Category: Y2 SOUND FOR SCREEN

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SPECIALISATION PROJECT

Spatialisation

My auditory response to this short film will be mainly focused on providing an immersive semi-realistic environment, a large part of how this will be accomplished is through the spatialisation of the sound. I plan to mix the audio in 5.1 as a believe that this format will give me what I need in terms of spatial movement of the sound. The majority of the sequences are fairly static, and I will need to created a realistic environment with atmos and foley. There are a few visual sequences that have a lot to offer in terms of movement of sound, I will separate these scenes and identify what sound will be needed and how they must move in the space.

1

I find this short sequence very intense, and I think the intimacy could be emphasised with a spatially comprehensive sound sequence, I imagine something close and enclosing. The content of the sound could be quite melodic to enhance the emotional aspect of the intimate scene.

2

In this sequence the camera slowly pans around the subject while the fire spits small sparks/cinder, I feel this would be an interesting sound to move around the mix. I think it will align the audiences experience with that of the character, hopefully creating a deeper sense of immersion.

3

In this sequence the subject walks through a small corridor with stone walls while birds fly above. I think that this will be an interesting scene to create spatially, ill try to make it realistic in relation to the architecture through use of spatialisation and reverb.

4

I feel this sequence will be one of the most spatially rich scenes, the camera moves forward through the ultra slow motion shot, moving towards the campfire and the lightning striking the tree. This will be the most challenging part of the project in terms of creating sound effects.

5

This sequence follows directly from 4, I can use the same sound design and pan it around the character. This will hopefully again enhance the immersion of the piece.

6

The camera moves backwards through an ultra slow motion shot, the character is throwing rocks at dogs about to attack him and the coffin. The rocks pass closely by the camera, I think this will sound very good In surround. Shortly after this, the dogs appear from behind, ill create some viscous sounds that will emerge suddenly from behind the audience.

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SPECIALISATON PROJECT

Artists Influences and Musical Response

I will be recording and arranging sound design for a short film called ‘3WW’. The film is a music video for the band Alt J, I will be removing the music and working with the visuals only. I believe that this gives me an opportunity to take inspiration and influence from both the visual directors intentions and the musical/lyrical content.

‘There was a wayward lad
Stepped out one morning
The ground to be his bed
The sky his awningNeon, neon, neon
A blue neon lamp in a midnight country field

Can’t surround so you lean on, lean on
So much your heart’s become fond of this

Oh, these three worn words
Oh, let me whisper like the rubbing hands
Of tourists in Verona
I just want to love you in my own language

Well, that smell of sex
Good like burning wood
The wayward lad laid clean
To two busty girls from Hornsea
Who left a note in black ink

Girls from above say “Hi” (hi)
The road erodes at five feet per year
Around England’s east coastline
Was this your first time?
Love is just a button we press
Last night by the campfire

Oh, these three worn words
Oh, that we whisper like the rubbing hands
Of tourists in Verona
I just want to love you in my own language’

-Lyrics of ‘3WW’ By Alt J

Alt-J approached Alex Takacs (also known as Young Replicant) to direct a short film for their song 3WW, a song about love and loss, they also requested that Takacs take influence from a Ted Hughes book of Poems ‘Birthday Letters’. At first Takacs thought that the poems and the lyrics had little in common content-wise, but after spending some time with them both he recognised a shared sense of ‘dark sensuality and morbidity’.

Ted Hughes- The Dogs Are Eating Your Mother

Ted Hughes was a very celebrated English poet, in 1956 he married another celebrated poet by the name of Sylvia Plath. They had an infamously intense relationship, until she took her own life in 1963 when she was just 30 years old. In the years past this event, Sylvia became an object of investigation for poetry enthusiasts, and a very important figure for feminist literary theorists. Due to this, Ted Hughes often became a target of criticism in light of events surrounding Plath’s suicide, them being separated at the time and her still being devoted to him. For Hughes, this criticism was a strange experience, strangers prodding into an intense love, he equates it to a pack of dogs ravaging her grave and digging up her body. ‘Pulling her remains, with their lips lifted like dog’s lips into new positions.’

This poem is about a small pocket of something beautiful being attacked from all sides, and the person inside it trying to protect it, struggling against this barrage but ultimately realising it to be a sisyphean task.

In response, Takacs created a visual story of a tragic romance between two characters, Ramon and Julina (A reference to Shakespeare). The film follows the funeral procession for Julina after her untimely death, the coffin is then carried by Ramon alone through the mountains, wherein he builds campfires, experiences a lightning strike a tree very close to him and the coffin is attacked by a pack of wild dogs.

