FIVE FILMS: THE SOUNDS’ THE THING
The Film Independent Directors Close-Up begins this week and with impressive panels and panelists planned. Each Wednesday evening our Director of Film Education, Maria Raquel Bozzi and her team have come up with a theme on which to focus to help independent directors reach the top of their craft. This week the focus will be sound and how essential it is to the emotional life of a film. We asked our friends at HitFix to give us five films that utilize sound to support the emotional life of the story. Check it out.
Rise of the Planet of the Apes
By now everyone knows of the remarkable motion-capture performance Andy Serkis delivered in order for director Rupert Wyatt to create the extraordinary ape Caesar in “Rise of the Planet of the Apes.” But if you thought Serkis delivered Caesar’s voice you’d be mistaken. Instead sound designers Chuck Michael and John Larsen recorded hundreds of ape sounds at a chimp sanctuary in Louisiana and mixed them with some of the audio Serkis provided on set. The duo also faced the challenge of having to age Caesar’s voice from that of an infant to a full-grown ape. Only the combination of those sounds, Serkis’ performance and WETA’s CG animation could allow the character to have the emotional resonance he achieved with audiences.
Tree of Life
Terrence Malick is a master of cinematic naturalism in his films and once again, he envelops an audience into another world with his latest Oscar nominated film. This time around it wasn’t the on set ambient sound that was the most challenging for sound designers Craig Berkey and Erik Aadahl, but the long sequence near the beginning of the picture that presents an augmented history of the universe. Shots would sequence from space to underwater to a dinosaur in a quiet streambed. Malick also dictated other sounds such as a waterfall that you wouldn’t see, but only hear. Combined with Alexandre Desplat’s operatic score you have a film that becomes a feast just as much for your ears as your eyes.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDum3gehFg0
Take Shelter
Most low budget indies don’t attempt to go above and beyond when it comes to sound design, but in order for Jeff Nichols’ drama it was reverberate with an audience it was mandatory. The impending doom that Curtis (Michael Shannon) senses is dictated mostly by the sounds and senses he’s becoming aware of. In one nightmare sequence, Curtis hears and feels the first wave of a massive lighting storm and tornado heading his way in the distance as a dog’s increasingly distressed barking adds to the tension. The dog break free and attacks and the audience hears the crack of Curtis’ arm breaking as the storm gets louder and louder. The entire film becomes an impressive lesson on what you can achieve economically investing in a good sound designer and editor.
The Artist
When is a silent film not so silent at all? When it’s Michel Hazanavicius’s “The Artist” and our hero, Jean Dujardin’s seemingly antiquated movie star, falls into a nightmare punctuated by a cacophony of diegetic audio in which only his own voice is missing. The jarring introduction of sound into the earlier pantomime — set to Ludovic Bource’s indispensable score — reminds viewers of the stakes for Dujardin’s George, but also of the stakes for the industry in any period of technological transformation. Is the scene a cheat? Yes. But it’s a glorious cheat.
(*editorial note: sadly no clip to depict this, but enjoy the tap dance!)
Drive
The main character in Nicolas Winding Refn’s “Drive” is a man of few words, but what the screenplay elides from dialogue, the sound design reinjects in abundance. The film’s cars are having conversations of almost Sorkin-esque verbosity, composed of shrieking tires, shifting gears and purring engines. The silence of early scenes gives way to an ever-building symphony of sounds that include mechanical violence between cars and also human-on-human violence, in which what we see is always less horrifying than what we hear. Spurring, or “driving” if you prefer, the narrative forward is Cliff Martinez’s score, which often mimics a heartbeat or a ticking clock.
– Brought to us by HitFix’s Greg Ellwood @hitfixgregory and Daniel Fienberg @hitfixdaniel
February 6th, 2012 • 1 Comment
One Response to “FIVE FILMS: THE SOUNDS’ THE THING”
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I wish I had seen the rest of these movies. I have only seen the Artist, but really want to see the rest of these. I love films and indie films in particular. I was to Sundance 2 years ago and hope to attend next year. I found it difficult to get tickets to the films I wanted to see. I wanted to see soo many. I didn’t notice that some of them were in Salt Lake for instance. I would like to know the best way to get tickets ahead of time. I live in nyc and to fly out there and not have access to films is a drag.
Regards,
Mary