Sonic Design : Effect of Different Sound in film

Date : May/5/2025

Name : Mabuchi Arata

Lecture : Sonic design

ID : 0351579

1, Introduction

On the day 5th of May, Mr Razif Mohamed posted a YouTube video called "Ultimate Guide to Diegetic vs Non-Diegetic Sound — Definitions, Examples, and How to Break the Rules" which is the video that explains about the types of any sound or audio in the movie and the role of each of them. There are mainly three different types of audio for movie exists and each of them have different form of sound in the movie. Every types of sound in movies have unique role to enhance movies. This e-portfolio is about what I've learnt form the video and it is about brief concept and role of each of different sounds.

2, 3 different types of sound in movies.

YouTube Video "Ultimate Guide to Diegetic vs Non-Diegetic Sound — Definitions, Examples, & How to Break the Rules", StudioBinder, 7th Nov 2022 https://youtu.be/2vlwm4VyyTc?si=ksU3BU4SVEuuPITi)

The YouTube video provided is teaching us all about the role of the any sound and audio playing during the movie and they all have different roles. The video taught that there are mainly three different types of audio exists in the every movies.

The movie without any sounds makes the story become boring and less impression to the audience even the scenerio of the film is great. We often say that we "watch" movies, however, we also "listen" movies. Sound if movies ehpasizes the event happening on screen, emotion or feeling of each character has, or even their thoughts in their minds. As techniques of filming is taking really important role in the every movies all around the world, sound and audio are also taking serious part for the movie creation.

As I already repeated to say, there are three different types of audio in every movies. They are each able to be categorized as :

Offscreen
Onscreen
Non digestic

Each of them have different way to play in every movies and there is also an another concept for audio that differenciate sound in movie in different way. That concept is called "digesis".

Definition of Digesis.

The meaning of "Digesis" means "The world of the film and everything in it" which can alter to be meant as "fictional element". This word is originally came from old-greek word and it was actually the word for theatre play. In this types of topic, it is assumed as meaning or "every element existing and visible on screen", basically, it is all about the things to see in the movie. The movie is all about the telling the story through making a "digestic" (adjective form of digesis) elements by recording it and editting it(To explain more about this, there are two different types of digetic elements exists. Digetic elements that includes word, meaning or character, on the other hand, Non-digetic elements are all about the kinetic visual elements that has no word , meaning, or character at all, therefore movie is all about "digetic" things to tell the story for audiences.), meanwhile during the sequence of recording, we also catch any sound happen in the screen (except if it is silent film), and of corse sound is not something visible, but we can see the any object that makes any sounds. That's where the idea of digesis comes for differenciating sound in film.

Digestic sound (Off-screen and On-screen)

The concept of differenciating sound depends on digesis is all about "Is the any audio sorce for the sound is able to hear by characters in the film or not?". To explain more about this, every story told in the film is completed within the film shown on screen or monitor and things on screen or monitor is the everything in the world of every movie unlike video games which audience can interact to the inside of the world made.

Everything in the screen is the everything of every movies and things that are not in the scene are not simply existed in the film. That is the theory for every movies. Things that characters in movie can sence is the only things that exists in the world of each film. That is "Digestic" elements of the film. Digestic sound means "types of sound used in the film that characters in the movie can hear it."

Digestic sound is basically the sound that characters can hear in the movie. That includes music, sound of machine, instruments playing, audio from TV or radio, weapons, tools, any natural sound such as rains and dialogue. It actually includes the thoughts in mind that one character thinks and others don't hear also includes because character in film still recognise its sound(-ish thing).

This concept of digestic sound can be then separated into two more category. One is on-screen and another one is off-screen. This can be easily differentiate depends on "Is the source of the sound is on the screen or not?". For example, if people have conversation in the scene, it is called "on-screen digestic sound" on the other hand, if someone calling the character on the screen from outside of the house while the character doing their own business, then calling voice is called "off-screen digestic sound".

The main role that this kind of digesis sound in movies is all about "emphasize the impression of the environment surrounding around the character". It may even indicate signals of something is going to happen for scenario of the movie. The role of digesis sound is as important as visual scene recorded by camera.

Non-Digestic

If Digesis sound in the movies is that the sound that characters in the movie can recognise in multiple form, non-gigesis sound is the "type of sound that charatcers in the movie can't recognise". The point you should notice here is that even the character can't recognise the sound itself. It is still part of the movie itself. There are still many types of non-digestic sound exists for movies.

