Harry Charlton’s Sound notes

Reflection

I believe that this project has been a success, my goals were well defined early on in the term. The practitioners and theorists I researched gave me a clear blueprint for my project, Ashman provided the initial concept, i transferred this concept to a different medium and developed it through methods inspired by musique concrete. Through reading the work of Tim Harrison I contextualised diegetic scoring within the traditional structures of cinematic sound design, exploring the relationships and similarities between ambience and music. Through researching Bernie Krause and utilising his concepts i have gained a depth of understanding of ambience, its informational quality and compositional potential. It has informed my dissertation as it has made me realise, it is possible to argue that designing a films ambience can be seen as a form of diegetic scoring.

I planned multiple methods of how to utilise material as a musical instrument, focused on the most conceivably effective one and developed it through multiple iterations/experiments. I changed recording methods, compositional methods and explored many implementations of my recordings into the soundscape. Eventually, i found that the implementation was most effective when informed by, and composed with the ambience.

I believe this project to be an effective proof of concept. Subjective as it is, i believe that these methods have resulted in a score that feels like part of the environment. However, Jose’s criticism from the presentation does ring true to me, he suggested that my aim was to create a score inspired by realism, and what i presented was rather abstract. I think this feeling of ‘abstractness’ comes from the context of the film score, perhaps it is abstract in its sound because it is an abstract piece of music, it has a unique timbre for its context (film score). However, i would argue that if we were to analyse the piece within a wider context, disregarding the traditional timbre of film scores, this score is contextually more coherent than most.

In the coming year, i plan to improve on this scoring practice. I believe that there are more effective methods of diegetically anchoring a film score. I also plan to conduct more experiments, creating a varied series of scores that increase in abstraction. Perhaps three scores for the same film, so as to illustrate my not yet proved suspicion of an inverse correlation between abstraction and immersion within film scoring. This will be a practice based realisation of my dissertation. ‘To what extent can peripheral sound be exploited in the practice of diegetic scoring for cinema?‘

Ethical Implications

I didn’t choose the subject matter of this project, the story, setting and visuals are all the work of my collaborator. I was brought on as a composer and sound designer after the story had been written, that being said it is still important to analyse the ethical implications of this work.

The story is a retelling of the garden of Eden set on a mountainside. The choice of the mountainside was inspired by the real location of He Sapa in South Dakota, as was the name of the project. ‘Hesapia’ is a merger between He Sapa and Utopia. This choice of inspiration makes sense, the site is regarded as the centre of the universe and the birthplace for all of the Lakotan Sioux. My collaborator was drawn to this location and culture as they are renowned for their ability to live in harmony with nature, a thing that has been completely lost in modern western culture.

The ethical problem with this project stems from the subject matter and the medium. Firstly it could easily be argued that as we are not part of this culture we do not have a right to use their mythology or symbology, it can be seen as appropriation. If we were to make money from this project that would especially be an ethical issue. Secondly the mediums we are using to make this project are in direct contrast with the entire philosophy of the culture. There are minerals used in my laptop that have been mined from land, this process no doubt destroying the natural landscape. I would argue that almost nothing used in this project has been completely ethically sourced. We are in a way contributing to the very problem being criticised.

This is not intended as a solution to this ethical dilemma, but a description of the wider context surrounding this. It could be argued that we as a society are too far gone in the way of the destruction of our environment, and that any act will somehow contribute to this destruction. Therefore, hypocrisy is inevitable. Even the most devout environmentalist will have unwittingly contributed to this, and to print a banner informing people of environmental destruction using material that contributed to the problem can be seen as a necessary evil in the pursuit of change.

‘Ultimately, those who decry hypocrisy are guilty of a form of ad hominem, attacking the opponent rather than his claims. By calling the protesters hypocrites in the hope of impugning the validity of the protesters’ stance, detractors avoid having to justify the expansion of fossil fuel projects in the face of the climate crisis.’

(Chang, 2020)

Bibliography-

Chang, D. (2020) “The sticky side of hypocrisy: Environmental activism in an oil-drenched world,” Dialogue and Debate, 23(2), pp. 200–202. Available at: https://doi.org/10.7202/1070465ar.

Ambience and MX transitioning

The narrative transition is from a cold baron environment to a utopian harmony between technology and biology, the soundscape should reflect this transition. The wind changes its narrative representation from isolation to calmness. I would like the geophony to be present throughout the sequence, as i would like a constant reminder of the setting in which this story takes place. I plan to create a sense of protection while the baby is in the cocoon by reducing the volume and high frequencies of the wind in this section, this is to recreate the sound of being sheltered in a very windy environment. I have a reference for this sound, a recording i made withe an Iphone on the 4th of January 2022 on top a large hill named Binsey, located in the lake district. At the summit there are small wind shelters made from balanced rocks.

