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Sound effects (SFX) are often used as aural cues linking visuals and directing the viewer to action. Used carefully, they can produce a dramatic effect in video. Sound effects are often used to substitute sound recording while shooting, for correcting the original, for compensating, and augmenting or for adding realism.
We have already seen how sound effects lend meaning.
Sound effects perform several functions:
A recurring sound becomes a symbol.
Certain sounds added to the soundtrack suggest or create certain moods. For example, a twang when one character hits another suggests comedy. Here is another example to illustrate how sound effects can create a mood – in a shot where the heroine has just across the road but, adding sounds of a crowd suggests that there is trouble outside.
Sound helps in establishing space, defining the environment and the setting, intensifying action, and adding meaning or providing a counterpoint. In a scene that opens with an MCU of a person sitting is typing, adding appropriate background sounds help suggest that the person is in office or at home. Adding a fast-paced percussion track when the heroine is being chased by the villain intensifies action. We have already seen how the sound of train whistle adds meaning. In the war film Apocalypse Now (English) directed by Fransic Ford Coppola, the central character is lying on the bed and the ceiling fan is seen from his perspective. However, on the sound track one hears a helicopter. This suggests that although the solder is resting, his mind is filled with images and sounds of the US war against Vietnam.
Sound is used as a transition and continuity between scenes by intelligent sound designers. In a scene ending with the heroine’s father declaring that the daughter will go abroad to study, the sound of an aircraft faded in at the end of the scene suggests that the heroine had flown abroad, doing away with showing an aircraft.
Sound effects help simulate reality when reality, obviously, has to be simulated. Let us take an example. Fake guns and bullets are used in an encounter between policemen and gangsters. The track is replaced with gun shots either form a library of effects or by foleying the dame in a studio. This helps simulate a real gunfight. Sound effects also help simulate reality when the sound recorded on the rushes tape is not clear. The husband who had promised to take his wife out for dinner gets late and the wife waits a long time for him. Finally, when the clock strikes twelve, she hears him drive in, park the car and ring the door bell. The husband is not shown but his late survival is suggested through sound.
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