The relevance of sound design in film and media gets subverted more often than it should, and plenty of projects have suffered for it. Here's why it's worth never underestimating.
- SOUND IS THE HONEY POT: visuals are the first cut, but sound is what pulls an audience closer, into the picture, into the motion. Watch anything with the sound off and it goes blunt, dull, flat. Sound carries the story and its texture; picture Godzilla vs. Kong without it.
- WHAT IS FILM WITHOUT DIALOGUE? Dialogue carries the audience through the story. Getting every line from every actor to sit at the same level, the same pace, is genuinely hard work, and the frustration is immediate when it isn't done right. Distinctive dialogue, inventive sound effects and an emotive score all build character together.
- BAD SOUND MEANS BAD PRODUCTION VALUE: an audience will forgive an imperfect picture more readily than an obscure or ear-splitting mix. As George Lucas put it, there's a huge difference between watching something on a small screen with a mediocre sound system and watching it in a giant theatre with a proper one, the difference is electric. A theatrical mix doesn't belong in a living room, and the reverse is just as true.
- WHEN WORDS FAIL, MUSIC SPEAKS: a score carries and amplifies emotion in ways the script can't. A soundtrack that gets stuck in your head, or gets you crying, is doing exactly what music in film is meant to do: moving an audience through fear, love, sadness or joy without needing a single word.
- WHERE'S THE FUN WITHOUT FOLEY? A character's footwear alone carries real weight in how they're written. How they walk, what they're wearing, what surface they're on, all of it builds sonic presence and sync. Strip Foley out of a horror film and the genre loses its nerve entirely.
Put those five together and roughly half of what makes a film thrilling, remarkable or exciting is riding on the sound, whether the audience consciously notices it or not.
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