Sound Design Basics

After teaching documentary storytelling for seventeen years, I
feel confident in the advice I give students, most of the time.
But, as soon as someone brings up sound design, I’m flummoxed. I
feel like my advice is next to useless.

Typically, what happens is this: a student feels like their story
is boring so they want to throw some sound in — something from a
sound effects library. They think it will make the story more
dynamic.

And, typically, I respond by saying, “If your story is boring,
write better. Or, play around with the structure. Or, find better
quotes. Don’t expect to solve a problem by tossing in some sound.
It will end up sounding cheesy.”

I do think that’s solid advice. But, in reality, there are times
when a bit of sound design might actually help a story. Not to
make it less boring, but to drive home a point or help the story
be more visual.

That’s when I return to my problem as an instructor: I don’t know
how to help.

But here’s the good news. I produce a podcast about audio
storytelling and I can actually ask people for advice! And so, I
did.

My first stop was Matthew Boll. Matt works at Gimlet as a lead
producer and music composer. Of particular interest to me was his
work on Crimetown, a podcast on crime and politics in Providence,
Rhode Island, that uses a lot of sound design.

Matt and I covered quite a bit of ground but I feel like I’ve
only started to understand how sound design works. So, consider
this the first in an ongoing, from time-to-time, set of episodes
on sound design that will appear over the next few months.