Sound Design Part 2

Ambient Sound Design

Silence is one of the most powerful tools in film but it’s never truly silent. I didn’t want the quiet moments in my film to feel dead or awkward. I wanted them to feel thoughtful. So I built a soundscape that’s nearly invisible, but emotionally loaded. This was the foundation of the world I wanted the characters to breathe in.

Base Layer – Present Timeline

These were interior apartment scenes, often slow-paced with minimal movement, so I needed background sound to maintain immersion:

• Apartment Noise / Subtle White Noise:

  • A near-unnoticeable static layer that sits under everything.

  • It’s not meant to be heard, just felt. It softens the silence.

  • Like how silence isn’t truly silent in real life. There’s always an AC hum, a fridge buzz, the soft reverb of empty space. That’s what I emulated.

    

    
    

• Traffic Noises (Faded In & Out):

  • Layered in waves using automation, so cars pass “through” the scene in real time.

  • This was designed to simulate a real city environment rather than a static background loop.

  • Timing was important here, I placed louder car honks or motorcycle rumbles during pauses in dialogue, to prevent them from fighting for attention.

    

    
    

• Distant Police Sirens (Panned Slightly L/R):

  • These were treated with reverb and subtle stereo panning.

  • Not close enough to feel threatening, just part of the “Old Lahore at night” vibe.

  • It anchored the characters in a city that never sleeps.

    

    
    

• Dogs Barking Randomly in the Distance:

  • Layered using volume automation so they appear and disappear naturally.

  • I intentionally avoided loops, every ambient element is placed as a moment, not a pattern, to avoid making the audience subconsciously notice repetition.

Flashback Sound Design – The Androon Sheher

This sequence demanded a denser, more chaotic soundscape:

• Location Field Recording:

  • I captured the actual ambient sounds of the location after I had finished filming.

  • This included people yelling faintly, car horns, passing rickshaws, and most importantly, a distant Azaan(a call for prayer for Muslims - very common in Pakistan), which echoed beautifully through the urban alleyways.

  • That Azaan wasn’t just aesthetic, it gave the flashback a cultural timestamp. It emotionally rooted the scene in a real place, which was important because it was a memory, and memories are always tied to sensory experiences.

• Noises of Nightlife:

  • Since the flashback is set outside, near residential buildings, I added subtle layers of:

    • TV muffles behind walls

    • Conversations from balconies

    • The clank of metal gates or dishes

  • This made the space feel alive, without overcrowding it.

• Police Sirens (More Prominent):

  • In flashbacks, the sirens are louder and closer, almost to suggest the memory feels more threatening, more raw.

  • It hints at past trauma echoing louder than present distractions.

This entire ambient track was treated as diegetic audio, meaning it belongs to the world of the film. It wasn’t just background; it was worldbuilding, verisimilitude.

Music Composition & Emotional Scoring

Music is where I transitioned from sound designer to emotional manipulator (in a good way). Rather than scoring like a composer, I scored like a storyteller, always asking: What does the audience need to feel right now that the dialogue or acting can’t fully say?

Initial Layer – Emotional Synth Pads

• Synth Pads: My emotional “filler.” These were used in scenes where the tone wasn’t sad, but also wasn’t engaging enough on its own.

• They:

  • Faded in and out with character dialogue.

  • Were automated to swell or drop depending on emotional beats.

  • Acted like “emotional highlighters,” softly underscoring key shifts in energy.

• Eerie/Nervous Synth Variation:

  • Used during emotionally tense but quiet scenes (e.g. when Saif asks Saba to stay).

  • It had a dissonant undertone, very faint but enough to create a subconscious unease.

  • Used to foreshadow emotional escalation.

This was one, amongst like 5-6 notes I used. These pads were subtle. They weren’t music, they were emotional texture.

Full Music Composition – Why I Made My Own

I knew from the start that traditional editing-to-music wouldn’t work. My film’s structure, which weaves between present and flashbacks, has unpredictable pacing. Using pre-composed tracks with set lengths would’ve limited how I cut scenes.

My Process:

1. Scene Analysis: I sat with each scene and asked: What feeling do I want to pull out of this moment? Not just "sad" or "tense", but what kind of sadness? Regret? Dread? Repressed guilt?

