| Film Fanatic October 2003
Now Close Your Eyes and Listen: Part Two
Producing a movie soundtrack’s mix involves
much more than giving context to a human voice in a venue. The sound mix must not only
give the venue a specific sonic character that complements the film’s story, but also
make it familiar to the human ear. Subconsciously, people accept the tangibility of an
object or place through its sonic signature.
In order to suspend disbelief, an audience has to accept
that what they hear on a film’s soundtrack is what they would hear in real life. A
duck is only a duck if it looks and sounds like a duck; moreover, the sounds that
surround that duck can lend further insight into its situation. For example, the sounds of
a secluded forest and a forest rife with hunters and gunfire convey very different
emotional meanings.
There’s no foolin’ the ear
Creating realistic sounds for a film soundtrack is not an
easy task. Consciously or subconsciously, people can finely judge the authenticity of the
synchronization of onscreen lip movements to the sound of speech on the soundtrack, or the
continuity of action from one frame to another. We are also very sensitive to the
atmospheric sounds that surround us. We intuitively recognize the sonic timbre of a
particular space by the way objects within that space produce and reflect sound. The echo
of a soundwave as it hits an unadorned wall, the muted quality of a voice that exists on
the opposite side of insulated glass, the faint flourish of a crisp breeze in a densely
wooded forest -- each of these sounds that occur naturally in our daily lives has a unique
quality.
The brain’s ability to dissect and process complex
layers of sound is very advanced, and incredibly difficult to fool. But that’s
exactly what a film’s sound crew is asked to do -- fool the brain into thinking that
what’s occurring onscreen is actually happening. A film’s sound designer needs
to develop an accurate sonic representation of the places depicted in a script. For
instance, the sonic qualities of a desert are different from those of a city. And the
sounds of a city can change depending on the year and location. For instance, the myriad
sonic details of late-1920s Chicago are different from those of 2003 Chicago. It’s
the sound designer’s job to research the sounds that distinguish each era.
There are some sounds, of course, that no human has
experienced. For instance, I have never heard the roar of a dinosaur, the groan of the
undead, or the engine of a galactic battle cruiser. But that doesn’t mean that such
sounds cannot be imagined, and those imaginings then created. In the case of a dinosaur, a
sound designer would research various animals that share similarities with the
script’s imagined creature. He or she may study the anatomical details of a lizard,
then create a reasonable composite of what a lizard many hundred times as large might
sound like.
It’s all in the layers
A film’s soundtrack is usually created from the ground
up. Live sounds are captured in as pure a state as possible, then "sweetened,"
or manipulated, in a studio. It is important to note that, by definition, sounds occurring
in nature do not occur in a vacuum -- in life, specific sounds are always mixed or layered
with other, secondary sounds. For example, it’s unlikely that a car would be driving
along with only the sound of its engine breaking the silence. The noise of tires on
pavement, the sound of the wind, that annoying rattle behind the dash -- all come together
to form that particular automobile’s sonic signature. This sonic signature may not
only tell the audience about the condition of the car, but might also be intended to
reveal some detail about the character of the person behind the wheel. The rattle could
simply be foreshadowing the car breaking down, or it might be an aural symbol of the
character’s state of mind.
Sound effects can add deeper subtext to a scene. A camera
doesn’t have to tell the audience everything about an image; some details can be
relayed via the sounds "within" the image, or "offscreen." For
instance, the camera could be giving us an extreme close-up of the face of our mentally
unstable driver, while the sound(s) of something happening offscreen indicate where the
scene is headed. Perhaps the driver is suicidal and is traveling down the wrong side of
the road. The sound designer might add the sounds of cars screeching and honking around
him to give context to the scene. Or perhaps all the audience hears is the patter of rain
against the windshield, as the camera pans to a newspaper headline warning of the arrival
of a hurricane. The cinematographer tells the story through images; the sound designer
gives depth to the story by adding layers of audible detail.
Drenched in sound
Unless you decide to sell your home and move into a sensory
depravation tank, it’s virtually impossible to get away from sound. Our ears are
constantly barraged by a combination of constant and random sounds.
Constant sounds are ambient sounds that intrude on our
everyday existence: the noisy air-conditioning in the private investigator’s office,
the gentle sound of crickets at night, the rush of water along a submarine’s hull.
Constant sounds are often looped during recording because their sonic signature has a
natural uniformity. Listen to the sound of crickets at night: it would be hard to tell
where a cycle of chirping begins and where it ends. These sounds, often relegated to the
background of a film soundtrack, give perspective to a location or situation.
Sound editors will either record a live
ambient sound or use one from a sound-effects library. Every film has some example of a
looped background. If you listen closely to the film Seven, you’ll hear
various city and office sounds looped back on themselves: car horns, sirens, street
traffic, and people having barely audible hallway conversations suffuse this
tension-filled film from start to finish. Howard Shore’s creepy and pervasive score
adds to the tension, but the density of the ambient sound adds to the claustrophobic feel
of the story and the rain-soaked city. But "looping" sound effects (for a
discussion of looping, see August’s column) is
different from "looping" dialogue. Looping dialogue means recording the
actors’ lines after the shooting has been completed; looping a sound effect(s) means
making a short sound effect last throughout a much longer scene.
If the sound of water outside a submarine is an example of
a constant sound, then the concussive depth charge that occurs without warning is an
unexpected sound. Unexpected sounds can be relegated to the background, but also placed up
front, with the dialogue.
Unlike in real life, in a film sound is manipulated to
drive a scene forward and/or direct the audience’s attention. For instance, the sound
of a sonar beep possesses one meaning when it is constant and infrequent, a completely
different meaning when it occurs with more frequency. In the gripping World War II
thriller Das Boot, director Wolfgang Petersen uses the monotonous sound of water,
the disturbing randomness of metallic creaks and groans, and a sonar beep to keep the
tension high. It’s apparent that the crew of the German U-boat is on edge, but then
the sonar beeps start happening: first in the background, at regular intervals, then
moving toward the foreground with more frequency, until they climax in the concussive
power of a depth charge.
Of course, images, too, contribute to the tension in Das
Boot. The camerawork is spectacular, masterfully conveying the claustrophobic
atmosphere of the submarine as well as the terrorized look of its crew. But watch this
film with the sound turned down and you’ll realize how much of the tension is created
by the sound effects. The camera might be able to show you what fear looks like,
but sound is what ultimately gets under your skin, to show you what fear feels like.
...Anthony Di Marco
anthony@hometheatersound.com |
