Category: Sound For Screen

NOWISWHENWEARE

NOWISWHENWEARE is an exhibition that was shown in October to accompany the BFI film festival. I was introduced to this exhibition by my lecturer Jessica Marlowe and wanted to check it out. The artist is Andrew Schneider who is know in the film industry for his works on The Sopranos (1999) and Northern Exposure (1990) as a producer. However, this installation shows a totally different side to his creative practice, one that is far more intimate and experimental.

What it’s about

NOWISWHENWEARE is a new interactive theatrical installation that pushes this idea to its literal extreme. An unseen narrator guides each participant through an individualized journey into a precisely programmed matrix of light – and the cosmos of themselves. Part meditation, part exploration, the stars draws visitors into a hyper-focus of the present. The stars traces every decision that you have ever made as a contributing factor to being ‘here’ and being ‘now’.

Andrew Schneider

Andrew Schneider is mostly interested in the story telling of humans, lots of his work and art look at this idea of that when people tell stories to one another, something universal opens up, we recognise ourselves in the experiences of others. I was first introduced into his work from his most recent exhibition NOWISWHENWEARE. “Andrew’s work uses new and old, high and low tech—from Wave Field Synthesis arrays and Volumetric Lighting displays to literal smoke and mirrors. He is interested in the edges of human perception, using science as a blueprint for staging, and above all, the question of—how does it make you feel?” IMDB. As he puts it, he is interested in the edges of human perception and in how art makes you feel before you even understand it.

How it made me feel

I do think about this exhibition still now after its been almost a month since I’ve seen. I think for him it really has this human element to it that draws you into the now. When you first go in you have to give you’re eyes times to adjust to the room as to super dark. You are met with this huge cube that is emitting light that you can walk between. The audio was what hit home for me on this piece, is was so meditative. Depending on where you’re standing you can hear a reflective story from a narrator talking about the what ifs in life. This was so enjoyable for me as I like to use these types of reflective audio clips in my own work. It bings you out go your own head, it makes you reflect and look inwards. It was really inspiring for me to listen to these stories, I like the way it changed my mind set and took me out of the usual motions of life.

The voice

Going to this exhibition really shone a light into how much power the human voice can carry. I like think about the voice in my piece and how much power the human voice can carry. This exhibition really shone a light on to how stories of peoples can brings the feeling of mortality. I think my looking further into the voice might bring me to a idea of what I want to use in my films.

Jane Cardiff the “Forty Part Motet”

This is a great example of how the voice shapes a space or evokes a feeling. Jane Cardiffs 2001 exhibition drives homes the power of multiple voices. She had 40 speakers and dream, and that dream came true Jane Cardiff well done!

Seeing Schneider’s work made me think of Cardiff instantly. Both installations use the voice to create an emotional environment, one that you walk inside rather than simply listen to.

Overall, NOWISWHENWEARE really opened up something in me about how we experience time, light and sound — but more than that, how we experience ourselves. It really felty like being part of a living story when I was there, I couldn’t quite explain in afterwards but it was surreal. This experience really made reflect on my practice as an artist. I think moving forward the voice might play a part in my project. I like the way it can displace and remove you from everyday life as its a very useful tool

As I reflect on my own practice, I’ve realised that I want to explore the voice intentionally, whether thats through narration, motifs or fragmented reflections. The voice has ability to pull someone out of their everyday thinking and suspend them in a new emotional space. Thats exactly what happened to me in the exhibition, and I think its something I want to bring into my own film.

Paul Davis

• Paul Davis is a sound designer and he is great at articulating what sort of practice is necessary within sound design. He has this ability to explain why sound design in a really compelling way. He has this ability to explain why sound is not just an accessory to film, but a psychological force. Listening to him speak, you realise just how delicate the balance is between noises silence and music.
• The anti form of narrative or noise still has a emotional response. Sound design is crucial to evoke a feeling or creating the psychological response in the POV of the character

Why use music on film?

My response to this was multifaceted. I think it has several uses, one might be too evoke a feeling where it is needed. We are able to do this in several ways, like to have a sad song played at a sad part of a film. However, directors like David Lynch would play a really harmonic and happy song when sometimes something quite horrific is going on visually. Another great use of music could be to add narrative when the visual doesn’t. A characters motif is used in story telling a lot, the motif can change over time thus showing the development of this character sonically. Music can also help build the film up and to change the pace.

