Started noticing sound in films more

L

linuxizer

Member
Thanks to you guys. I was watching a "most emotional moments" clip for some reason, and it had a scene from the Battlestar Galactica reboot (which is worth watching in its entirety even if you're not a scifi person) where Adama finally gives a direct indication to Lee of the depth of his love for him, and Lee chokes up. It's pretty poignant, but rewatching it in clip form it became obvious how much of the impact came from the sound. His face doesn't do much, just crumps ever so slightly, but the sound of him inhaling and trying not to make a sound was just spot on.

I know this forum can be filled with people wanting to know how they can avoid hiring a pro sound person, or what equipment they should buy, plug-in, and forget to sound like the pros. So I just wanted to say that this particular mostly-lurker really appreciates that you come here and educate, even though I'll never make a film in the traditional sense.

Thank you.
 
linuxizer said:
It's pretty poignant, but rewatching it in clip form it became obvious how much of the impact came from the sound. His face doesn't do much, just crumps ever so slightly, but the sound of him inhaling and trying not to make a sound was just spot on.
Click to expand...

And thus the saying: 70% of what you experience in a movie is sound.

Goes all the way back to Mozart IMHO. He was the guy that figured out that the emotion in an opera could be carried solely by the music. Prior to Mozart the emotion was spelled out for the audience in the lyrics ("oh, I feel so sad", etc.). For Mozart and all who followed, the music wasn't just accompaniment, it was the crucial player.

You could see the replay of this discovery in the transition from silent films to talkies. We transitioned from the actor looking at the camera with big eyes looking terrified with a placard that read "what's that noise?" to the same actor looking somewhat confused, head and eyes moving slowly to camera right, while we hear the sound of a squeaking door hinge. And it's us, the audience, who is terrified.

This is why I worry more about sound than picture. Sound is my first priority.
 
The part that amazes me most is how folks will blow there budget on visual equipment and then ask how to get super-pro awesome audio on their remaining budget of not very much to nothing. Then they get pissed (at the board members) when they don't get positive answers affirming their poor choices about the cheapo kit they purchased. This has happened here so many times it is just silly. Does anyone actually form a business plan and or some realistic decision making process which places realistic values on the cost of decent audio gear and the skill to use it? As a rule of thumb, my audio kit is worth about the same as my visual kit and this seems like a good ratio for my small business.

Grant
 
Bruce - Interesting history. Thanks.

ggrantly - I have observed this here as well. I guess it happens in every community. Since time immemorial, photo forums have been filled with people asking if they should buy X camera body or Y camera body to put behind their $100 zoom lens (or instead of spending money on travel to go see interesting places to capture).
 
Bruce Watson said:
And thus the saying: 70% of what you experience in a movie is sound.

Goes all the way back to Mozart IMHO. He was the guy that figured out that the emotion in an opera could be carried solely by the music. Prior to Mozart the emotion was spelled out for the audience in the lyrics ("oh, I feel so sad", etc.). For Mozart and all who followed, the music wasn't just accompaniment, it was the crucial player.

You could see the replay of this discovery in the transition from silent films to talkies. We transitioned from the actor looking at the camera with big eyes looking terrified with a placard that read "what's that noise?" to the same actor looking somewhat confused, head and eyes moving slowly to camera right, while we hear the sound of a squeaking door hinge. And it's us, the audience, who is terrified.

This is why I worry more about sound than picture. Sound is my first priority.
Click to expand...


Sound is objective. Picture is not. Look at cinematography vs production sound. Through the years, I've had several opportunities to be in volved in making films in Europe, including Eastern Europe. It was very easy find extremely talented DPs, and indeed Eastern European DPs have a very good reputation in Hollywood. And then you got to sound - an utter disaster. Clearly, it is not a matter of talent - there are talented actors and DPs and set designers and so on in Eastern Europe, but somehow, the one weakness of those films is sound. It is not because somehow less talented people get involved in sound production over there. It is because of the nature of the job. When you light a film, there is a great deal of subjective and artistic license you can take - just as there is with acting and many other things in film, like set design. And subjective artistic interpretation is a matter of taste and choice. But if you are recording dialogue, there is only one standard - how cleanly has it been recorded. You can't record something that's distorted and muffled and claim "artistic license". Sound is objective - is there noise, which can be measured, are there frequency dropouts, can the dialogue be heard over background noise, how clearly can we hear the actors etc.. As a result, you've either done sound right, or wrong. That's a much harder call in photography - is that blown highlight an artistic choice, or is it a mistake? The fact that the camera is shaky - well, that could be a choice. Cinema verite was a crude look that became a choice initially borne of necessity. There is no right and wrong - or rather the boundaries between right and wrong in picture is rather blurred. But you cannot record dirty muffled dialogue and call it a style - it's simply wrong.

Nobody is going to give you the benefit of doubt or cut you slack if you've done sound wrong the way they'll do for picture, acting and other more subjective areas. Your only option in sound is to get it right. Which is why it is - IMHO - far more important to hire a legitimate sound professional than a DP. And when rolling your own, you are obligated to pay much more attention to getting sound absolutely right, than picture, comparatively speaking. And so with equipment. Better a cheap subpar camera than subpar sound equipment, because the subpar look from the cam can be fashioned into an artistic statement, whereas you can't do that with sound.
 
Wow, good job. I have kind of said similar things before but never really put it together as clearly.

You are right in the Visual VS sound areas, not sure how much slack the actors get... But a director or editor can make most visual problems into artistic choices where there is very little wiggle room with the production sound, and only so much you can cheat your way around in post.
 
