I want to discuss how useful certain sound effects are, and why you might choose specific sound effect cues to indicate the script's setting, the passage of time, character movement, or what actions the speaker and listener are doing right now.

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🛑 This isn’t a debate on whether or not scripts with SFX are less likely to be filled, or whether you think adding sound effect cues is unnecessary. This is my opinion. I don’t claim that my way is the best way, the right way, or the only way. 'You' and 'we' are used in the general sense.

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#Useful?

Do you think every cue you add to your scripts is actually useful? It's okay if they aren't! Sometimes I add SFX because I think it adds flavour. I started recording some amateur sound effects after getting frustrated that I couldn't find SFX for some of the cues I had written. It's been a fun exercise that helped me realize that not all my SFX cues are useful and when I'm evaluating which cues to keep and which to cut, it's helped me pare down the excess.

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A knock on the door is a very obvious sound that everyone can recognize in audio. It gives us important information, a new character has just arrived on the scene. So it's useful. There's a reason so many audios include opening and shutting a door (someone has arrived) or a belt clink and zipper (someone is taking their trousers off). Those sounds are obvious and we can avoid the dreaded awkward dialogue of, "What do you mean, you're at the door?" or "Let me take my trousers off".

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But sometimes we include SFX that don't add anything of value to the audio, because the way you 'hear' a sound in your head doesn't match how it actually does sound in real life. Think about the sound of combing hair, rubbing a Q-tip on the skin, or putting on a pair of socks. Do you think you would recognize those sounds in an audio if there wasn't any dialogue to explain what was happening?

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I recorded four mystery sounds. Can you identify what they are?

• One
• Two
• Three
• Four

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It would be easier for your brain to recognize these sounds if I included dialogue to add context, but I deliberately didn't do that.

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And sometimes, there are things we think make an audible sound, but if you record yourself doing that thing, the mic doesn't even pick up the sound at all!

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🎚 There are different categories of sound effects:

1. Hard sounds are connected with something specific happening. They include 'common sounds' such as a phone rings, car horn honks, a door slamming, slapping someone, etc. These are a great choice for your script because many of them are sounds you'd recognize with your eyes closed.
2. Designed sounds don't normally occur in nature (or they're impossible), such as the squelchy sucking of a tentacle monster or something designed to create a mood like the sounds in your favourite sci-fi movie. These sounds aren't necessarily specific, because neither tentacle monsters nor 40th Century laser beams exist so we don't know what they sound like. They can sound like anything! But the problem with adding them to audio porn is that without dialogue to explain what they are, listeners don't know what they just heard because they can't see the action. If you use a lot of these, write dialogue (not scene direction!) to give listeners context.
3. Background & Ambient Sounds —also called ambiance or atmos (atmosphere)— these sounds indicate the setting, like the birdsong of a park, the chatter in a restaurant, buzzing lights, stuff like that. If the script is taking place at someone's home in the present day, I usually don't see the need for these in my scripts because what does a home sound like? But if the script takes place in a park, or the workplace, or on a plane, now you might want to think about adding this. Some ambiances like beach waves are very obvious so you don't need to state, "Ah! We're at the beach!" But if the characters are in an empty warehouse and listeners hear echoing reverb, they won't know why without saying something like, "This warehouse is empty."
4. Foley sounds are recorded live by Foley artists. The difference between Foley sounds and everything else is that Foley relates to the movements and activities of characters, while hard sound effects relate to everything else that makes noise (cars, machines, doors, etc.). Foley enhances how believable the audio is. E.g. the characters are sharing a drink. If the VA takes a sip of water as they record, that's Foley. Other common Foley sounds are footsteps, dishware and cutlery, cloth rustling, and stuff like that.

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🌏 How can I show where the setting of the script is?

• Ambiance tracks are great! Whether it’s birdsong at a park, office chatter, café or restaurant ambiance, or wherever the scene is set, there is probably an ambiance track for it somewhere.
• A movie plays in the background
• Traffic noise in the background
• Weather effects like waves, rain, thunder, wind
• In a cave, the VA can add an echo to their voice
• Sci-fi or on a spaceship: look for designed sounds
• Bathing in the tub or a shower running in the background

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🗓 How can I show the passage of time?

• Ticking clock
• Fade out/fade in
• Narration that uses “Meanwhile…” or "Several hours later…” or "A week later…”
• The long pause of total silence
• Music fades out or different music begins
• Make the speaker reference a passage of time, “Last week when we…”
• Location changes: if there’s office ambiance, a pause or musical interlude, then park ambiance, we’ve obviously skipped ahead and gone somewhere else
• Reverb that gets stronger or softer
• There's a variety of magical "whoosh" sounds and depending on your dialogue, these can mean anything from time passing to magic spells or teleporting.

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🚶🏻‍♀️ How can I show movement?

• Car driving, train, or plane sounds
• Footsteps seem obvious but can be tricky. If the script is one speaker talking to one listener, do you think you should just hear the speaker’s footsteps or the footsteps of both people?
• A lot of footstep sound effects that I’ve located are of people wearing shoes, and when the scene is inside a home, that is very off-putting to me. Where I live, you don’t wear shoes inside the home. What I’d expect to hear is sock feet or bare feet on wooden floors, tiled floors, or carpeted floors, not shoes.
• What about when someone in the script uses a wheelchair, a walker, or a cane? Would you expect to hear one set of footsteps and the other person's chair rolling or footsteps with a cane?
• (PS: I only have SFX files for motorized wheelchairs. If you're able to make SFX for manual wheelchairs, walkers, and canes; please send me a message.)

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🏓 How can I show WHAT my characters are doing?

• Use hard sounds, common sounds like pour a drink, shut the door, spank an ass.
• If you must use awkward dialogue, save it for the actions that you can't explain with a sound effect alone, write lines that support the SFX and pick SFX that support the line.
• "Put your wrists out," followed by the SFX of handcuffs ratcheting is easy to understand.
• But blindfolding someone just sounds like...a lot of things, actually! Maybe it's a sock, maybe it's a washcloth, maybe it's a curtain or a pillowcase. You don't know. So this is a great time to be explicit and say, "I'm going to blindfold you," followed by the SFX.

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⚠ Some SFX don’t convey what you think they do:

• Clothing and fabric are a good examples. When the script arrives at the sex scene, the sound of a belt clinking and a zipper are very distinctive. That’s why so many people use them. But what about other types of clothing?
• I did an experiment once. I recorded myself putting on and taking off many different outfits, and then separate pieces of clothing.
• What I learned is that the sounds of undressing seldom matched the idea of the sound I had in my head.
• Taking off clothing, while undressing at regular speed takes a lot longer than I actually want to hear in the audio. When I imagine clothing SFX I think of a brush of cloth as the shirt is removed. But taking off an entire outfit can take over 30 seconds which can feel like a long time in audios.
• All I actually want to hear is the hint of clothing and my imagination fills in the rest.

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💬 In summary:

1. Pay attention when you watch movies. I tried watching some movies with my eyes closed to really concentrate on what I was hearing that painted the picture of the action.
2. Some ideas to google for further reading are “passage of time in audio dramas” or “scene change in radio plays”.
3. What sound effects do you think are useful, and what ones aren't? Why?
4. What do you think the mystery sounds were?

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Christina 💙