Sound Design Basics

Sound School Podcast vor 8 Jahren

How do you craft sound design that doesn't sound cheesy? HowSound's Rob Rosenthal has no idea. To start figuring it out, he talked with Matt Boll who worked on the sound design for Crimetown.

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Sound School Podcast

389 Episoden

The Backstory to Great Audio Storytelling

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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.