Advice to New Sound Designers | Richard King Film Sound Design Master Class Excerpt

In this excerpt of the Film Sound Design Master Class, Academy Award®-winning sound artist Richard King (Dunkirk, Inception) shares his suggestions for new sound designers approaching projects.

We are excited to announce our collaboration with Richard King to develop exclusive sound effects libraries curated from his private collection. With four Academy Award® wins for Best Sound Editing – Dunkirk (2018), Inception (2011), The Dark Knight (2009), Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2004) – Richard King is among the most renowned sound designers and supervising sound editors in the industry today. His sound library has been steadily and masterfully built throughout his feature film sound career and continues to serve his craft as an invaluable tool.

[cinematicsounds]

🌟 Here is a summary to help you get the info faster, thank me later, you got this!
🎨 Broad Strokes First:
• Start with Broad Strokes: Begin by addressing the broader aspects of the scene, such as the overall ambiance or the most prominent sounds. This approach prevents getting bogged down in details too early.
• Focus on Key Elements First: For instance, in a car chase, start with the engine sounds before adding skids and other details. This helps anchor the scene with the most crucial auditory elements.
• Iterative Refinement: After laying down the broad strokes, gradually add finer details. Revisit the scene multiple times to layer in additional sounds like suspension clunks or minor ambient noises.

⏳ Take Your Time:

• Utilize Full Time: Given time constraints, use all available time wisely. The goal is to create quality sound, not just to finish quickly.
• Balance Intuition with Revisitation: While working from intuition is vital, revisiting your work ensures that the initial impact and feeling of the scene are maintained.
• Allocate Time Wisely: Prioritize scenes and sounds based on their importance to the narrative. For example, in a gun battle, focus on gunfire and bullet impacts before backgrounds or footsteps.

🎯 Prioritize Key Sounds:

• Critical Sound Elements: Identify and prioritize the sounds that will have the most significant impact on the scene. In high-intensity scenes, like gun battles, emphasize sounds that are immediately relevant to the characters and audience.
• Hierarchy of Sounds: Understand the hierarchy of sounds in a scene. Primary sounds (e.g., dialogue, gunfire) should be addressed first, followed by secondary sounds (e.g., footsteps, environmental noises).

👂 First-Person Perspective:

• Character’s Awareness: Imagine the scene from the character’s perspective to determine which sounds would be most noticeable. This helps in creating a more immersive and realistic soundscape.
• Focus on Key Auditory Cues: In a tense situation like a gun battle, focus on sounds that a person would be highly aware of, such as bullets hitting nearby or the direction of gunfire, rather than less critical sounds like footsteps.

⚙ Super Processing:

• Avoid Over-Processing: Strive to maintain a sense of realism in your sounds. Over-processing can make sounds feel artificial and disconnected from the scene.
• Real-World Sounds: Use sounds that are familiar to the audience, even if they are repurposed for different contexts. This helps in grounding the scene in a semblance of reality.
• Synthesized Sound Integration: When using synthesized sounds, ensure they are treated with EQ and reverb to blend seamlessly into the environment of the scene.

🏠 Worldization:

• Blending Sounds into the Scene: Use worldization techniques to make fictional or synthesized sounds feel like they are part of the scene’s environment. This involves adjusting EQ, reverb, and other effects to match the acoustic characteristics of the space depicted in the scene.
• Consistency with Visuals: Ensure that the auditory elements align with the visual context, enhancing the overall believability and immersion.

💡 Additional Tips:

• Bounce Around: Don’t hesitate to move between different scenes or reels. This approach allows you to come back to each scene with fresh ears and a new perspective, which can help in identifying areas that need improvement.
• Intuition vs. Revisitation: While initial cuts based on gut reactions are important, revisiting scenes helps in fine-tuning and ensuring that the initial impact is preserved.
• Context Awareness: Always be aware of the scene’s context and the relative importance of different sounds within it. This awareness guides your prioritization and ensures that critical auditory elements are given due attention.

[jamwrightiam]

Very good advice for getting a good work balance to start here

[ausdoug]

very, very helpful. As a beginner, I learned so much from this video. Thanks for creating it for us.

[jtavegia]

I wish they would all take your class as this is what I have found. I record music groups so I have some background. what is bothering me about film is terribly recorded dialogue. but even a that what is happening on DVDs is that the PCM sound is compressed to MP3 quality any where down to 224 kbps up to a whopping 448 kbps...nothing better than MP3 quality. The audio bit rate is better on Blu-ray discs. I have also found that not enough compression is used if any. I have cleaned up movie tracks that I have recorded about 5 min of audio on then applied compression of 3:1 to 4:1 at about -25db. This is because too many actors are talking Under their breath, so low that almost can't be heard. I also think that mic technique is not very good and lesser quality mics are used. Something is surely wrong when on my nice Yamaha S801 I have to turn the bass to -6 and up the HF to +4 to make it work.

[bethanythedford]

This was very helpful, i want to do freelance sound design but i don’t know whare to start, also i’m having trouble finding particular horse sound effects, i heard them in various shows and films such as lonesome dove and other mini series, i found most of them but there’s about 12 seconds missing, it, low to mid high range and tuned from b flat to e sharp, i don’t know the name of the file but they’re all from the same horse, sorry this comment is so long, i just need help finding this sound file, it sounds perfect for a project i’m doing, does sound design for animatronics count too, does the soundStorm library have this spicific horse sound effect or is it somewhare else

[mr.guzwee]

Is it advisable to get a background
in sound theory, like the science of sound before venturing into Sound editing?
2. Apart from film, what other projects do sound editors work on?

[jennifercraig]

How to take any type of sound and bring it in perfect tune for musically idea anytips thanks

[Marauder]

If you can´t make your gun shots sound like in a Michael Mann movie, quit your job.