Note 1: Why Citizen Kane? Not just because it's
the
first modern sound film, but also because, according to most film critics
and scholars, it's one of the best movies ever. See the
American
Film Institute site and its list of the 100 greatest films for its
2007 anniversary year: "Honoring the 10th anniversary of this
award-winning series, a jury of 1,500 film artists, critics and historians
determined that CITIZEN KANE remains the greatest movie of all time
[bold font mine]."
Note 2: This Weblecture, intended as a supplement to Giannetti's chapters
(one on sound and the other on Citizen Kane), is very long, in part because sound is a
neglected but vital language of film,
so be prepared to spend a little time with
this film concept. Students have told me it's one of their
favorites. (Next lesson's lecture on acting is very short.)
WEBLECTURE #5 Hearing with New Ears Cinematic sound is that which does not simply add to, but multiplies,
two or three times, the effect of the image.
─ Akira Kurosawa ─
When we say we "saw" a good movie or
"watched" a bad movie, we’re showing how the visual image predominates in
the way we think and talk about films. Have you ever tried turning off the image and just
"listening" to the movie as though it were a radio show? In fact,
when we experience movies today, we "hear" them as much as we see them; but in
this age of television when the visual image reigns, the language for talking about our
experience of sound is relatively impoverished. Also, while we can go back and
"pause" or "stop" an image within a shot and can move frame by frame
to re-capture a single frame, it is impossible to "pause" a sound and still hear
the sound! The film language of sound is difficult to analyze--particularly difficult for
those who have not trained their ears to listen. Yet it is this elusive quality of sound
that makes it such a powerful part of our experience.
Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (U.S.A., 1979)
begins with a black screen and the sound of helicopters. Before any visual image is
projected, we hear, as if in sleep or dream, the beating of something, sounds like the
heartbeat coming out of the black, and then--when the visuals appear, out of the smoke and
the jungle, we see them, the helicopters, heartbeat and engine of destruction for the
Vietnam War Machine. The strains of guitar music by the Doors enter our consciousness as
if from the very helicopter engines themselves, and we see the jungle go up in a blast of
napalm flame as the song lyrics begin to be sung:
This is the End, my beautiful friend,
This is the end, my only friend, the end
Of our elaborate plans, the end
Of everything that stands, the end
No safety or surprise, the end
I’ll never look into your eyes again. . . .
And this is just the beginning of the film that won an Oscar for
Best Sound for the year (70mm 6-Track for 70mm prints, and Dolby for 35mm prints).
It’s a song and a set of visual and auditory images burned into my brain, recalled
the instant I go back to the place where Apocalypse Now lives in my imagination
and memory.
As I type this lecture, I can hear the songs of small birds flitting
in the palm trees outside, a lawnmower purring in the distance, a door opening and
closing, my neighbors arguing about something (their voices are too muffled to catch their
words, even if I wanted to listen), an occasional purr of a car accelerating down the
street, the wind blowing through the Aleppo pines, the footsteps of my husband in the
kitchen, the tapping of my fingers on the keyboard, the hum of the computer, and on the
CD, Ravi Shankar plays Raga Jogeshwari. These sounds make up the background of my
experience. They flesh it out and as I attend to them, my experience of the moment becomes
that much richer and more awakened.
Experts in sound effects, dialogue, and music can re-create this
sense of "being there" for us as we’re viewing the rectangle of flickering
lights we call a movie. As Walter Murch, one of our greatest
contemporary film and sound editors puts it, "You just have to listen
to the film."
From
"Silent" Films to the Sound Era
Sound is the norm in film now, and many people think silent films
represent what is simply primitive or experimental in cinema; but the term "silent
film" is a misnomer--because silent films were hardly silent experiences. Sound of
some kind has always been associated with cinema, and machines to synchronize sound and
image were devised almost as early as those for movement of photographic images. By 1900,
only 5 years after the presentation of the Lumiere Brothers’ films in Paris, films
in Europe and in the U.S. were being regularly accompanied by live musical performances
(if only to cover up the sound of the projector). When they discovered the power of music
(whether emanating from a single piano or a full-sized orchestra) to add emotional
undertones, to cue the audience, to bridge transitions in the narrative, even to provide
sound effects, filmmakers and film companies responded. In 1909, Edison’s company
published a guide for film accompanists entitled "Suggestions for Music." It
didn’t take long for the movie studios to begin supplying musical scores and
"cue sheets" (telling the musician where certain kinds of music or rhythms or
effects should occur during the screening) to the exhibitors of their products.
Some exhibitors even hired a person to provide a running narrative
to help audiences "get" the story; some of these vocalizers just read the titles
out loud for the benefit of immigrants or illiterates; and sound effects were produced on
the spot to enliven the film experience. But it was the music that added the mood
and the magic. It is hard to imagine this early film experience. As Ivor Montagu (a film
editor, importer, distributor, exhibitor, script writer, director, associate producer who
worked with Hitchcock in England and Eisenstein in Hollywood, and who was the first film
critic for the Observer and the New Statesman) says in his book Film
World: A Guide to the Cinema (Baltimore: Penguin, 1967),
No student today, sitting in the otherwise empty projection theatre
or peering through a movieola at the tiny image, can really understand what the premiere
on the enormous screen of the giant picture palace of, say, Murnau’s Last Laugh
with at least a forty or sixty piece orchestra playing a special score was like. Nor can
he know, or really experience, that film without a revival on the same scale and at the
same expense (which, because of this last, will never be.) (61)
With the development of technology for amplifying recorded sound and
for synchronizing sound and image, when sound could be easily transformed into light
photographed as a series of bars on the celluloid itself, and then read back into
amplified sound by another device in synch with the projected visual image—then
movies would be able to enter the sound age. This development occurred between 1926 and
1929, though the movie that most people remember when they think about the beginning of
the sound age is The Jazz Singer, with Al Jolson. The Jazz Singer (Alan
Crosland) opened on Broadway in October 1927, and offered 4 singing or talking sequences
(with the rest of the film using titles just like the old "silents"). Film
historians point to the box-office success of the film, which convinced Hollywood to
invest in sound technology to make "talkies." They suggest that the popularity
of Al Jolson, a well-liked and well-known singer, generated its own excitement that led to
the financing of more such talkies. Certainly, The Jazz Singer gave Warner Brothers
a head start over the other movie studios. You can imagine the scramble to change
everything and get sound into the act, an act that would bring many other changes—in
genre, in acting style, in actors themselves (wonderful silent film actors with tinny
voices just didn’t make it into the sound age, for example).