Walter Murch

Walter Murch has a bit of a different view when it comes to using silence in a film. He has worked on films like The Godfather and explains his reasoning into why silence is a powerful tool in film making. He explains the reasoning behind using silence in powerful scenes and because it can have the opposite effect if you add music where sometimes its not needed. Music is a powerful tool but you need to know when to use it. I think it’s important to know this and to be aware of music and be conscious about it.

• Subtext is very important with music. The music is in there at the correct place. however you as the filmmaker seem fit
• Rhythm of the film also applies to music, music has the ability to change the direction pace and feeling off the film
• Non-diagetic and diabetic sound are mixed together to show the POV of the character on screen
• When a film is visually main a statement there is no reason to for the music to follow

Reflection

Thinking about the ideas of David and Murch together has shifted my understanding of how I want to approach my own films sound. They both speak from experience, but they meet in one place: sound is emotional architecture. It holds the firm upright. It carries what the character cannot say. It shapes how we breathe with the images.

As I build the sound world for my film, the atmospheres and the music and Foley. I’m realising the responsibility of choosing what to include and what to leave out. I’m drawn to the idea that silence is not absence and that noise is not always presence. Sometimes the most powerful thing is restraint. Other times, it’s leaning into instability or contradiction like Lynch does.

Ultimately, I want the sound for my project to feel lived in, something that doesn’t just accompany the imagery but reveals it. My goal is to craft a sonic experience that reflects not only what is happening on screen but what is happening internally, psychologically and emotionally.

This four minute poet film by Margret Tait touches natural elemental feeling like water, air and fire. It doesn’t follow a narrative sonically and is more structured for a musical score than a narrative driven film. Instead of us pushing through a plot, Tait constructs a world of rhythms, textures and emotional pulses.

Taits films and life

“One of avant-garde film’s best kept secrets, Margaret Tait was a fearless independent artist working across film, art and poetry. With 1992’s Blue Black Permanent, she was the first Scottish woman to direct a feature film, yet her work was scarcely seen in Britain during her lifetime – even as she developed a small but dedicated following among the international artists’-film community.”

Margret Tait was remarkably independent filmmaker, poet and artist. Her work existed on the edges of the British film world during her lifetime, yet she quietly built a dedicated following internationally. She made Blue Black Permanent in 1992, becoming the first Scottish woman to direct a feature film, but long before that she had already carved out her path creatively.

Tait when talking about her films used to call them film-poems, her films where designed to function like poems, short, lyrical and anchored in the rhythms of everyday life. She often worked in short musical and lyric driven narratives. Her approach to natural movements of life (a garden or a dead bird) so that the ordinary becomes insightful to the watcher. Aerial is a great example of her approach, her consideration for an emotional response, almost like the world itself is speaking. The emotional response comes from the simplicity of the images and the trust Tait places in the audiences imagination.

watching her work and reading about her process has pushed me to think more deeply about how sound can respond to visuals. Im especially inspired by how she listens to the world, not to create it literally but to shape it and reflect its energy. In thinking about my own sound design, I keep coming back to her elemental approach and how I might echo that sensibility in my film.

My sound pallet

• Ambience/ Field recording– Wind going through the heather, water lapping at the bay. Feint village and town hum like a quiet road.
• Foley/ Close mic sounds – footsteps on a layer of snow, (boots on fabric). Pebbles on concrete, crackling fire the compressed layer of snow compressed by footsteps.
• Musical elements– Short guitar, short notes played sparsely. I want to keep the notes resonated out recorded in a large room or added reverb. Also I would like to add drones, a small hiss or bass hum from a synth
• Found/ Processed sound -Lightly distorted bird hum, the crackle of a radio or the hum of an engine. I want to reprocess these noises into a different direction

Editorial strategy

Start -I want to introduce a clear motif or elemental noise (wind or a single guitar note) to set the films elemental tone.

Middle -I want to start to alternate between captured sound like water lapping and intimate foley. Let the musical elements begin to intertwine with the natural ones, building a subtle without becoming overly narrative.

End -Start to let the piece drown out naturally into white noise or distorted sound and start to cut out musical element, make sure its controlled and organic, almost like an exhale.

