A post recently shared on No Film School, containing a video tutorial from The Film Look, explains how some of your favorite movie sounds came about, and how you can create your own, fully customizable library of sound effects. While there may not be a lot of surprises in the knowledge shared, it serves as great inspiration: pitch a tent in your living room, set up your mic and go to town.

After having your gory, stabby, bloody, squishing, cracking way with a variety of fruits and vegetables, go the extra mile and pick up a selection of sounds that you will almost definitely be needing in your edit. Things you may take for granted or simply neglect to include could be sounds like foot steps, jumps, handshakes, the rustle of clothing, cabinets opening and closing, doors creaking … the list goes on. On my latest shoot, we took great care to record clean, on-set sound, but even so, as I was editing the footage, I found that increasing the volume of dialogue sometimes gave the ambient sounds an unnatural presence in the mix. Similarly, in scenes with a rich room tone, like outdoor or group scenes, some of the finer details would get drowned out, giving the mix a feeling of being incomplete – even though the sounds were there. Have those basics (footsteps, movement, clothing) handy.

That said, what really sells these custom-made sound effects in the final mix is the delicate addition of room tone, so be careful to get that while on set.

But say your film is animated. Or set in a dystopian future/past. Or seeks to transport the viewer to unfamiliar places. Is room tone and watermelons gonna cut it? No. Sound effects – or sound design, really – should always support how you want the viewer to relate to your characters and their environment. The perfect example is a film like Wall-E. Take a cue from the greats:

When Heika Burnison and her team at White Light Audio Inc. begin post-production on any given project, they are taking it through what’s been aptly dubbed ‘The Seven Stages of Sound Design.’ Order and approach varies, but all seven will at the very least be carefully considered. So what exactly are these seven stages of sound design?

ADR. Foley. Dialogue Editing. Sound FX. Background Editing. Music – and Final Mixing.

Heika, co-founder of White Light Audio Inc., will take you through the specifics.

White Light Audio Inc. is a new and exciting sound studio specialized in both on-set recording and post-production. For more about their services, check out their website, and enjoy a quick pitch about what sets them apart from other studios.

If you were to mute the movie, any movie, what would be lost?

Movies are absolute visual stimulus, no matter the genre, no matter the plot. The audio tends to be secondary in our minds. While sound lends itself more to a villain’s monologue than a daring car chase through Amsterdam, both are ultimately on the chopping block. Direct exposition might stall in the silence but we still have visual cues: the performances, the aesthetic and the movement. In live theater, it’s all about the actor’s movement whereas film relies on the camera’s. This cinematic principle is called the “eye of god.” A camera takes you places you’re normally unable to go. Even more than that, this dynamic gives you insight – a camera will hold on an actress’ face far longer than we’d dare stare in real life, and in that disembodied, extended focus we observe every inch of her emotion. Now incorporate sound: her shuddered breath is agitating, the stifled sobs emotive. Sound is the sensory validator, confirming what we see is communicating what it should be. The screech of a violin announces a psychopath with a meat cleaver while a slammed door indicates an unseen entrance. Now remove those markers… something is lost but is something gained as well? Think of cinema before “talkies,” in the silent era when faces were dialogue and music was exposition. Now remove that music and there’s still a wholly visual experience there, with all types of indicators toward a story.

So can a movie exist without sound, or sound without picture? Should they be expected to? Ideally, yes.

Take last year’s Whiplash, for example. It’s literally a film about music, but there’s a silent, visual story in there. Imagine Whiplash on mute and the foundation remains intact through what we see: “An aspiring drummer vies for a spot in a formidable jazz conductor’s studio band but soon realizes the man is not only a master manipulator but an absolute sadist to boot.” You could watch the entire film, start to finish and while the sound may change or arguably enhance the overall experience, you’d take in all the information you need from the performances and gradual evolution of the cinematography.

Now, sound without picture is a different story, one we’re actually more familiar with. Audio plays have been around since the dawn of mass media – one of my favorite parts of the radio show A Prairie Home Companion is when Garrison Keillor and co. present a highly-involved skit with nothing but voice and sound. Even more than expositional narration, our ears pick up what is called “ambience” or “foley” to make sense of things. These audio principles ensure the environment of the story is communicated by noise, from a chuga-chuga-chuga at a train station to the skittish footsteps of a woman walking home during a full moon. While picture stimulates us, sound activates our visual imaginations. For example, the final scene of Pulp Fiction serves as its own audio play from the moment Jules and Vincent sit down to pancakes. By removing the picture, we hear only the ambient sounds of the diner and the dialogue of our characters, and once Ringo and Yolanda stick up the joint we are treated to tension in both the silence and raised voices that break it.

The take away from these examples and the theme at large is direction both in sight and sound. Directors should constantly be selling the story in the visuals, even beyond the structure of the script. Likewise, sound editors and mixers must strive to not only follow the visual cues but at the same time compose their own audible story between every screeching tire or ringing gunshot. If sound and sight can come together in these highly intentional ways, that’d make for movies that feed both the eyes and ears in a swell of cinematic awesomeness.