Synchronized music and sound effects, even their mechanical
reproduction, were welcomed as added resources in filmic representation. Sound effects and
music could work hand in hand with the visual images in the three stages of the filmmaking
process: in the conceptualizing stage (in the writing process), in the shooting phase
(guided by the shooting script, with its notations about sounds and music), and in the
editing room where the sound and visual images could be arranged. But there was some
resistance to synchronizing the human voice. Because words require continuity to be
meaningful, using spoken dialogue, some said, would restrict the art of the filmmaker.
Paul Rotha put it well, when in 1929 he welcomed the mechanical reproduction of the
specially composed score as an improvement even upon orchestral accompaniment, but
bemoaned the coming of the dialogue film:
a film in which the speech and sound effects are perfectly
synchronised [sic] and coincide with their visual images on the screen is absolutely
contrary to the aim of the cinema. It is a degenerate and misguided attempt to destroy the
real use of the film and cannot be accepted as coming within the true boundaries of the
cinema. Not only are dialogue films wasting the time of intelligent directors, but they
are harmful and detrimental to the culture of the public. The sole aim of their producers
is financial gain, and for this reason they are to be resented. Any individual criticism
that may be made of them may be considered as having no connection with the natural course
of the film. This, as will be seen, lies in the plastic molding [sic] [sic] of sound and
visual images. . . . (The Film Till Now, Hamlyn House, Middlesex: Spring Books,
1963; Rotha’s text originally published 1930. 408)
According to Rotha, sound could not be be a means of dramatic expression of
content and theme if it is required to be understood literally:
Sound has not to be understood literally as had dialogue and does
not interfere with the visual appeal of the screen. . . . it inclines, if used rightly, to
emphasise [sic] and strengthen the meaning of the visual image. . . . Sound is the result
of the action seen in the visual image, which is not lengthened or altered in any way to
suit the sound, as must be the case with reproduced dialogue. (409-10)
Rotha bristled at the whole idea of the talkies and those who made
them: "The sole aim of their producers is financial gain, and for this reason they
are to be resented."
Of course the equipment needed to make these films AND to show them
in the theaters was expensive. Financial speculation on a very large scale was crucial.
Remember also that the United States was sliding into the Big World Depression by 1929 and
1930, when Rotha made his assertion; film corporations were being swallowed up by bigger
film corporations, which in turn were being taken over by the electrical-apparatus giants
in the U.S., interested in new buyers for electrical goods. The electrical industry,
despite the crash, was still accumulating vast amounts of money and so was able to
speculate in new idea, making the talkies. By the time these corporations had, as Montagu
writes,
put their representatives on the big film companies’ boards,
and the big film companies’ studios were making talking pictures, and the theatres
were equipped to show talking pictures, and if they wanted to keep open had nothing else
to show but talking pictures, and the public if they wanted to see pictures at all had in
general no other pictures to go to, public choice had played a rather smaller role in the
matter than some romantics supposed."(63)
In both Europe and the United States, compatible technologies were
developed to provide for amplified, synchronous sound tracks for the movies--thanks to the
banks and investment houses. Warner Brothers could hold on to its head-start
superiority for only a few years. Arthur Knight, film critic, suggests that it was
at this point in film history that the financiers got
their first real hold upon the motion-picture industry. Every studio
needed sound, and most of them also needed vast sums of new working capital to make the
equipment purchases and studio alterations required to convert to sound. Both the
equipment and the financing led ultimately to the same sources, to Western Electric, RCA,
and their affiliated banking houses. Soon their representatives were sitting on the boards
of the motion-picture companies, making policy with—and sometimes in place
of—the veteran showmen who had brought their studios from obscurity to world-wide
prominence." (The Liveliest Art, NY: Mentor Book/New American Library, 1957,
150-51)
Paul Rotha was not pleased with these developments; this is how he
put it at the end of his book in 1930:
The advent of the sound and dialogue film marks the opening of the
second cycle in the history of the cinema. Discoveries that have taken twenty-five years
to evolve are being thrown aside in the interests of showmanship and commercialism;
magnificently the film neglects its proper qualities and returns to the confines of the
theatre. But just as in the primitive days the film developed despite the misconception of
producers and directors, so am I confident that the offending dialogue will pass as soon
as its showmanship possibilities become exhausted, and the way will be left open for the
great sound and visual cinema of the future." (412)
Notwithstanding the heights sometimes achieved in the music video
(and exhibited on MTV) as Paul Rotha might have predicted, he was wrong about the dialogue
film. Richard Griffith, Curator of the Museum of Modern Art Film Library, who published an
extension of Rotha’s book in 1963, "Part II; The Film Since Then," says
this about that time when Rotha was completing his task for The Film Till Now:
the motion picture industry was in crises. In the short space of a
year the silent film had disappeared, to be replaced in the theatres and in the hearts of
most audiences by films featuring synchronised dialogue and music. It is hard to realise
[sic] to-day the emotional impact of this revolution. Few people can remember more than
dimly what it was like to see silent films at the time of their production [and not in
currently available revivals resonant with nostalgia for the good old days] and majority
opinion, now as then, assumes that since the invention of the talkies represented
mechanical progress it automatically meant aesthetic improvement. But to the film
enthusiasts who were the first passionate readers of [Rotha’s] book, the sound
upheaval came as very death." (415)
The film enthusiasts of the 1920s and 1930s were devoted to the
hypnotic experience associated with being in a darkened room, fixed on images flickering
on a rectangular screen, listening only half consciously to music which called no
attention to itself but merely underscored the patterns of images appearing and
disappearing on the screen. Realizing that the main barriers to popular understanding of
art were primarily verbal, these early cineastes thrilled with the idea of having come
upon a truly universal language--a language of images that could communicate perfectly
well without words. They pointed to the success of the great Soviet films, like Potemkin,
which were able to reach the hearts and minds of illiterate peasants. Griffith reminds us
that "the advent of sound brought all these hopes to a dead stop. The film, which had
ranged so far and spoken so eloquently to people everywhere, was suddenly battened down
inside the sound stages and behind the language barrier" (417). Not for all
film lovers. Several noted filmmakers and theorists (Eisenstein, Pudovkin, Lubitsch, for
example) actually welcomed the introduction of synchronized and amplified sound. Indeed
the Soviets produced a manifesto making this point.