Happens all the time. Most folks don't really want professional advice. What they are really after is validation on a choice they have already made in their head. And when the answer given differs from what they really want to hear, the advice is ignored, or the responder is talked down to.

I don't know how many times I have seen questions like.... I have microphone X and I want to improve my studio sound. Should I purchase Microphone Y or Z to get better sound?

And upon listening to a sample from their studio the response is.... Put that money into the room in the form of acoustic correction.

Then the OP replies.... That's not what I asked, which mic should I get?
 
OldCorpse said:
Sound is objective. Picture is not. Look at cinematography vs production sound. Through the years, I've had several opportunities to be in volved in making films in Europe, including Eastern Europe. It was very easy find extremely talented DPs, and indeed Eastern European DPs have a very good reputation in Hollywood. And then you got to sound - an utter disaster. Clearly, it is not a matter of talent - there are talented actors and DPs and set designers and so on in Eastern Europe, but somehow, the one weakness of those films is sound. It is not because somehow less talented people get involved in sound production over there. It is because of the nature of the job. When you light a film, there is a great deal of subjective and artistic license you can take - just as there is with acting and many other things in film, like set design. And subjective artistic interpretation is a matter of taste and choice. But if you are recording dialogue, there is only one standard - how cleanly has it been recorded. You can't record something that's distorted and muffled and claim "artistic license". Sound is objective - is there noise, which can be measured, are there frequency dropouts, can the dialogue be heard over background noise, how clearly can we hear the actors etc.. As a result, you've either done sound right, or wrong. That's a much harder call in photography - is that blown highlight an artistic choice, or is it a mistake? The fact that the camera is shaky - well, that could be a choice. Cinema verite was a crude look that became a choice initially borne of necessity. There is no right and wrong - or rather the boundaries between right and wrong in picture is rather blurred. But you cannot record dirty muffled dialogue and call it a style - it's simply wrong.

Nobody is going to give you the benefit of doubt or cut you slack if you've done sound wrong the way they'll do for picture, acting and other more subjective areas. Your only option in sound is to get it right. Which is why it is - IMHO - far more important to hire a legitimate sound professional than a DP. And when rolling your own, you are obligated to pay much more attention to getting sound absolutely right, than picture, comparatively speaking. And so with equipment. Better a cheap subpar camera than subpar sound equipment, because the subpar look from the cam can be fashioned into an artistic statement, whereas you can't do that with sound.
Click to expand...

Yeah. This is SPOT ON.

It's the same in recording music. Especially in the more aggressive or artsy styles.
The drums, the electric guitars and basses, the keyboards - they can all be; Compressed, distorted, EQ'd to oblivion, effected, gated, chopped, crushed, WHATEVER...but the lead vocal HAS TO sound like a real voice or the listener simply will not connect with it like they normally would. Even the untrained ear instantly spots something "artificial" on the voices.

I've been trying to explain this to people since the 1980's.... In film and video I tell folks about the post houses in L.A. that JUST do dialog. That's all they do is clean your dialog tracks. This should be a hint for them as to how important that is.
 
The importance of sound is counterintuitive.

Ask people coming out of the theater what they thought about the movie: "Oh, it was great!"
"What did you like about it?"
"Well, it was such a great story, and the acting was so wonderful."
"Anything else?"
"Well, the cinematography was really beautiful."
"What did you think about the sound?"
(pause) "Oh, the music was wonderful."
"No, I mean the on-set recorded sound."
"You mean, like, the dialog and stuff?"
"Yeah."
"Oh, well, I could hear it! Everything came through loud and clear, heh heh!"

It reminds me of a joke:
"How many bass players does it take to screw in a light bulb?"
"I don't know. How many?"
"Nobody's ever noticed."

You sound guys are right, but remember that it is counterintuitive how important it is. It just doesn't seem like it's that important. It seems like I'm being generous if I devote 25% of the budget to sound. And yet:


Just bookmark that video and post in a thread whenever you run into arguments like this.
 
Last edited:
"What did you think about the sound?"
(pause) "Oh, the music was wonderful."
"No, I mean the on-set recorded sound."
"You mean, like, the dialog and stuff?"
"Yeah."
"Oh, well, I could hear it! Everything came through loud and clear, heh heh!"
Click to expand...

That sounds about right. When people here I do sound for film they usually assume I'm a composer.

Though I would also correct the interviewer because if you are watching a full budget film you really can't make much of an assessment of "on-set recorded sound" since you don't hear much of it and if well done you will have no idea what was "on-set" and what was added in post. Except that you can assume pretty safely that if it is not dialog then it was added. So the irony is that the "Everything came through loud and clear" was probably a reference to the dialog and in fact IS an assessment of the "on-set" sound, sort of.


That video is a good one for helping folks to spend some budget on production sound, but skips post all together. In a talking head shoot like that there isn't a lot of need for much post sound work, but in a narrative film the post sound work is what creates the "world" that the story takes place in.

Dialog editing is rather exacting but for many editors it is also the most like factory work. It's the only category (including ADR) of sound editing you can't get an Oscar for. FX editors tend to have all the fun. I don't doubt that there are some places in LA that just do dialog, but there probably are not many. Most places would be doing all of the post work, except maybe Foley. Foley is one thing that is specialized enough that there are a number of stand alone facilities and you also can rent out time on a big studios Foley stage. Oh and scoring stages, that would be the other category that has is often done away from where the main sound post is being done.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top