This week we had the privilege of using the new Zoom F4 that were just purchased by the school. As Paul mentioned, we are the first batch of students to ever lay hands on it since they have just unboxed the equipment the day before our class took place, so I guess that’s something cool.

That aside, I have always treated sound to be my forte as I came from a music and audio technology background upon completing my diploma back home in Singapore, and this week’s class serves as a good refresher as well as a tutorial on how to use the newly bought equipment.

Sound is such a delicate thing. It’s there, but you can’t see it, nor touch it. And more often than not, we often tend to overlook the capabilities of sound being able to bring a film to the next level. Unlike video, where you can shoot things and “fix it in post” to some degree, sound cannot be manipulated the way like how we would with video. Hence, there is not much variation on how you record sound, you just try to record the subject in the most cleanest form (ie. having the microphone recording the desired sound only, with a signal to noise ratio (SNR) as high as possible).

We were tasked to head out of the classroom to record as many sounds as we could, and my group mate and I went round the city campus recording any forms of sound we thought might be useful. It was not easy recording clean sounds, as the whole universe could be picked up by the microphones, however we still managed to record some decent sounds that we were pleased with.

After the exercise, I realised why the need for a proper recording studio for sound design. There is no way we can record perfect clean sounds for a film right off the streets. At the most, maybe some environment sounds, or atmospheric sounds, and even then there should be silence on set to record true environmental sounds, such as traffic noise, large crowded area, hallways, and so on.

Why is sound so important, but yet it is easily taken for granted? I guess we tend to disregard the importance of sound effects or foley, because of the fact that, when everything seems to sound correct or “true” to what appears on screen, it does not seem noticeable. However, if we have something that does not sound right as to what is being shown on screen, then it becomes really obvious. We are hard wired to notice the flaws in something that sounds artificial, rather than the perfect sounding hits and punches in a fight scene.

I hope to explore the effects of sound, in the upcoming exercise where we will be assigned to shoot some footages that may or may not relate to the sounds we have recorded in the first workshop of the week.