Film-poems

What draws me to Tait’s idea of film-poems is the way she places meaning in rhythm, breath and image rather than in explanation. When I first read about her, I was struck by her devotion to seeing things ‘freshly’. Her short works can carry this belief: that the small things in life, the movement of clouds or a flicker of light are enough to build an entire emotional universe.

Thinking about including my own poem in my work feels like a natural extension of this. Not as narration, but as an undercurrent or a guide to the rhythm of the piece. Like Tait’s films I want my own work to be like poetry that doesn’t need to literal.

Visual notes

The films consists of images of nature: Clouds, birds, light reflections, water sky and movement of air. I really like the way she has pieced all these things together, the imagery is rhythmic and cynical which brings on this feeling of reflection, which falls into Tait’s idea of seeing things freshly “as though one had been born into it”.

Reflection

Engaging with Tait’s work has shifted they way I approach sound for film. Instead of seeing sound purely as a tool for realism or continuity. Im starting to think of it as emotional and elemental, something that carries meaning in a way that visuals can’t. Tait’s film-poetic approach encourages me to slow down, to notice the textures of the world and to trust simplicity. I want the soundtrack to feel alive, to breathe with the images and carry its own quiet poetry. Ultimately, my goal is to create a sonic landscape that doesn’t just accompany the film but deepens the viewers connection to it.

Hunger by Steve Mcqueen

• This a great example of how you don’t need lots of dialogue in a film to gain context. In fact, McQueens choice to minimise spoken words creates a hyperrealistic sonic world in which every sound feels weighted with meaning.
• we watched the first couple of scene and I understand the stylistic choice to make the audio hyperrealistic. Things like the drag of a cigarette can be heard from our perspective to give context, not simply as a noise, but as a piece of storytelling that connects us to the characters inner world.
• This way of telling a story not through word of mouth but by sonic realism has given me some good insight into the worth of someone making audio for film. This creates a more active relationship between viewer and film, which is something I’m becoming increasingly interested in for my own sound redesign project.
• The spacious use of dialogue actually allows the watcher to feel inclined to understand the events unfolding on screen. It’s a useful way to keep the audience hooked.
• The introduction not only communicates what’s goes on with our character, it also communicates what’s going on a social and political scale within the confines of this era of Ireland. Through footsteps, breath, the scrapes of chairs and the metallic clangs of the prison environment, we come to understand the atmosphere of tension and dehumanisation long before er get any explicit context. Sound becomes a vessel for the films political weight

Walter Murch’s words encapsulate this perfectly

“You have more freedom with sound than you do with picture. There are, consequently, fewer rules. But the big three things—which are emotion, story, and rhythm—apply to sound just as much as they apply to picture. You are always primarily looking for something that will underline or emphasize or counterpoint the emotion that you want to elicit from the audience. You can do that through sound just as well as through editing, if not more so. Rhythm is obviously important; sound is a temporal medium. And then story. You choose sounds that help people to feel the story of what you’re doing.“

How can sound create character?

• We talked a lot about the use of sound, the sound being a firm part in film and art.
• Audio and dialogue play a huge part in hoe we view a character, from what they say to how they sound. Dialogue reveals intention, background and emotion. However sound design and Foley reveal texture, physicality and psychological state.
• Sound design and foley also play a crucial part on how a character is created, if want a character who is a heavy mercenary for example you would add a heavier foot step to shape them in a more aggressive way. Meanwhile, a nervous character might have quicker, lighter movements, the rustle of clothing or the subtle trembles of objects that touch.
• Motifs can add character by adding a soundtrack you can evolve that character musically. They become part of the character identity. Through reassuring musical phrases or signature sound cues
• Silence also can be a powerful tool into creating character

A Strange Border – Essay on Music & Sound, by Paul Davies

Davis writes about the transitional space between music and sound design, where ’emotional interpretation’ becomes fluid. Though I didn’t explore the full essay, one idea stuck out to me is the notion that sound exists on a boundary between the litra and the symbolic. It can represent real world physics but I can also slip into abstraction that evokes memory, mood or subconscious meaning. This is also something I can see myself experimenting with in my own film, using sound not only as music to mimic the world onscreen but to hint at the emotional world off screen.

Reflection

Across all these films and concepts from Pinewoods Foley craft to Hunger, Murch and Davis, I’ve realised how deeply sound shapes our experience of cinema. It’s more than an accessory to the image; it’s a language that can transform the emotional and narrative core of a story. What I once thought as a technical layer now feels like an expressive medium in its own right, capable of carrying symbolism and helps also to shape character and audience perception.

As I move into redesigning the sound for my own film project, I’m approaching it not just as a technical exercise, but as a creative opportunity. I’m thinking more intentionally about the choices I make, how prop texture can effect the meaning of a moment, how silence can pull a viewer closer and how motifs narrate the inner life of a character. I feel more attuned to the artistry behind sound and I’m excited to apply these ideas in ways that will hopefully resonate on both a narrative and emotional level.

• Our jobs as students studying sound for screen are to choose a reason for the choices we make when coming to recording. Every decision should have intention behind it.
• We think about aesthetics and why we collect sound in a certain way and what effect it has
• Synchresis – Is the forging between sound and image. What we hear and what we see snapping into a relationship that feels natural, even if its completely artificial.
• We as audio engineers are able to play with perspective and distance shaping how close or far the audience feels from a sound source.
• We want to do this and understand the becoming off what we create, the transition from raw sound to meaningful audio.
• Our goal is create character to our sound, however, we can only do this when we become conscious and deliberate about the choices we make.

John Akomfrah

• John Akomfrah is a sound designer and artist that has had work put up in the Tate.
• He says he is really interested in the “conversation” that goes on between noise. Noises can suggest direction or emotion even before the image reveals it.
• He believes there are sonic ways of knowing the world, like how nightclubs or music scenes allows us to discover people through the music first.
• He believes music can alter and change the space that you are in, that’s why its such a powerful tool

Review of the arrangement for my sounds collected

Last week we went out and recorded environmental audio whilst making a sonic map of what we heard around us. I collected some audio signals into an arrangement and in todays lecture we watched a short film with my audio layered in top. Surprisingly, it worked really well. I think the lack of strict goal I just wanted to experiment with form, texture and placement. Somehow those “strange” arrangements created a dreamlike dissonance that suited the footage.

This has inspired me to explore dreamscape music and sounds that feel deliberately absent or unsettling, sonic landscapes that feel lost or even half remembered, like a memory that doesn’t fully belong to me. I want to incorporate more of that haunting and or liminal feeling into the film.

The voice in cinema

• Voice in cinema is the crux of setting up perception for the watcher, In every mix there is a voice and that voice commands attention and has a hierarchy to all other sound
• The level and the noise of the voice have to be artificially enhanced over the sounds, to isolate the voice from background or ambient sound

The Voice Of Cinema by Michel Chion

This book looks at examples of directors and filmmakers who have used the disembodied voice in their films, the likes of Hitchcock’s Psycho and Kubrick’s A Space Odyssey. How have these directors used the heard but not seen voice to build suspense in these films? Chion explores the hidden and faceless voice and its story telling powers.

Gaze in cinema

Laura Mulvey Essay on the Female Gaze in Cinema

• Mulvey talks brilliantly about the female and male gaze in cinema, gaze refers to the point of view of the people who made the film
• The female and male gaze refers to a split between narratives within the story with the man in the story going out and getting things done and progressing the film. Whereas the female in films are made to be looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic purposes

Larry Achiampon

• Achiampon’s films explore some themes of identity, mental health and race
• His use of narration in his films bring out the hidden fire within his films. His music is dreamlike and minimal and moving
• The point of view of his films are from the point of view of himself, his films bring up some raw emotion from digital identity in a modern age to the complexities of class

Reflections

As I move into making a conscious decision into what I want to do for my hand in for this unit, I’m realising how much sound is not just a technical craft but a way of sensing the world around you. Sound become a story that sit underneath the visuals, shopping feelings that audience absorbs before even have time to realise it. This feels lessons Akomfrah’s ideas about sonic knowledge, Mulvey’s exploration of gaze and Chion’s disembodied voices have made me more aware of how sound can speak from the edges of a film, guiding attention and shaping emotion.

When I listen in to the sounds around me Im actively trying to be more attentive. Im listening for textures and the quiet clues that reveal a spaces inner life. Looking at possibly making my own music or sound design for a film, I want to be able to make my own world. A world where sound is the character itself, carrying memories and tension that the visuals alone can’t hold.

Lesson overview:

In today’s session we looked at the course content of Sound for Screen unit guide. We had a couple of administration tasks to do then we talked about the type of audio visual language that’s used in the audio for sound industry. We also examined some historical examples of sound for screen and how early pioneers helped shape cinemas relationship with sound and its connection to sound art.

Historical pioneers for cinema

Walter Murch (1943)

Walter Murch (1943) is an American film editor and sound designer. Some of his works include sound design for Apocalypse Now and The Godfather trilogy. Murch believed in what he called the three rules of sound. These include Emotion, Story and Rhythm. we would typically call this a synopsis. Meaning the outline of the plot for a play, film or book. His approach encourages us to ask not just what sound is, but why it’s there and what emotional or narrative role it serves.

Dziga Vertov (1896-1954)

Vertov (1954) became famous because he pioneered sound montage, he created meaning by cutting clips together. He became famous for his movie Man With A Movie Camera (1934), he created a movie depicting a day in the life of a modern soviet city in the nineteen hundreds, his use of quick cuts and stop motion was revolutionary for its time and changed the way films where made. Vertov’s work showed that sound and image could be assembled like building blocks to create new layers of meaning.

Sound Design

What is a sound track?

A sound track incorporates music and pretty much everything else that doesn’t include sound design. It forms the emotional bedrock of the viewing experience.

what is sound design?

Sound design looks more at creating a sound environment for the film or media that could be made from collecting sounds or creating them using synths and so on.

Paul Davis on Sound Design

Paul Davis is a sound designer that worked on You Where Never Really Here which is a thriller and crime film about a troubled mercenary. He believes that a good film director understands that sound design is a powerful storytelling tool. Sound works on a different level and works a different area to the brain which is perhaps more primitive which is why good sound design is so effective for horror movies. It can also be used subtly in other genres, helping shape an emotional tone without the viewer even noticing.

The elements that make up a soundtrack

• Non/sync and sync sounds- Non sync refers to the sound on screen that is not synchronised to the visual on screen, and sync is sound effects that are synched with the visual on screen
• Diegetic/Non diegetic sounds- Diegetic is a sound that doesn’t exist in the world or on screen that the characters can hear, Non diegetic is what the actors cant hear like voice overs or musical elements
• ADR- Audio Dialogue Replacement is the use of all post production audio change to voices
• Dialogue
• Atmospheres – Things like traffic noises or sound FX that you go out and capture
• Foley – Synched sound performed for screen
• Sound Design – Tracks or Non synced sound

Practical

At the end if the lesson we went out with Zoom field recorders and took some audio samples form the environment around us to try and isolate and map the sounds we hear. This exercise I felt was really useful to separate and contextualise there noises that you usually hear around you to put them into a separate box from what you relate it to. I took out some paper and we draw a audio mind box to visualise what we where hearing and it was a little bit difficult at the start to try and draw and code what I was hearing but I understand there is some use to map and layer what we are hearing.

Watching

Disappearing Sounds

Cities and Memories

Stuart Fowkes

He is trying to save the worlds sounds that are disappearing and looks for the defining sounds of a certain place that we may never hear again. It’s an important piece of work as sound isn’t always factored in when we think about a loss or change. Some sounds are already disappearing or gone completely and I think its good to try and store some distinctive sounds in a ever changing world. This project really shows how fragile and fleeting sonic landscapes can be.

Reflection

Listing to the examples seen in the lecture today I noticed a difference. Instead of treating sound as something that just “happens” around me, I found myself tuning in with intention, almost like I was peeling back sonic layers I hadn’t noticed in the past. The field recording exercise made the world feel both familiar and strange. A simple breeze, footsteps and distant traffic are things I would normally ignore suddenly felt meaningful and cinematic.

I noticed how much of our emotional world is shaped by sound without us realising. The lessons about Murch, Vertov and sound design made me see sound as an invisible thread that ties them together. It can guide thew audience, unsettle them and or comfort them.

What struck me most is the idea that almost every sound has a place and a story if its own. Today made me more aware of how important it is to listen, not just hear. I think moving forward in this course, I want to pay more attention to those quiet details that usually go unnoticed.