Archive for October 27th, 2017
Is Everything you hear in films a Lie?
Sound is a language. It can trick us by transporting us geographically; it can change the mood; it can set the pace; it can make us laugh or it can make us scared.
Sound design is built on deception –– when you watch a movie or TV show, nearly all of the sounds you hear are fake.
Tasos Frantzolas explores the role of sound in storytelling and demonstrates just how easily our brains are fooled by what we hear.
This talk was presented to a local audience at TEDxAthens, an independent event. TED editors featured it among our selections on the home page.
One of my favorite stories comes from Frank Serafine. He’s a contributor to our library, and a great sound designer for “Tron” and “Star Trek” and others. He was part of the Paramount team that won the Oscar for best sound for “The Hunt for Red October.”
In this Cold War classic, in the ’90s, they were asked to produce the sound of the propeller of the submarine. So they had a small problem: they couldn’t really find a submarine in West Hollywood. So basically, what they did is, they went to a friend’s swimming pool, and Frank performed a cannonball, or bomba.
They placed an underwater mic and an overhead mic outside the swimming pool. So here’s what the underwater mic sounds like. (Underwater plunge) Adding the overhead mic, it sounded a bit like this: (Water splashes)
But once you’ve created your sounds and you’ve synced them to the image, you want those sounds to live in the world of the story. And one the best ways to do that is to add reverb.
So this is the first audio tool I want to talk about. Reverberation, or reverb, is the persistence of the sound after the original sound has ended. So it’s sort of like the — all the reflections from the materials, the objects and the walls around the sound.
Take, for example, the sound of a gunshot. The original sound is less than half a second long. (Gunshot) By adding reverb, we can make it sound like it was recorded inside a bathroom.
But reverb can do a lot more. Listening to a sound with a lot less reverberation than the on-screen action is going to immediately signify to us that we’re listening to a commentator, to an objective narrator that’s not participating in the on-screen action.
Also, emotionally intimate moments in cinema are often heard with zero reverb, because that’s how it would sound if someone was speaking inside our ear.
But what are some other tools or hacks that sound designers use?
here’s a really big one. It’s silence.
A few moments of silence is going to make us pay attention. And in the Western world, we’re not really used to verbal silences. They’re considered awkward or rude.
So silence preceding verbal communication can create a lot of tension. But imagine a really big Hollywood movie, where it’s full of explosions and automatic guns. Loud stops being loud anymore, after a while.
So in a yin-yang way, silence needs loudness and loudness needs silence for either of them to have any effect.
it depends how it’s used in each film. Silence can place us inside the head of a character or provoke thought. We often relate silences with … contemplation, meditation, being deep in thought.
But apart from having one meaning, silence becomes a blank canvas upon which the viewer is invited to the paint their own thoughts.
Ambiences work in a most primal way. They can speak directly to our brain subconsciously.
So, birds chirping outside your window may indicate normality, perhaps because, as a species, we’ve been used to that sound every morning for millions of years. (Birds chirp)
On the other hand, industrial sounds have been introduced to us a little more recently. Even though I really like them personally — they’ve been used by one of my heroes, David Lynch, and his sound designer, Alan Splet — industrial sounds often carry negative connotations.
sound effects can tap into our emotional memory. Occasionally, they can be so significant that they become a character in a movie. The sound of thunder may indicate divine intervention or anger. Church bells can remind us of the passing of time, or perhaps our own mortality. And breaking of glass can indicate the end of a relationship or a friendship.
now we’ve spoken about on-screen sounds.
But occasionally, the source of a sound cannot be seen. That’s what we call off-screen sounds, or “acousmatic.”
Acoustic sounds — the term “acousmatic” comes from Pythagoras in ancient Greece, who used to teach behind a veil or curtain for years, not revealing himself to his disciples.
I think the mathematician and philosopher thought that, in that way, his students might focus more on the voice, and his words and its meaning, rather than the visual of him speaking.
So sort of like the Wizard of Oz, or “1984’s” Big Brother, separating the voice from its source, separating cause and effect sort of creates a sense of ubiquity or panopticism, and therefore, authority.
There’s a strong tradition of acousmatic sound.
Nuns in monasteries in Rome and Venice used to sing in rooms up in galleries close to the ceiling, creating the illusion that we’re listening to angels up in the sky.
Richard Wagner famously created the hidden orchestra that was placed in a pit between the stage and the audience. And one of my heroes, Aphex Twin, famously hid in dark corners of clubs.
I think what all these masters knew is that by hiding the source, you create a sense of mystery.
This has been seen in cinema over and over, with Hitchcock, and Ridley Scott in “Alien.”
Hearing a sound without knowing its source is going to create some sort of tension. Also, it can minimize certain visual restrictions that directors have and can show something that wasn’t there during filming. And if all this sounds a little theoretical, I wanted to play a little video.
On a personal level, I fell in love with that language a few years ago, and somehow managed to make it into some sort of profession.
And I think with our work through the sound library, we’re trying to kind of expand the vocabulary of that language. And in that way, we want to offer the right tools to sound designers, filmmakers, and video game and app designers, to keep telling even better stories and creating even more beautiful lies.
Adonis Diaries 