A needle drop is when music that wasn’t recorded for a movie is added into a movie – when a pre-existing song plays in a movie or show, either as diegetic sound or non-diegetic sound.

Example: In American Psycho, Patrick Bateman plays ‘Hip to be square by Huey Lewis & The News’ as he is about to murder Paul Allen, the use of an upbeat song juxtaposes his murderous intentions/actions.

The Shepherd Tone:  It’s an auditory illusion where two sine waves with different frequencies are played in the same ear simultaneously and creates a pulsing or beating sensation as if they’re coming from within your head.

Diegetic: Sound that the characters can hear eg. Dialogue

Non-diegetic: Sound that the characters can not hear but the audience can eg. Narration and Music Soundtrack

Synchronous: Sound that is matched by action eg. Playing a piano

Asynchronous: Hearing something we cannot see on screen

Needle Drop:  A “needle drop” is slang used in the film industry to describe when a pre-existing song is used in a movie.

Leitmotif: A recurring musical theme that is associated with a character, location or situation.

Score: A film score is original music written specifically to accompany a film

Underscore: An underscore is a soft soundtrack theme that accompanies the action in a performance. It is usually designed so that spectators are only indirectly aware of its presence. It may help to set or indicate the mood of a scene.

Sound Perspective: Sound perspective refers to the apparent distance of a sound source, evidenced by its volume, timbre, and pitch. This type of editing is most common in how the audience hears film characters’ speech.

Ambient Sound: Is background sound eg. Crickets at nigh

SOUND EDITORS create the sounds ( that may or may not already exist in real life), and they edit movie dialogue music, and effects to create a soundtrack that corresponds with a certain scene.

SOUND MIXERS mix and balance the audio as it is recorded; they also control the volume and tone of the sounds.

Sound editing is the recording and creation of sounds for a film piece, to create necessary auditory cues for different features of a scene, such as foley sounds for different props or creatures, real or fictional.

Sound mixing is the process of blending each piece of audio media together into one piece that suits the tone of the scene, and amplifies it. It involves lowering and raising the volume of each sound, and making use of both diegetic and non-diegetic sounds to further immerse an audience.

Sound editor: A person responsible for creating the sound.

Sound mixer: A person responsible for blending and editing sounds in post-production.

Sound Editor: This is when sound is filmed either on set or in a Foley room. This is created in production.

Sound Mixer: This is when sound in the film is enhanced and edited in a way to dramatize a scene. This is created in post production in an editing software.

Sound Editor: Creating and recording sounds (pre-production).

Sound Mixer: Controls the volume and tone of sound picked up by microphones in order to obtain the desired effects for recording.

Sound editing is the job which involves moving a project’s audio from the production to post-production stage. The main difference between sound editing vs. sound mixing is that editing focuses on the production, while mixing takes the edited product and hones it during post-production.

An example of a Diegetic sound within the Shaun of the Dead clip is the sound of the objects being thrown at the zombies.

An example of a Non-Diegetic sound is the sound effect heard when a cut in footage happens.

A needle drop is when music that wasn’t recorded for a movie is added into a movie. It may be used to set the tone of a scene or to contrast it.

Some examples of a Foley artists work on a film soundtrack include the sounds of birds or waves.

Another movie that uses a leitmotif is from the movie “Jaws” when the shark bites someone.

Another film that uses narration is Blade Runner, the narration in the movie was added in post as the studio believed the movie was to confusing for the audience to understand.

My favourite film soundtrack is The Dark Knight, this is because of the leitmotif they gave the main character of Batman.

Sound editing and sound mixing are two different but related processes. Sound editing is the process of manipulating recordings to make them more suitable for a film or TV show, while sound mixing is the process of putting together all of those edited sounds into one cohesive audio track.

The main difference between sound editing vs. sound mixing is that editing focuses on the production, while mixing takes the edited product and hones it during post-production