(upbeat music)
- Hey guys, welcome to Travel Feels.
My name's Matti and guys,
I hope you're doing good today.
I really wanna just say I appreciate you guys.
I appreciate all the love, all the positive comments,
and just you guys being apart of this channel,
this community.
So a big thanks to all of you guys
for supporting the channel.
Alright, so as film makers,
we all love insane, epic visuals.
I know I do, that's my main focus,
but there's a really easy way to enhance your visuals,
and it actually has nothing to do with visuals.
If there's one thing that really elevates a film or a video,
it's their sound design,
or their use of sound effects.
It's one of those things that takes a little bit of time,
but it doesn't actually take that much effort
or that much skill,
and you can really enhance your films dramatically,
just by adding some sound effects.
Just take a look at this example
from the last epic travel feel I made
in Norway of my friend, Samuel.
Check this sequence out without any sound effects.
- [Narrator] The world just offers
really great tools and keys to open
some new doors and unlock the ones that you've been
kinda trying to get open.
- And now here's the same sequence with the sound effects.
- [Narrator] The world just offers
really great tools and keys to open
some new doors and unlock the ones that you've been
kinda trying to get open.
Man, my world's been just--
- It's subtle, but it makes a huge difference.
It just somehow brings the footage to life.
So here are some big tips from my workflow
to really help you elevate your sound design game.
So first off,
let's look at where to get different sounds for your films.
Well first off, you could record them yourself,
which is a lot of time and effort,
and sometimes you just can't record audio.
So for me, I use a few different platforms
to find my sounds.
If you want a free option,
there's FreeSound.Org.
And it's nice because it's free,
but the problem is there's a lot of crap on there.
So it takes a lot of time and effort
to actually find decent sounds.
And a lot of times there's just nothing good
for what you're looking for,
but it is a great, free option.
If you have some money to spend on sound effects,
Lens Distortions makes some really cool sound effects packs.
They have the Archetype
and the Anticipation Sound Effects packs,
and both are really good,
but I especially like the Anticipation Sound Effects pack.
I use these sounds effects packs
on both the Norway Epic Travel Film and the Iceland one
that I recently put out.
But lately, I've been actually using Epidemic Sound
for their sound effects.
If you don't know,
Epidemic Sound is a music licensing site,
and they have really high quality music on there
that's perfect for YouTube.
It's a monthly subscription,
so you don't have to invest a lot of money up front,
and they just have a lot of really, really good,
high quality music.
And if you wanna check them out,
there's a link down below.
If you're a YouTube filmmaker,
you should definitely be using these guys.
But what's awesome is that there's a huge library
of sound effects also on top of all the high quality music.
So for example, if you need some ambiance sounds,
or some car sounds or swooshes or whatever you need,
you can just look it up on there,
download it and you got the sound effect good to go.
So I highly recommend Epidemic Sound,
not only for their music, but also for their sound effects.
But the question now is
what kind of sounds should you be using?
Well, for me, what I do is
I look through my film,
I look through individual clips,
and I look at what's in that clip,
if there's water or a car or somebody walking,
or fire or water boiling or coffee grinding.
Any of those things make a sound in real life,
so you can find sound effects
that enhance those video clips and bring them to life.
It sounds really simple, but that's literally what it is.
If you have a waterfall, look for a waterfall sound,
and put that in.
And it just brings that clip to life,
it feels like you're there right by the waterfall.
But the cool part here is that you can be really creative.
You don't have to use just literal sounds,
you can use other sounds that sound cool,
and put them in your video to enhance what's going on.
So for example here with the coffee grinding,
I have no idea what this actual grinding sound is,
(coffee grinding)
but I just slowed it down,
and I manipulated it a little bit,
and I think it actually works pretty well,
but I have no idea what that actuall grinding sound was.
So experiment, use some different kinds of sound,
slow them down, try different things,
and see what works best for your film.
You can be super creative in this process,
and the more you do it, the more you realize that like,
"Oh, I could use that kind of sound here,
"and I'm gonna use that sound, it works perfectly here,
"even though it's a random sound,
"but it just sounds really good in this section."
And then once you have all your sound design,
you wanna make sure that they all sound good.
You wanna be tweaking their levels,
and maybe you're EQing them.
Just like you always color great footage,
you should also be editing your sound
so that you're getting the most out of them.
Don't get lazy with this,
these are the things that really make you professional.
And then lastly, make them subtle.
Your sound effects should never be overpowering,
or overbearing,
that they're really distracting to the viewer
that you're just like,
"Oh whoa, where did that sound come from?
"Whoa, another sound."
Take it easy, make it super, super subtle.
Sound design should enhance your story,
but never distract the viewer from what's going on.
- [Narrator] offers
really great tools and keys to open
some new doors and unlock the ones that you--
- I can't stress this enough,
make it subtle.
I think sometimes
when we put a lot of effort into something,
we wanna make it visible,
or in this case we wanna make sure people are hearing them,
but you wanna keep them subtle.
That's gonna be the best for your sound design.
So there we go,
sound design is actually not that scary, not that hard.
It's really easy in the end and it's kinda fun,
you just make up stuff basically.
Find a random sound and you stick it in,
and it just sounds really cool,
and it just brings your edit to life.
You can use them to enhance your clips,
you can make your transitions better,
there's just so many uses for sound design.
So next time you're making a film,
especially if it's a really epic one,
make sure you're spending a lot of time
on sound design.
Don't get lazy.
Again, these are the things that take you from here
to all the way up here,
making you look way more professional.
Alright guys, I hope you enjoyed this video.
Leave a comment down below,
hit that like button,
subscribe to the channel, join this community,
and guys, enjoy the filmmaking process,
and go get some of those Travel Feels.
(calming music)