Ricky Grove 00:38
Can you hear it? Listen closely. It's the ambient sound. Most times you don't pay much attention to it, but it's there. Ambient sound can be very important in establishing the reality of a setting or a place. Some machinima films don't use an ambient sound, and I think that's a mistake, especially when you're outside. Ambient sounds outdoors can have a variety of frequencies from very high to very low, especially if you're in the city. Half Life two does a wonderful job of this in city 17 different places have higher pitched ambience, and other places have low pitched ambience, frequently gun battles or sounds of people shouting in the distance alert you to story elements, foreground sound and background sound. Foreground sound is the sound that the viewer can see on the screen. Cars passing by, people talking the sound of a police siren, somebody running past you, birds in the tree that's foreground, sound background sound, however, is the sound that's implied by the location. For example, you could have a location that's near a freeway and the roar of the traffic on the freeway comes through. Or perhaps it's just wind or environment, rain or clouds or thunder, or maybe you're in an area that has a lot of nature in the background. What you have to do is you have to read the scene as it's written, and then you have to look at the visuals. What sort of sounds could you find in this location, in this setting? And if you can get that foreground, background, ambient sound going, that's almost 50% of the believability of the scene. So the next time you're editing your machine in the film, think about Foreground and Background ambient sound. You can record it on your own, if you've got a good portable recorder, or you can get it from places like free sound or online or in some sound packages or CDs, sometimes used record stores will have sound effects CDs. Oh, by the way, all the sounds you heard on this show are available for download. Just check the links on The overcast. Thanks for listening.