's bring it back to low frequencies.
• 8:59
  You're asking about low frequencies and I did look up
• 9:01
  some information about low frequencies and high
• 9:04
  frequencies. OK, because they are or they can
• 9:08
  be anxiety inducing for people. And one of the theories about
• 9:14
  low frequency is and I did look at a study.
• 9:17
  Let me see if I can find it here because I don't want to say the
• 9:19
  wrong thing. Loudness judgments and annoyance
• 9:24
  reactions are sometimes reported to be greater for low frequency
• 9:27
  noise than other noises for equal sound pressure and level.
• 9:31
  And this is from the effects of low frequency noise and a.
• 9:36
  It was published in May 1996. OK.
• 9:39
  So can yeah, can you explain that in in terms I will
• 9:42
  understand. Yeah, so they, they basically
• 9:44
  did a study where they they found people that were living in
• 9:47
  areas with a lot of low frequency noises.
• 9:50
  And one that comes to mind are those giant wind turbines
• 9:54
  because they make a they make noises that are below the range
• 9:59
  of human hearing. And what they found was that
• 10:01
  that people's anxiety levels were higher than and other areas
• 10:06
  and when they lived and they were constantly exposed to those
• 10:10
  low frequency tones. So they their ideas out there
• 10:14
  and I couldn't find studies on this because this would be
• 10:17
  biological, but larger animals have lower frequency growls and
• 10:23
  noises. And so there might be an
• 10:25
  inherent fear that humans have when they hear that.
• 10:29
  And that's that's true if you've gone to a horror film.
• 10:33
  Yeah. And you hear a growl and you can
• 10:35
  feel that subwoofer vibrating. It kind of immediately makes
• 10:40
  your hair stand on the back of your neck.
• 10:42
  So that's kind of Fair because even in the example you just
• 10:45
  played, I was at first I was like, oh, giant crocodile or
• 10:51
  something big like my, my brain did not go to small little thing
• 10:58
  that's going to try to kill. Like it was imagining something
• 11:04
  very large that is now growling and that's a warning sign that
• 11:08
  it's now going to attack and eat me.
• 11:09
  Yes. Yeah, that was that was the
• 11:11
  point of it. And just so you know, if
• 11:13
  anyone's interested out there to see how I put that together, I'm
• 11:16
  more than happy to record like a video of a screen grab of of how
• 11:19
  I later all these sound effects in.
• 11:21
  But that was that was a tiger, but it was, it was dual layered.
• 11:26
  So I so I pitched one up as well.
• 11:30
  So. So it wasn't.
• 11:31
  Just crocodile first. I don't know, maybe that's what
• 11:34
  I'm most inherently scared of. Because you couldn't see the
• 11:36
  monsters you don't know. What it is?
• 11:37
  I didn't know it. Was very Cloverfield assed
• 11:39
  except for no picture. Except for nothing to make you
• 11:42
  nauseous, yeah. Though I guess, Yeah, Crocodile
• 11:45
  is really fair. Like something more creator
• 11:49
  natural I guess. Is the Is that the way to
• 11:51
  pronounce that? Perhaps, but something like
• 11:53
  almost dinosaurish. Oh yes, lizard.
• 11:56
  Lizardly, yeah. Which actually is kind of funny
• 11:59
  because dinosaurs are my biggest fear, so that actually kind of
• 12:04
  tracks if I'm attacked. By a dinosaur as a child.
• 12:06
  I just don't think it's fair to judge being afraid of dinosaurs
• 12:11
  because had humans and dinosaurs ever been around at the same
• 12:14
  time? Because they weren't right, No,
• 12:17
  And they depends on. What museums you attend?
• 12:20
  I think there's one in Oklahoma that would argue that humans and
• 12:24
  dinosaurs coexisted, but I wouldn't take.
• 12:27
  That my knowledge they never had.
• 12:29
  But if we were around at the same time, other than, you know,
• 12:31
  like chickens, because chickens are just cute, like humans
• 12:37
  wouldn't win that fight. We wouldn't win that fight.
• 12:39
  We wouldn't. We wouldn't, and in the movie
• 12:41
  Jurassic Park, obviously we didn't.
• 12:43
  Dinosaurs continue to win in every single sequel, I think.
• 12:47
  I don't know. I quit watching after the second
• 12:49
  one. I struggled with those obviously
• 12:52
  having a very terrifying of dinosaurs.
• 12:55
  I didn't. I didn't step right up to see.