But something had come to an end; perhaps it was the belief that
great film was an art form distinct from anything that might need popular or commercial
appeal to be created. Increasingly and continuing today, film theorists and film makers
would look to the audience as a vital part of the mix in both making and thinking about
films. It would become increasingly more difficult, if not impossible, to pursue a theme
alien to the sympathies of experiences of that average audience:
This, as film history continues to demonstrate, is the basic
condition of survival. An artist may use what virtuoso methods he likes in his films so
long as his subjects are emotionally important to the majority; if they are not, he cannot
work at all.// . . . the most functional intellectual approach to the cinema must be that
of research into the economic, political, and cultural patterns which it was bound to
reflect. (Griffith 421)
The first generation of filmmakers had passed (it had been a little
over 30 years since the beginnings of moving pictures) and the early experiment had proved
successful. The formulas for box-office success were becoming clear. Producers could put
their money on more predictable products. The age was ripe for the development and
financing of sound technologies. Government agencies and other institutions controlling
the flow of information were now joined by filmmakers. Movies could speak directly to the
people, even as Paul Rotha himself later discovered in the production of documentary films
and a book about documentaries, dialogue movies could help in this enterprise of
connecting the destinies of films and their audiences, of bringing people into the great
arguments of the times.
Fox invested in the technologies leading to the Fox Movietone News
series, synchronizing pictures and sounds of the newsmakers like Charles Lindbergh
returning to the U.S. after his solo flight across the Atlantic in May 1927. The sound
newsreel (now immortalized in the "News on the March" sequence of Citizen
Kane) became a staple of movie houses until television became a fixture in American
homes in the 1950s.
And we still have those movies that use only the
universal language of imagery and film to satisfy the longings of those who
feel that spoken language poses barriers to understanding: Koyaanisqatsi
(USA, Godfrey Reggio, 1982) for example, which you
can access via MGM Studios
YouTube version (you get closer to the actual film experience, of course,
with the DVD).
Orson Welles' Citizen
Kane: First Modern Sound Film
In the late 1930s, a "boy
genius" named Orson Welles was becoming known in theater and radio as the voice of
"The Shadow" and as the lead for a group of actors, the Mercury Theater. By
1939, Welles had created the most realistic disaster show on radio ever known--so
realistic, in fact, that it put listeners into a panic thinking they were actually under
attack by Martians. It was his Halloween production of H. G. Welles’s novel War
of the Worlds (30 October 1939, to be precise), and it was to gain him the recognition
of RKO Studios and a contract that culminated in the making of the first modern
sound film and one of the greatest films every made: Citizen Kane. Welles
was intoxicated with echo chambers and musical bridges; his own voice was commanding,
riveting—and he was in love with the voice of an all-seeing, all-knowing,
all-powerful narrator setting the scenes, threading them together, and offering insight
into the meaning of it all. He used everything he had learned about dialogue, sound
effects, and music to impel a narrative and evoke intense emotion, and he introduced his
narration technique to the world of film in Citizen Kane, the movie that almost
never got distributed because its veiled subject, the newspaper mogul William Randolph
Hearst (yes, of the Hearst Castle in San Simeon, California) got studios to offer large
sums of money simply to have the print destroyed. Fortunately, Kane and RKO resisted the
offers; and we now have a great film to study. Indeed, Giannetti devotes the entire
closing chapter of his book to a close study of Citizen Kane, as a way of
synthesizing all the film concepts of the semester.
Understanding and appreciating
Citizen Kane, if you are a beginning film student, may be a
challenge. I remember when I first saw the movie, I fell asleep; I
thought it was too long, too slow, too just black-and-white. I just
couldn't follow it and so I decided it was "boring." Beside, I
didn't like the main character at all. Of course, I was
very young (in my teens); I didn't know much about people or history, and I
didn't know much about film as an art form. In fact, I didn't even think
of film as an art form; I was pretty ignorant and wanted movies just to
entertain me. I thought, for example, that a film with an unlikeable
character or difficult-to-follow story was, well, just a bad film. No
wonder I didn't appreciate Citizen Kane! I was just ignorant,
closed-minded, and immature when it came to the film experience. I just
lacked knowledge and skill. It was only after I became a film student that I began to
get it.
You have chosen to take a college film class, so you
have more knowledge, skill, and respect than I did on my first encounter with
Citizen Kane. You can keep in mind its place in history, and use your
developing powers of observation and hearing. You understand that alert and
responsive attention will bear fruit in your development this semester.
You understand that your ability to
appreciate a film like Citizen Kane is a measure of your critical thinking skills, your
visual and auditory literacy, your maturity, your open-mindedness, your
overall intellectual acuity, and most of all your creativity. You
would be embarrassed to be caught saying that this film is "boring" because
that would tell people either that you just aren't interested or that you haven't
been learning in this class how to really see and hear a film. You know
that you can appreciate a film even though you may not like the main
character, or the storyline, or the genre.
Citizen Kane is probably the most complex film
you will be asked to screen this semester, so be sure to view it more than
once so you
can experience the richness of the experience. I have seen Citizen
Kane over 50 times, and I'm still discovering new things about the film.
Like all great works of art, it grows with you. What you see and hear
when you're 25 is different from what you see and hear when you're 18; and
believe me, as you get older and gain experience with people and life, it's
amazing how the film experience also grows in depth and complexity. This
aesthetic complexity and layering of meaning is not present in most films,
which give little or nothing on subsequent viewings.
For more information about Orson Welles
War
of the Worlds broadcast: Mercury Theatre of the Air (includes streaming
realaudio from various Mercury Theatre productions, and a 1940 interview with both Orson
Welles and H.G.Wells, the novelist who wrote the science-fiction book, War of the
Worlds, which Orson Welles adapted in his famous radio production in
1938--just scroll down the page to get what you want) | For another Website with audio
files, including the original broadcast, try EarthStation1
| Scott O'Callighan's article, "War
of the Worlds: Why the Hoax Worked" |
Committee for the
Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal on the panic
caused by Welles' radio production of War of the Worlds ("The `War of the Worlds'
panic happened almost seventy years ago, but its lessons are as relevant today as
back then.") | A nice-looking student site on the radio broadcast:
War of the Worlds Broadcast | A Radio Days article on
Science Fiction
on Radio from the 20s to the 50s.
Making
Sounds: Making Tracks Sound is 50% of the motion picture experience. --George Lucas
Let's turn now to the technology of film sound, starting
with how sounds are captured.
To capture and convert sounds to the screen, you need microphones
and a magnetic recording machine, then editing machines to assist in the synchronization
in the cutting room; finally, projection devices and sound amplification systems are
needed in the theater for to properly transmit the final soundtrack.
Microphones are placed to pick up sound effects and dialogue so that
the sounds and words come from a position close to the camera, and therefore seem
realistic. In order for words to be distinct, however, microphones will be specially
placed; sound-mixing can also lift crucial dialogue out of a general hubbub of a scene.
The sounds that are recorded build the sound tracks, separate from the images and
manipulated independently. The optical sound track, a track by which sound waves are
recorded directly onto the celluloid, was used until the early 1950s; now magnetic tape is
used to record film sound, and the final sound track that goes to the laboratory is then
recorded onto the celluloid that will go to the laboratory for printing.
