As noted, sound design is the hub to which all sonically connected tasks are connected. But it wasn’t until sound designers Ben Burtt and Walter Murch executed breakthrough design work on Star Wars (1977) and Apocalypse Now (1979), respectively, that the art of sound design was permanently elevated to a status equal to image design for moving pictures. Murch, in fact, received the first-ever sound designer movie credit for Apocalypse Now; until then, the term had been used in stage productions but never in a motion picture.

There are core concepts related to the designing of a film’s soundtrack that you need to understand before you move on to learning the basics of recording elements of dialogue, adding effects, or editing or mixing anything. Among these principles, you need to take both a micro and a macro view of the work simultaneously. You must determine what specific elements you want or need—dialogue, effects, Foley, ambient sound, library sound, music, and so on. Then, you must decide on what your parameters can be—how many channels, what special sounds (a spaceship, an alien) you will need to create, while being realistic about what your resources will permit you to include. Will you need a composer and a full-on musical soundtrack? Will you need to license music? What are the acoustics of the places where you will be recording sound? What technology will your budget and personnel permit? Your resources will certainly impact what you can do sonically, but the clever manipulation of sound will permit a smart filmmaker to solve problems while conserving resources (see Producer Smarts: The Sonic Business, below).

When making your decisions, always focus on the end game—that is, what is best for the story. Your decisions about all other matters must emanate from that single goal, and no sound should be gratuitous. Never wed yourself to a sound or a technique merely because it is cool or because you can do it. Ask yourself, should I do it, does it further the story?

Also, remember that sound is an exceptionally collaborative art. Even if you are multitasking and in charge of everything on your student project, you will need to incorporate input from possibly a professor, a director, an editor, other crew members, actors, and even friends, as well as input from test screenings. Revisions will be inevitable, and you should be open minded about this reality and not try to execute your sonic vision in a vacuum.

Modern sound designers generally categorize the roles that sound plays in a movie in three ways, as explained by longtime designer, engineer/inventor, and professor Tomlinson Holman (developer of the high-fidelity THX cinema audio standard, originally on behalf of the Lucasfilm Company, with THX standing for the original name, Tomlinson Holman Experiment). In his book Sound for Film and Television, Holman described these three categories as “narrative,” “subliminal,” and “grammatical.”²

The narrative role of sound revolves around its basic storytelling goal—to help the audience understand where to look or how to feel at any given moment. The subliminal role involves using the medium to have a more subtle emotional impact over time—often, an impact audience members do not consciously comprehend. This happens when sounds are mixed together in such a way that the listener cannot separately identify and analyze each but, when combined, they impact that viewer nonetheless. Finally, sound’s grammatical role involves its use to emphasize specific timing or events in the story—indicating the end of a scene, a dramatic pause, and so on.

Good sound designers understand the different ways they can use the medium to fulfill these roles. These are not technically straightforward concepts to master; rather, they involve the way you as a filmmaker think about sound. With these principles in mind, we now take a look at the first step in your sonic journey: evaluating your script and formulating a sound plan.