Sound design
This programme trains students to become a sound designer. The quality of a film, documentary, television production or new media project is determined to a large extent by the sound that is heard. This applies to the technique, but even more to the content and design. The sounds, the silences and the music together with the human voice all have an impact on the viewer?s perception. The designing, recording and manipulating of all these sounds are part of the sound designer´s job.
The programme focuses on the entire process of a documentary or fiction production, from sound concept to sound recording up to and including sound finishing. Right from the beginning of the course the students are introduced to the various aspects of each element. Digital technology and the computer play important roles in this.
Characteristics emphasized in admission tests?
Motivation is the most important aspect: the desire to want to do ´something´ with sound, preferably sound with images. It is this desire that ensures that future sound people continue to enjoy their work and that as a result they can provide positive and substantive input. Furthermore, a reasonable group composition must be achieved with sufficient mutual differences between the students. A good basis for this is the feeling that the group will enjoy working with each other for four years.
Key attributes of a good sound designer
- (has) Content
- (can) Work together
- (deliver) Quality
Study programme
First year
During the first year, students from all disciplines attend classes on sound theory in which steering elements and mechanisms of sound are dealt with in great depth. This includes sound barriers (on-screen, off-screen, non-diegetic), the hearing point (public hearing point and film character hearing point), audible and inaudible editing with internal and external logic, the four sound elements (sounds, speech, music and silence), synchronous versus asynchronous and synchresis, causal semantic and reduced listening, etc. By means of many film examples it becomes clear to the first year students how easily sound can manipulate the contact without this being obvious.
The intention is specifically to make screenwriting, production and directing students aware of the powerful possibilities of sound so that they can make use of it deliberately. During their specialisation at the end of the first year the emphasis is on the use of sound theory to make three interesting sound images in terms of both creativity and content. Narrative, atmospheric and one in which a previously chosen image is seen in a different way.
Second year
During the second year the students work on three subjects.
- In the technology classes (microphones, physics, technical quality, stereo technology, digital technology, digital versus analogue technology, sound editing and mixing) technology is regarded as the means to an end.
- In the classes on content (sound in documentaries, sound in fiction, sound analysis, sound manipulation and foley) the goal is observed and designed more clearly: sound adds substance to the image.
- In the practical assignments (documentary and fiction) the sound students work with students of all other disciplines to develop sound with the image; from the sound concept via the screening period to sound post-production they are responsible for both the technical and substantive aspects of the sound. During the evaluations the possibilities, difficulties and the achieved results are discussed.
During the second year technology, theory and craftsmanship go hand in hand, lessons and practicals are alternated and aim to achieve the maximum substantive result.
Third year
During the third year there are in-depth lessons in technology (M/S stereo, surround, transmitting microphones, digital technology, time code, levels, tapping, sound editing and mixing in surround) and all the students work on longer exercises. The sound students provide the sound concept and the sound finishing assisted to some extent by coaches and lecturers.
The students can test their ideas in practice during the internship period and examine new methods and opportunities in the written thesis. In the third year the sound student becomes a budding sound designer: vision results in content and technique.
Fourth year
The fourth year is very practical with few classes: the academy seen in terms of the professional world with regular feedback to the course management. The students are like spiders in a web with control, overview and, again: vision. Used with complete deliberation sound gains impact and perspective, sound with content becomes Sound Design. By the end of the fourth year the sound student has mastered the subject and becomes a ´Sound Designer´.
Teaching goals
- Offering information (lecturing, demonstrating and instructing i.e. thinking and learning).
- Interactive (learning conversation, discussion and subsequent discussions i.e. reflecting).
- Assignment support (exercising, experimenting and testing i.e. deciding).
- Assignment delegation (working, reproducing and studying i.e. doing).
During the first year, the course takes a more general approach and offers an introduction to all the disciplines in theory and practice. The practical side focuses on subjects such as camera, sound and editing and includes various exercises and assignments that the students must complete during the course of the year. Furthermore general subjects such as film and art history, literature and television history are included. Part of the programme during the first year is devoted to the chosen specialisation. In these blocks lessons are given in the discipline for which the student has been admitted.
