The Art of Sound Design
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General
Course Long Title
The Art of Sound Design
Subject Code
MCMP
Course Number
643
School(s)
Academic Level
GR - Graduate
Description
This course will explore sound design for narrative from both a conceptual and technical perspective. While the main focus of the class is on sound design for the moving image, the strategies explored will be applicable to film, theatre, dance, popular music and any instance where sound is called upon to support, enhance, contradict or otherwise correspond to narrative.
Our exploration will include approaches to sound design that emerged in opposition to or at from the fringes of mainstream culture--including Eisenstein's vertical montages, the BBC Radiophonic Workshop's musique concrete strategies, David Lynch's industrial drones, and Andrei Tarkovsky's synthesized soundscapes-and the application of these strategies to create our own sound design compositions.
We learn how to use EQ to make sounds more sinister or sweet; how to use panning and ambience to expand cinematic width and depth; and how to use acousmatic sounds to draw the audience into the world of the film and beyond the frame of the screen or stage.
We will also explore the relationship between sound, narrative and image through concepts such as synchrony/asynchrony, acousmatic sound, synchresis, rendering, empathy/anempathy, temporalization, and added value to better understand of how sound, narrative and image interact, both in collaboration and opposition to one another.
This course will include lectures and technical demonstrations, along with a weekly screening. The lecture each week will focus on the film screenings and readings as well as the creative/conceptual aspects of sound design and production. The practical workshops and creative technical exercises will focus on practical aspects of sound design for moving image, theatre, dance and popular music.
Over the course of 14 weeks, students will start by developing their own bespoke libraries of sounds they have created in the service of a larger sound design project, and then work towards developing a full realisation of sound design, including foley, environmental sound, sound effects, and score for a 5-7 minute extract of a narrative work for moving image, theatre, game design or dance.
Our exploration will include approaches to sound design that emerged in opposition to or at from the fringes of mainstream culture--including Eisenstein's vertical montages, the BBC Radiophonic Workshop's musique concrete strategies, David Lynch's industrial drones, and Andrei Tarkovsky's synthesized soundscapes-and the application of these strategies to create our own sound design compositions.
We learn how to use EQ to make sounds more sinister or sweet; how to use panning and ambience to expand cinematic width and depth; and how to use acousmatic sounds to draw the audience into the world of the film and beyond the frame of the screen or stage.
We will also explore the relationship between sound, narrative and image through concepts such as synchrony/asynchrony, acousmatic sound, synchresis, rendering, empathy/anempathy, temporalization, and added value to better understand of how sound, narrative and image interact, both in collaboration and opposition to one another.
This course will include lectures and technical demonstrations, along with a weekly screening. The lecture each week will focus on the film screenings and readings as well as the creative/conceptual aspects of sound design and production. The practical workshops and creative technical exercises will focus on practical aspects of sound design for moving image, theatre, dance and popular music.
Over the course of 14 weeks, students will start by developing their own bespoke libraries of sounds they have created in the service of a larger sound design project, and then work towards developing a full realisation of sound design, including foley, environmental sound, sound effects, and score for a 5-7 minute extract of a narrative work for moving image, theatre, game design or dance.