Animation

The biggest difference I've heard in animation is that there is no spatialization.  All the dialogue is very dry and has no reverberation.  There is only reverb when the space is deliberately being portrayed.  For example, in the Futurama clip, the big brain has no reverb unless it yells and there is only a slight amount of delay. 

Animation

I think that the sound design for animation would be difficult . I noticed it is very minimal, which I think is good. You are already dealing with so many things the picture, color, voice over an over powering background noise or music I think would be very distracting.

Sound in Animation

My all-time favourite animated cartoon short is the 1953 film Duck Amuck directed by Chuck Jones. Similar in aesthetic significance to Porky in Wackyland (1938), Duck Amuck exploits the potential of animated cartoons in a rather extreme fashion. One of my favourite parts has everything to do with sound. About two minutes in, Daffy is completely erased, then asks ‘All right, wise guy: where am I?’ He is redrawn in a cowboy outfit and holding a guitar. He attempts to strum and sing, but gets no sound. After he holds up a sign requesting sound, we get sounds…all of them comically wrong: machine gun fire, a car horn, and a donkey. Daffy smashes the guitar and leaves the frame for a moment, then comes back without any costume. He attempts to say something, but instead of Daffy’s voice, we hear the cock-a-doodle-doo sound of a rooster, followed by other animal noises. Eventually, however, Daffy’s eyes glow red and he looses his temper, and he shouts that he has never been so humiliated in all his life. Sound is now back to normal. While this sort of extreme audiovisual dissonance can be found in non-animated film, it works particularly well in cartoons.

Another excellent example of a similar contradictory nature is found in Tex Avery’s Daffy Duck in Hollywood (1938). About two-thirds of the way through the short, Daffy gets loose in a film library and splices several film clips together. After he has replaced another film with his own, we are treated to a series of short clips which are funny, not in themselves, but because of the contradictions between sound and image. First there is mention of happy legionnaires, bathed in glorious California sunshine, passing in review — but we see a shot of the soldiers marching in heavy rain…with rather stoic faces. Among other such comical contradictions is a reference to swinging jitterbugs in a hot dance contest…but with an image of an elegant eighteenth century court dance. We also get a description of a very brutal fight, but the boxers we see in the shot just stand in the ring doing practically nothing.

Another one of my favourite cartoon shorts is Duck! Rabbit, Duck! (1953), the third of Chuck Jones’s celebrated ‘hunting trilogy’ featuring Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and Elmer Fudd. After the opening credits, we see Daffy pulling down ‘Duck Season’ signs and burning them as firewood. At the same time, we hear pit-orchestra music accompanying while Daffy is singing/lisping ‘La Vie en rose’, but we are not given any crackling ember sound effects for the fire. Nor do we do ever get any territory sounds or elements of auditory setting. This absence of territory/environmental sounds, as well as a focus on Daffy’s singing rather than the fire, significantly contributes to the feeling that we are viewing a fictional animated world rather than the world we live in. Non-musical sound effects tend to be very sparse, and, in this film, largely limited to gunshots (though there are some others, such as when Daffy is pulling signs off of trees). Occasionally, there are amusing sound effects which line up with visual cues, such as the moment about two minutes into the short after Elmer informs Daffy that he ‘[hasn’t] got a wicence to shoot a fwicasseeing wabbit’: we hear a warm metallic boing as the black-dot points of Daffy’s eyes rapidly bounce back and forth (Daffy obviously is irritated to find Elmer so short on brains). After the boing has settled, we hear a bassoon on cue when Daffy shifts his eyes to one side. Since sound effects are sparse (for instance, there are no sounds of footsteps), music often takes over the role: when we see any character such as Daffy or Elmer walking, the music is rhythmically lined up with their steps. Music in this cartoon (like so many other cartoons) is also often used for its symbolic value. Earlier in the short (during the opening credits) we heard hunting horns, thus immediately telling us that this is a hunting picture and not a film about movie studios (such as Daffy Duck in Hollywood, which features tunes that are traditionally associated with Hollywood). This hunting horn motif significantly returns later on in the short. But all in due time… When Daffy has learned that Elmer hasn’t got a licence to shoot a fricasseeing rabbit, he sits down to write one out himself. However, Daffy has to ask Bugs how to spell fricasseeing. While Bugs innocently (or not so innocently) spells FRICASSEEINGDUCK, we hear the pit orchestra playing ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’, thus conjuring the image of a diligent student answering a teacher’s question during a spelling lesson — or a spelling bee…in any case, Daffy is the one who gets stung. After getting his bill shot off and taking another look at the licence he gave Elmer, Daffy realises his error and acknowledges that he’s the ‘goat’. Thus starts a sequence (which returns later in the short) of several animal names cropping up, always to Daffy’s disadvantage. Every time Bugs holds up a sign showing us what season it is (Goat Season, Dirty Skunk Season, Pigeon Season, etc.) we hear the hunting horns again. Very quickly we become conditioned to this horn call as a trigger which inevitably precedes Daffy’s bill getting shot off into a hilarious position.

Masha I Medved

This assignment was to blog about animated clip and sound used with it. Since I do not watch many animated shows, I thought would could be better than using one of the cartoons that my sister likes to watch. This cartoon is semi similar to the characters of Tom and Jerry ( cat and mouse) except its a little girl named Masha and a Bear.  Here is a youtube link if anyone would like to check it: Masha i Medved

In this clip I have noticed how bold the "direct sounds" use is. They are definitely overused, but I think in a sense of animated cartoon with not that much of conversation that really helps to make the cartoon come to life.  Also in this cartoon we notice the color change in orchestral music for each tune or character. For example, when we see a Bear on the screen, music is played by low brass instruments and it is slower than it is when we see Masha the little girl, music than becomes more cheery, abrupt, mischievous. Also when we see the new character a wolf introduced on the screen the orchestration again becomes different.  There is also quite a bit of punctuation used in the cartoon to represent the characteristic, personality of each character.  Also with the use of punctuation a lot of the times it is done through orchestration, yet there are also couple direct sounds that are used to punctuate the importance of gesture. Sometimes when the character speaks and we hear a delay in the sound brings more comic feel to the cartoon which is what cartoons are all about I guess.  I have also noticed in the cartoon that with use of reverb the perception of place becomes more present (example when wolf is howling), which does not match at all times with the rest of the story.  This is a cute little cartoon! Hope you all enjoy it!

PlanetES

As we saw in Futurama, sound design can be relatively simple when it comes to animation. In most animation the sound is directly subservient to the visual and is created on a what you see is what you hear basis, but for PlanetES, the hard Sci Fi anime about a group of space station workers, this is not the case. In fact, the sound designers for PlanetES seemed to take exactly the opposite route, by making the sound inside the space station extremely busy and convoluted. There are always the mechanical sounds of doors sliding open and shut while the life support status is being sounded over a muffled pa system, pausing only to give up the aural stage to the noticeably loud sound floor (presumably generated from the air filtration systems), as every sound is filtered through the thick reverberation caused by the harsh acoustics of a steel room. While this can be an exhausting listen, it serves as an effective way to immerse the audience. That is what it would sound like if you were on a space station. When humans reach a point where they are engineering space stations for long term use, the acoustic ecology of the created environment will most likely be at the bottom of the list of important concerns if it makes the list at all (just like early and even many current manufacturing plants). The sound designers knew that and went out of their way to make it an annoying reality for the characters and viewers of PlanetES.

Quick thought on Children of a Lesser God

In Children of a Lesser God, just about all of the sign language is translated verbally by a "speaking" character. I found this very helpful as I thought this movie would require using subtitles, when it almost eliminated any need for them. It also helped to smooth out the dialogue between two people, when one was using sign language, because the reiteration of what was just signed, and any gesture of emotion that is also expressed, is confirmed for the viewer by the "speaking" character.

10-30

I have been trying to pay more attention to how I watch movies and tv. I was watching a movie the other day and I thought was an interesting way to use music in the movie. The movie was about being honest with yourself and how these people are not being honest with themselves. Throughout the movie there is no music. When the characters start being honest with themselves all of a sudden they slowly start adding music. So I thought that was a cool touch. Also they tell a lot of stories in the movie and they use the story telling to take them different places by using the colleague* technique.

Solaris by Tarkovsky

This past thursday I watched Solaris by Tarkovsky. First of all this movie was awesome and I recommend it to EVERYONE! The translations were excellent, which I have not seen that done that well in any foreign films I have watched. There were so many examples in the film that go well with al the things we have talked about in class. For example there was a use of the same sci-fi sound that was used everytime the Solaris cloud itself were shown and than there was one more time when this sound came in when Kris Kelvin was on Solaris for the first time. I also thought there was a good use of leight motive through out the film. There were also excellent examples of non diajected sound, for example when at the begining of the film there was an episode where on tv they were showing a group of people that were disscusing the first trip ever to Solaris, there was also this Sci-Fi sound that I thought would play a good example of non diajetic sound. Also this movie was really big with internal sounds, where narration would fall in to both the on screen and off screen. Also another awesome thing I have noticed in the film is about sound that are familiar to us, were used in something that is unfamiliar which totally fell perfectly with the film itself talking about Solaris being this discovered, yet completely undiscovered planet.  I also thought that Tarkovsky was excellent with use of sounds for internal logic.
What an awesome film!

Some thoughts and observations provoked by Children of a Lesser God

Being hard of hearing myself, watching Children of a Lesser God (1986) was an interesting experience. It is probably the best film I have seen which focuses on the issues of deafness and hearing impairment. The sound design, in particular, serves to emphasize these issues quite well.

Internal logic, I think, is very appropriate for the sound design in a film about deaf people, especially from a philosophical point of view. Deaf people may not be able to hear sound, but they can still make sounds, they can influence the sounds others make, and they can also influence the way hearing people experience sound. While the film is approached from the perspective of a hearing person (James Leeds), for much of the film he is trying to get inside the head of a deaf person. Because it is impossible for anyone to actually see inside a person’s mind, it is absolutely essential for the filmmakers to show this through sound (I speak not specifically about the inside of the mind of a deaf person, but simply the inside of the mind of anyone). This is why the internal logic in Children of a Lesser God works so well.

Children of a Lesser God, I think, gives a very good depiction of the fears and frustrations which can be caused by deafness — or by even just relatively slight hearing impediments. I, fortunately, am by no means as bad off as any of the deaf/hard-of-hearing characters depicted in the film. Since I was very young I have experienced difficulties with hearing, which have, over the years, caused me to develop certain fears and inhibitions. For much of my life I have had a terrible time trying to understand what people say (unless it is quiet and I am only a few feet away from the person). Often, this has led to me simply guessing what people are saying, which sometimes produces awkward situations if I guess incorrectly (the equally unsavory alternative is for me to ask someone repeat what they said, sometimes three or four or five times before I hear it correctly). Because of this, I have conditioned myself to avoid situations where I might have to carry out a conversation with someone. It is largely because of this that, although I consider myself a hearing member of the community, I have grown accustomed to distancing myself from people socially. I’ve developed a total inhibition against speaking in a public area or in a group or class (whether it is quiet or not), and this inhibition is very difficult to overcome after so many years of conditioning (even though I have absolutely no difficulty speaking). I suppose I’m afraid of hearing incorrectly what others say, and am hesitant to speak because of this (too often in the past I have said the wrong thing because I misheard). Even with my hearing aid, I still sometimes have a difficult time being able to understand what other people are saying, particularly if there is a lot of background noise — my hearing aid helps me hear what people are saying, but it also picks up many other noises, and since I spent a large part of my life not hearing such noises, they pose a major distraction to me (consequently, I am sometimes just as bad off with a hearing aid as I am without one). This paragraph might be misconstrued as a divagation from a discussion of the sonic elements in Children of a Lesser God, but I think it perfectly sets up the final point I wish to make about internal logic:

With many of the examples of internal logic in the film, the background noises went away, removing sonic distractions from what the filmmaker intended us to concentrate on. Sound tends to either focus or clutter our attention capabilities. Similarly, whether I wear my hearing aid or not generally depends on the situation in which I find myself at any given moment. It all depends on what you want to concentrate on (do I really want/need to listen to the high frequencies made by the ventilation system when I’m trying to write?). I’m reminded of the British poet Philip Larkin, who, while Head Librarian at the University of Hull, would always turn his hearing aid off whenever he attended required meetings…so he could read Tolstoy’s War and Peace and ignore the meeting…

Children of a lesser God

I thought the angle of a hearing persons perspective made for an interesting soundscape. It was a little distracting every once and a while that the background noise was so loud, but maybe that was the point. I liked how they made the Bach a recurring motive throughout the movie. It's kind of hard to focus in on the specific sounds other then the music.

Ba boom a rang rang rang

I thought the end of the Children of a Lesser God was done well with how the audio synchronized with the different emotional changes between Sarah and James.  Starting with the loud dance music fading away as they get closer to each other about to talk, followed by the crickets fading in to enhance the tension.  Then after they both say they're sorry to each other, the music comes in to add sincereness.  After they apologize and start walking away, noise from a group of boys messing around in the background fades in and the camera shot shows only the guys for a few seconds to break the tension.  It then cuts to Sarah and James walking away while you can still hear the boys from a distance.  I think the overall sequence of sounds fading in and out from each other augments the emotions of the two characters greatly.

Children of a Lesser God

Before we started watching children of a lesser god, we talked about how the sound designers were telling the story strictly from a hearing persons point of view because they never exploited the possibility of having complete silence. While this is true from in a literal sense, I do believe they did show what it might be like to be deaf in a different sense. I am talking about in particular the scene where James goes to an (almost) all deaf party with Sara. This scene was unnerving to me because of how quiet it was and how different that is from any party I've ever been to. Sure there were plates rattling together as they were set in the sink and beer fizzing after recently being opened, but it still seemed awkwardly silent for a hearing person. Having a scene where silence underscores people moving their mouths would have been trivial and more likely represented the experience of being behind glass, or wearing headphones while someone is talking, but this scene reverses the poles and makes the hearing person (James) the odd one out. Forcing him to watch hand gestures fly from every direction as he stands in silence, just like everyone else.

Football game and Life as we Know it

So we watched that movie in class and we are suppose to blog about it, but the thing is it was so hard for me to watch that movie because it took all my focus on the sine language and trying to link it all together, that I couldn't focus my attention on sound/music with visual. I think I was mostly focused on the visual part. On that note I can not give specific examples of sound use in that film, so I will focus this blog on a recent footbal game and Life as we know it, movie that I watched this week. Just now while watching some footbal game with my client, I have noticed all over examples of  audiovisual dissonance, in particular the commentators were disscussing a figure/buildness of one of the players ( the shot for couple seconds was of that player) and than they still continued disscussing his physical features, when the shot has shifted towards the field and both teams, getting ready for deffense.  In the movie Life as we Know it there were many elements of sonic flow, inparticular internal and external logic.  For example the scene where Holly was reading a book to Sofy and it was the quite scene, where they were both sitting on the bad, and all you could hear is clock ticking, pages turning and Holly's voice, this scene in the movie before it actually happened symbolized that something big will happen, because the change of pace, scenery and overall lighting/mood, and it did because  little Sofy called Holly mom even though she wasn't her mom. I felt like this could be a good example of both external and internal logic.

Coming To America

While watching Coming To America, there are a few non-diegetic, element of auditory setting sounds added to portray the quality of the apartment building they are being shown.  When the landlord shows the tenants that there's only one bathroom that everyone shares, he opens the door and you can hear the sound of flies swarming in the bathroom, but they don't show any.  When the landlord shows them the actual apartment, you can hear police sirens in the background to enhance how bad the neighborhood is.  The clip I'm explaining starts at 1:15, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjjoVAgqp4s

The Show Must Go On

The Show Must Go On is a Korean film about a gangster who has trouble balancing his brutal life at work and his family life at home. Throughout the movie, there is a polka theme that gets played often, and it is always juxtaposed against a tragic scene for the main character. For most of the film, this music serves to exemplify the silliness of a scene, like a scene where he gets into a knife fight in a convenience store but he doesn't have a knife so he is forced to throw boxes of cookies at his offenders. The music helps the audience focus on the fact that he used a snack as a weapon and not that he ended up with a rather severe stab wound.

At the end of the movie, the main character ends up staying with the mob to fiscally support his son and daughter as they study abroad in Canada. The stress of being married to a mobster causes his wife to leave him to stay with their offspring as they study, leaving him alone in Korea. In the final scene, he receives a home movie from his family in Canada. As he watches it, his attitude goes from excited and happy to get news from his family, to sad and angry about the fact that he will never join them in Canada. He throws his bowl of noodles to the floor, he knocks over a speaker, but the tape plays on without any concern for his tragic obligation. He realizes this, calms down, and proceeds to clean up the mess he made. As he does this the polka music starts to play.

This musical theme functions with eternal logic, though not with the main character or any character for that matter. It serves as a representation of the jubilant indifference to his suffering of ultimately life itself. But what can he do but clean up the noodles he spilled and get back to work at the job he hates. After all the show must go on.

The final scene I wrote about:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdO1rqkjvBs&t=103m16s

Enter The Overdubs...

