Ok, i admit it, I am jealous becauase I want one & they arent available/don’t work in New Zealand (yet) but this is pretty cool in a minimalist-sine-wave-music kind of way… fast forward five years & we’ll be running ableton LIVE on our phones…
Application & source code availabe here as well as applications for sending OSC to Max/MSP… hmmmm
If you have ever had to record & edit vehicle sound effects you will appreciate this ad for using fossil fuels in the best way possible (ie very fast cars) – tasty!!!
If you are a fan of the music of Sigur Ros then you probably already know about this, but I only just picked up a copy at Tower Records and WOW!!!!! Quoting from their own press release: “In 2006, having toured the world over, Sigur Rós returned home to play a series of free, unannounced concerts in Iceland. ‘Heima’ is a unique record of that tour filmed in 16 locations across the island, taking in the biggest and smallest shows of the band’s career. ‘Heima’ is a 97 minute documentary feature film featuring songs from all four Sigur Rós albums alongside previously unreleased material and, on disc two of the DVD release, a brand new song, also titled ‘Heima’.
Heres the trailer, but do your senses a service and go here to watch the high resolution version, the 1080p especially looks beautiful!
Through a very kind introduction and the generosity of many people, last week I was able to visit the legendary Toho Studios in Tokyo. As a big fan of many Japanese films it was truly an honour to visit a company such as Toho with such a rich history. More info at Toho Kingdom
Seven Samurai was made at Toho Studios in 1954
and Godzilla!
Yours truly, alongside Godzilla, at the entrance to Toho Studios
(and yes, its winter in Japan at the moment!)
Ditto, beside the Seven Samurai mural
A view into one of the 15 massive sound stages
The legendary Toho dubbing stage, with large scale Neve DFC desk and multiple ProTools systems. The acoustics in this room were beautiful – apparently the room was originally used to record the score (live to picture) for Godzilla!
This stream, which passes through the Toho Studios lot, was featured in Seven Samurai and is apparently very beautiful during sakura (cherry blossom)
Arigatou gozimasu!
Incase it wasnt obvious by my lack of posting, I am back in Japan on a holiday of sorts…. I am working remotely on a New Zealand project where I have to create a sound/music track for a Museum Installation which will play looped for the next ten years. Seriously: TEN YEARS! The track also has to be layered such that both the general background & specific elements can be mixed & triggered in real time by external interactive control… daunting? Yes, at first… but as with anything complex I had to just start by taking one small step, followed by another & slowly some sense is forming. At this stage I am just aiming to generate a demo stereo mix, which I can then break down into layers & elements…. & so far so good… much thanks to the Mac (& digital video) genius of Allan Honey I am able to access my entire sound library remotely while I travel and although I dont yet have a SoundMiner server setup, for now I know my library well enough to find what I need using AudioFinder
Anyway soon I will post a few sonic memorys from my time in Japan, including a visit to the legendary Toho Studios, plus some new recordings from my handy Zoom H2.
2008 is already a busy year. In February I head back to New Zealand to first attend
Soundsplash a brilliant reggae festival set on one New Zealand’s finest beaches (Raglan) and then back to work properly on two films.
The first film is a dialogue driven drama called SHOW OF HANDS, written & directed by Anthony McCarten and scored by Don McGlashan. The second film is called LAUNDRY WARRIOR and is quoted as drawing on “two great milieux, the Samurai movie and the Western”, starring Geoffrey Rush, Kate Bosworth and Korean star Jang Dong-gun, the film is written & directed by Sngmoo Lee and produced by Barrie Osbourne and Tim White.
And then it will be Christmas again! Well, almost…
Oscars? The finalists are announced any day now but today its just my subjective opinion as I finally got to experience the Coen Brothers new film: “No Country For Old Men” and I only have one word to describe it: genius. Thanks to filmsounddaily.com you can read an interview with Sound Designer/Re-recording Mixer Craig Berkey here, but this should all be secondary to seeing & hearing the film. Heres the first (& best) trailer:
And the more cliched ‘movie trailer’ trailer (ie too much obvious exposition/voice over)
Why I consider the film & its soundtrack genius mainly comes down to restraint and while the following quote was referencing physical design, I believe it also relates to the design of the elements that what make a film soundtrack truly great: “In anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away” – Antoine de Saint-Exupery. This approach is almost the antithesis of the usual Hollywood BLOCKBUSTER approach, where generally speaking, “more is more” and bigger is better. It is also a good rule of thumb when layering elements to create complex sound effects!
