Soundscape for a western

Audio is more important than video. This is an undeniable truth. Nowadays, even with a phone, decent quality video can be taken, but bad audio that breaks immersion is just as easy to get. Almost all sounds in a film are added after shooting; normally, only dialogue is recorded directly on set. Many westerns in their film openings play with the absence of sounds, mainly using nature sounds that can be added after recording. This has, of course, always been done with a purpose: establishing setting, showing a lonely character, setting a pacing, even the combination of these. These combinations are achieved through the combination of elements as well.

Combinations

SLOW MUSIC + SHOTS WITH A LONG DURATION

Shots with a long duration already speak for themselves. The lack of constant cutting portrays a more contemplative and slow pacing. Take a look at this scene in which a folk song by Leonard Cohen, with long duration shots, highlights the loneliness of the main character. A very important thing is the sound design, which is full of ambient sounds, with only steps as human-made sounds. This enhances how small and lonely the main character is in contrast to the huge environment that surrounds him.

This is a lot as what we aim for. As we could easily add all this videos from websites like PIXBAY or even YOUTUBE. For AICE media we alredy had to create a sound design from scratch. Plus other fim related works that I've done, I know that I can find all I need in this two sytes. We could foley maybe the digging and walking to make it with the perfect timming but just in the case that we have extra time, because it can perfectly work only with the sounds we download from these sytes. 

ABSENCE OF DIALOGUE 

The previous scene is also an example of this but I'd like to show a different example, in which almost a whole situation is developed, without dialogue when in many movies dialogue would've been used. 

The confrontation between the characters is developed through actions. It follows the basic rule: show, don't tell. For our film opening, we will be shooting outdoors, so we really don't want to record dialogue because we will be shooting in an open field where there will be a lot of wind. This would make the audio really low quality, and we don't want that. In the first example, there is a scene in which dialogue is not necessary, but in this one, there is no dialogue for almost two minutes, and it's done to generate suspense. And really good sound design helps this. An unrealistic sound perspective that lowers the volume of some ambient sounds to enhance specific moments is something we can definitely use.

I think that for the moment our main character is digging, it'd be a great moment to mute all ambient sounds to only hear the digging and make it a more powerful scene.

MUSIC

Music in western films is predominantly acoustic: guitars, violins, and banjos. It all depends on the dramatism of the scene. For our opening, I'd like to take inspiration from the first 20 seconds of Leonard Cohen's "Traveling Light". For some recent projects, I've mixed non-copyright instruments from YouTube and put them together. This song is the repetition of a guitar sound and some really dramatic violin. I can definitely make something like this.

There are ways of complementing our video with great audio. It is essential that we make it right so the film opening is more immersive.

VCV. “Sound Atmosphere of the Western Movie Genre.” VCV Community, Aug. 2022, community.vcvrack.com/t/sound-atmosphere-of-the-western-movie-genre/17964. Accessed 21 Feb. 2025.

“260 Sound Design for Westerns: Bass Reeves – TONEBENDERS.” Tonebenderspodcast.com, 2024, tonebenderspodcast.com/260-sound-design-for-westerns-bass-reeves/.