3WW- Alt-J

Although the brunt of this project will be foley work and atmos, I want to create some melodic elements in the sound design to respond to the poem and reflect the emotions that the poem/film invokes, I believe these to be isolation, determination, remorse and nostalgia. As a reference I’m looking at ‘Romantic Works’ by Keaton Henson, specifically ‘Petrichor’ as a palette. I feel that this will be a small part of the project, I would like to keep the music subtle, as a supplement to the sound design. Through providing a realistic audio environment I would like the listener to be immersed in the otherworldly scenes. I’m hoping that this immersion will make it easier to sneak in emotional musicality without it being the focus of the piece.

https://thehundreds.uk/blogs/content/meet-alex-takacs-aka-young-replicant-director-behind-favorite-flying-lotus-lorde-music-videos?country=GB
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SOUND FOR SCREEN 12/10/21

Watch ‘Girlhood’ by Celine Sciama

Acousmetre- ‘a kind of voice-character specific to cinema that derives mysterious powers from being heard not seen. The disembodied voice seems to come from everywhere and therefore to have no clearly defined limits to its power. Acousmetre depends for its effects on delaying the fusion of sound and image to the extreme, by supplying the sound and withholding the image of the sounds true source until nearly the very end of the film. Only then, when the audience has used its imagination to the fullest is the… ‘

– Schaeffer Acousmatic

Synchresis- The forging between something one sees and something one hears. It is the mental fusion between a sound and a visual when’s these occur at exactly the same time. For a single face in the screen there are dozens of allowable voices, just as for a shot of a hammer hundreds of sounds will do. The sound of an axe chopping wood played exactly in sync with a bat hitting a baseball, will ‘read’ as a particularly forceful hit rather than a mistake by the filmmakers.

– Michelle Chion Audio Vision

SHAPE MEANING THROUGH SOUND

The privilege of voice in cinema- it takes priority over all other sonic element in audiovisual media. There are voices, and then everything else. In every audio mix, the presence of a human voice instantly sets up a hierarchy of perception. The level and presence of the voice has to be artificially enhanced over the sounds, in order to compensate for the absence of landmarks that in live binaural conditions that allow us to isolate the voice from ambience.

Todays task- Recording atmosphere for ‘We need to talk about Kevin’ scene.

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WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN RESCORE #1

I will be rescoring the opening scene to the 2011 film ‘We need to talk about Kevin’. The film opens with a dream sequence, what seems to be a very busy festival in which people are chucking tomato pulp over each other. The reality of the scene is later revealed to the audience, the protagonist is asleep in their living room and someone/people have thrown red paint at her house. This situation gives sound designers a lot of room to be creative, the two scenes being intrinsically linked and the dreamscape allowing non-figurative use of sound.

My first thought when considering the rescore is I would like to be able to ground the dream soundscape in reality by only using (and manipulating) sounds that would be heard in the context of the second scene (reality). I will start the process by identifying the sounds I can use as a base for instrumentation:

  • Wind
  • Birds
  • Television
  • Phone
  • Voices
  • Cars
  • Her breath

I will then manipulate these sounds to invoke the emotions of the dream sequence, which I think is a kind of euphoric escape, and a feeling of support from other people which maybe contrasts reality.

The next step is to identify the different sections of the scene, to highlight changes in atmosphere and the introduction or emphasis of certain sounds:

Dreamscape-

  • 00:00:45:05 Small room with open door, curtains waving. (might want to introduce these. sounds before the visual to ease viewer into the story) A
  • 00:01:19:20 Outside area, very crowded. Lots of movement, liquid being thrown. A/SFX
  • 00.01:44:14 Change of camera angle, close up approx 13 people in shot. SFX
  • 00:01:55:22 Close up of liquid being thrown SFX
  • 00:02:07:18 Close up of 2 people falling into 1 foot high liquid SFX
  • 00:02:11:13 Close up of people kicking liquid SFX
  • 00:02:16:05 Close up of person writhing around in liquid SFX
  • 00:02:18:04 Protagonist is lifted above crowd, liquid still flying (She’s smiling and laughing) A/SFX
  • 00:02:31:12 Someone is hit in the face with tomatoes SFX
  • 00:02:43:08 Protagonist is pulled back to crowd level A
  • 00:02:49:19 Protagonist is laid on floor and people throw tomatoes on her SFX
  • 00:02:53:07 Close up of protagonists face while tomatoes are thrown SFX
  • 00:02:59:02 Close up of tomato pulp on floor SFX

Reality-

  • 00:03:06:16 Small living room, window closed. A
  • 00:03:32:05 Close up of protagonists face waking up SFX
  • 00:03:43:14 Close up of window SFX
  • 00:03:57:22 Protagonists feet hit the floor FOLEY
  • 00:04:07:10 Protagonists foot stubs table leg and pills hit ground FOLEY
  • 00:04:12:11 Protagonist puts on slippers FOLEY
  • 00:04:15:14 Protagonist pulls door handle off door FOLEY
  • 00:04:18:06 Protagonist opens door FOLEY
  • 00:04:22:07 Scene change to outside, Protagonist walks down steps, walks a few paces and turns around FOLEY
  • 00:04:37:04 Protagonist walks back up steps FOLEY
  • 00:04:48:23 Door closes, end scene. FOLEY

Key:

A- Atmosphere

SFX- Sound effects