Creating scene sounds

I've been reading Michael Ondaatje's The Conversations: Walter Murch and The Art of Editing Film and came across a very interesting passage the other day. Murch and Ondaatje are talking about hyperreal sounds: how sometimes recording a "real sound" just doesn't cut it for a film. For example, for Apocalypse Now, Murch needed cricket sounds for a scene. Murch knew that he wanted a "hallucinatory clarity," and he knew that going out and recording a field of crickets would be too ordinary for the scene. He needed something that was extraordinary — or, in his case, hyperreal. So, Murch went out and got close to one cricket and recorded it. Then, electronically, he multiplied the sound of that one cricket to make the sound of thousands of crickets, all in the same pitch, which gave it a "harmonic unity."

I think it's so interesting how much altering of sounds is done in film in order to give bring the audience in as much as possible. If you think about it, the aim of everyone involved in the film is to make it as real as possible for the audience so that they are able to feel captivated and engrossed by it; able to feel part of the world on screen. Weird, then, how, in order to get that sensation, sound designers have to manipulate real sounds or record "fake" sounds (ie. sounds created in a foley studio that weren't recorded during production). Nothing is ever as it seems, especially in the world of film.

A Beautiful Mind

I've decided to watch a few of the six movies we have to choose from for our final paper. I wanted to be able to watch the movie once, allowing the music to affect my experience subconsciously.

The first movie I watched was A Beautiful Mind. My goal was to enjoy the film as I would any other film while it was playing, and then, after it was done, think about what sounds were significant; what I could remember.

Looking back on my experience, I remember many moments of swelling, heart-tugging music. However, I remember an equal number of scenes filled with silence. From what I remember, silence encompassed the scenes where something particularly important was going on — the music started after the moment. But the silences were particularly important, as they allowed the audience to get absorbed by the content of the shot instead of the music. The content made us feel a specific way. And the music, which started seconds after the moment, simply picked us up where we were and carried us along, further emphasizing our feeling. Beautifully done.

The one other thing I remember is the importance of sound near the end of the film, when Nash was hearing voices. The scene that stands out in particular is when he's speaking with his wife and Dr. Rosen. He hears a faint giggle and says, "is that the baby?" It's heartbreaking and touching at the same time.

We, the audience, listen to sound from Nash's point of view, which makes it hard for us to distinguish what's real and what isn't. At the moment mentioned above, we don't know that the baby is with Alicia's mother, and we think, "wow, what a tender moment, he just heard is baby's faint giggle, see, he does pay attention to things that are real and meaningful." Then, we discover that the baby isn't there.

The way the filmmaker used sound to manipulate the way we saw each scene was fantastic, because you don't realize it as it's happening. We think each sound is one everyone can here and only realize later we were listening to what Nash could hear in his subjective reality.

I'm eager to watch at least two other films, see what I think of them without listening too carefully, and then picking the one I want to focus on.

Walter Murch

I've been reading Michael Ondaatje's The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film and I've been surprised at how much I've learned so far.

I didn't know anything about Murch before opening the book and, based on the title, figured that it was simply about editing film. How wrong I was.

Walter Murch is a sound designer as well as editor, and this book has given me the chance to understand, at least more than I had, the art of sound editing and design.

Murch was the sound editor in the film The Conversation. The Conversation is the story of a private surveillance expert who is following and recording everything said by a young couple. And the way Murch manipulated sound in the film was extraordinary. I don't know if I was more aware of it because I had just finished reading about it, but the entire movie was filmed from the main character's point of view, including sound. The audience hears nothing Harry Caul can't hear.

Had the film been set up any other way, the outcome would have been so completely different. Caul spends much of the film mulling over the conversation he recorded at the opening. Whenever there was interference with the recording, all we heard was the distorted version of the couple's voices. We were kept in the dark not due to visuals, but due to sound. Sound was everything in this picture. And the way it manipulated our thoughts about the actions was fascinating. Sound led the film, whereas in many other films I feel the picture leads it. Sound had an obvious impact on the audience, it wasn't as subtle as I normally feel it to be. But it worked perfectly because we, the audience, were yearning to uncover the secret of the couple just as much as Caul was and we knew just how to get there, we just needed the right sound.