The biophony and MX are narratively intwined and so will build in volume and harmony together. The MX is the sonic identity of the metal buildings, a remanence of human organisation and engineering from the past. The harmonic resonance of this metal should represent the harmony between industry and nature.

The strongest representation of this is the bird recordings i conducted, where i played field recordings of birds through the metal. This recording is both natural and cold, industrial and metallic. This was inspired by Cristobal Tapier de Veer’s Utopia soundtrack (see artist research post). A blend of natural and artificial, although he achieved this through granular synthesis and extreme time stretching of audio, i achieved mine through resonance and transducers. I hope that this timbral blending of MX with an ambience detail results in a seamless merging of the two.

These compositional decisions will hopefully result in a clear representation of the narrative, using the informational implications of environmental sound (Harrison, Sound design for film 2022), and intertwining the musical representation of industry with the biophony. I am also hoping that this link between music and nature ambience will further diegetically solidify the score into the scene.

Identification of Ambiences– Biophony

When we enter the garden we are introducing the biophony, this has many psychological and narrative implications. The biophony is the ‘voice of the natural world’ (B.Krause), this is an invaluable resource and can be used to evaluate the health of a natural environment. The sound of animals can represent the health and prosperity of space. In the context of this film, a pocket of life within a desolate plane. Harmony after destruction.

There is an extremely powerful narrative value to this biophony, Krause writes that there is reason to believe that animals and insects taught humans how to sing and dance.

‘Experienced composers know that in order
to achieve an unimpeded resonance the sound of
each instrument must have its own unique voice and
place in the spectrum of events being orchestrated.
All too little attention has been paid to the fact that
insects, birds and mammals in
any given environment have
been finding their aural
niche since the beginning of
time.’

(Krause, 1987)

Hesapia is a rebirth of life, a harmony between machine and biology. The biophony represents a teacher for the infant protagonist, and for the intelligence developing out of the mountain. An auditory representation of organisation from chaos, much like humanity filters itself into sections of functional niches, each animal occupies it’s own aural niche.

Bibliography-

Krause, B. (2022) Biophony, Anthropocene. Available at: https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2017/08/biophony/ (Accessed: November 29, 2022).

Krause, B. (1987) The niche hypothesis: How animals taught us to dance and sing. Available at: http://www.xenopraxis.net/readings/krause_nichehypothesis.pdf (Accessed: November 29, 2022).

Identification of Ambiences– Mountain top

The sequence i have been sent can be divided into 6 shots:

• Shot 1- Wide shot on the top of mountain (No plants or animals)
• Shot 2- Close up tracking of baby running up said area
• Shot 3- Close up of baby in cocoon on side of mountain
• Shot 4- Tracking shot of baby travelling down mountainside
• Shot 5- Baby enters garden
• Shot 6- Wide shot from in between derelict buildings, Tracks back to centre of garden.

Within these shots there are three distinct sonic environments, mountain top, mountain side, inside destroyed buildings and the garden.

Mountain top

The mountain top is purely geophonic, no animals or plants. The only elements present are wind, rocks and metal.

Wind

Because there are no trees or cover i imagine the wind to be quite prevalent. The sound of wind can symbolise and reflect many different things in film:

• Change- A change of wind can inform people of an inbound change of weather, this can be paralleled with a narrative change.
• Travel- Wind is strongly associated with travel due to the use of sail boats, this can be harnessed as a narrative signifier that a journey is about to take place.
• Freedom- Wind is mostly prevalent when there are no obstructions, this can signify an escape from a claustrophobic environment.
• Isolation- Contrasting with the previous use, this lack of obstruction can also signify isolation, or venerability.
• Relaxation- A gentle breeze can signify a relaxed state of mind, a metaphorical breathe of fresh air.
• Divine intervention- Wind is beyond our control, and can be seen as a higher power. It’s sometimes used to represent the voice of a higher power. This can be seen in Japanese culture as typhoons are described as ‘Kamikaze’ meaning divine winds.
• Destruction- The destructive power of wind is not only associated with divine power, it’s been a destructive element through out human history, people naturally recognise the destructive sound.

In this context the wind represents isolation, the babies emerge out of their cocoons to a cold world. When i refer to the world as cold, i am not referring to temperature. The babies gave a mechanical appearance, suggesting they wouldn’t feel the temperature. Coldness in this context refers to the lack of nurture on this mountain top. The phycological parallels the audience will draw from the wind’s temperature implications will evoke the narrative.

Rocks

The sound of rocks crumbling can reflect multiple narrative points. Firstly the rocks can remind the audience of a traitorous environment, danger and uncertainty. The babies are born into this environment and are forced to make this dangerous journey down the mountain to the relative safety of the garden. The rocks might also create a closer connection between this abstract alien world and our own, reminding the viewer that this is set on earth.

Biblography

Rhys, D. (2021) Wind – meaning and symbolism, Symbol Sage. Available at: https://symbolsage.com/wind-meaning-and-symbolism/#:~:text=As%20a%20symbol%20of%20change,both%20positive%20and%20negative%20interpretations. (Accessed: November 29, 2022).

