Vocals

• Vocals consist of dialogue and other sounds of the human voice.
  
  
• Overlapping dialogue can create or reinforce a sense of nervousness, stress, and isolation.
  
  
• Vocals, such as Darth Vader’s voice, may be distorted for effect.
  
  
• Dialogue is invaluable for revealing a character’s ideas, goals, and dreams, though often it does so more concisely, obliquely, and revealingly than conversation in life.
  
  
• Although vocals can be extremely expressive, many films rely heavily on visuals and use only limited vocals.
  
  

Sound Effects

• Sound effects are sounds other than vocals and music.
  
  
• Some of the many possible uses of sound effects are to help create a sense of a location, intensify a mood, enhance a humorous situation or conceal an action.
  
  
• Sound effects specialists have many options in manipulating sounds, such as playing them backward, playing them faster or slower than they were recorded, constructing them, and blending them.
  
  

Music

• Music can be played in countless ways, including in different keys, at different volumes, in varying tempos, and by different instruments.
  
  
• Film music may mirror a film’s central conflict, direct viewers’ attention, establish place and time, suggest what a character feels or an animal is like, cover weak acting, and be used in many other ways.
  
  
• In large-budget movies, sometimes the film music is selected with an eye to future recorded music sales.
  
  

Silence

• Possible uses of silence in films include during dreams, to suggest dying or death, or to interrupt the regular rhythm of life’s sounds.
  
  

Transitions

• There are many possible ways to use sounds between shots, such as to have the sound of the first shot end as the shot does.
  
  
• Sound transitions between shots are used to reinforce continuity or contribute to discontinuity.
  
  

Sources of Sound