Sound Shaping Images - Essay Example

Sound shaping images Sound in films is part of the narrative sphere and perceptive sphere of any film. The audio-visual factors are the foundations for a theory of the function of the film sound. This concept is based on introspective rationalization of the audience and their perceptional level and capacity. In addition, it is crucial to discuss how sound plays an important role to transform an ordinary film into a greater level. The filmgoer's perception relies mainly on how he interprets and co-ordinates both the images that is the visual and the auditory into one. Since Chion is an authority on sound and cinema, he is often quoted and referred to in this paper throughout. This paper will include the following points to analyze. Sound in a film can transform not only the perception of the film goers but also the whole outlook of the film. Different sounds are used to portray and impart different set ups and also for different moods. The contextual music in a film often enhances the feelings and emotions felt in the film and the audience. There are certain patterns and ideas about specific sound patterns in the film usually followed by the film makers and the audio experts. Mostly, audio surpasses rules regulations of the natural theory like the poetic license. Sound creates a new dimension to the film by creating unnatural sounds. Sometimes there is a cross identification of sounds and this will be explained later on in the paper. We will also certain movies and show how the director modulated and even manipulated the audience by using certain sound effects. Last but not the least we will discuss the part Foley plays in the sound effects of any movie. Sound transforms the perception of the audience The 'Silent City' has been taken to prove this particular idea that sound plays a much larger part in this film. Through the use of the sound effects we can see that sound portrays a greater emotion. But it also acts as an indicator to the action displayed on screen and makes the viewer's attention to certain elements as the brain perceives the sound and the object that makes the said sound. In this film sound can also be used to determine time lines which in another sense, is very important to the set scenes and set locations. In this film, in Paris, Texas (directed by Wim Wenders) sets the location as Paris, Texas and it also uses the shared cultural knowledge. the traditional instrumentation of the place That are male voices, guitars and drums of the film 'The Silent City' achieves all this and more because of the clever use of film and sound techniques. Hence the viewer gets the full picture and the whole range of emotion with the sound backing up the film perfectly. The audience views it to be Texas. First of all how sound and image can transform one another in the filmgoer's perception with be elucidated. According to Chion, this shift occurs not because of any "natural harmony" between image and sound, but owing to the "audio-visual contract", wherein, "the two perceptions mutually influence each other...lending each other their respective properties by contamination and projection." (The Voice of Cinema. by Chion) Chion's view point is that sound, for example, music, "adds value" to the image. The nature of the sound occurring or existing at the same time or having the same period or phase causes the filmgoer to construe the image differently, and thereby the relationship of sound and image in a film should not be "associationist", but as "synergetic"; and they enter into a "contract" in the filmgoer's perception. (Chion's own words are used in quotes.) The film explores the abstract ideas of compassion, companionship and loss. It examines minutely the depths of human emotion and there are many scenes in this film pushing a person to the very edge of sanity. If we see the whole film without the sound (audio) or muting the sound as it is , we will realize the real meaning of my argument. Without the sound, the opening scenes have lost its dramatic quality to show the audience that it is dreamlike. The opening shows the city in ruins and all life has been destroyed with no exception. The bell like instrument and a simple melody, just one or two lines are being played is portrayed by the sound. But the sound muted film shows nothing of that kind of a place and without the sound, nothing works. Dramatisation gets lost without the sound in the film. What happens when there is no sound There are also some scenes which detracts the audience from the seriousness of situation without sound. For example let us review the first scene with the lone patrolman. He finds a sniper up in a window and puts a bullet in his head. In the movie, piece of stringed instruments plays to emphasise this fact and to give the shot real impact on the minds of the audience is entirely lost. Without the sound to 'back up' the visuals, this effect is lost and we can say that the audio-visual contract has been broken. Chion describes this as 'sound bringing value to film' a theme consistent through his book. (Sound on Screen by Chion-1994 pg 5) There are a number of other scenes which become meaningless without the sound, the values get lost without the audio. For example, the facial expressions lose their value without getting aided by the sound pointing the viewer to the source of the gesture. Without sound the facial expressions and some emotions become