Categories of Sound

The different categories of sound are broadly broken up into the human voice or dialogue, sound effects, and music. Dialogue is essential to a film because it aids in telling the story and showing the emotions of each character. The rate at which it's delivered can have an effect on the audience, whether it's back and forth humor to prevent them from reflecting or a small amount of dialogue to make it seem minor and overwhelmed by other factors. As for sound effects, they're broken up into two categories, synchronous and asynchronous sound. Synchronous sounds are matched with the image, and they help convey a sense of realism as the audience subconsciously expects the sound to go with the picture. On the other hand, asynchronous sound effects have no visible relation to the image portrayed on the screen, yet they serve to add an emotional nuance or underscore a potential idea that hasn't been confirmed yet. Finally, music is essential to any film because it gives it a pace and links scenes together based on the tone and rhythm of the score. Although background music is not always mean't to be noticed, the film would seem empty without it because we expect some sound to complement the action on screen, something that music is able to accomplish.