Sound Workshop - notes and ideas

Class notes:

• Sound montage - key concept I want to focus on. Associative, poetic grammar, conveys another set of meaning on top of the film.

• Robert Breton - what's for the eye? What's for the ear? One shouldn't duplicate the other

• Field recording

• acousmatic sound - abstraction. what can you make sounds with?

• Pierre Schffer - don't want people to identify mundane origins of sounds

• Luc Ferrari - anecdotal music

• juxtaposing locations

• poly-valant editing - editing for all other reasons for editing. Colour, light, shadow, visual play, highlighting jump cuts, extreme juxtaposition.

• Polyvalant editing now quite comon. Movement in the shot, the rhythm of shot sequence and internal rhythm. They are working in tangent with each other.

• Memory informed eg. rope = manmade and rigid. bamboo = natural and strong

• anthropomorphism in nature

• slow down how we listen

Sound

• location

• timbre

• texture

• making discriminatory decisions

• focus on the sound - foreground, background etc.

• capturing the sound

• equipment

What kind of things would you be looking for?

• conceptual

• distortion

• signal: noise

• two-channel

• hand feedback

• the material quality of the recorder

Book - 'Listening to Places' - find later for research

Listening exercises - wake up our ears

Origin: Earth, Water, Wind, Human, Animal, Tech

Temporal quality: continuous, repetitive, intervals or singular

Problem solve with ears first.

Take into consideration the soundscapes of the location.

where you record voice changes the meaning because of resonance. Mood and tone is affected. Like Ursula Biemann's 'Deep Weather'.

Location is the perfume that enhances the sound.

Reamping/Reworlding - recording things in different spaces. It could be interesting to layer voices.

Sound as memory - psychological quality. Anaesis - the memory of when you first heard the sound - like a photograph.

What does this mean to other people? What are the connotations and symbolism of the sound?

Significance of heartbeats, breathing etc. - sensitive to how we use sound. Responsible for the context. In horror films - it is a useful tool.

Ears can discriminate sound... mine can't lol, thought he was being pretty ableist when we were having this discussion. Implying that I'm 'broken' because I can't filter out sounds and that 'People would go mad if they couldn't do this'. Live a day in my life buddy!

Distance impacts how sound sounds. Close up vs far away. Can you see the forest if you only see the tree?

Clarity, rhythmic - closer up

atmosphere (broader) - 'room tone'

Sound description into the script for sound design - writing practices

Sound treatment v. important.

• voice - descriptive

• music

• natural

• biological

How can I convey my intentions with the least effort and maximum effect?

• conscious decision

• v. powerful - need to use sound at its full potential.