But the film’s soundtrack still contains all the expected elements of any good soundtrack ie dialogue, ambiences, sound effects & foley. However why it is able to function so clearly & effectively is very significantly due to the lack of score. Carter Burwell, composer & long time collaborator with the Coen Brothers contributed less than sixteen minutes of score to the film (& that includes five minutes of credits) in a film that is two and a half hours long!
Quoting from a New York Times article about the film Exploiting Sound, Exploring Silence Carter Burwell: “If you ask film composers — and I have — whether they feel there’s too much or too little music in the average film, they will all say too much,” he said. “I’m very happy this time to be on the other side of that balance.”
The article also goes on to discuss some of the subtle techniques employed to use music without drawing overt attention to it: “The nocturnal driving scenes are occasions for the composer Mr. Burwell’s near-subliminal drone to creep into the sound mix. “The idea was to use the music to deepen the tension in some of these transitional scenes, when there’s not much going on,” he said. “The sounds are snuck in underneath the wind or the sound of a car. When the wind or car goes away, the sound is left behind, but you never hear it appear.”
One less obvious aspect of film making to the outsider is that while creative accidents occur in the making of a film & are sometimes used, the actual finished product is debated & considered very carefully. If a scene plays quietly it is for a reason & will have been discussed many times by the director, mixers & sound editors during the creation & realisation of the soundtrack. Accordingly one last quote from that NY Times article is indicative of the justification of the use of minimal sound in one specific instance: “There is at least one sequence in No Country for Old Men that could be termed Hitchcockian in its virtuosic deployment of sound. Holed up in a hotel room, Mr. Brolin’s character awaits the arrival of his pursuer, Chigurh. He hears a distant noise (meant to be the scrape of a chair, Mr. Berkey said). He calls the lobby. The rings are audible through the handset and, faintly, from downstairs. No one answers. Footsteps pad down the hall. The beeps of Chigurh’s tracking device increase in frequency. Then there is a series of soft squeaks — only when the sliver of light under the door vanishes is it clear that a light bulb has been carefully unscrewed.
“That was an experiment in what we called the edge of perception,” Mr. Lievsay said. “Ethan especially kept asking us to turn it lower and lower.”
Ethan Coen said, “Josh’s character is straining to hear, and you want to be in his point of view, likewise straining to hear.” The effect can be lost, he conceded, “if it’s a louder crowd and the room is lousy.”
Joel Coen interjected, “If it’s a loud crowd at that point, the film isn’t working anyway.”
And that last comment is incredibly inciteful – many times in mixes balance & level decisions can veer towards the side of caution, when the reality is often such that if the audience isn’t fully engaged with the film & really listening then using less dynamic range really won’t help bring them back.
Got a favourite sound in a Coen Brothers film? Theres plenty I could name, many from Barton Funk especially the reception bell gag at the hotel… and the drooping wallpaper… and the fire sounds…. and..
God bless dialogue editors! They truly are the masters of an invisible art; when their work is very very good it is un-noticeable. I have worked with many different dialogue editors over the years and most of them have been good, but only a few have been very good…
The difference? In my opinion a good dialogue editor makes the dialogue work ie technically cuts, splits & fills production audio, splits production FX, cues ADR & breaths, attends ADR recording & fits ADR & wildlines and attends the dialogue predub…
But a very good dialogue editor does all of the above plus has a crucial/critical understanding of story. It might be an extra line they suggest in a scene that helps exposition or any number of subtle but critical additions but the very good contribute more than just a technically well presented dialogue session to the predub. It takes maturity & experience but as with sound effects it also takes an innate sense of what is required, of what could help make the story clearer…
Sadly when the dialogue in a film is not good it can ruin the movie, but the reasons for bad dialogue can be many & varied: bad production audio, minimal ADR budget, bad ADR (ie actors who cannot recreate a realistic performance in an ADR studio), lack of experience with the sound recordist/dialogue editor/editor/director….
Anyway apart from gaining experience or asking advice (always wise & often only costs a bottle of wine etc) I also just read on gearslutz post forum of a new book on the art of dialogue editing…. check it out:
First post of the year and it is provided by David Lynch succinctly summing up the state of the emperors new clothes…
