The Monkey: Sound Design

For non-music sounds in the movie, we really wanted to focus on separating sounds during filming so we could have maximum control over them in the editing process. For example, in the film's second shot, where we see the friends playing a video game, we knew that in the editing process, we wanted to have the audio coming from the game be lower in shots of the characters, and louder in the shots of the actual game.

To accomplish this, we filmed the shots featuring the characters with the video game volume turned all the way down. We then recorded two minutes of the actual game footage with the audio on. This way, we could take the game audio and separate it from the footage, and use it as background noise for our character shots.

We also separately recorded the sound of the door opening and closing once Garrett and Ethan leave the house. This would be offscreen anyways, so syncing the sound up with the footage would not be a problem. In the edit, we made the volume of the door sounds low and added a bit of reverb to help it fall back in the mix and make it sound natural within the scene.

The next sound we had to make was Ethan’s footsteps as he approaches the closet. Ethan would be walking around in socks on a tiled surface, so the sound would without a doubt be a bit flat and punchy. To match up the sound with the footage, Corey watched the scene and stepped in sync with his onscreen movements. We put our microphone on the floor while he stepped to catch all the nuances of the sound. In the editing process, we elevated the volume of his steps, and made each step become louder as he approaches the closet to create tension and build up. 

Another offscreen sound we made was the sound of Snowy's neck snapping. We got a bit creative with this one, and record the sound of sticks snapping. For other dog sounds, we found a stock video on YouTube.