The topic of diegetic vs. non-diegetic sounds made me think a lot about Bruce Lee films. The dialog in these films (as many of you already know) are originally  set in Chinese and then translated to English using studio overdubs. As hard as the studio engineers may have tried, most of the spoken word never really lines up with the movement of the characters' mouth and creates an almost comical effect. However, it did seem to be a very effective way to create a new style of film that garnered a massive sub-culture in it's own right. But back to the point. The spoken word in these films (in English versions) has obviously not been recorded on site and is not directly heard by the listener, therefore making them non-diegetic. However, the effect of representing that which is implied by the the spoken word attaches it directly to what we see on screen, making them diegetic. Furthermore, the sound effects in these movies (especially those in the fight scenes) are presented and often exaggerated in the exact same ways. So the question is, into which category do these sounds fall? It is my thought that although the producers probably went this route because they saw an effective way to overcome a challenging language barrier rather than thinking about sound production (not to mention a financial opportunity to profit in the US film market), it is the obscurity between these two conventional sound sources that make the films effective in the first place. Below is a link to some of the fight scenes along with some of the dialogue that I am talking about. 
   
http://youtu.be/os6m9oL3PSM

Taken

Many of you have seen the movie "Taken". Well recently there have been many comercials on "Taken 2" so I decided to watch the first one.  This movie is definately an action movie and I felt like it had a lot of the things that we have ben talking about in class. First one is added value. One of the examples I thought music played the added value, is when Bryan finds the person that took his daughter away and ties him in the chair and tries to get information on where did he sell his daughter too. The man is tyed to a chair and Bryan turns on the electricity which is shocking the guy. Well the sound that is added to this scene gives intensity, tension and disgust. This scene is also the example of direct sound or maybe Diajetic ( I guess I am still confused on the difference between the two). But the direct sound is that we see the source from where the sound originates, so every time Bryan turns on the light switch we hear that buzzing, penetrating noisy sound. This scene is also a very good example of empathetic music because to us as viewers/listeners we can both feel the anger of Bryan and the pain and scaredness of the bad guy.  Another example of direct sound in the movie that really stuck out to me was when Bryan was on the plane to rescue Kimmy and he was rewinding a recorder to hear the phone call when his daughter was Taken, we as audience saw the direct source yet not really because we heard the recordings but there were no images of his daughter. I also noticed that this movie was pretty big on using punctuation. Unifying or binding flow of images by music. Unifies visual breaks through sound overlaps and brings unity by establishing atmosphere as a framework that seems to contain the image. For example one of those scenes was when Bryan was in the apartment and kind of having mental pictures of how his daughter was taken.

The Holiday

So I am watching The Holiday and there is one scene where she puts a cd into the cd player and is singing to the music. So since you can see where the sound is coming from and it is the sound that was actually recorded I guess that would be a direct diagetic* sound ? And I never had really noticed before but they really do honk the horn on cars when they pass one in a movie which is really weird... And I just used the word really three times in that sentence....

Thought On Mon Oncle

This film opened my eyes to exaggerated audio effects can be.  Having every sound added to the visual after the fact is something that I have never listened to or viewed before. It made me think about how the general public would react to a contemporary movie made that way today. I think the majority of people would find it more difficult to watch, as I did with Mon Oncle, because we are so accustomed to the contemporary way of mixing sound in film. I also think that if this technique was employed to the extreme today that it would make horror films funny and action films choppy, etc.

The movie was a pretty good. The sound was interesting. I thought the 'motives' of the shoes and the town. It was kind of distracting that the sounds were so loud compared to the background noise. I am still confused as to why those dogs are always running around the town. And in all honesty I don't even know what the movie was actually about. But all in all it was pretty funny and over all good.

Mon Oncle

I enjoyed watching "Mon Oncle" because it's originally a comedy, but also is funny in the same way that "Dracula"is by which they create the sounds and try to synchronize them to gestures with the technology they had at the time.  I found it interesting that even with technological differences between then and now, Tati is able to portray subtleties of sounds to characters.  For example what we discussed in class with the footsteps, that the women have very short, clicking steps while the men are more scuffled sounding.  I believe that that elaborates on the characters actions.  Also, the soundtrack used for the town and the city was a great way to interpret the living styles .    

Sound in Jacques Tati's Mon Oncle

In Mon Oncle (1958), sound is used a great deal to enhance the attributes of different characters and different environments. This is done in several ways, but right now I wish to focus on the use (and non-use) of music. It is perhaps interesting to note that music is present only in the world of Monsieur Hulot. Most other filmmakers, I think, would have had music in the world of the Arpels as well. Or does Tati do this? Because of the way he exaggerates the noises we hear in the Arpel world, one might consider it an expression of the philosophy presented in Luigi Russolo’s L’arte dei Rumori, in which the noises of the modern world are considered musical in their own right. On the other hand, it is possible that Tati might have intended the lack of music to symbolise the philistinism of the modern world. But whether we decide these sounds have a certain musical quality or are just noise is perhaps not very important. The lack of (traditional) music in the Arpel world greatly emphasises the sounds we do hear. This, combined with the visual differences onscreen creates greater perception of the social and ideological distance between the Arpel and Hulot worlds.