Harrison, T. (2022) Sound design for film. The Crowood Press.

Yolande Harris

My portfolio research has been an investigation into soundscape composition as a diegetic cinematic scoring practice, this investigation informed my dissertation research which became an exploration of the degrees of composition and abstraction in soundscape composition. The crux of the research is finding the balance of composition and audiovisual correspondence, which in this context is a realistic sensorial representation of the world. As this is my research I though Yolande Harris to be the most suitable visiting practitioner to do my presentation on. I’m going to be talking about her practice and philosophy with my related research dispersed throughout. 

Yolande Harris is a sound artist and scholar who’s practice focuses on sonic consciousness, investigating our relationships with the environments that surround us. She analyses sound in relation to other senses, and the changing of the perception of our environments through placing different elements in it. This is presented in Yolande’s work ‘walk in the woods 2’ in which she reveals different parts of a forrest in northern Catalonia with projectors. Imagery from the projectors oscillate in and out of perceptibility, blending with the environment of the forrest. I think that this piece is a reflection of a concept I came across during my research by Michael Gallagher. Gallagher proposes that there is an element of composition in the act of playing back a field recording, this is because the field recording has its own spatial identity as does the room. When the recording is played in a room, the spatial identities blend and contrast, creating a juxtaposition. Yolande’s ‘Walk in the woods 2’, to me, is a visual representation of this concept, how visual or auditory information interacts with the space it is projected into. 

The next piece Yolande presented was ‘The Pink Noise of pleaser yachts in turquoise sea’, a piece in which Yolande dropped hydrophones in the Balearic sea in Spain to record the engine noises of yachts. The piece emphasises the contrast of our perception of the picturesque tranquil sea from above, and the hidden soundscape below that we contribute to. The installation of this piece took the form of an immersive experience, in which the audience would stand on a projection of the turquoise sea, and through the use of headphones hanging above can listen to the soundscape underneath. 

There are parallels here between my work and Yolande’s as the primary driver for my portfolio project is immersion into a composed sonic environment. To understand how to achieve immersion I thought it best to research soundscapes from an artistic perspective. Yolande’s piece immediately reminded me of the R.Murray Schafer quote in which he describes a soundscape as ‘the universal composition of which we are all composers’. By placing the audience in the environment not only visually by contextually, standing on top of the ocean in place of the yachts, the audience becomes the composer. I think its a near perfect representation of this concept. My practice currently doesn’t involve installation work so I don’t have the opportunity to contextually place my audience in the soundscape as Yolande has done, but I think this is a good way to approach creating cinematic soundscapes. This has caused me to consider the psychological influences composing with the anthropophony has on the immersion of a soundscape. 

Prototype Session 2

For the revised recording session I conducted the experiment in the way described in the session one reflection, however there were a few new problems that arose. I booked out a MixPre and a directional mic in the hopes of avoiding gain hiss, room tone and excess noise from the rooms either side of the performance lab. This worked as planned but the microphone change caused a necessary change of placement. I found that the previous placement (Fig.2) resulted in little to no sound, instead I had to use the placement illustrated in Fig.3. I noticed an interesting opportunity for another level of permanence with this method as different frequencies were emphasised by different microphone placement.

I also chose to use two contact microphones, these recordings were clearer from a musical sense but harboured less material. I would describe it as a slightly metallic cello, the primary quality these recordings lacked was environment. I prefer the shotgun mic recordings as they seem like an object in a real space, this is the most important quality in the project, verisimilitude.

For this version I wanted to be very organised and intentional with my project set up, each recording has a folder that contains each recording downloaded from the MixPre. I am very interested in the idea of creating a realistic space using reverbs and volume, I think this will be the crux of maintaining the immersion and not breaking audiovisual correspondence. I plan to research into realistic background editing, but for this session I created my own template.

The template consists of three bus channels (close, mid, far), each of which has a convolution reverb with a mountainside preset. I gradually increased the wetness, length and size of the reverb. I also decreased the volumes of the mid and far busses.

In conclusion this method worked a lot better for the implementation of the sounds into a simulated space, I feel I have concrete proof of concept (the concept being diegetic composition). My focus can now pull away from proving this concept, and move onto creating a realistic soundscape for the animation.

I received a very in depth storyboard from my collaborator, this has made me realise that the foley might be an insurmountable task for this assignment. I feel I may have to focus my efforts purely on background and music to achieve the level of work I want to, I can then record foley and other elements later to complete the project.

I will be receiving footage by the end of this week and will begin this process.

Secondary Experiment

Soundscape Composition: Initial plan

• Find space with multiple sound sources
• Record stereo omnidirectional recording
• Use directional microphone to isolate specific sound sources
• Manipulate the directional recordings to implement musicality eg. Custom impulse response in convolution reverb. (Record impulse response in space?)