MyFlik - Your Free Online Film School

Narrative Sound Design

The better the sound the better the shot. Most would agree that the soundtrack of a film equals about half of the viewing experience. The action and scenes will become flat without good sound design to help evoke a wide range of changing emotions. Great sound design can sometimes save a bad shot. Bad sound design can kill the best visual shot in the world.

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"The evolution of film has led to a new fusion of the audio and the visual. It's a kind of poetry that abounds in aural metaphors."

– Walter Murch

Emotional Sound Cues
	How can you use sounds when writing your script or making your film to cue the audience emotionally?
Adding Emotional Air
	How can you create background sounds in your films to cue your audience to the changing emotional states in the story?
Script Soundtrack Breakdown
	Take out a fresh copy your script and read through it listing any sounds you think might work well in the margins. Look for places to add sounds to cue the audience emotionally.
Using Different Sound Sources
	An old car radio sounds different in a film than a telephone answering machine or a plastic record player. How can you use different sound sources to evoke changing emotions in your story?
Case Study: Apocalypse Now Sound Design
	Apocalypse Now won the Academy Award for Best Sound Design that year because it used these many different types of narrative sound techniques. See how you can use similar ideas in your films and animations to add sound realism.
Using Offscreen Sounds To Save Time
	How can you start writing offscreen sounds into your script to save time in production?

"What we play is life."

– Louis Armstrong

Watch some sample movies below from the online Story Engine on Storytelling Goals, Creating Themes and Using Symbols and Metaphors. These short films are samples from the new 20 hour step-by-step "Writing A Great Script Fast" DVD Workshop.

Follow along and create a great film or story idea fast! Download the Workbook PDF file or DOC file to edit. You can also use a notebook or paper and the Online Workbook or watch it in 20 Steps.

Sample Movies

Below are some sample movies from the 94 minute version above on Storytelling Goals, Creating Themes and Using Symbols and Metaphors. These short films are part of the new 20 hour step-by-step "Writing A Great Script Fast" DVD Workshop: