Sound design Technique: Extreme audio focus

Most of the time as sound designers our best work is often the work that goes unnoticed. A quote from a previous instructor I had was “ if no one talks about the sound then you did your job”.  Although this may be true its not always the case. In some instances there may be a scene where the sound requires much more than just making it realistic. As explain in a previous post talking about the “sound of gravity” there should be no sound in space however with no sound it would be boring, so as a sound designer you need to understand that sometimes you need to create sounds that don’t exist.

One technique I like that is used in sound design can be compared to a close up in filming. If you want something or someone to be the focus of a shot you would go to a close up right? Well in sound design you can do the same, im not sure what its actually called but I call it a extreme audio focus.  A great example of this is in the film Amelie(2001 directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet) this is a French film if you do plan on watching it there will be subtitles. There’s a scene where she’s walking down a hall in a train station and the audio just zooms in onto her footsteps out of nowhere it really grabs the viewer’s attention, although this does go along with the movie’s style it is shown in an over saturated filter.

There is a bunch of examples of these in the filter where the sound designer focuses on a single sound, I think it really helps bring the viewers attention, it does however take you out of the film sometimes and you realize that It isn’t real but at the same time your drawn to it because it was such an interesting sound. I recommend anyone to watch this film. I really enjoyed it. It was also nominated for best sound in the Oscars in 2001.