The Feeling of Sound

Hello to all!

In this post I am going to be talking about my personal opinion on the feeling of sound. This is something that all sound designers and anyone in a sound department should employ into their work ethics.

Sound in pretty much anything you see or hear today will always have a massive impact on how you feel. Whether this will be emotionally or just that gut feeling you get when you have just seen or heard something awesome or sad for the first time. This is in music, films, TV shows and games. Going into depth about what I am trying to portray is that the sound designer, music composer, audio mixer and everyone else in the audio department, always thinks about the way they want the viewer to feel when these moments happen.

Games are a perfect example of this theory mostly because instead of focusing on what is going on the screen and some ambience's like films and TV shows, designers have to build a world for the player to be engrossed in. Take a game like The Last of Us for example. A game about a zombie apocalypse, that starts off as everything being normal. Instantly however you notice something is wrong. You get the feel of isolation from having very few sounds playing in the background and focus on the dialogue. The music is also played with few instruments as possible to back up the feel of isolation but to also make the connection with the relationship between the Joel and his daughter.
The sound effects in this scene such as the explosion from a distance are made to be sharp to make it feel like you are in the house with her. When the first explosion has happened you can hear distant dogs barking and car alarms ringing which symbolise the chaos of what is about to happen. As the scene is not chaotic as of yet this creates unease for the player making them have this sense of fear of what is really going on in the world.

If you watch the whole scene you can really tell how much depth and planning went into making this scene whole. Watch it below and have your say in the comments what you think about the scenes audio or even just the scene in general (Yes it is an emotional roller coaster but it is a very good example!)


This is what audio departments expect you to achieve when you are working on a project with them. If you are able to get that cinematic feel to have a bigger impact on the audience. You have succeeded as a sound designer.