Trip to the Museum of the Moving Image

The Sound Editing demonstration at the Museum of the Moving Image explains the techniques used in how movies mix sound, music dialogue, etc. in a cohesive manner to bring a scene together. In the demonstration the demonstrator explained that sound editors use different techniques to incorporate foley, score and dialogue. The demonstrator used James Cameron’s Titanic to explain the different sounds being incorporated in the scene by isolating those sounds and describing their individual purposes.

Dialogue does a lot for a scene as it allows characters to converse and it helps put things into context in order to let the story progress for the viewers. The actors also play an important role when it comes to the dialogue; depending on their skill they can keep the audience’s attention to the story. The score, or music, helps to set the mood of a scene. Fast-paced music could be appropriate for a scene with a lot of action, and slow mood music for a more romantic scene. The foley for a scene is basically the various sound effects that are artificially created. Foley artists use different types of props to produce sound effects that normally can’t be picked up during regular filming. They use crushing a soda can to represent the crushing of a metal ship or the breaking a piece of celery to display a bone cracking.