• 12:57
  Those so low frequencies might be biologically terrifying to
• 13:03
  humans potentially. And I also wanted to hit on high
• 13:06
  frequencies and a lot of people think that the reason we go on
• 13:11
  edge from high frequency noises, if you think of like The Shining
• 13:17
  is the first film that comes to my head as far as like the score
• 13:21
  and that high violin. Oh, I think psycho too though.
• 13:24
  The Reap. Reap.
• 13:25
  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, the the I'm gonna stop
• 13:27
  trying to make sound effects I. I enjoy it.
• 13:30
  I'm gonna just add these to my library and just make one
• 13:34
  terrifying beat after another. It'll be great, but so high
• 13:38
  frequencies. They think that we're
• 13:39
  classically conditioned to respond to them like alarms
• 13:45
  because high frequencies in nature aren't inherently scary
• 13:48
  like a bird chair, maybe a bee a little bit might be like a long
• 13:53
  high frequency you might be thinking might be getting stung
• 13:55
  here soon. But we're conditioned for alarms
• 13:58
  because they can they can Pierce and they get your attention
• 14:01
  really quickly. You know the whatever fire alarm
• 14:06
  goes off and it's very. High.
• 14:08
  And they train everybody to be able to escape.
• 14:11
  Yeah. And so hitting those high
• 14:12
  frequencies and those low frequencies are really
• 14:14
  important. And the other thing that I did,
• 14:19
  I kind of dug into this because the human voice is actually
• 14:24
  right around the one kHz range. Obviously it goes lower and
• 14:27
  higher than that, but these like Basie roars are really low
• 14:31
  frequency. The, the highs are well above
• 14:35
  human speech, right? But the humanistic type animals,
• 14:40
  if you take them into your audio software and then you you, you
• 14:45
  take a look at the frequency spectrum and where the energy
• 14:47
  is. The ones that are a little bit
• 14:49
  more human, like the Predator, they have some of those noises
• 14:52
  in the one kHz range as well. As the.
• 14:55
  Long ones, so it's so it's giving it kind of like a.
• 14:59
  It's the audio version of the uncanny valley.
• 15:01
  Yeah, yeah. So that's, that's kind of like
• 15:02
  more of a humanist, yeah, human esque type character might have
• 15:06
  like a roar in that range, which which and it also helps with
• 15:11
  presence as well. So that's kind of the frequency
• 15:13
  in that roar I made. I, I added a little bit to that
• 15:15
  higher frequency because a tiger is one of the lowest in the
• 15:20
  animal Kingdom as far as frequencies.
• 15:23
  And it's, it's really funny. If you go online, you can dig
• 15:25
  into how to create Monster Wars, which I had to do some tutorials
• 15:28
  to kind of figure out what I was going to do with the sound
• 15:30
  library that I had available to me.
• 15:32
  But a lot of times people will use elephants.
• 15:35
  Oh. Yeah, they'll slow down cow
• 15:37
  moos. As well cow moos would be.
• 15:40
  I feel like hippo grunts and snorts would be good too.
• 15:42
  Oh, I would imagine. But hippos are just scary, yeah.
• 15:46
  And the other thing that happened with the sample that I
• 15:48
  used is when I slowed it down, it started to get some
• 15:52
  artifacting which it made it sound unnatural.
• 15:55
  So one thing that I want to point out to everybody is if you
• 15:58
  get this is an old sound effects library that I bought years and
• 16:01
  years ago and it was recorded at 44.1 kHz, which is the the
• 16:06
  frequency that CDs Max out on. Right, so.
• 16:10
  If you have a field recorder and you want to get a sound that you
• 16:15
  want to slow down in post, it's almost like shooting at a higher
• 16:19
  frames per second. So that you can slow it down but
• 16:21
  still keep a good picture quality you want to be able to.
• 16:25
  Is it like recording in a higher Hertz?
• 16:27
  Yes, exactly. So like the Zoom recorder that I
• 16:31
  use, I believe it goes it caps out at like 96 kHz.
• 16:34
  So if you're recording at 96 kHz, you can basically slow it
• 16:39
  down by 50% and you won't get it as many issues with the
• 16:43
  artifacting that you would get if you record at 44.
• 16:46
  Because when you slow that down, it's going to 22, which starts
• 16:51
  to get into the human because it has to go up and the speaker has
• 16:54
  to go back and forth and we can only hear.
• 16:57
  This might get a little boring here, but I'm gonna go into the
• 16:58
  weeds for just a second. So human ears hear up to 20,000
• 17:03
  Hertz, right? I'm gonna believe you like.
