Why Not Sketch Sounds in Pre-Production?

The director leans over the DP’s shoulder, pointing at storyboards. “Can we push in tighter here?” Meanwhile, the sound designer—if they’ve been hired at all—sits in an office waiting for someone to lock the edit. It never gets locked, by the way.

I’ve been writing about this for decades: The fundamental disconnect between how filmmakers think about image versus sound in pre-production. It’s completely different assumptions about what can and should be discussed before you start shooting.

The Visual Conversation

Cinematographers and directors have an entire ecosystem for planning: storyboards, shot lists, location scouts, lookbooks full of reference images. A storyboard panel of a close-up actually looks like a close-up will look. When you and the DP examine a Caravaggio painting, you’re literally looking at the same thing, talking about how that chiaroscuro might inform your lighting.

The DP gets hired early because they have to be. Locations need scouting, equipment needs ordering. But it’s more than logistics—there’s a recognition that visual storytelling benefits from integrated planning. The cinematographer shapes how the film will be shot, which shapes what can be shot, which shapes the story.

Sound Has to Speak in Metaphors

Sound designers usually show up much later, almost never before principal photography wraps. When we do get early conversations, we’re working through metaphor and analogy.

Some directors do better. Francis Coppola described Apocalypse Now in terms of sonic contrasts: mechanized American violence versus organic jungle sounds, and those worlds blurring together as Willard’s psychology dissolves. But notice—it’s conceptual. Francis couldn’t sketch what it would sound like the way he could sketch a shot.

I’ve worked with directors like Bob Zemeckis on Contact and Brad Bird on The Incredibles who think architecturally about sound from early on. But even then, the conversation is different in character. We talk about strategy: Which moments should be driven by sound design rather than music? Where can sound carry narrative weight? What stays ambiguous?

Why This Matters

When visual elements get extensive pre-production while sound gets deferred, you end up with films designed for the eye, sound serving a supporting role. Opportunities get missed because they weren’t imagined early enough to inform how scenes are shot.

Think about a scene where someone discovers something shocking. With visual preproduction, the director and DP have planned the composition, lighting, movement. But if I only see this scene in post, I’m responding to locked choices rather than shaping the moment’s architecture. Had I been there earlier, maybe we stage it simpler, let sound carry more weight early-on, to make the visual punch even more powerful when it does arrive.

On Ratatouille, we thought early about how Remy experiences the world through heightened senses. That shaped how scenes were conceived—moments of stillness where we could hear his perception of food, kitchen sounds, the sensory overload of Paris. That doesn’t happen if sound design is an afterthought.

Different Media, Different Possibilities?

Some sound designers argue responding to the edit serves the medium better. Sound should emerge from what the film becomes, not what we imagined. There’s some truth in that. But it doesn’t have to be either-or. We can have a plan for sound, and still have plenty of room to make discoveries later in the process.

The question isn’t whether I should specify every effect in advance—that’d be limiting. It’s whether I have the chance to think architecturally about sound from the beginning, helping shape how scenes are conceived.

What Would Change Look Like?

We’d need new tools, maybe templating systems for rough sonic sketches. We’d need cultural change in filmmaking: budgets accommodating early sound involvement, directors educated to think about sound cinematically, production schedules considering acoustics.

Some of this is happening. Some VR production involves sound designers from the start because spatial audio is crucial. These emerging forms might seed practices that migrate back to traditional filmmaking.

But the fundamental asymmetry persists as long as we assume we don’t need a plan for sound, just vague ideas about it. For sound to achieve real integration, we need to design the film for sound.

Sergio Leone and Ennio Morricone sketched sound design for the first sequence in Once Upon A Time In The West, and sound decided what the camera should focus on. Screen that sequence for a taste of what can happen when a director truly thinks about sound design before they begin shooting.