Mon Oncle is such a good comic film. I find it interesting to compare it with Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times (1936), which, though very different, is similar in that it lampoons the technology, machinery, and values of the modern world. In Modern Times, though still essentially a silent film (well, a film without much dialogue anyway), Chaplin nevertheless does use sound effects in a limited way, particularly for the sake of emphasising the comedy coming from the modern technology (especially the first fifteen minutes or so). Chaplin’s Modern Times is a great cinematic masterpiece, but Tati’s Mon Oncle goes even further in its use of sound for enhancing/telling the story.

Blog on Tatti's Mon Oncle

I thought the movie Mon Oncle by Tatti was pretty good. I really like the French style movies, they are so simple yet entairtaining. The sound effect and music in film was mostly split into main theme tune for the market and everytime the "Uncle" would appear on the screan as well as really strict no music enviroment for when little boys house and family would appear. The sound would always be very distinct, for example the water fountain turning on, but only when someone would be at the gate. They had a very high tech house with technological sounds. It was also interesting how in class Dr. Twombly pointed out to the sound of footsteps, how Mom's and Dad's sounds were clicky, edgy and distinct compare to muted footsteps of the child and completely quiet footsteps of the Uncle. I loved how some of the object on the screen had direct source of sound. For example a door opening or closing, a car rumbling or a noise of a carriage and bells. Where on the other hand there were sometimes pictures but no direct sound like dogs running around but never really making sound until the scene with the fish at the market. I thought the scene of kids whistling and getting people to walk into a post was really cute as well as different compare to the other set of music/sounds to the film. At this part I noticed there was no main tune theme, and more silence as well as coins setting on the rock, which made a more intense feeling, but not as strict as the silence and house commercial sounds at the rich home. I also think that even thought this movie was pretty good, it took a long time for the film to really unfold to be able to tell what was the story going to be around, but I did like how music had a sense of linear combination of different sections in the film. One very good scene that shows causal listening was the scene with the phone picking up sounds from the market and main tune to symbolize what the Uncle was doing at that specific time.  In general I think the movie really represented more of direct sounds, which is what you see is what you hear.

Mon Oncle

The most interesting thing about the sound in Mon Oncle is that none of it was recorded while it was being filmed. This technique makes the sound of the utmost importance because every sound is deliberate. Everything you hear in the film was carefully thought about and recorded. But because of this technique, the sound in Mon Oncle is usually sparse, awkward, and unnaturally mixed. This is especially prevalent in the beginning scene where the mother is cleaning a running car with a rag. Even though one would struggle to hear the sound a rag makes when it wipes something in complete silence, you can hear it over the roar of the car engine. While this does make me tilt my head, it serves its purpose by directing my attention to the rag instead of anything else on the screen. Another example is when the father walks, his footsteps sound almost nothing like what I would associate with the sound of footsteps in real life, but it works because the sound is happening every time one of his feet hit the ground. This marriage of visual and aural rhythm makes the viewer ok with the odd sounding steps. All of this adds an extra bit of quirkiness, meaning, and fun to the movie.

Added value in performence of Chang Xiang Shou by Chi Wang

So since the whole week, has been pretty much talk about Kyma I decided for this blog to include some refferal to KISS 2012. Saturday concert was visual as well as music concert and in particular the performance by Chi Wang and her composition Chang Xiang Shou has played a big effect on me.  In this performance Chi Wang used a wii powered voleyball that she used to control sound as well as movement of certain pictures on the screen. I found it interesting when Chi Wang's film was more angular or like a static pictures the music was more moving forward and angular which made it interesting in the film sort of creating sense of moving even though the pictures was static. Another aspect I noticed was when the Wii volleyball would go in circle, the sound would be surround and the picture on the screen  would be moving circular too. By having surround sound the picture almost felt more life, more real. It was interesting because when I would close my ears during performance and try to isolate sound the film itself sort of seemed broken up into parts, compare to with music it seemed to have a very good flow.

Outer Space: the Added Value of Silence

Of the many interesting things in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), one of my favorites is the extensive use of silence.

