Adding Sound to My Silent Film

Today in Media Theory I had to record and add sound to my silent film. To do this, me and my group watched the film a few times and took note of all of the sounds going on that needed to be replicated, not forgetting ambient noise. After this we went out to record and did this in a variety of ways.

One hard part of recording was getting ambient noise and car sounds from outside without the wind interfering with the clips. To solve this problem we shielded the microphone, however some wind was still audible. In the end we just waited for it to stop and recorded at those times. Something which worked well was using Max's bag to make sounds in a silent room. This helped us to create realistic sounding effects which we needed.

My Premiere timeline showing all of the
audio clips alongside my silent film.

After we had all our sounds recorded, we had to edit them into our films separately. This wasn't too much of a hard task software-wise, however some of the sounds needed adjustments. To make them fit I changed the speed and pitch of some of them. Lastly, I downloaded some royalty free sounds from freesound.org to fill in any gaps where our recordings weren't good enough. This is the end product without music:




Overall I think this audio has made the film more effective. This is because firstly it gives the story being told more depth and realism because the viewers ears will tune in to the sound alongside the visuals. Another way the sound is effective is that it helps to add pace and drama to the film e.g. the footsteps added to the chase scene make it more fast paced. In the opening of the video the sounds are effective in setting the atmosphere of the film, through the ambient sounds which show its outdoors in the street. Lastly, sound was effective as it made the video funnier. When action takes place like a fall, the sound helps to add impact to it.

Overall, I think that by adding sound, the film has been improved and portrays a better story, although it doesn't really fit as it's a silent film and adding sound doesn't make it true to it's time.

This is the finished product with the added sound and music.