Sound within film

Even though the most prominent factor of film for most people sound, in all its forms, is incredibly important and influential within the scene it is placed. There are five different types of sound within a piece of film and these can be broken down even further into the nature of the sound.

Dialogue: Audible noise which comes from a characters mouth. This could include grunts and moans in combat and standard conversation. This is usually digetic however it may be amplified if it is meant to be particularly impacting within a scene.

Sound effects/Foleying: A collection of sounds which are direct audible reactions to actions. This could include the sound of a door opening or the reloading of a gun. Despite their frequency in film they are one of the most impacting ways of effecting the audience without direct visual display. When this is the case the sound effects are often nondigetic or amplified so they stand out from the rest of the scene. The source of such sounds are varied but the majority of the effects are collected through a process called Foleying, (please see my post about this process for information.)


Silence: Within the use of sound simply leaving it out can be largely beneficial for a scene. Without sound the audience is forced to absorb the film in another way, mainly visually. This can be particularly effective within battle scenes as an audience member can take in the massicur on screen without getting distracting by screams of the clashing of weapons.

Ambiance: This form of sound, in the majority of cases, is nondiagetic and forms a natural base layer of sound for the scene. This type tries to mimic the distinct and subtle sounds of a environment such as distant movement or creaks from thermal contraction in an old building. On many occasions these sounds are reverberated to distort them into something beyond recognition by changing their frequency and blurring temporal characteristics.