In the early days of film making audio was provided at the picture house usually by a solo musician at the piano who would play mood music and the occasional audio effect. This was commonly a slapstick which made a cracking noise – something that had been used in theatres for years before. These days, of course, music in movies is so interwoven that the soundtrack is an integral part of the cinematic experience. Could you imagine Gladiator without its stirring score, Shaft without its grooving funk bass lines or Trainspotting without its pump-pump-pump dance music? Indeed, even when there is the absence of a score, notably in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 masterpiece The Birds, the effect is to leave audiences unsettled like something is amiss.
Nevertheless, music is only one part of the audio concept of a film. Dialogue needs to be captured whilst the actors are giving their best takes. Foleying – adding sounds and speech in post-production – needs to carried out. Special audio effects are also added to the mix later in the process. All of this needs to be brought together in one coherent way that assists the story-telling but does not get in the way of the images. Usually, directors will assign an audio designer to undertake this aspect of the finished movie for them. However, the role can be a tricky one, especially if the studio demands cuts or changes to the film which can make an audio design sound a little unbalanced if not carried out sympathetically.
Unlike television production, big budget movies really do sound like they have been designed. Clever image makers can make TV seem like it is the sort of thing a Hollywood studio has produced, but the small screen rarely comes up to scratch in terms of audio. Perhaps this is because – even with the best home entertainment system – playback of television rarely sounds anything like it does in a cinema. Small and independent cinemas are all well and good but the advantage of the big cinema complex chains like Cineworld, which has screens all over the country, is that the sound is simply superior.
The studios know that sound is one area where cinema still rules over other media like TV, the internet and so on. These days, a production’s sound designer is a principal member of the staff working on a movie. An audio designer will usually expect to have an equal creative authority with that of a cinematographer or an editor, all of whom will be working under the director. The introduction of Dolby Stereo and later digital technologies allow for high fidelity playback in picture houses which has, in turn, led to the rise of the audio designer.
Audio concepts go far beyond the simple stereo set ups that we are used to at home. Sound designers make use of left and right sound effects, of course. This is usually referred to as panning. They are also able to shift audio back and forth as well, making for much more creative combinations of sound. The ability of cinemas to accurately playback low frequency rumbles, because of their use of large sub-woofer speakers, means that the big screen remains the best place to hear a movie soundtrack. Now that many films are entirely distributed in digital formats in the UK, the effects are that the music and dialogue that are a part of them sound even better as a result.
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