The dialogue track is recorded during the photographing of
each shot—at the same speed as the film (the magnetic tape is running at the
equivalent of 24 frames per second) on which it will be eventually played back. In order
to achieve fidelity, the sound and images must be "shot" in synchronization;
when this doesn’t happen, what we hear is "out of sync" with what we
see. If synchronization is achieved, then editing can begin--that is the alignment
of the visual and the sound tracks, using some reference points to capture the
synchronization in the editing process. This can be done by eye, or it can be done
electronically (where a light flash at the start of camera action is matched to a beep on
the tape.
It can also be done by using a clap stick containing
production information (e.g., the scene number, the take, the date, etc.) held in front of
the camera with its information read into the microphone; with the sharp noise of the
clap stick being closed, the camera captures the motion and editor lines up the frame
showing this with the magnetic tape where sound begins. Once the clap stick is closed, the
take is made (photographed and recorded).
Sound effects, music, and dialogue added to a film after photography
are said to be dubbed. Dubbing, particularly to re-create the aura of synchronous
sound, has a variety of functions:
to cover for an actor’s inability to deliver the lines well
to replace a poorly recorded sound effect
to make up for an undesired noise level that can’t be
evened out when the cuts are juxtaposed
to accommodate for translation to another language (as an
alternative to written subtitles given as translation of the dialogue) so dialogue does
not need to be cut or simplified in the subtitles and so that the words can be understood
without distracting the audience from the visuals
to provide an actor who can’t sing with a decent singing
voice (Did you really think that was George Clooney singing in "Oh Brother, Where Art
Thou"? Clooney looks like Clarke Gable, but he isn't doing the singing)
to get high-fidelity sound outdoors
to get the quality of sound that the microphone can’t
achieve (particularly with long shots or wide-angle shots), particularly if the microphone
is connected to the camera itself
to free the photographer from the
constraints of capturing sound faithfully with microphones and magnetic
recording machines
to give the filmmaker greater control over relative sound level
to add information and contextual clues to
the meaning of visuals
Dubbing is achieved by bringing the actors to the recording studio,
projecting the scenes with the actor listening through earphones to the soundtrack made
during the time of the shoot. The actor then repeats the lines into a synchronized
microphone at the same speed as the images she sees; in other words, she reads her own
lips and puts the words back into her mouth at exactly the points where her lips are
mouthing those words and with precisely the emotion required of the scene. This then
becomes the dialogue track of the film. Other sounds—sound effects and music—are
dubbed in later. Standard sound effects and a wide variety of musical selections are
already available in sound libraries and can be purchased rather than recorded for the
film one is making. In films using original musical background, the film composer will
look at the edited version of the film and will then create and record the music in a
series of short selections matching the length of the scenes needing music. In musicals,
the dubbing process is reversed, in a process called photography to playback. First
the songs are created and perfected in the recording studio. Then the soundtrack is played
during photographing sessions in the film studio till a high degree of lip-synching (and
other synchronizations) is achieved. During this time, the camera operator is free to move
around without concern about capturing synchronous sounds.
A narrative track may be prepared before or after photography and
editing of the film. In Alain Resnais’ Hiroshima Mon Amour (France, 1959), the
narrative comes first—and the images are edited in the rhythms provided by the
narrative voice-over dialogue. The opening scene, for example, provides a direct on-camera
dialogue between a man and a woman making love. We see naked arms, parts of their bodies
in the love embrace. We hear them talking. The soundtrack soon becomes a descriptive
voice-over supporting scenes of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, visuals from the Peace
Museum at Hiroshima, pictures of the hospital and the victims being treated. When the
woman says, "The hospital, for instance, I saw it. I’m sure I did. There is a
hospital in Hiroshima. How could I help seeing it?"—the visuals follow the
directions of the script by Marguerite Duras: "The hospital, hallways, stairs,
patients, the camera coldly objective [We never see the woman herself seeing these
things.] Then we come back to the hand gripping—and not letting go of—the darker
shoulder." When we hear her lover’s voice say "You did not see the hospital
in Hiroshima. You saw nothing in Hiroshima," we do not see him say these words;
instead, we see what Duras planned for in her script: "Shots of the museum. The same
blinding light, the same ugly light here as at the hospital. Explanatory signs, pieces of
evidence from the bombardment, scale models, mutilated iron, skin, burned hair, wax
models, etc.)." And so on throughout the sequence, we hear the voices continue
conversing, in a continuous rhythm, with images matching in rhythm and meaning only,
drawing the audience deeply into the heart of the film and its concerns about the
relationship between the ravages of memory and the ravages of war, between the
possibilities of love and the limitations of time and space.
Sound
Mixing
The technical process by which the various sound tracks, lined up
with visual images, are blended into a final unified or composite sound track is called
the mix, the last creative step in the making of a film (prior to sending the film and
final tracks to the laboratory for a finished composite print). Sound mixing—the
combining of dialogue, sound effects, and music—can happen on the set, or it can be
done in a recording studio or sound-mixing facility.
It is said that sound mixers "hear" a scene the way a
camera "sees" a scene for the audience, or the way a reader "reads" a
scene in a script or novel. For example, if the scene shows two characters emerging from a
quiet library into a busy city street, then for a while, street sounds will dominate. Car
and bus engines racing or revving by, horns honking, people talking or yelling, even
sirens in the distance—these will dominate the aural space. But soon the sound mixer
will lower the relative volume the street sounds so that the dialogue of the two
characters can be heard. If during the conversation, a moment of revelation or crisis
occurs, the filmmaker might bring in some music to underscore the theme or to raise the
level of excitement or to create a feeling of suspense in the audience; in this case, when
the pause is broken by the resumed conversation, the musical score will fade into the
background so that the words can be made intelligible.
Sound and
Mise-en-Scene
Sound is an element in the mise-en-scene of a single shot providing
information about the narrative. Consider, early in Citizen Kane, the close-up of
lips forming a word
[QuickTime wavfile] at the moment of death, the word that fuels the search for the essence
of the man's life. The lips fill the whole screen, as we witness the final breath of
the man we come to know as Charles Foster Kane. The extreme close-up, combined with
the quality of the sound (it is a whisper resonating as though in an echo chamber), tells
us before we even know his name, that this man is dying alone, that in his death he is
calling out to someone or something for which he longs; but the only answer he gets is an
echoing of his own voice in the emptiness of his castle chambers.
But sounds reach beyond the visual images captured by a camera.
While a camera can suggest off-screen objects and characters, the microphone can actually
bring into the scene voices and sounds not actually in the camera’s view. This
provides many avenues for storytelling and movie magic. Off-screen sounds actually
penetrate the borders of the frame and occupy the same space as the visual image we see;
even when we don’t see the actual source of the sound, it is there in the
mise-en-scene.