• 17:06
  I don't children like I can't 'cause I'm over 40.
• 17:08
  So that starts that range starts to get lower and lower as you
• 17:10
  get older, right. So, so 20,000 Hertz, that means
• 17:14
  that the the refresh rate of the 44,000 Hertz means that it goes
• 17:20
  the speaker can push and pull. So 1 push is 1 and one pull is
• 17:25
  the other. So it's right at that that
• 17:27
  20,000 Hertz rate because it's half because it's it's it's it's
• 17:31
  peak to peak on the amplitude. So it's like measuring like the
• 17:34
  back and forth is 1 is one cycle.
• 17:36
  OK, so. It's like if the the wave
• 17:39
  measurement goes ocean waves. Yes, is what I'm talking about.
• 17:46
  They measure from like the bottom.
• 17:49
  Yeah, not just from the water line.
• 17:52
  They measure from the bottom of the to the top of the wave.
• 17:54
  So I'm talking about 11 peak of one wave to one peak of the
• 17:57
  other. Oh, distance.
• 17:58
  Yeah, the distance between those.
• 18:00
  So that's the 44,000. Hertz, So I was just going wrong
• 18:03
  direction, but This is why I don't do audio, yeah.
• 18:06
  But I, I correct me if I'm wrong in the comments, but if so, if
• 18:10
  you get the 96,000 Hertz, you can basically slow that down.
• 18:13
  And you're not going to get as much artifacting in your final
• 18:16
  recording as if you take something that's recorded at
• 18:19
  44,000 Hertz, which which would be like trying to take a, you
• 18:23
  know, something that you shot at 24 frames per second and then
• 18:27
  slow it down in post. You get that jankiness to it.
• 18:30
  Yeah. You're going to start blatantly
• 18:31
  skipping frames. It's going to look very blurred
• 18:33
  and uncomfortable. It's not going to feel like very
• 18:35
  smooth motion versus filming it at, you know, 60 or 120.
• 18:39
  You're going to be able to slow it down but keep it very smooth.
• 18:41
  Like the opening of Zombieland is beautiful.
• 18:44
  Yeah, exactly. So same thing with audio.
• 18:47
  So we went. Through the woods went into the
• 18:49
  woods on that one. Yeah, but what I'm really taking
• 18:51
  away from this is for those of you without access to a detailed
• 18:54
  sound effects library but looking to create your own,
• 18:58
  Chuck from any film podcast here is recommending that you grab
• 19:01
  your recorder and you head to your local zoo.
• 19:04
  Yes, go to the zoo, get in the back.
• 19:07
  Start recording things. Listening to the animals.
• 19:09
  Nobody will think it's creepy at all.
• 19:11
  Yeah, just bring your recorder. I'm sure they'll just let you
• 19:13
  back in. There isn't.
• 19:16
  It's OK. I'm a professional location
• 19:18
  sound recordist. Yes, let me into the polar bear
• 19:20
  exhibit. Guaranteed I.
• 19:24
  Don't know if I would go into the polar bear exhibit.
• 19:27
  You got to get close. It's all about proximity to this
• 19:30
  noise noise source with microphones.
• 19:33
  So anyway, OK if you anyway you want to record at a high kHz so
• 19:39
  that you can potentially slow it down and post if you want to
• 19:42
  take those sounds and make them lower than they actually.
• 19:45
  Are OK if you want to add that additional creep factor or just
• 19:48
  have the capacity to manipulate it in more ways, Yeah, you're
• 19:52
  going to need that higher kHz. Is that the right word here at
• 19:57
  the higher kHz recording rate? Yep.
• 20:00
  Oh OK, nailed it. I'm learning new things.
• 20:02
  Yeah, thanks. I like it when I learn things on
• 20:05
  the podcast that I'm supposed to be speaking intelligently on.
• 20:08
  Well. I'm.
• 20:09
  I'll take care of this as the newly ordained audio engineer.
• 20:13
  I'll just be taking care of that myself.
• 20:16
  So maybe we should probably talk about some other practical
• 20:19
  things that people can do with sound.
• 20:21
  I know that I've screwed up a lot of things on my end, and one
• 20:25
  of the big ones is J cuts and L cuts as far as using that to
• 20:32
  amplify tension in a scene, which more movies do a lot of
• 20:36
  time. If you're unfamiliar, if you're
• 20:38
  new to indie filmmaking or you're just starting out and
• 20:40
  directing, what AJ cut and an L cut is, it's basically taking
• 20:45
  the audio and playing it from the previous shot into the next
• 20:49
  shot or vice versa. It looks like AJ or an L on the
• 20:54
  timeline and I one of my favorites that sorry, I keep
• 20:58
  talking and you're. About ready to talk.
