Directions Unit: Sound Design| Examples of Still Image Sound Designs

Because part of our unit is to create a one minute sound design for one of Gregory Crewdson's images, I felt it was essential to part take in researching and interpreting an example of a sound design.

Firstly, I knew that it would be challenging to find a professional example of a sound design due to it being quite unique as well as vague, as searching the web for something like 'images with sound' just didn't seem to work. So I begun to think ahead and tried thinking of places which involve lots of sound, thus leading to an image of a place which may potentially be on the web.

So my initial thoughts were places involving lots of nature - focusing on animal sounds primarily. For example, a jungle, forest, woods, etc. Nevertheless, I felt that this wouldn't help me as much as I wanted for my personal sound design, as my image doesn't involve as much of a natural environment. So, I thought I would also research instead more industrialised and humanised places instead, as Crewdson's images incorporates this more than nature. Thus, I begun to undertake research in humanised areas which involve a lot of sound, such as a city, village, town, etc. I also felt it was essential to try and incorporate elements of culture so that the image becomes more recognisable. Because searching the web for searches such as 'Images with sounds', i focused my research on the networking site 'YouTube' due to it focusing on video and sound. Here below are 2 examples - one focusing on nature and the other more industrialised:

Native America with Sounds (Meditation & Relaxation)

So after researching, I managed to find a clip which focuses particularly on cultural aspects. However, this clip works in a different way by using sound and images to create relaxation or as named sound/images used for 'meditation'. This I found to be interesting as it shows how both sound and image are used collectively to make the audience become relaxed, thus showing an effective sound design. This is enhanced by the recognisable Native American sounds (i.e. the flute) which give an additional culture feel. Whilst watching the video you can notice how the use of bright and ambient colours work with the natural background music plus recognisable animalistic sounds i.e. birds tweeting which tend to be more recognisable in Native America. Therefore, although this uses more than one image, this sound design works successfully to help relax the audience by using different layers of mainly sound but also images as well.

Indian Traffic & Congestion

For this sound design I found it very difficult to find a clip containing only images and sound. This is the closest I could get to - a video showing the traffic in India (Bangalore). I thought it was interesting that you could picture an image in your head (without looking at the video) just by listening to the sounds in the video. Personally, I think that there is a clear distinction of culture also evident throughout sound. For example, that this is a poorer country instead of a more developed country, such as England. The frequent beeping, longer beeps, unique horns that you would never hear in England - I felt these sounds create a clear design of culture thus being an effective design as you don't need to watch the video to learn what is happening.

Conclusion

To conclude, I felt researching previous sound designs was very complex. It felt almost impossible to find what I was looking for all over the web. Nevertheless, I feel the examples I have used have given me an insight into sound design. My first example has shown me how sounds and image can work together to react with the audience which is what is needed for the sound design I am going to create. Both images convey almost complete different representations, as one relaxes you whilst the other is very loud and intense. This furthermore links to how sound in particular can convey diverse emotions thus showing how powerful it can be, meaning for my sound design I must make sure that the sounds I use have to be relevant and powerful in terms of working with the image I choose.