The camera might be aimed at one character’s face while we hear
the voice of another character; the microphone gives us the dialogue, and the camera shows
us the reaction to those words. Or the camera might be showing us two people arguing,
while the microphone tells us something that is going on off-screen or hidden from the
camera eye. In one of the most tension-filled scenes in Citizen Kane, we hear an
argument between Charles Kane and his wife Susan in a tent during a fancy beach party Kane
has invited their "friends" to attend. During the argument, Kane strikes Susan
on the face; we hear the sound of the slap in sync with the actual image of his hitting
her. What happens next is extraordinary. In the ensuing argument, slowly from out of the
background somewhere we cannot see, comes the scream of a woman. Then another scream and
another—it’s a scream of terror, as if she is being raped. And we hear this with
no image onscreen to guide us—it’s a sound planted in our minds to show us how
Susan is feeling inside: she is screaming in terror because her very soul is being
violently attacked. We sense this at the subconscious level, deeply, because the sound is
not literalized by a matching visual image; it comes from the mysterious space we call
"off-screen."
Sound
Editing
Sound is also a feature of editing, and is an aspect of the
film-editing process such that an editor cuts shot to shot AND sound to sound, using
various techniques to bridge images and sounds so that the cuts are not obvious unless
intended to be so. Sound effects, music, and dialogue can extend from one shot to the
next.
Paul Rotha, though leery of the limitations imposed on the filmmaker
by the advent of synchronous sound dialogue, was nevertheless excited about the
possibilities of sound images manipulated along with visual images to express the same or
contrasting dramatic points; Rotha claimed that
the wealth and richness of sound material available for dramatic
emphasis is almost unlimited. The sounds of the world are to be combined with the sights
of the world. Already Pudovkin has spoken of the whisper of a man, the cry of a child, the
roar of an explosion. "It will be possible to combine the fury of a man with the roar
of a lion." There is the sigh of a multitude to be heard in contrast to the dropping
of a pin. The sound of the wind and the sound of the sea. The sound of rain, leaves,
animals, and birds; of trains, cars, machines, and ships. These are to be woven into a
unity in counter-point with their visual images, but never in direct conjunction with
them. Even as the camera’s power of distortion is used for dramatic emphasis so will
the distortion of sound be used. In the same way as an effect is built out of pieces of
film by the act of montage, so will little portions of sound be built up into new and
strange noises. The process of short cutting in visual images will be paralleled in the
mixing of sounds. Even as visual images mix and dissolve one into another so will sound
images mix and dissolve, according to the nature of the scene and as indicated by the
scenario montage. . . . sound images [will] be overlapped with both melodic and discordant
effect, as the mood of the dramatic content of the scene demands. . . .//It will not be
possible, except in rare cases, to cut direct from one sound to another as with the visual
image, unless there is a background of music to soften the contrast. For instance, it will
be possible to cut from the loud, angry sounds of a turbulent crowd to the sound of the
crowd when hushed, and to strengthen that contrast not by the silence of the crowd, but by
the shuffling of one man’s foot. // The sound images are to be fitted to the visual
images in the final act of assembling. . . // Thus will it be possible to construct a film
as a plastic composition, capable of achieving unprecedented emotional effect on any given
audience." (410-11)
The quality of the sound is most important—volume, pitch,
timbre, duration, etc.; and the editor makes qualitative decisions about each sound as it
relates to the screen action. With the musical score, the filmmaker can transport the
audience smoothly from one edited sequence to another; a melodic line can carry over
through the cut. The music track is vital to the film (more about music later).
The FX (sound effects) track is just as important as any other
soundtrack in extending the complexity and dimension of the visuals and in the making of
an effective final mix. Off-screen sounds can add immeasurably to the complexity and beauty
of a film experience. Take the lone dog barking or coyote wailing in a scene of a Western
where the hero is walking down a lonely street at sundown. Suddenly, he seems more alone
than ever. Sounds give us a sense of our environment—and most of them are
off-screen
so to speak (out of our range of vision). Sound effects are also orchestrated to provide
continuity and flow through the cutting of one shot with another. Take a person running,
take the sound of their feet hitting the pavement. That sound can provide continuity
through dozens of cuts in a highly edited sequence and make us believe that their
"run" was one continuous movement, just slightly abbreviated. It is the flow of
sound that provides stability in the filmic experience and holds the spectators in a
steady place across sometimes vast visual discontinuities onscreen. When the sound moves
with the image, we are drawn more deeply into the narrative.
A sequence in Alfred Hitchcock’s 39 Steps (U.K., 1935)
aptly illustrates sound montage technique. First, we see a landlady (full back)
discovering a corpse in the innocent hero’s room; and then (of course) she screams
(quarter turn). Her scream merges with a shrill whistle that we see, in the next shot, is
the train on which the hero is fleeing from those who think he is a murderer.
Take Mike Nichols’ The Graduate, when Benjamin Braddock,
the hero (played by Dustin Hoffman), demonstrates the deep-sea diving outfit his parents
have given him for graduation at the party they hold in his honor. The camera shows a
shifting perspective—the "outsider" view shows the hero walking toward the
pool, and then shoots the "inside" view so we viewers become Benjamin Braddock
as we look through the goggles and move awkwardly toward the pool. The sound
replicates this "point-of-view" camera shot. The sound follows the camera
movement; the quality is clear and sharp when the camera is outside looking at the hero
along with all the other party guests, but each time the camera moves inside, from the
subjective view of the hero, from the vantage point of the diving-suited graduate, the
sound goes garbled, muddy, even cut off. And when the hero jumps into the water and sinks,
the sound follows—we hear the rush of water and the muting of all voices. We sense we
are under the water with the hero.
In conversation sequences, dialogue provides a stream of continuous
auditory information that bridges cuts that are inevitably made between one speaker and
another. In fact, the continuous dialogue can trick the audience into believing the
speakers are in the same place and having this conversation in real time together. In fact
this is not always the case. Next time you see an interview on television, observe
carefully whether there are invariably cuts between speakers. Do they look like they are
in the same room? Are you sure? Could it be that each one of these people recorded his or
her lines separately maybe one week apart from the other, and that in the positioning and
set design during filming and in the editing room after the shoot that they were made to
appear as if they were actually having a give and take conversation with each other in a
single room in a single period of time?
Sound
Conventions
Now, after over seventy years of movies with synchronized and
amplified sound, film audiences have acquired an auditory vocabulary that includes several
conventions:
Voice-over narration with voice of character. We hear the voice of
the character who is in the camera view, usually in close-up at least at the beginning of
the monologue or dialogue, but the character’s mouth is not moving (asynchronous
sound.). Meaning: The character is thinking. We are in her or his mind, either in
the memory of the past or in some imagined future inside the head. (The audience is
hearing the thoughts. In live theater, we "hear the thoughts" of an actor when
s/he speaks directly to the audience and other characters onstage seem not to hear. This
is called an "aside," the theatrical equivalent to a film’s voice-over
narration.)