The examples of non-digestic sounds are such as sound effect, background music and narrator's dialogue. These features are also one of the essential things to include to increase movie's intensity to fuse yourself into fictional world.

"Avengers" (2012), Directed by Joss Whedon, Marvel Studios and Paramount Pictures

The good example of usage of non-digestic sound in movies is "bgm" (Background Music). It enables to increase feelings of impression for each scenes. Without any background music, the movie would be boring even the scenario is great.

"Avengers"(2012) is the good example of usage of BGM. In the late scene of the film, the every member of avengers joined together in New York and fight against Loki and army of Chitauri. The epic "Avenger's Theme" is started to play. At that point, none of any characters doesn't recognise the music at all, however the orchestral sound of music still makes impression of excitement for first Avengers assemble great. This is the one of the example of how non-digestic sound works.

First assemble scene of "Avengers" (2012), Directed by Joss Whedon, Marvel Studios and Paramount Pictures

Both of digestic and noon-digestic sound in movie have total different form in film and each of them have different role. In my perspective, digestic sound recorded with video is like ingredients to cook while non-digestic sound that added into the film is like seasoning or topping for the food that makes food much tastier.

Expectations

Actually, there is a third form of sound in film excist as form of "expectation". It can be existed in multiple different form in movies and one of is dialogue of the characterz not in the scene as narrator. Another example is narrator later reveals as one character in the movie (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005) is one of example of this. Narrator in the film was actually one of the Oompa loompa working in the Wonka's factory.).

In the video, transition from non-digestic to digestic is introduced as one of the example of expectation of it. Example of it is like the background music played in the scene naturally becoming instrument played by character or played by phone.

This kind of technique is widely used to break the 4th wall and it can transit character's feelings, impression and emotion in movies.

3, Adobe Audition work

In this week, I've done some audio experssion using Adobe Audition and remixing multple music sources to create a background sound. I surely used the previous techniques I used for every work in Sonic Design so far to make the any audio files I found on the internet to make it much more closer to the environment of the image I received.

through the work of sound making, I came up the idea to make "base sound" that is going to be the main sound of the background of the image first. Luckly the two images I received were both factory or laboratory-ish place therefore I can reuse the sound I made first, then I applied more sound that makes the sound for each image more suitable for the event that happened in the both images.

The process of background sound was all started from estimating what kind of sound must be playing in the background. As both image seems to be any place of factory or experiment laboratory, with gigantic machines, the sound of both places must be formed mainly by **big metallic sound hitting each other** although it is not like big gear hitting each other or rotating each other. The first image I received looks like some laser experiment that can produce huge rays that we can assume like big projection in the fiction, therefore I tried to use some sound like some machine may produce while working although machine itself is not something familiar with. I use the combination of base sound as well as secound background sound. After I made "base sound", I had to add multiple sound for each of image so the impression of environment become much interesting. For the image of laser experiment lab, I added some keyboard typing sound and monitor displaying sound, this is because I thought this kind of experiment must have serious control of laser-ray to control scale of how strong the laser ray is going to be like. At the last, the sound impression for first image ends up like some high-advanced tech-experiment in quiet lab.

Secondary, the sound of secound Image. I had to start what is going on in the image. In my opinion, there is some experiment or project happen with plant, and I don't think theire is just tree or some kind of plant placing in the middle of image, I feel like some liquid is also filled in the tube placed in the middle of the image as primary feature to be shown in the image, so I had to find any bubbling sound that playing slowly to show the experiment is taking with care. I also found two people wearing some military or security jacket with gun, so I added some walking sound with shoes on cold and solid floor so I can't just add simple walking sound of security but the impression of secret and serious impression in the image too.

In the end, I think I successfully achieved the goal to make a sound by combining and editing sound to expressing the event and impression of the given images. I tried to use the techniques I used in the project such as equalize and delay and echo. I think at least I complete to make a sound good enough to represent both background, however I added too less number of sound I downloaded. The sound quality might had been better if I had added more sound onto both project to explain everything happened in the scene.. so the background ends up simple to tell alothough it may be good idea to simplyfy what to "mainly" tell. I guess I have to add more sound details within a time.

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Mabuchi Arata