Chapter 3 Sound and Image 99track. Th ey must help to provide the fi lm with a sonic signature, an aural
world that enriches and brings to life the reality present on the screen.
In sound design, there is an interesting tug between reality and imagination.
You can hear this when you experience the work of the designers or supervising
sound editors who fueled bursts of creative work in this fi eld, as with Ben
Burtt on the Star Wars fi lms, Skip Lievsay on fi lms by the Coen brothers,
and Alan Splet on early fi lms of David Lynch. Th ey have devised imaginative
solutions to the creation of distinctive noises that remind us of what we are
used to hearing yet that can also depict fantastical settings using noises of the
everyday. As Ben Burtt said about Star Wars (1977), “We wanted real motor
sounds, rusty clanky things, to create the sense of a used world.” Whether a
fi lm is set on a far-off world or in a typical home, it is sound that can complete
the task of craft ing a world up on the screen. As the eff orts of the creative team
working on a fi lm come together, mysterious and imagined places and events
can feel as real to us as everyday life, or the most mundane daily experiences
can take on powerful resonance as we witness them on the screen.
As we have now reached the role of a professional whose tasks on a fi lm
stem from the complexity of contemporary movies with digital recording,
multi-tracked surround sound, and teams of assistants, let’s return to the
true reason for audience excitement upon the arrival of sound: a person
talking in a movie.The Spoken Word
At the time of the integration of recorded sound into motion pictures, the
addition of sync sound added a relatively new element for fi lmmakers to
consider: spoken dialogue. Until then, the only actual words communicated
to the audience were those written on the screen for the intertitles of silent
fi lms. Now, they could be heard.
By the 1920s, certain aspects of the role of the writer had been standardized
in fi lm industries, although roles for writing stories, scene breakdowns, and
intertitles were oft en separated, vaguely defi ned, and regularly uncredited.
However, some writers developed substantial careers writing for the silent
cinema, such as Anita Loos, Frances Marion, June Mathis, and C. Gardner
Sullivan. Signifi cant conventions of screen storytelling were developed by- Can you name three movies you have seen in
which sound contributed greatly to the impact of
the movie? Why was this the case? - What are the sorts of sound systems that are used
when you watch the different types of motion
pictures that you see? How does this affect your
experience?- Do you have any favorite places where you see
movies or shows? Is sound a factor with this?
Framing the Discussion
VIEWFINDER
“I thought I was doing
a job similar to that of
a production designer,
except that I was
decorating the walls of the
theater with sound, so I
called what I did sound
design.”
–Walter Murch–
Sound designer and editor,
has worked on either or both
departments for fi lms such as
Th e Godfather: Part II (1974),
Apocalypse Now (1979), Th e
English Patient (1996), and
Jarhead (2005)Copyright 2010 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).