Task 15 - Why is sound so important in films?

The importance of sound in film

Sound is used in films to establish tone, atmosphere, and to help give the audience clues about the plot, characters or to identify the genre of the film. It is also used to help ‘suspend disbelief’ to create realism for the viewer and heighten their experience of the film.

Terminology:

Sound term	Meaning/ definition
Ambient sound	The surrounding sounds.
Diagetic	Sound that the characters can hear.
Non-Diagetic	Background music that the characters can’t hear, only the audience can.
Score	Music specifically composed for the production.
Song	Set of words applied to music.
Voiceover	A narrator/character talking over what was recorded in the movie.
Dialogue	What the characters say.
Foley	Sound that has been affected by something.
Synchronous	Sound synchronised with the object that is giving of the sound.
Asynchronous	Sound deliberately out of sync with what is shown.
Sound bridge	Music that links the overall sounds together and carries on throughout various scenes.
Sound motif	A reoccurring piece of music.
Sound	The things you can hear such as audio/ noises.
Soundscape	Individual sound that have been put together to make everything that can be hear in the film.
Sound design	The way that the sound is made, deliberate decisions that are planned for the film.
Suspending disbelief	Making the audience actually believe what they are hearing.