• 20:59
  It's good. You might.
• 21:00
  Just want to write that down because I'm going to go for a
• 21:02
  little bit, but I recently rewatched Cabin in the Woods and
• 21:06
  there's a scene where the last girl is getting murdered.
• 21:11
  That is not the trope. By the zombie O is the the.
• 21:14
  Final Girl. The final girl.
• 21:15
  Yeah, well, I'm not good at my horror tropes, but thank you for
• 21:18
  correcting me. Final Girl is one of the best
• 21:19
  tropes. So final girl is getting
• 21:22
  murdered by the zombie or in the in the show and it cuts to the
• 21:26
  scene where they're all celebrating that the final girl
• 21:30
  is going to die. And like this, this entire
• 21:33
  ritual is ending and they start playing REO Speedwagon.
• 21:36
  And it's kind of funny the way that they make that cut.
• 21:39
  And the reason it works is because they start playing the
• 21:42
  REO Speedwagon from the party like over the top of this poor
• 21:46
  woman getting mutilated by a zombie.
• 21:48
  And then it goes into the next scene and it gives that like
• 21:52
  foreshadowing effect. And early on, when we were
• 21:56
  making films with Lower Gentry Studios, that was the lesson
• 21:59
  that we learned. It's like, why is the scene so
• 22:03
  stagnant? It's not just in horror films,
• 22:05
  but it applies to two people talking at a table.
• 22:08
  If you're doing a dirty shot, you want to make sure that
• 22:11
  you're getting actors reactions. And I, I did help somebody one
• 22:15
  time that had a film, they brought it to me in their
• 22:18
  timeline and they're like, why is this so uncomfortable?
• 22:22
  And I showed them, well, you just are having the actor say
• 22:26
  the line and the camera goes to them.
• 22:27
  And then you cut to the next actor and they say the line and
• 22:30
  there's no the way your eyes work are you're watching
• 22:33
  somebody talk, the other person says something, and then your
• 22:37
  eyes move to that other person, which is the importance of the
• 22:41
  natural feel of AJ and an Alka. It does definitely help, and it
• 22:45
  can also help kind of speed things along.
• 22:48
  It's one of the ways that editors can help improve
• 22:50
  performances from time to time too.
• 22:52
  Oh yes, and it's a way that you can really emphasize things.
• 22:54
  Or you can you can completely hide a big reveal of, you know,
• 23:02
  somebody's having this really in depth conversation.
• 23:04
  You see the other person, you hear the other person talking
• 23:07
  back to them and then suddenly boom, it's revealed.
• 23:09
  Oh, this is actually what's his bucket, the Green Goblin in
• 23:14
  Spider Man and Willem Dafoe is just having a conversation with
• 23:17
  himself. And it's still the creepiest
• 23:19
  thing anybody's ever going to see.
• 23:20
  Right. Like there are a lot of fun ways
• 23:22
  to play with it and do reveals, but also cut any bad
• 23:28
  performances, any bad moments you didn't love, use different
• 23:31
  takes, audio that sounds a little bit better or really lean
• 23:35
  into a powerful moment where you watch something hit an actor as
• 23:40
  opposed to them saying it. So there are a lot of ways that
• 23:43
  it's it's powerful and it's important.
• 23:45
  For sure. For sure.
• 23:46
  And horror movies, obviously, yeah.
• 23:49
  Horror movies do things very well.
• 23:50
  I actually on the subject of doing things well, I do have a
• 23:54
  few examples of some of my favorite horror sound design.
• 23:58
  Oh. Yeah, let's talk about famous
• 24:00
  film sound designs. I feel like one of them
• 24:01
  everybody's going to see coming because it was a pretty recent
• 24:04
  film and it was a really popular 1 and it had incredible sound
• 24:06
  design with Sinners. OK yes.
• 24:08
  And it was just beautiful the way that they layered
• 24:13
  everything, the entire dance scene, having all this different
• 24:16
  music and everything. There were some moments of ADR
• 24:18
  that I was not 100% on board with, but at the same time, I
• 24:20
  also could not do any better. So yeah, I don't know if I
• 24:25
  should throw any shade for that, but oh, go ahead.
