Acoustic Ecology and Film Sound

Acoustic Ecology is the balance between living organisms and the sounds around them. Since the sounds in urban areas have become nosier due to urbanization, it has extended to natural environments, and certain sounds have been defined as a type of pollution. The idea of acoustic ecology is for people to experience the quiet soundscapes that natural environments offer, such as forests and rivers. Many theories state that natural sounds could evoke a person's psychology such that it clears the person's mind and allows him/her to come up with ideas or to concentrate on a specific topic. In relation to film, most of the time people do not care about sound as much as visual aspects, however, sound plays an important role in films, too. Distinctive sounds can augment the focus point of a scene. For example, when we see a person walking on the streets, we hear distinct footsteps more prominently than the noise of the city in the background. In reality footsteps are blended in with noisier environment but in movies they have been exaggerated to become more noticeable. When we close our eyes and listen to the sound of nearby environments carefully, it is not hard to notice distinct sounds, we could also identify the distances of the sound and let our imaginations to form images in our mind. A similar situation happens in the filmmaking, the sound designers will create different soundscapes to make different layers of sounds. When people receive the sound as a whole it invokes the viewers imagination which makes people feel like they are at the location of the story, in the film, rather than just watching a screen.