2. Inspirational Research: I watched trauma-based scenes from other films and listened to their scores, not for reuse, but to understand instrumentation and pacing.

3. Sampling + Separation:

   • I then found pieces with the mood I liked, even if just one instrument.

   • Ran tracks through vocalremover.org to isolate stems (piano, guitar, bass).

   • Cleaned them, re-EQ'ed them, slowed or stretched them, removed rhythm, layered them over one another.

4. Built Custom Tracks:

   • Using DaVinci + Audacity, I stitched together instrumentals:

     • Slow ambient piano with notes that rang out like pads.

     • Minimal guitar lines, low-pass filtered and reverb-heavy.

     • Occasional sub-bass pulses that only appear at emotional climaxes.

       

       grabbed individual instruments from each stem, creating my own plant? idk if thats a good analogy but i tried

       

       
       

5. Complex Music Design Details:

   • Some piano tracks used reverse reverb pre-delays to create that “ghostly anticipation” effect.

   • I used sidechain ducking for some pads to subtly dip under dialogue without needing volume automation. In other words, one track is made quieter (the ducked track) whenever another (the ducking track) gets louder

   • Reverb tails were manually stretched to ensure smooth fade-outs between scenes.

     

Scene-by-Scene Music Narrative

Let me walk you through how this music behaved in specific scenes:

The Table Scene (Video Reveal)

• Start: Almost no music, just synths.

• Mid-conversation: As Saba begins realizing something’s off, the music subtly fades in, slow, unsettling.

• Saif hesitates: Music swells slightly, with a rising dissonance.

• Saif’s Breakdown:

  • At the line “Nothing. I was a child. He kept USING me,” the music goes completely silent for half a second.

  • Then: fast-paced, emotionally intense instrumental kicks in, meant to simulate a panic attack. rapid, rhythmic, oppressive.

• Transition: That music fades into the next shot where Saba is lying on the bed. There, the music disappears again, replaced by synths.

pay attention to the music here

The “Saba Leaves” Sequence

• No traditional score, just layered rapid pages flipping with a riser that follow her motion.

• Focus was on stillness and detachment.

  
  

The Reveal of the Teacher’s ID on the laptop

• Long creepy riser begins as Saif moves to the laptop.

• Cut to black: a pause. Then the subtitle “shit.”

• Instant cinematic impact hit (layered thunder, bass slam, subtle metallic shing texture).

• That transitions directly into the intro animation’s instrumental.

• That fades into the “2 weeks earlier” title, resetting the timeline.

3. Final Mixing & Audio Engineering

This is where everything came together. Every individual element sounded good but now they needed to work together without clashing.

Volume Structure / Output Limits

I created a target loudness plan:

Audio Type	Target Range
Dialogue	-15 to -20 dB
Music (under dialogue)	-30 dB
Ambient Noise	-40 dB
Diegetic SFX (e.g., knocks)	Up to -12 dB

I kept my peaks below -6 dB overall to avoid clipping in exports and transcoding when I upload on YouTube.

Spatial Mixing (Sound Placement)

I used DaVinci’s 3D panning tool to separate layers:

• Dialogue & Diegetic Sounds: Centered.

• Non-Diegetic Music & Pads: Pushed wide left and right.

• This created a spatial width where all elements are audible without clashing.

Result

Even when multiple layers are present, nothing feels muddy. Every sound has its own place in the stereo field. This creates a rich headphone experience, which is why I always tell people to please, for the love of God, wear headphones.

Conclusion

The best part?

The audience doesn’t even realize half of this is happening.

They just feel it.

They don’t notice that the synths faded in the moment Saba’s expression hardened. Or that the ambient tone dropped a key when Saif stood up. Or that there’s a reversed piano note ringing out under the word “used me.”

But it’s there. Guiding them. That’s the kind of score I wanted.

Reflection

For a film so quiet, this was ironically the loudest post-production phase.There were more decisions to make here than anywhere else. Because you can’t just add emotion in sound design. You have to listen to what the scene is already whispering and amplify that.

At every turn, I tried to respect the silence of my characters. I didn’t want the music or ambient layers to interrupt them. I wanted the sound to compliment their story. To give their silence weight.

In the end, I don’t know if the sound is perfect.

But I do know that it’s honest. And in a film where the characters can barely bring themselves to speak, that honesty is the loudest thing in the room.