Voice-over narration with voice of someone not a character in the
film. This is the kind of asynchronous monologue or dialogue typical of advertisements and
documentaries. We hear a voice telling us information explaining the meaning or importance
of what we are seeing in the images. Meaning: Whoever is speaking knows more about this
story than anyone on screen; without evidence to the contrary, we accept whatever the
voice is saying as true.
Fade-out dialogue. We watch one or more characters talking,
synchronously; their voices fade out, and then we get a fade to black or another kind of
editing device to bring us to another image (maybe of the same character or characters,
still talking). Meaning: Some time has passed.
Sound distortions like echo effects. Meaning: Something different is
going to happen in the narrative (a flashback, a flash-forward, a shift from
film time
dialogue to internal monologue with voice over).
A noisy, confusing, scratchy, or unpolished soundtrack. Meaning: This
is a real record, a document (because of their historical connection to the technologies
developed at the beginning of the news and documentary years, the graininess of the sounds
continues, conventionally, to provide a sense of immediacy and serves to communicate the
realism of on-location documentary or news reel sound recording).
The development of technology to give us increasing control over our
auditory environment has become the subject matter of documentaries, film scenes, and
entire films. Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation (U.S.A., 1974) examines
how that technology can turn on us. A film about sound technologies and a textbook
example of manipulation of sound and image, The Conversation explores the dilemma
of Harry Caul, a sound engineer hired by some corporate bigwig to secretly tape a
conversation between a man and a woman in a noisy park, when he discovers foul play after
cleaning up the tape he made. We watch Caul replaying, refiltering, remixing his tapes;
all this is heard with accompanying flashback images of the couple, until we reach the
first point of climax, the good dub, and the man saying, "He’d kill us if he
could." The rest of the film deconstructs Caul's discovery, and his interpretation of
the bit of dialogue on his clean-up magnetic tape and in the process, the audience is
brought into awareness of the relative objectivity and subjectivity of sounds as our
understanding is manipulated by the external or internal quality of the sound as well as
the context in which we hear those sounds.
Film Music: Play
It Again, Sam
We end where we began, with music, which has always accompanied the
magic lantern world of film.
Music, a major art form on its own, is a vital element in the
creation of a film. Today, the film industry provides one of the major sources of
livelihood for many musicians, and film composition has come into its own as a major
musical genre. Ideally, a film score--like the one composed for Citizen Kane by the
great Bernard Herrmann (he had composed the music for most of Welles’s radio
shows)--is, as Knight says, "completely functional, providing dramatic accents, tying
scenes together, making transitions--never simply purring in the background" (175).
In actuality, the musical score of a film functions in several different ways (Giannetti
discusses and provides examples for most the them):
establish or maintain mood or atmosphere or evoke emotion in the
audience
change mood or atmosphere or control emotional shifts
advance the theme of the film, beginning with the main titles,
especially when the music is joined to poetry (as with songs)
direct the audience’s attention to a particular character
or detail, to identify character qualities
direct the audience’s attention to a particular detail to
heighten dramatic effect, to comment on the action, or to underline dialogue
provide information about the setting—give a sense of
locale, the time or place of the action
emphasize ethnicity, class, or culture
create or support pace and movement of the narrative
create suspense or predict things to come
comment ironically on the action (examples: the closing song of Dr.
Strangelove showing nuclear bomb blasts to the song "We’ll Meet Again Some
Sunny Day" or another Kubrick mentioned already by some students in the Student
Lounge, A Clockwork Orange (U.K., 1971), when Alex brutally beats a man and
sexually attacks his wife while singing "Singin’ in the Rain" and
tap-dancing in his storm trooper boots as he kicks at the body he is assaulting).
Establishing, maintaining, and changing mood is the function most
commonly and historically associated with film music. In many films, the mood is
communicated by the music and poetry of its songs. Take the main song of Nichols’ The
Graduate, Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel’s "The Sounds of Silence":
Hello Darkness my old friend,
I’ve come to talk with you again,
Because a vision softly creeping,
Left its seeds while I was sleeping,
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains within the sound of silence. . . .
Simon and Garfunkle's five-stanza song was written before the movie
was made, and there is no direct relationship between the words and the several scenes it
accompanies, including the opening and final scenes. Though the song does not relate to
any specific onscreen actions, it suggests the emotional state of the main character,
Benjamin Braddock--loneliness, confusion, desire for insight, a desire for a voice that
can tell him everything is fine, a desire for connection and communion with others, a
yearning for words that mean something and people who really listen with their hearts as
well as their ears. The sound of silence, of course, is another way images can be
enhanced.
In many films, a piece of music is associated with a particular
character, and when the music is repeated (we call this a "musical motif"), the
audience automatically thinks of the character. In Federico Fellini’s La Strada
(Italy, 1954), "Gelsomina’s Theme" is a piece of music that early in the
film suggests the joy of discovery and the buoyancy of the youthful spirit. Then it takes
on a romantic quality as the narrative explores the happiness she has found in her
relationship with the strongman. The musical motif associated with Gelsomina brings her
sweet face and innocent character back to the viewers’ minds even after she has died.
Even though her image does not appear onscreen, we see her in our mind’s eye when we
hear her music. In the final scene, when Zampano finally realizes the love and beauty he
wasted when he neglected his little Gelsomina, he falls sobbing into the sand at the edge
of the ocean she loved and the camera pans up and out while the musical score soars with
Gelsomina’s theme. She will never be forgotten. At the end, it is the melody that
evokes in the audience a deep sadness about her death and a bittersweet sense of the
karmic balance of the world. The audience watches Zampano collapsed on the sand, weeping
as the waves wash in toward him, and the music underscores his excruciating desperation
and his final realization: that he has created the brutal, loveless world that now
devastates him.
In other films, the musical motif is associated with a place, or
with the film itself. Take "Tara’s Theme" in Victor Fleming’s Gone
with the Wind (U.S.A., 1939). I’ll bet if you’ve seen that movie and taken
it in deeply, you can remember that theme and that when you hear that musical motif in
your mind’s ear, your mind’s eye draws up the image of Tara--the O’Hara
estate before the Civil War, the O’Hara mansion after its destruction, and the land
surrounding those images of what humans can build and what they can destroy--always the
land that, like Scarlett herself, endures. Or consider Carol Reed’s The Third Man
(U.K., 1949). The strumming zither, the first image of the film, pervades the story
and attaches itself to the sounds and troubles of postwar Vienna, whether echoes in
sewers, dogs barking, sirens, voices from out of nowhere shouting and whispering, or
footsteps running in fear; it’s "The Third Man Theme," the melody
created by composer Nino Rota, that stays with us when we go back in our memory to images
of the film. The same goes for a film like David Lean’s Dr. Zhivago (U.S.A.,
1965), which is generally recalled with the playing of "Lara’s Theme"
music). You can probably think of many other songs or musical motifs that come to your
mind when you think of a particular movie you have seen and heard. If I say "Star
Wars," what do you hear? I'd bet that for 9 out of every 10 people who
answer, it is the Star Wars theme music that they hear.
