First of all, I just wanted to apologize for ruining this thread with my ridiculous, opinionated, idiotic and stupid ramblings.
To be honest, I was hoping for a discussion more about the advanced specifics and aesthetics of sound design rather than about what sound design is and whether one should do it. However, your posts appear to me to be quite representative of the vast majority of no/nano budget filmmakers, so maybe some discussion of these absolute basics is a good thing/useful?
so far I haven't really met any professional sound designers. The only ones I've met are also boom operators that are sound designers, or sound designers that are boom operators, I'm not sure which. So I'm not a 100% on what I'm being sold.
This raises an important point. At the no/nano budget level there are extremely few, if any, actual sound designers, although there are many who advertise themselves as sound designers. These people usually don't even know what sound design is, let alone how to do it. So I don't believe most of them are being deliberately deceptive, they simply don't realise that they are being deceptive! The vast majority have come from a music production background and even those few with an education specifically in film sound tend only to have been taught the practicalities and technicalities of film audio. At this budget level, they have almost certainly never read a script or interacted with a Director and DoP with a view of advising how to design the film for sound. Their experience is limited to being handed an essentially already finished film, fixing the production dialogue, adding a bit of Foley and atmos, maybe designing a SFX or two and then levelling it all together. It seems to be a vicious circle, directors at this budget level don't ask for this kind of advice/service, so those offering audio services never learn to do it.
It's worth mentioning that most TV dramas are made the same way, they don't have an actual sound designer as such. However, the big difference in my experience between commercial TV dramas and the vast majority of no/nano budget filmmaking is that the professional screenwriter/s and directors write and design their TV films/dramas with sound as a storytelling player in the first place! As I said though, I never really thought about any of this until I came here. Being on the audio side I thought in terms of audio/visual storytelling and so did all the directors I worked with, so I just took it for granted that's what filmmaking was and never knew anyone approached it differently or thought to question how the directors I worked with arrived at this approach. Maybe they just naturally thought about filmmaking in these terms, maybe they consciously studied it by watching/listening to films, maybe they picked it up as they worked their way through assistant and other roles before they became professional directors or more likely it's some combination. Thinking about it now, this approach is maybe the reason, or at least one of the reasons, how/why they managed to beat out the competition and become and maintain a career as professional directors! It should also be noted that even in the theatrical film world, having a sound designer collaborating in the earliest stages of the filmmaking process is a relatively new thing, the first sound design credit was in
Apocalypse Now. However, thoroughly sound designed films were already well established long before then, starting with the likes of Hitchcock and Welles in the early '40s and advanced by the likes of Leone, Kubrick and others through the '50s, 60s and 70s. In other words, all these famous directors were effectively also sound designers!
In conclusion: At this stage, even if you can find a someone (calling themselves a sound designer) within your virtually non-existent sound budget, it will most likely be a case of the blind leading the blind. Even with a good sound designer though, the aesthetics of sound design and designing your films for sound is something you're going to have to ultimately become very good at yourself, if you wish to progress beyond an amateur director.
Every other film, I'm thinking about the music complementing the action (whether I can get the music or not, thinking about the music gives me a feel for the mood of the scene).
Incidental music is a most powerful weapon in the filmmaker's arsenal for eliciting feel/mood from an audience. However, it also has an unfortunate side effect, it reminds the audience that they're watching a film, it detracts from the realism/believability because in addition to the feel/mood of the music itself, it also creates a surreal feeling. This is why incidental music is usually employed together with sound, which lessens (but doesn't eliminate) this tendency.
I haven't shot much that required the intensity that proper sound design brings to a scene.
To be honest I find this impossible to believe. Are you saying that you've shot a dramatic/narrative film or short which didn't have any drama? No dramatic climaxes, lulls in the drama or any shape at all?
And in the one movie that I did think about the sound when planning my edit, I found that my plan was too intense, and I had to take some of the sound away because it was almost becoming repetitive.
That's not uncommon. Not usually because it's repetitive though but because it's simply too much going on and confusing or distracting. However: 1. Just because it didn't work as you intended doesn't mean you should just give up on the concept of sound design. I'm sure you've also experienced some shots which didn't work out visually how you intended. Did you throw your camera away or give up on the idea of ever having any cinematography in your films? 2. It's exponentially more preferable to have the visual support for too much sound than for too little. Using the train example again, we don't have to have trains running constantly throughout our scene, it may be only occasionally or even just once almost imperceptibly, if it doesn't work in the final mix how we expected/wanted. The alternative is a scene which drags and/or doesn't have the desired dramatic impact and no visual support for any sound design which could have cured this boring scene. IMHO (and experience of audience reactions and directors' instructions), boredom is the biggest audience killer of them all and must be avoided at all costs!
I'd almost rather avoid collaborating with a sound designer, as I don't know what the upside of all the time spent will be, given that I'm not even sure that I need trains in the background.
I'm sure you realise the trains I've mentioned is just an example, there are countless other background things you can use instead; car mechanic/carpenter workshops, construction or home DIY, gardening (leaf-blowers, lawn mowers, strimmers), factories/mills, farm equipment/machinery, office machinery, other traffic types (bus depots, airports, highway/road/junction), schools, hospitals, cafes/bars/clubs and many others. Each of these provide a palette of sounds and sonic colours which can simply add some realism and interest to a scene or can additionally go far further and give shape, pace and drama to aid scene, aid character or story definition/development, create mood/feel and various other emotions, etc. Personally, I would ask your question the other way around: What would be the upside of spending all your time and money to make half a film, a film deficient in; realism, shape, pace, mood, feel, character development/definition and audience engagement and interest?
I almost think that some beginning sound designers have a penchant for packing too much foley into everything, to the point that the sound sometimes seems too deliberate.
That could just be ignorance and poor judgement on their part, it could be that they know the scene is dragging and needs help and you haven't given them any visual support for anything other than some Foley or most likely, some combination of the two. Again, at the no/nano budget level none of the personnel are going to be highly experienced experts and none of film crafts are going to be executed perfectly, you do the best you can with
what you've got and if you as the director feel there's too much Foley, then direct the Re-recording mixer/audio post person to use less or make them quieter and next time give them a picture edit which provides them with more/better options.
I'm trying to change. But the logistics right now seem so costly, that I'd rather think about what little sound design I need myself, at this point. Maybe it's not so costly. Maybe it's only in my head.
Costly in terms of time; designing your script and planning your shot list for sound, filming the establishing shots and camera angles, editing those shots (while thinking about sound) and then doing all the audio post, yes, it is costly. In terms of budget/cash though, not necessarily any more costly at all.
I'm planning to shoot a short, in which I'll definitely need sound design, as there will be an alien zapping people with zapping beams ...
Again, that's not specifically sound design, it's just one aspect or element of sound design, sound FX design.
My problem is that my brain can't get out of it's little box of "the location audio nightmares."
Ah but here's one of several very useful fringe benefits of designing your film for sound. In addition to all the aesthetics mentioned above, it can often be used to hide or disguise some of the usual problems/weaknesses with the production sound. In a virtually silent room, in an empty house in a quite suburb, the production dialogue needs to be pretty much pristine because there's nowhere to hide except for room tone. Sound design does not of course give us free reign to record crappy production sound because during filming you usually can't be absolutely certain exactly how it will all pan out in the final mix but sound design does commonly present this and other types of correctional "opportunities".
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