In most science fiction films which are set in outer space, one finds that filmmakers seem to feel obliged to give us sound effects of spacecraft and space weapons — despite the fact that in the vacuum of space there can be no sound. I suppose most filmmakers believe their audience would find it ridiculous to watch something blow up in outer space without any explosive sound effect. To a certain extent, I think there is some justification in this. For instance, if, during the rebel attack on the Death Star in A New Hope (1977), we were given battle sound effects when the shot is of the interior of a fighter but not when the shot is from outside, it might add an interesting dimension to the film, but it also would adversely disrupt the continuity of the sequence and potentially be a harmful distraction to the audience (despite the constant music itself creating continuity in the scene). It is a dilemma. Our conditioning makes us expect to hear an explosion when we see the Death Star (or any other spacecraft) blow up, even though in reality it would be silent. Caught between the Scylla and Charybdis of Silence and Noise, most makers of outer space films seem to choose the latter.

However, when watching 2001: A Space Odyssey, one of the dominant things we are confronted with is silence. Whenever we see shots from the perpective of the vacuum of space (or, more accurately, its representation on screen) there are no sound effects: it is either totally silent, or we get music. The silence is especially prevalent throughout the Jupiter Mission section. Not only is this scientifically accurate (important in a film that attempts a level of accuracy which in 1968 was unprecedented in a sci-fi film), it also serves an important aesthetic function. The entire film is sparse: small cast, a script of few words, simple-looking costumes and staging — the restrictions on sound add even greater emphasis to this. The sparse atmosphere is quite fitting for a film predominantly set in outer space.

The difference, though, between 2001 and other sci-fi/space films is that 2001 is not about action. Nor is it particularly about telling the audience anything. It is an elegant cinematic poem, designed more to suggest thoughts than to tell something. The sonic, visual, and dramatic restraint allow the film to say more, just as with literary poems the poetry is not necessarily what is written, instead being that which a person projects between the lines. The six-part Star Wars, to me, anyway, also is best interpreted as a cinematic poem, but a poem of a different sort. It is about telling a story — and a story which is filled with much action. This requires it to be handled differently from 2001, and the sonic decisions emphasise these differences. Overall, I agree with the sonic choices made throughout Star Wars, as well as 2001. Nevertheless, I think space films in general make too much use of noise…

Tom and Jerry

I was watching Tom and Jerry the other day, (Hanna-Barbera era - mid1950's), and noticed how much added value there is.  I first shut my eyes and listened to only the effects while blocking out the orchestration.  Without the visuals, it was spliced sounds mashed together.  A spring sound followed by the infamous slide whistle ending with a cymbal crash.  Also, without the visual it becomes easier to hear how the sound was most likely created.  When putting the TV on mute and watching without sound, it's less exciting.  In the animation, there are added lines around the character indicating pain, or sudden movements, along with shaking film slides, but without the added sound a lot of the effectiveness is lost.  Most of the sounds are also direct, whatever effects are made are always shown.  In the rare chance that the source if off screen, there is added animation to show where the source is located.  For example, a dog is barking off screen so 5 small lines are flashing synchronized to the bark in the area where the dog would be.

Added Value in Bored to Death

Recently I was watching the HBO series "Bored to Death" when I came across a great example of added value. This series is about a writer (played by Jason Schwartzman) who is having trouble finding inspiration for writing his second book. In a search for a cure to his writers block, he starts taking cases as a private detective. In this particular episode, he had a case where he had to find and retrieve a stolen skateboard. After he finds the person who stole the skateboard, he proceeds to steal it back. This act results in a chase scene via skateboards. This scene is complemented by the roaring of skateboard wheels and it is used partially to familiarize the viewer with the sound of a moving skateboard for later in the episode. The writer ends up escaping the skateboarders and returning the stolen skateboard to it's previous owner, but in the final scene, when the writer is returning to his apartment, the sound of the moving skateboards returns causing the writer to look up and grow a concerned look. The episode then ends. In this example the sound of the skateboards moving is actually responsible for resolving the entire episode. The audience never sees the skateboarders approaching him, but they still experience it because of the sound. The sound also returns the sense of dread and uncertainty present in the chase scene thus adding not only physical information, but also emotional information. So in this example the sound was actually more important than the visual. If you played the video without sound, the viewer would end up being confused, but if you just heard the screaming of the moving skateboards, there would be no question about what was going on. 