ludicrous. Without sound to aid in the story telling the emotions which are expressed become comical and lose the original intended meaning. Building up suspense Moreover, the suspense factor is of paramount importance to a film. It is very difficult to build up suspense and expectancy without so through it's use of crescendos, glissandi and resolving chords und. Strangely enough, only music has the ability to add the right amount of suspense. Let us examine the film, "A space odyssey human voices" (Stanley Kubrick, 2001) and the first scene marks the arrival of the first ape like creatures. If you imagine the scene without the vocals, the meaning and the overall feel of the piece is lost for ever. In another scene you can see an explosion in a hand held mirror at a distance. Without the sound the viewer will not know exactly where to look because he was not aware of the sound to look at the explosion. Another important factor to note is that music and sound effects have the capacity to portray emotion much better than just a film without music. The same film is a great example to prove this fact. When the last man is approached by the 'thing', the use of minor notes with elongated crescendo conveys a sense of menace and malcontent. In the same film Foley complements the action in the film. The character Cillian Murphy is woken up to the sound of his rifle being cocked. Without this sound, the impact and the 'jolt' of being awakened would not have the same effect on the viewer. Sound draws the attention of the audience to the action on the screen and he / she is not allowed to go out of the picture. Therefore we could say that sound effects actually control the audience and keeps them enthralled inside the place where they watch the movie. Use of contextual music Contextual music enhances feelings and emotions to a crescendo. After proving that sound transforms the language to take the viewers to the real position at hand, we can go on to say that the use of empathetic music in the film also enhances the feelings and emotions. In the same film there were these 3 patrol people are doing around the outer wall and they see the Cello piece playing consisting of 6 notes in a marching style and this directly mimes the action of the characters on screen. Hence it allows the viewer to get the same sense that they too are marching with the troop. We can quote another interesting point that concerns the music. This is when the 3 man patrol is rounding a corner and then they see a giant wall standing in their path. One thing I felt when I viewed this scene was that the instrumentation changes to a more 'Far-Eastern' type. I believe this is used to accentuate the fact that a giant wall or a great obstacle is facing the team much like the Great Wall of China. That is the reason why they use of far-eastern sounding instruments. Chion describes this temporary factor as "one of the most important effects of added value relates to the perception of time in the image, upon which sound can exert considerable influence.' (The Voice in Cinema, Chion, 1994 pg. 13) This film is a direct example of how both the sound elements and the visual elements affect our spatial impressions. There is a power in the voice just as hushed tones not only convey information but they create within us the desire to attentively listen to them. I would like to discuss how sound was given a new dimension in many movies specifically, Hitch Hock's movies. "From his first sound films, Hitchcock has treated sound as a new dimension to cinematic expression. He has hardly ever used it redundantly, but rather as an additional resource. Indeed, he is actually very proud of his control over the soundtrack. As he told Francois Truffaut: "After a picture is cut, I dictate what amounts to a real sound script to a secretary. We run every reel off and I indicate all the places where sounds should be heard." Such attention to sound is rare in commercial filmmaking. Most American directors leave all but a few important decisions to their editors and sound editors." (The Sound of one wing flapping by Elisabeth Weis) It is also possible to differentiate directors according to their styles whether they are closed or open. Directors operating in a closed style like Hitchcock and Fritz Lang are selective, stylized, and more in control of their material and their world is self-contained. But the directors operating in an open style like Altman and Jean Renoir are rather more realistic but less in control of their materials and there is an implication of life beyond the frame and away from the camera. This distinction has been made in terms of visual techniques, but only very much less in terms of aural style. Different movies and directors - Hitchcock In order to appreciate Hitchcock's attitude toward sound, it is necessary to understand the way sound is traditionally handled. In the Hollywood studio convention, the film soundtrack is divided among three categories: dialogue, sound effects and music. These reflect a distinct separation of the sound elements on separate tracks, which is maintained until all the three are combined at the final mix, where all the three technicians control their own volume of one track. Hitchcock never takes for granted the traditional functions of a given track. He recognized the intermingling of their functions in many instances. In three films where Hitchcock for example, he uses sound effects to provide the same atmospheric effect: wind in Jamaica Inn, waves in Lifeboat, bird caws in The Birds. In The Birds, the avian noises imitate the functions of music instead of musical cues and bird cries maintain the tension. In Psycho music of screeching violins imitates birds at various points. Although Hitchcock plays a large part in the creation of the screenplay, he has not shown much creative interest in the dialogue per se than in such human expression as screaming and laughter. He believes that their value as sound effects is usually as important as their significance as human utterances. In the same way, Hitchcock pays greater attention to how a character says something than to what he says. In other words, a person's actual words are not that significant as his definition as glib or taciturn, voluble or silent. Just as language sometimes functions as sound effects, Hitchcocks sound effects at times function as language. He often attributes very precise meanings to his sound effects. He told Truffaut: "To describe a sound effect accurately, one has to imagine its equivalent in dialogue." "The most important shift of style in Hitchcocks films involves a move from expressionism toward greater realism. From the beginning of his career until about 1966, Hitchcock became more and more interested in audience involvement. He moved toward realism in an attempt to increase audience identification through his protagonists, an emotional identification which depended to an extent on a relative invisibility of technique." (The Sound of one wing flapping by Elisabeth Weis) Different Movies - The Bird The Birds continues the subjective tradition in which aural intrusion plays an essential role. In The Birds Hitchcock moves beyond audience identification with any character. And just as there is no sole victim whose views we share, there is no single source of fear which can be attributed to what really happens. In The Birds Hitchcock deals with these fears in the form of the birds, but the birds are less important for what they are. But the reactions they elicit are more crucial in the film. Thus The Birds relies especially on sound because of the non-specific quality of sound effects. Sound and visual effects work together to provide Hitchcock's most terrifying sequences. There is a scene in which the bird noises are very menacing rather than the sight of them alone. In his essay "The Director Vanishes," William Pechter describes the shift in mood: "In one of the most amazing images of the film, we suddenly see the town, now burning in destruction, in a view from great aerial elevation; from this perspective, one sees everything as part of a vast design, and the scene of chaos appears almost peaceful, even beautiful; then, gradually, the silence gives way to the flapping of wings and the birds awful shrieking, and the image, without losing its beauty, is filled with terror as well." We can perceive the added effect of the sound because it is introduced later than the visuals and changes the mood of the film and specifically the shot. The Exorcist Let us see some other films where we see the meaning of a picture getting modulated by the sound effects. In Exorcist the signature elements like the sounds of the rats in the attic, the hospital equipment, the demon's voice, the girl's bed bouncing around and her head going into its 360 routine are the great in sound effect. Without the sound, they become dull and boring. In the mixing of sound effect in the film, we see the music and effects will be really, really loud and crazy, and then there'll be dead quiet. In the desert it goes dead quiet. When the priest is walking around the jeep there's no music, no wind, nothing but Foley, and that's incredibly exciting... which might be surprising for a sound person to say, but it's a great setup for what is to come.' The Passion of Christ In the Passion of Christ, Mel Gibson "has a stylistic approach to sound and picture where there are peaks and valleys," comments assistant sound editor Tim Tuchrello. "Reel one is a good example: It draws you in by the realism of the surroundings with the night and the crickets and bugs and all that. Then the fight breaks out [between Roman soldiers and Jesus' disciples], and you also have Satan there and the quiet moments with Mary, so it's a whole cornucopia of sounds - these peaks and valleys. And not everything is literal. In the fight with the Romans, you don't hear every whoosh and punch, but you do hear the detailed creaking of the leather [of their uniforms], which was a big thing with Mel. It's a film with a realistic base." According to Asgar and McCormack, The Passion was a very Foley-intensive film, with the sandaled crowds, the bloody flaying, and the long march up Calvary posing particular challenges to both the sound editors and Foley artists." The whipping scene alone required so much work," Asgar says. "Every whip hit you hear has a certain amount of layers to it - from the arm coming up, to the actual moment of contact, to the decay of the sound and when the whip is pulled away." "The sound of the dragging of the cross is even multiple layers, dragging on dirt and scraping and a lot of low end to give it weight. The ringing of the wood was probably one of the harder sounds to get. We used big planks of wood so you'd get that resonance we needed." The Titanic In Titanic From the moment you hit the iceberg to the time it sinks is a