More Confessions Of A Sound Designer - continued

 Number One: If someone in the scene isn’t listening to what’s going on, then the audience isn’t going to be listening either.

Sounds in movies are not intrinsically interesting, no matter what a genius your Sound Designer is. In addition to their innate qualities, they will tend to be interesting and compelling to the degree that they are perceived by one or more characters in a scene, When people are talking, they are not listening. Therefore, if a character is talking constantly (screaming constantly), or seems oblivious to the sounds around him/her, then those sounds are nothing but noise, and they have little dramatic value, unless they appear elsewhere in the movie in a scene where someone IS listening.

Number Two: The frame needs to contain some mystery, something which is not obvious. 

The human brain does seem to assign a certain kind of hierarchy to the visual and aural: when we think we are getting enough information with our eyes we tend not to fully use our ears. 

Therefore, it is the ambiguous image, the darkness in the frame, the slow motion, the smoke, the fog, the odd camera angle, the ultra close-up, or the slightly eccentric POV which sends the brain to the ear for help. In the process, the audience is literally more engaged, each sense teasing the other. More of her is being brought into play. How can she resist being more compelled when more of her body is engaged in the act of perceiving... when each sense is shaping the other sense from moment to moment.

Number Three: Storytelling is about making connections between characters, places, ideas and experiences. It isn’t enough for a sound to be merely loud, or high-fidelity, or digital. It needs to remind you of, resonate with, other sounds, places, feelings, in other times. No matter how much talent you have as a Sound Designer, you cannot make these connections by yourself. They need to be set up with the writing, acting, visual design, photography, and editing. Nobody successfully forces Sound Design onto a film, or even, a sequence, which hasn’t been designed (consciously or unconsciously) to welcome it. It would be great to read other people’s attempts to make sound a full collaborator in movie sound. Send them to me, and I’ll incorporate them into future articles if you don’t feel like writing an article yourself.

Reproduced with kind permission of the author and the CAS Journal

How to preserve

irreplaceable

soundtracks for film

..duplicating soundtracks in analog format on fullcoat film ... is the surest way to preserve these valuable assets

 Studios and producers are making important strides towards preserving the image elements of their films, however Keith Watanabe is sounding the alarm about the efficacy of soundtracks. Watanabe is sales manager for FPC, Inc., a Kodak subsidiary that supplies analog and digital media for the motion picture and television industry.

“With the transition to digital audio recording and mixing, some producers are relying on a comparatively unstable media for preserving irreplaceable assets. For many years, analog sound was mastered onto magnetically coated fullcoat film that is extremely durable. These mixes have proven to be essential to people doing restoration work.”

Today, he explains, a majority of sound mixes are mastered on removable digital drives, such as the magneto optical discs distributed by FPC. Watanabe notes that sound departments at several major studios are duplicating digital soundtracks onto analog fuilcoat film media as a relatively inexpensive form of asset protection. However, most producers aren’t taking that precaution because they believe that soundtracks stored on DA-88 tape and other digital formats will preserve those irreplaceable assets in perpetuity.

“Unfortunately,” he says, “that isn’t necessarily true. First, media such as DA-88 tape is less robust than polyester-based magnetic film. Second, digital formats tend to become rapidly obsolete. You have to presume that the media formats you use today to store preserved audio elements will be obsolete in a relatively short time. Even if the media survives, there might not be equipment to play it. The technology for reading analog magnetic sound is simple and accessible, and it has remained constant for about half a century. We recommend duplicating soundtracks in analog format on fullcoat film because it is the surest way to preserve these valuable assets long into the future.”

This article has been reproduced courtesy of ‘In Camera’ magazine, Kodak Ltd