Quick comment on Added value

Here goes my first blog. I was watching some tv the other day and for all of the commercials I muted the audio. I found that a lot of the time you don’t even know what the commercial is trying to convey or sell you.  For example,  a commercial will start out with fast cars driving around or a polar bear ( an older commercial that comes to mind) and just when your thinking ‘where is this going?’ or ‘this is definitely about that new car’, it ends of up being a coke commercial or some other soft drink commercial. On the other hand, I found that sometimes you want the polar bear commercial to be about coke and it actually ends up being about saving the environment to protect the polar bears.  Again, these commercials are being watched without audio. I also found that added value plays an important role in these commercials. The sound of the car grabs your attention and audibly describes how fast the car is moving and how “cool” and awesome” it would be to be driving the car. Without audio you just see a car appear to be moving.  There is also a kind of transfer of subliminal messaging from the image of the car to the soft drink, as well as transferring the audio of the car to the audio of a soft drink being opened. The audio of the soft drink also proves the effectiveness of added value. To sum up, audio plays an important role in describing what a commercial is trying to convey and goes a long way in potentially making you feel like you need what the commercial is showing.

Added Value and 'The Road'

The Road is a movie set to the novel of the same name by author Cormac McCarthy (movie director Joe Penhall). The story is about a man and his young boy trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic world battling starvation, loneliness, cannibals  and anything the new world has to throw at them. The visual setting is extremely bleak with dark hues of blue and grey; a desolate wasteland void of bright colors and life. This is where the added value of the sound (or should I say, lack of sound) becomes important. While there IS a musical soundtrack and special effects, a good portion of the movie is very quiet. Most of the sounds that are drawn to the viewers attention are either those of the man and the boy traveling or the environment around them (wind, dust, thunder, etc.). As a viewer, this really built a lot of tension for me because I felt completely exposed, like I was one of the characters in the film and I could hear every sound around me. (Surround sound is amazing for this movie) The silence made the important parts even more important because there was a clear contrast in sound. It was very noticeable when someone or something was around. Another thing that the silence did was help to build empathy for the characters. During the most 'human' scenes in the movie, I could not help but make an emotional connection as my focal point was on the characters themselves.  Beyond the silence, the score composers; Nick Cave & Warren Ellis, did a great job of adding mood to the scenes that needed music. During the scenes with the most intensity, their 'atmospheric' type compositions utilized a lot of high frequencies while the moments of solace or loneliness had a lot of lows and mids. Below is a link to the trailer and I hope you all get some time to check this movie out. 

http://youtu.be/hbLgszfXTAY          

Added Value in Slapstick Comedy

Any of the short films featuring the Three Stooges would make a good example for discussion of this subject, but I shall focus on All Gummed Up (1947), which, while not being one of the Stooges’ best films, nevertheless offers some interesting features for the purposes of this posting. A video clip of the first half of the short may be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxieHgozwRg

One minute into the short we find Moe Howard (who, in this particular film, is, along with Shemp and Larry, a drugstore clerk) testing a lightbulb. When he is finished testing it, he turns his face towards the bulb, his cheeks briefly expand and contract, and the bulb goes out. If one watches it with the sound, however, it is instantly clear that he has just done the impossible (and comic) feat of blowing the lightbulb out as if it were a candle. On the other hand, if you listen to the scene without watching it, when Moe blows out the lightbulb it merely sounds as if he has a problem with a stuffy or runny nose.

At 4’45” Shemp declares that he has got an idea in the back of his head which won’t come out, and asks Moe and Larry to help him. So, in typical Three Stooges fashion, Moe and Larry begin to hit and slap Shemp’s head to coax ‘the idea’ out into the open. With the sound, these hits and slaps come across as being comic and intense. This culminates in Moe bonking Shemp’s head with a hammer. Triggered by the bonk of the hammer, we finally get this lovely sound which resembles a vending machine yielding one of its products (a bowling ball with crushed ice by the sound of it!). Now watch this segment (4’45” to 5’05”) again, without the sound. Watched without sound, one can clearly see that Moe and Larry are not hitting Shemp, but are instead lightly touching their fists against his hair, and that the velocity of the fists moving through the air is actually slower than the impression the sound effects give. However, since without the sound we don’t know why Moe and Larry are hitting poor Shemp, their actions might appear more cruel, whereas with the sound effects we know we are supposed to interpret it as comic. Also, with the sound muted at the point where we would otherwise hear what resembles the vending machine, the viewer has absolutely no idea how to interpret the hit on Shemp’s head with the hammer…apart from the fact that Shemp appears to be happy about it (which, in itself, would be really weird). Yet, merge sound with image, and the comedy becomes perfectly clear.

Slapstick comedy has relied heavily on added value for several centuries (including the provenance of its name). Whether one is experiencing traditional commedia dell’arte, a Laurel and Hardy tit-for-tat sequence, or a nice civilized pie fight in a Three Stooges film, one finds that, even though acting ability is a determining factor, much of the success of slapstick comedy is actually due to the sound effects.