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