Foreground music is just as important as background music. Music
coming from a radio, a head set, a television, a film within the film, a live band or
orchestra, a live singer--these can also function in many ways to advance the narrative,
create idea, flesh out characters, and evoke emotional responses in the audience. In The
Piano (Jane Campion, Australia/New Zealand, 1993), the music often comes synchronously
as the visuals show Ada playing the instrument which is her only voice in a world that
abuses, frightens, and silences her. The foregrounding of the music emphasizes its
importance to the experience the filmmaker is inviting us to. In musicals (such as The
Wizard of Oz—Victor Fleming, U.S.A., 1939) and music documentaries (such as The
Last Waltz—Martin Scorsese, U.S.A., 1978) or biopicks about musicians (such as The
Doors—Oliver Stone, U.S.A., 1991), many scenes play music in the foreground, with
the characters themselves singing and playing instruments. In almost every case the
foreground music also serves as a bridge to other visuals and remains in the background to
provide emotional continuity.
The Sounds of Silence
What happens to a sound track without music or talking ?
Most mainstream movies today use lots of music to affect the
audience. Very few movies today are made without music. Similarly,
most films are packed with words, language that expresses feeling, thought,
and action. We are used to hearing people speak in this country; we are
used to having music in the
background to go with the mood of the scene in the films we watch. Movies that move into the
realm of silence can be disturbing, challenging, and enlightening.
The film student knowledgeable about the intricacies of
film sound is not surprised when movies win awards or nominations for Best
Sound, Sound Editing, and Sound Mixing, even when they seem to be full of
silence. Many film critics noted that most of the soundtrack of Cast
Away (USA, Robert Zemeckis, 2000) has no music at all, only the voice, and
mostly the sound effects. The sounds of a jet crashing into a turbulent
ocean during a horrible storm (probably one of the most scary and realistic
airplane crashes on film) are enough - we don't need tense music to feel the
desperation of the man struggling to survive, to breathe, to remain whole.
Listening to the ending credits sequence of this haunting film, so beautifully
designed by sound supervisor Randy Thom, brings the whole film experience back
to life in the mind's ear. It's really quite overwhelming, that wavelike
moving in and out of the exquisite music (heard in the film's final act), and
then the sounds of wind and waves (heard through most of the rest of the
movie). One of the reasons No Country for Old Men (USA, Ethan and
Joel Coen, 2007) seems so intense is that there is no annoying background
music pushing us to feel something synthetic or sentimental. We hear the
sounds of footsteps, the sound of wind, the sound of a really bad guy with a
really bad gun walking toward a door. Something bad's going to happen,
and we don't need scary music to feel goosebumps on our back.
One of the most silent of movies I've recently seen is
called Into Great Silence (Philip Groning, France / Switzerland /
Germany, 2005), a documentary about the daily lives of ascetic monks in the
Grande Chartreuse Monastery in the French Alps, monks who have taken a
vow of silence (not complete, but almost). As
Mathew Leland, a BBC film reviewer, writes of the two-and-a-half-hour
movie: "With few human sounds aside from chanting. It sounds more like an
endurance test than entertainment." As an educated film reviewer, however,
Leland is capable of appreciating the hypnotic and illuminating rhythms
provided in the film. He is not bored or confused by the silence and its
slow, haunting expression;
in fact, he writes that
such restrictions lend the film an austere integrity
that suits its subject matter entirely. Without droning voiceover, it's far
easier to appreciate the stillness and seclusion of the lives depicted. You
can't help feeling curious about the personal histories of these remarkably
dedicated men, but the film's aim is to observe rather than pry. Patience is
certainly required, but the effect of seeing the same actions (reading,
praying, working) performed over and again does become soothingly, movingly
hypnotic. And there are moments of true enlightenment: who would have thought
monks went sledging on their days off?
Another film critic, A. O. Scott, writes in his review
of the effect of this documentary on the lives of these monks in such a
beautiful, remote spot on the planet:
Not the thing itself—Mr. Gröning is not so
vain as to suppose that a movie can provide a religious experience—but
a preliminary understanding of its shape and weight. The sensual beauty of
the images is part of this, but the film has more than lovely alpine
vistas and arresting compositions of light and shade. Like the monks
themselves, it is both humble and exalted. // And, in its way, eloquent.
The idea of removing yourself entirely from the world is a radical one,
and Mr. Gröning approaches it with fascination and a measure of awe. At
first, as your mind adjusts to the film’s contemplative pace, you may
experience impatience. Where is the story? Who are these people? But you
surrender to Into Great Silence as you would to a piece of music, noting
the repetitions and variations, encountering surprises just when you think
you’ve figured out the pattern. By the end, what you have learned is
impossible to sum up, but your sense of the world is nonetheless
perceptibly altered. // I hesitate, given the early date and the
project’s modesty, to call Into Great Silence one of the best films of
the year. I prefer to think of it as the antidote to all of the others. (New
York Times film review of February 28, 2007).
Ordinary movie-goers, expecting just to be amused or
entertained, have a difficult time experiencing the haunting beauty of silence
in such films; they may not even try, because they don't know or care enough
or because they are just not up to the challenge. You, however, are
different. You are developing a knowledge of film, as well as a
skill in watching, analyzing, and reviewing films, that allows you to welcome
such challenges.
You use this knowledge and skill to interpret and
appreciate movies dense with music, sound effects, and spoken language in the
same way you do to understand and appreciate movies that seem at first to have
neglected these sounds. It's a matter of knowledge, experience,
openness, and creativity. It's about quality and effectiveness of the
sound, not just the quantity of sound. When asked "How important is
music to the process [of editing]?" Walter Murch, one of the great film and
sound editors of our time, replied: " It's tremendously important." Of
course, he meant something more complex than may first appear, or sound:
"You just have to listen to the film." (See his
2003 BAFTA lecture, about 7 minutes in.)
The most exciting moment is the moment when I add
the sound. . . .