• 24:28
  Oh, I was going to say so sometimes with ADR, if you're
• 24:32
  new to processing audio and film, people will think that you
• 24:37
  ADR the line, which means that you had it recorded after the
• 24:40
  fact. But if you run it through AI
• 24:42
  cleanup too heavily, it sounds unnatural.
• 24:47
  So just be real careful with those AI cleanup tools that will
• 24:51
  remove all the ambient noise. Yeah.
• 24:54
  Because some people will assume that sounds like somebody
• 24:56
  recording into a microphone after the fact.
• 24:58
  Yeah. And it feels very unnatural.
• 25:00
  So I don't know if they did that there, but I just.
• 25:02
  Wanted to. Well, this was like somebody was
• 25:04
  clapping and we heard the clap sound, but it didn't line up
• 25:07
  when when their hands were actually doing it.
• 25:09
  Yeah, that's that's real rough. Oh, whoops.
• 25:11
  Digging. That's real rough, yeah.
• 25:13
  But again, I don't think I could do any better, so I'm not gonna
• 25:16
  throw shade for it. That's frame by frame stuff
• 25:18
  there. You just gotta go frame by
• 25:20
  frame. No, there's no other way to do
• 25:21
  it, which is sad because it's time consuming, but one that I
• 25:25
  feel like did not get a lot of love.
• 25:27
  And I am so sad because this film was a really solid film.
• 25:33
  It was a good horror film. It was a good story.
• 25:35
  It was creatively shot. It was an interesting premise,
• 25:37
  but the sound design was incredible.
• 25:40
  And it was the first time I really noticed sound design in a
• 25:45
  horror film being used to create a whole different world.
• 25:50
  And it's talked to me. OK, So in the film Talk to Me,
• 25:53
  you shake hands with this. I don't know if it's petrified
• 25:57
  or mummified or I don't really know.
• 25:59
  It's a hand. And when you do, then you see
• 26:02
  like, either the afterlife or the underworld or however you
• 26:06
  kind of want to see whatever that spiritual realm is.
• 26:10
  But all the visuals are very wet and very murky and like people
• 26:15
  in puddles and everybody kind of looks damp.
• 26:18
  Yeah. But it also sounds like you're
• 26:20
  underwater. Suddenly there's just this
• 26:23
  ambient, like pressing kind of noise, if that makes sense.
• 26:28
  If a noise can press, I don't know.
• 26:30
  But you know when you're underwater and everything gets
• 26:32
  muffled and foggy, but there's also that static.
• 26:36
  It's not white noise because it's underwater noise, but
• 26:38
  whatever that is that suddenly just fills your ears.
• 26:41
  They have that and it's subtle, but it's so good and I really
• 26:46
  liked it. And I just wish Talk to Me had
• 26:47
  gotten a little bit more credit for their incredible sound
• 26:49
  design. It was.
• 26:50
  So good. Yeah, those subtle ones are, are
• 26:51
  really cool. I I wanted to talk a little bit
• 26:54
  about The Shining, which is one of my favorite horror movies.
• 26:57
  And their sound design in that film is incredibly subtle.
• 27:03
  Yeah. But it's it's spooky.
• 27:05
  I always think of the Danny the little kid in the tricycle going
• 27:10
  from hardwood floor. To the carpeting.
• 27:13
  To hardwood floor to the carpeting, and it's the way that
• 27:17
  they let that linger for so long is creepy.
• 27:20
  And then there's also Jack typing.
• 27:23
  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
• 27:26
  But prior to that, there's scenes of him just typing in
• 27:28
  this giant hall and all you hear is the the hammer hit.
• 27:31
  And for some reason, like in that scenario, because you know,
• 27:34
  something eerie's going on, just those those simple elements that
• 27:38
  are cranked up louder in real life, but not like obnoxiously
• 27:42
  loud, but they sound louder, can make your skin crawl.
• 27:45
  Oh, it definitely does. Absolutely.
• 27:47
  Because then a Quiet Place and that entire franchise, I guess
• 27:51
  now leaned into that too, right where it was so quiet because
• 27:59
  they had to be because the monsters heard and, you know,
• 28:03
  exceptionally better rates than than humans or whatever.
• 28:05
  And but they couldn't see. Oh, OK, so.
• 28:09
  Like AT Rex? Yeah.
• 28:11
  Oh, no, wait, they can. They can't see motion.
• 28:15
  They only see motion. Oh yeah, that's right.
• 28:18
  Oh yeah, yeah. Sorry.
• 28:19
  They don't see motion, just hide in plain sight.