Films
1st year
Presentation of a film fragment for sound (all first year students), presentation of a film with sound analysis (sound students), various exercises in alternating groups, sound specialisation, working in small groups.
2nd year
Documentary exercise (10 minutes), fiction exercise (5 minutes), commercials 4th year.
3rd year
Commercials, third-year exercise (10 to 15 minutes), editing exercise ´horror´, internship.
4th year
Internship, fourth year graduation film (25 minutes).
Study material
Software
Although every attempt is made to achieve alignment with professional practice the programme maintains its independence of specific software. Currently we are working with Mac OS X, Pro-Tools 6 TDM and Light, Waves Gold and Platinum, Metaflow, Digitranslator and M-Tools.
Books
In the sound programme material is used that has been developed within and outside the academy. Examples include the following readers: analogue and digital sound equipment, microphones, sound in documentaries, sound in fiction, the physics of sound, technical quality of sound, filters, dynamics, transmitting microphones, time code and synchronisation, levels and metering, sound in surround, stereo and digital technology and various lectures of The School of Sound.
The books listed below are also used.
- Ron Streicher & F. Alton Everest, The New Stereo Soundbook
- Eddy Bøgh Brixen, Audio metering
- Michel Chion, Audio Vision-Sound on Screen
- Michael Ondaatje, The Conversations
- Walter Murch, In The Blink of an Eye
- John Eargle, The Microphone book
- John Watkinson, The Art of Digital Audio
- Ken C. Pohlman, Principles of Digital Audio
- John Watkinson, The Art of Sound Reproduction
- Ratcliff, Time Code: a users guide
- Rycote, Microphone Data
- Tomlinson Holman, Sound for Film and Television
- Francis Rumsey, Spatial Audio
- David M. Howard & James Angus, Acoustics and Psychoacoustics
- Eelco Grimm, Checkpoint Audio
A complete list will be supplied on application to the NFTA.
Other comments
Every aspect of the course from the first year to the end of the fourth year is geared to students achieving the goal of the goals of the course, the competencies that enable the sound student to call himself a ´Sound Designer´.
Technology, content, execution on the set and sound finishing are presented at levels of increasing difficulty and all aspects of cooperation are incorporated in the practical exercises.
This means that the sound graduate:
- has developed his abilities by making sound analyses, film analyses, sound archive, individual sound assignments, practical exercises and internships
- has developed the ability to cooperate during the practical exercises and through assistantships, internships and evaluations
- has mastered the quality of film sound technology in the broadest sense.
The sound student has become accustomed to reflecting extensively with others on all aspects of the achieved quality in terms of technology, content and the practical side of working with others. In this way the three most important characteristics of a Sound Designer are developed.
The discipline benefits enormously from the availability of high-quality set equipment (recorders, mixers, microphone and transmitters) and the sound finishing equipment (editing and mixing sets and the extensive facilities of the mixing studios).
List of films sound design students must have seen
Apocalypse Now (Redux), The Conversation, The Godfather, The Shining, 2001 a Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, The Big Lebowski, O Brother Where Art Thou, Fargo, Barton Fink, Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive, Magnolia, Punch Drunk Love, Se7en, Panic Room, Fight Club, Saving Private Ryan, Reservoir Dogs, Kill Bill, Good bye, Lenin, The Graduate, American Beauty, Annie Hall, Raging Bull, Rumble Fish, The Fog, Paris Texas, Jaws, Trainspotting, The Deerhunter, The Doors, Taxi Driver, Buena Vista Social Club, 9/11, Delicatessen, Snatch, La Haine, The Blair Witch Project, Brazil, True Romance, Festen,
Pierrot le Fou, Jules et Jim, Requiem for a Dream, Psycho, Breaking the Waves, American Graffiti, Citizen Kane, The English Patient, Touch of Evil, Sacrifice, Forrest Gump, La Cité des Enfants Perdus, Out of the Present, La Dolce Vita.
Kasper Koudenburg