Importance of Sound

Importance of sound

Can you imagine Jaws without that score? Or James Bond without its tense, thrilling sound effects? Sound is undoubtedly a vital element of film production, but does anyone actually acknowledge this? Giles Packham, music composer and managing director interestingly highlights ‘Sound is 50% of the experience but it sometimes only gets 1% of the budget. Spending all the money on the visual aspect is short-sighted.

'Good sound and music can tell a story that the picture can’t always communicate on its own’.

                                                                                                           
Below an easily prepared activity that helps students learn about their sense of hearing, teaching them to differentiate between various sounds.

Egg shaped holders can be used and milled with materials such as water, rice, pennies, sand, buttons etc. By introducing such sounds to the children it invites them to use their sense of hearing to help me match the sounds when they shake each egg.  Each student a chance to shake the egg and match the sound to the place card with the same matching material.

The answers don’t necessarily have to be correct the purpose for this activity is the process of listening to the various sounds and using problem solving skills to match them rather than the correct end product.  

As part of our Education Futures studies we were to create a five minute podcast (in form of a radio show) using Audacity. We embedded a “theme song”, sound effects, and “animated” discussions about something showbiz news. Working in pairs we created “We’ve got you entertainment”, a light hearted celebrity radio show. Using the  Audacity software was fairly straight forward and enjoyable and we were able to change the pitch and tone of the voices recorded to add different effects.

We developed a number of creative techniques by using various parts of the new software. The session helped us understand how a mind story can be created with just the use sound, and how a different view can be formed by just shaping the tone and pitch. This task focused on our ability to work as a team and established the important element that sound plays.