The Use of Sound in Media
Sound is the second most important element in any form of media, next to video of course. The sound used in a piece for media does more than enable the audience to understand what has happened a bit easier. It creates whole atmospheres, moods, emotions and can even tell a story. For example, using slow, deep non diegetic music in a film can make us feel sad, lonely, depressed etc. without even having to show us anything. As soon as a bright, fast, happy song starts playing as the opening sequence of a film begins, we know that the beginning will start off happy and jolly.
Sound also creates an atmosphere, even the simple use of light wind or quiet crickets can make a clip go from very flat and boring, to textured and interesting. If you had a clip with dialogue recorded post-filming, then the scene would sound very unnatural as there is no background sound. Adding some wind in the background can make the scene feel alive.
Continuity editing does not only apply to video, the use of continuity editing with sound is very effective as it makes the scenes flow smoother with no obvious jumps in the sound. Visual continuity errors, while still easy to point out, are less obvious as audio continuity errors. A sudden jolt in the visual editing can easily go unnoticed but a jolt in the audio editing is very obvious as it stands out. Upon editing you find that although you have filmed all shots in a scene on the same day at the same time, the background noises etc will be completely different in each shot. This could be due to the position of the camera. These changes in sound are obvious when jump cutting between shots during a film, which makes it very unbelievable and fake. It is a good idea to film one long continuous shot of each scene you do just to make sure you have a long clip of background noises which you can put behind each shot to create better continuity
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