Sound Design

We will need to plan for our sounds during the filming and editing of our short film. This will include foleys, dialogue, ambient sound, and diegetic and non-diegetic sound. It is important to plan for sound because we need to know what equipment we will need for each type of sound, and we will need to know what we will be recording/making and when.

Location

Our location could be a problem, as we will be filming in Brighton, which is nearly always very busy. There will be lots of sounds going on at once, particularly within Churchill square shopping centre, such as the sound of people talking, cars, music, etc. We can chose when we film to try and cut down on the amount of noises. This would mean choosing to film on a day that would be less busy, such as a weekday as opposed to the weekend, where it will be busiest. If we film in the half term, it might be a bit more busy than usual, due to schools having a week off. I think mid-week would be the best time to film this, as it should be the least busy during this time.To avoid picking too much of this extra sound up we will use an external mic, so that we only record the sounds that we want from filming in that location. The only other problem would be filming near the seafront, as the wind might be strong, which could affect our sound recording. I think the best way to avoid this would be to check the weather forecast in advance, and pay attention to wind.

Dialogue 

Our film will not be very dialogue-heavy. In fact, there is only two scenes of dialogue in the whole five minute stretch. We will be filming one of these scenes in the dark room at college. This will be a fairly easy process, as we will be the only ones in the room at the time, which means we can control our filming and the sounds that can be heard. We will use an external mic to pick up the dialogue when we are filming. We have done this before, twice in our first year at college, so we know that this will work in that location. The second bit of dialogue will be in the shopping centre, and is only a very brief back and forth exchange between two people. We will, again, use an external mic in order to pick up the dialogue. The problem here would be the background noise of all the other people in the centre. To avoid this, we will get the mic as unnoticably close to the people in the scene as possible. This should cancel out most of the background noise, but if not, at least make the dialogue the most prominent sound heard.

Foleys 

We will need to use foleys for our short film. The most obvious would be a gunshot sound, which we will have to find during editing, as we cannot record a real gunshot for obvious reasons. This will be the most noticeable foley, however, in the same scene we will need the sound of a door opening, lights turning on, and the sound of a gun cocking. These will all need to be added during the editing process. We can find the necessary sound effects either on Garageband, or we can find it non-copyright online. We will have to chose the most realistic and most fitting sounds In order for our film to be believable. We will also need the sound of a busy shopping centre, which we can either record during filming on the day, or we can find during editing. This will be added to add a sense of depth to the scenes in the shopping centre. The last foleys we need will be the sounds of a car slowly driving, then stopping, and the doors opening. These, we can all find during the editing stage, as we will be filming near the seafront, so any sounds that we do record during the day may be affected by the wind. Choosing the sounds during editing makes eliminates this problem, as they will be clearly recorded sounds.