"A Dimension of Mind: Film" - Part 4: Sound

"A Dimension of Mind: Film" is a facsimile of the "Sight and Sound: Film" course at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.  However, "A Dimenstion of Mind: Film" differs in some important ways because it can be replicated at home.

Difficulty level: 2

Round 4 – Sound. 

Sound totally changes our perception of an image. In most of these exercises, you are to record background sounds on-location using a microphone, or find sound effects on the internet for free, or create your own foley sound effects. Remember that the keys to creating realistic sounds include room tone (the basic ambience or white noise in a room at any given moment) diagetic sound (sound that takes place in the story world, like sound effects, dialogue, or a musician’s fiddle) and non-diagetic sound (out-of-world “commentary” music, like voice-overs or soundtrack music)

Move 13 — Music.

• Create a film with a single piece of music as its soundtrack. Practice cutting the movie to the sound. (Cutting images to sound is called "mickey-mousing" because it migrated to film from the world of animation)

This scene from The Social Network makes good use of music.  It's not choreography, it's just using a soundtrack.

Movie 14 — Voice-over

• Create a film that utilizes some form of recorded voice-over.

Look to films like Fight Club, or some film-noir classic, for examples of internal monologues. Look at documentary films like March of the Penguins for educational-style voice-overs. Sometimes a story is told in-media-res and is narrated by the main character from the middle or even the end. Voice-over is so versatile that the sky's the limit.

Movie 15 — Offscreen sound-effects

• You’re not quite ready to show things making noise on screen, instead, imply the environment and the action off-screen with use of sound effects.

Movie 16 — Sound effects.

• Create a film that uses hand-recorded sound effects. These sounds can either be real sounds of objects or foley (replicated sounds).
  
  This scene from Delicatessen uses sound effects in a fun way