• 28:21
  It's fine. So these if like they had
• 28:25
  characters communicating through sign language because you can't
• 28:29
  speak to each other, you can never talk, you can never hear
• 28:32
  each other. And they lean into that.
• 28:33
  And then anytime you hear like something drop or you hear their
• 28:37
  footsteps or something, you're like.
• 28:39
  Or one of the characters had their nails done that day and so
• 28:42
  they were communicating really loudly in sign language.
• 28:44
  They get murdered. Wow, just all you hear is like a
• 28:48
  oh, that didn't I don't have, I don't have nails.
• 28:51
  I don't have nails. You can't.
• 28:52
  You can't hear them clicking at all.
• 28:53
  Do a click. I mean, I don't.
• 28:54
  Know. But but I have.
• 28:56
  Not seen that series of. Films.
• 28:57
  OK, it's delightful. It's fun because it's like the
• 28:59
  absence of sound is the tension building, which is pretty cool.
• 29:03
  It's a fun way to do it. Contrast is super important
• 29:06
  contrast. Is important though on that
• 29:07
  note, needle drops in music obviously.
• 29:10
  Jaws and Psycho, very, very iconic music that people just
• 29:17
  know, but also I think not just a needle drop of a popular song
• 29:23
  or a catchy song or a song that where you kind of know where
• 29:25
  it's going, but sort of the manipulation of an otherwise
• 29:29
  innocuous song. So insidious did that really
• 29:32
  well. They had the what is that the
• 29:35
  tiptoe through the tulips song, but it was a very distorted,
• 29:39
  creepy version of it and taking this really cute, soft song that
• 29:43
  everybody knows and dirtying it. I get I don't know whatever
• 29:49
  making it. Eerie and uncomfortable.
• 29:50
  Exactly made it so much worse. And I sort of equate that to of
• 29:55
  course, back to Marvel Ultron had the the Pinocchio no string.
• 30:01
  Was it Pinocchio? The no strings on me?
• 30:04
  Oh yes, that's Pinocchio. Yeah, so Ultron would be singing
• 30:10
  This Ain't No Strings on Me Pinocchio song, but it's because
• 30:16
  suddenly he is unleashed and now going to take down everyone.
• 30:19
  And it suddenly took this adorable little oh look, I'm a
• 30:22
  puppet It's so cute song and turned it into a oh God, it's
• 30:26
  here. And it was kind of a cool.
• 30:28
  Moment. But don't worry, The Avengers
• 30:29
  will stop him. Don't be mean.
• 30:34
  Hurray. Avengers, I think we've given
• 30:38
  enough shade to marvel for a while.
• 30:40
  They'll be fine. Oh, that's true.
• 30:41
  That's true. We haven't been doing the
• 30:43
  Ruinous Cinephiles Day because we realized we were trying to
• 30:45
  make a point to do that. And if you look at some of our
• 30:47
  vertical videos, we ended up pissing people off for other
• 30:49
  reasons. Oh, yeah.
• 30:51
  It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.
• 30:52
  Try. No, we're just.
• 30:54
  We're just whatever. Whatever we say and throw it up
• 30:57
  on. Anytime we say anything, it's
• 31:00
  going to ruin somebody's day, which is you.
• 31:03
  Know. You know, you can't please
• 31:04
  everyone, Chuck. And I think I just need to lean
• 31:06
  into that and embrace it a little bit more.
• 31:08
  I'm going to try, but I'm never going to succeed.
• 31:10
  And that's OK. I'm allowed to accept that.
• 31:13
  Me too, me too. Is there anything else that you
• 31:16
  want to touch it on as far? As unless you had any other
• 31:18
  examples that you really wanted to call out.
• 31:20
  I think I'm good. Thanks for taking a listen to
• 31:23
  the little scene I created and thank you all out there for
• 31:25
  listening. Thank.
• 31:26
  You for creating something that was really cool.
• 31:28
  It was, it was fun. It was fun to do.
• 31:30
  I've never done anything like that before, but sound design is
• 31:32
  important, so when you send your film off, make sure that that's
• 31:35
  as polished as possible. And just running it through an
• 31:39
  AI cleanup is usually not enough.
• 31:41
  No, you want to. It's better to add noise if it's
• 31:44
  really a loud recording than it is to try to take too much of it
• 31:46
  out. You you want to balance that but
• 31:48
  just add your own clean ambience anyway.
• 31:51
  Good call. Shall we say syncly farewell?
• 31:54
  Perfect. Excellent.
• 31:55
  Bye bye.