At this moment, I tremble. --Akira Kurosawa
Sound, then, deserves special study in a film course. Sound engages
a perceptual system distinct from images and so engages us as humans more completely in
the cinematic experience. Imagine Citizen Kane without the sound track, and you can
see how the experience is changed. Sound can shape how we perceive and interpret images,
can in fact alter our understanding of those images. Take the scene at the end of Citizen
Kane, where we come back down from Xanadu to the fence and the sign, "No
Trespassing." Imagine this scene without any sound. Then imagine the scene with the
music from "News on the March" or the song-and-dance number of the newspaper
staff celebration party. Imagine the final scene with Susan’s operatic solo, or
"It Can’t Be Love" from the ill-fated beach party scene. Then play it
again, and listen to how the music and sound effects in the soundtracks of the final scene
reinforce what the whole film expresses about the relationship between power, wealth, and
loneliness that was the life of Charles Foster Kane. Sound can also cue us to look at
certain parts of the mise-en-scene. Spoken and sung words often direct our attention to
certain things onscreen; sound effects do the same. Hear the sound of a phone, and we scan
the image for a telephone in the room. Hear the sound of a doorbell, and we look for the
door. Hear the sound of a voice, and we seek out the source of that voice. Hear a musical
theme associated with a character, and we scour the image for the character or wait in
anticipation for her appearance.
In fact, the sounds of a movie can train us to form expectations.
Remember the famous shark music from Jaws (Steven Spielberg, U.S.A., 1975)?
Invariably the music would precede the gore, and whenever we heard it, we’d tighten
up and get ready for someone to be eaten. The sound has become so famous that it now
appears in parodic form in other films and in television commercials. Makers of the
murder-mystery and horror genres make effective use of this function of sound. Often they
scare us by using the anticipatory sound set-up. Further, sound provides new possibilities
for creating meaning through juxtaposition of sounds. And finally, sound accentuates the
meaning and value of silence. It’s only within the context of dialogue, sound
effects, and music in the sound track that a period of silence can be expressive.
Almost all the sound hardware used today has been around in some
form since the mid-1930s. The most recent innovations are really enhancements of the basic
equipment: the stereophonic sound process developed in 1952 for Cinerama; portable,
lightweight magnetic tape recorders; microphones and mixing equipment with more
sensitivity and more "buttons"; flatbed editors, TV tape transfer editing
systems, Dolby and THX sound systems to add depth and dynamism needed for modern visual
FX. The new generation of sound creators is now exploring the digital universe;
soon, they tell us, all sound will be created in the studio, with synthesizing devices
that can replicate real sounds with uncanny precision in the same way that computer
technologies are also providing visual artists with ways to recreate the world we
experience with our eyes.
When we think of films, then, we think not only of the photography,
the mise-en-scene, the movement of camera or subject, or the editing of the images, the
way the film looks, the visual aspects—but we also think of what the film says, how
the film sounds. We remember the music of many films. Film is an aural as well as visual
medium. Often we leave the theater thinking, that was great music—I’m going to
get the album. And even bits of dialogue become part of the culture. Can you name the
films which created these sounds, which have now become familiar to multitudes?
Go ahead, make my day.
E.T., phone home.
Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.
Gentlemen, you can't fight in here. This is the War Room!
Hasta la vista, baby!
Heeere's Johnny!
Here's looking at you, kid.
I coulda been a contender.
If you build it, he will come.
I’ll be back.
I'm going to make him an offer he can't refuse.
I'm gonna get you, sucka!
I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it any more!
I see dead people.
It's alive! It's alive!
May the Force be with you.
Open the pod pay doors, Hal.
Play it again, Sam.
Rosebud.
Show me the money!
Stella!
They call me MISTER Tibbs.
Toto, I've got a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore.
We'll always have Paris.
We're gonna need a bigger boat.
What we have here is a failure to communicate.
You talking to me?
Will "WALL-E" make the list? ("WALL-E!
WALL-E!") Can you think of other famous film lines?
Recommended:
Studio360: hear an interview with Ben Burtt, who created the sounds for WALL-E
- click below to get the interview directly - sound samples galore
(great on sound effects - the public radio program interview is full of example sounds from other Burtt
films too, like Star Wars)
The cinematic experience then engages two major sense systems--sight
and sound. Combined with a good knowledge base about films and film languages, a
skill in "reading" the film experience, a sensitivity to what is different or
new, and a supple imagination--our ability to see becomes a talent for discernment, and
our ability to hear is transformed into a knack for listening and understanding.
If I were to film this moment in my week, as I type these final
lines and ready this lecture for your amusement and edification, I would first shoot a
full-back long shot showing me at the computer in my small office, white light pouring in
from the window to my left, a yellow light beam coming from a desk lamp spotlighting my
notes on the right, and a bluish glow coming out from the computer screen itself. Then I
would move around to show my face in close-up, coming in to an extreme close-up to show
the glow of the computer screen and the words being typed in the mirror of my right eye.
Then I would move back around, close in on my fingers typing, tilt up to the right to show
a small brass statue of Ganesha, the Hindu deity of auspicious beginnings, then pan left
for a close-up shot of the computer screen itself, the sea of words there and these words
being added as we go. With the very first visual image of this closing shot, the
soundtrack would be playing Ravi Shankar’s Raga Jogeshwari, and as the camera
moves and focuses on various images, the sounds of those images will begin to be heard,
the tapping of fingers on the keyboard, the hum of the computer, my breathing.
As the camera follows the creation and revision of these words on
the computer screen, these sounds will dissolve into sounds from the outside world--first
the skateboard of a neighbor boy doing tricks; then one, two cars speeding
by; a lawnmower humming in the far distance; a dog barking a block away, lonely for the
boy. Next, as the camera pans up and out toward the window to show the back yard, Ravi
Shankar's raga droning even more softly, sounds fade in and dissolve as other sounds fade
out. Sounds of the starling and sparrow chirping in the palms and bottlebrush, the wind
whispering through the Aleppo pines, a light airplane purring above. The camera pans up
into the white and blue of the afternoon sky, as the tapping of the keyboard comes up in
volume. With the camera lens filled with blue sky and white clouds moving slowly in that
sky, the sound of the wind through the Aleppo pines joins in volume with the tapping.
Finally, all sounds dissolve into the rising volume of the Raga of Ravi Shankar. .
. .
Created 27 July 1998. Revised
25 February 2009
Gloria Floren, Letters Department, MiraCosta College, One Barnard Drive,
Oceanside, California 92056.
Contents Copyright 1998-2009 Gloria L. Floren. All rights reserved. U.S.A.
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It can also be done by using a clap stick containing
production information (e.g., the scene number, the take, the date, etc.) held in front of
the camera with its information read into the microphone; with the sharp noise of the
clap stick being closed, the camera captures the motion and editor lines up the frame
showing this with the magnetic tape where sound begins. Once the clap stick is closed, the
take is made (photographed and recorded).