11/05/2026
Sound Takes More Than Half Credit in Cinema
by Arghyadeep Saha Wrik 2026
When it comes to the language of cinema, it is always audio-visual. You know enough about video, but can you perceive the actual position, intensity and reality of audio?
In films audio of anything, a music, surrounding sound, sound of pouring tea into cup, dialogues everything feels natural right? And you do not even feel that they are all edited in a way to fake the viewer’s brain.
Well, that is the trick. You have to fool the viewer’s brain into thinking that everything is going natural and all of it is a single piece.
When someone is walking towards us in a wooden floor, the footsteps sound will begin to intensify. When a car arrives from left to right, we will observe a sound pan from left to right. When someone is drinking tea and putting the cup on the table, we will notice the sound difference between putting half empty cup and full empty cup on the table.
You have to know what is needed for interpretation, just to fake everything. If you capture the reality, then it will not be fitted into the film.
“We are not trying to photograph the reality; we are trying to photograph the photograph of the reality.”- Stanley Kubrick
The evolution of sound design in film is not smooth. If you observe carefully, you will notice that nowadays because of technology it is very much wide. Directors like Christopher Nolan not only takes advantage of this, but also leaves cues in the sound design forcing our brain to work the way he wants.
In the movie “Interstellar” (2014) you will notice rising tension because of the use of (+1,-1) octave sound also known as “Shepard's tone”. You will notice this in many of his movies including “Dunkirk”. Also, you can observe how he used ticktock sound to rise intensity of the scene.
If you start making films, the most challenging part is to make a scene natural to both eyes and ears. If the scene looks bad and sounds good, it is a good scene. But if a scene looks good but sounds bad or unnatural, people never forgive you.
This is the part where the power of “Foley sound” comes into action. Foley is creating or mimicking sound effects by manipulating objects heard in the film. It is like salt in a food, it is required but in a small amount.
This article is a part of my upcoming book “Art and Craft of Cinema: Cracking the Visual Code”.
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