Sound Definitions

Sound effects : film

In the context of motion pictures and television, sound effects refers to an entire hierarchy of sound elements, whose production encompass many different disciplines, including:

• Hard sound effects are common sounds that appear on screen, such as door slams, weapons firing, and cars driving by.
• Background (or BG) sound effects are sounds that do not explicitly synchronize with the picture, but indicate setting to the audience, such as forest sounds, the buzzing of fluorescent lights, and car interiors. The sound of people talking in the background is also considered a "BG," but only if the speaker is unintelligible and the language is unrecognizable (this is known as walla). These background noises are also called ambience or atmos ("atmosphere").
• Foley sound effects are sounds that synchronize on screen, and require the expertise of a foley artist to properly record. Footsteps, the movement of hand props, and the rustling of cloth are common foley units.
• Design sound effects are sounds that do not normally occur in nature, or are impossible to record in nature. These sounds are used to suggest futuristic technology, or are used in a musical fashion to create an emotional mood.

Each of these sound "food groups" are specialized, with sound editors known as specialists in an area of sound effects (e.g. a "Car cutter" or "Guns cutter").

The process of creating sound effects can be separated into two steps: the recording of the effects, and the processing. Large libraries of commercial sound effects are available to content producers (similar to the Wilhelm scream), but on large projects sound effects may be custom-recorded for the purpose.

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