long period of film time, at least an hour-and-a-half," Rydstrom says. "So you have every different type of effect in the water category--everything from drips to the sound of water building up behind a wall, water seeping under a door crack, then building up to three inches in the room, then several feet, then climbing to the ceiling, then the big explosions and crash through the glass dome. It was very important for that long hour-and-a-half stretch that everything--creaks, water--have a real sense of progression. I found that by going way down in the sections where there were voices, the voices themselves added this ghostly quality. That, combined with straining steel, became the basis for the metallic groans and the ship sinking." Music and instruments Director John Carpenter, who creates and performs the music for almost all of his own films, agrees that the soundtrack should be implicit. ''[Y]ou shouldn't be aware of what I'm doing. Yeah, when it's scary or action-filled, you'll hear it, and it is fine. But you shouldn't be sitting there listening to music, or aware of it. It should be working on you. ... I don't want you to be aware of the technique. I just want you to feel it'' The sound mixers for the Michael Crichton movie Congo found out that even high naturally made noises can build suspense. In the jungle, the birds and insects create a high ambient whine that very quickly gets on your nerves most of the time. As one of the mixers said, ''when they want to create a real feeling of anxiety, these insects are going to be played loud'' (Kenny, ''Sound for Three'' 83 -- 84). The violin in Psycho is very effective because it is used as percussion suggesting the knife strokes. Deep sounds which are percussive can be felt literally penetrating your body if the pitch is strong enough. Jaws also uses a sinister but simple double bass and it begins in long, heavy notes slowly acquiring a faster beat and rhythm. Another example of low music for suspense is seen in the opening of the Malcolm McDowell vehicle Time After Time. A prostitute stumbles across a London pub. We hear garish popular Victorian music from within. Then this changes to a deep, double bass just as the prostitute looks up and sees ... Jack the Ripper. But she does not know that he is Jack the Ripper. She just thinks that she sees a well-dressed gentleman, so the soundtrack cleverly changes to the pub music. The music is sinister only long enough for the audience to register the threat in their mind. Some anomalies in sound effects in films There are a few anomalies which are being continually affected by the film goers. Here are some examples to go through. Animals are never ever silent - dogs whine or bark and cats meowor purr even in cases where most animals wouldn't be making a sound. Bombs always "whistle" when falling from a plane and every button you press on a computer will make some kind of beep Thunder is always synchronised with the lightning, and the explosion sounds are always synchronised with the stuff blowing up. People standing outside a running helicopter can always talk in normal voices but in reality this out of the question. Any airplane in a dive will make a whining noise that will get louder and higher-pitched if the dive lasts.When a character pulls out a knife, even from his pants, you can hear a sound of metal brushing metal. Baby crying is always bad news. For example in The Godfather when Don Corleone is shot, Sonny barges in to his house and announces this which is actually followed by baby crying. In Snow Falling on Cedars the sheriff announces to a woman that her fisherman husband is dead and that is also followed by baby crying. In addition we forget the vacuum in space and create sound effect even in space. In all the space movies we can notice this and also the anomaly of the speed of light and sound. Conclusion Directors know that realistic sound is vital to hooking an audience. But one thing is absolutely certain. As visual effects are becoming more and more developed and sophisticated we can be certain that the sound effects will also reach the same level. The technicians should be more inventive As Tamara Rogers, a sound expert in Hollywood, puts it, ''audio is the last frontier'' (Stokes 77). Whether or not you're aware of it, sound plays a key role in how you perceive reality. The voice is as difficult an object choice for analysis as any, a fact that Michel Chion notes at the beginning of his book, The Voice in Cinema, when he states that, the voice is elusive. Once you've eliminated everything that is not the voice itself-the body that houses it, the words it carries, the notes it sings, the traits by which it defines a speaking person, and the timbres that color it, what's left What a strange object, what grist for poetic outpourings... (1) Reference 1. Chion, M. The Voice in Cinema, 1994, published by Columbia University Press, 2. Chion .M. Audio Vision: Sound on screen. , Chion. M. New York 2. Interview Ben Burtt, 50Movie Sound Designer 3. Kenny .- Monkey Business/ Star Trek 4. Kenny - Sound for three 5. LaBelle, B. Site specific sound 6. Attali, J. (1985) Noise: the political economy of music 7. Kahn D. Noise, Water and Meat: a history of sound in the arts 8. Kenny, T. Sound for Picture: The Art of Sound Design in Film and Television (1999), Hal Leonard Publ. Corp Sound Design: The Expressive Power of Music, Voice and Sound Effects in Cinema Read More