What 'Storytelling with Sound' Actually Means

A lot of sound designers and composers call themselves ‘storytellers with sound’, but what does this really mean?

Sonic storytelling is valid and necessary to nearly all audiovisual stories, but especially games and films. Sound can communicate important elements of your story, such as:

Worldbuilding

Environmental storytelling makes a world feel richer and more inviting. Hayao Miyazaki does this with the backgrounds of his mysterious films such as Spirited Away and The Boy and the Heron. Our other favorite Miyazaki does this with the SoulsBorne series, between how the characters behave and the descriptions of items scattered over the world.

Sound can play into this in games by making the world bigger. This could mean hearing birds native to a region in the game even though we can’t see them, or hearing characters off-screen bicker. It could even include the player-character reaching into a backpack we don’t see for an item that appears moments later. All these techniques can help with worldbuilding while even saving money since you don’t need to draw, animate, or render assets that are only implied to exist.

Displaying Character

When we hear an NPC dragging their feet instead of prancing, we can deduce how they’re feeling or what their traits might be. Foley, the art of performing in sync with picture, focuses on clothing, props, and footsteps for this reason.

So much of our movement, what we wear, and how we handle objects reveals how forceful, energetic, and how in control we are. Silent characters, on the other hand, don’t give players as much information or opportunity to predict how certain characters will behave throughout the story. Setting the Tone and Mood

Have you ever watched a film commercial with an entirely different score and noticed how it drastically changed how you interpreted what was happening on-screen?

Both sound and music are integral to communicating how to feel with our audience and our players. Imagine a horror film trying to build anticipation without low, swelling pitches or screechy violins. Horror without sound would not be effective at building the necessary anxiety to frighten an audience.

In Conclusion

Sound can be a way to enrich your world with more detail while saving money, it can help with characterization, and it can set the tone or mood. These broad strokes are applicable to most stories, but each individual narrative has many more specific ways that sound can tell its story. Give your sound designer an opportunity to collaborate with you on this, and your whole game or film will improve.