Ambient Sound for a Historical Scene: Case study of Thai Lanna

The ambient sound is applied in the films industry for many decades; it aims to increase the realistic atmosphere in the films, especially in the historical documentary films. The historical documentary films are also employed distinction ambient sounds to simulate the ancient atmospheres in which do not exist in the current time. This type of sound is one of very important factors in the film industry production because it helps to create the visual imagination. However, the Thai film industry has borrowed the ambient sound from the international sound effects which are ready-made sounds in a sound library. The way of sound borrowing is caused to the low sound quality in the film because it lacks of many sound components which are necessary to construct the identities of a realistic local sets, and a recording situation of an actual environment. It, moreover, causes easily noise in the sound quality. Therefore, the author would like to propose a new framework of the ambient sound design, to create an ancient sound ambient for the film scenes through a synthesis process of sound design. By framing the ambient sound design concept, this paper focuses on the Thai north documentary film, Ancient Lanna Kingdom.