Sounds About Right
Have you ever heard silence? Seriously, if we’re quiet and listening to the world, even if we’re somewhere quiet, there are all kinds of sounds. We talked about the importance of sound design in storytelling in my emerging technologies class because we are building our own virtual reality scene experience. It isn’t easy. I spent almost five straight hours working to add the right directional sound to my experience, before I gave up and came back the next day to keep working on it. But, we do it because sound is a crucial part of telling a story. Saving Private Ryan is one of the film standards of compelling sound. So much so, there is a short documentary about director Steven Spielberg and composer John William’s choices for sound in the movie.
I mentioned that I struggled adding sound files in the right positions to my virtual reality experience, but actual sound design is difficult too. All those sounds have to be recorded and mixed with good quality before they become part of any movie or experience. Check out the sound design booth at the North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem, NC. Sound design and editing is something that a viewer probably never thinks about, but it’s an essential part of any story.
There’s a relevant joke that young millennials and generation Z never have our phone ringer turned on. I mean it makes sense, we’ve been in the classroom or important meetings for most of the time we’ve owned a cell phone and the worst thing that could possibly happen in those settings is your cell phone sound going off. And it’s true, most of us don’t keep our ringer sound turned on, but I am the outlier that does. I was in my apartment the other day when my phone went “cha-ching.’ My roommate freaked out. She looked around confused and asked me where the heck that cash sound came from. That’s the sound of someone sending me a payment on the money transfer app called Venmo. It’s genius. It’s a specific sound for the app. It creates an association with the app from the sound and prompts me to open the app when I hear it. All apps do this, Snapchat notifications sound different from iMessage which is different from Tinder, and so on. It’s the same way when you “empty trash” on a MacBook with sound on, it plays the crumpling up of paper. That’s just another way sounds tell us the stories of everyday life.