Comments on: The Role of Breaths in Film Sound

By: animated emoticons

animated emoticons — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 21:32:45 +0000

Dennis Hopper will always be remembered for his great movies. It’s very sad and a great loss. Not just for the movie industry but in general as he was a man of integrity. His most rememorable movie for me is Blue velvet.

Regards,
Jenn
angry smiley

By: robin

robin — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 23:10:16 +0000

I was going to say “2001″ but was beaten to it.

Instead I’ll just remark that some of the same concerns exist in vocal recordings for pop music. Listen to different genres and you will hear different techniques applied to the breathing, ranging from compressing it with the rest of the track to chopping it out completely. Tori Amos springs to mind for fans of heavy breathing.

By: Designing Sound » More than 50 Articles/Tutorials about Sound Design, Recording and more, Plus Wooshes Sound Desing

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 16:06:30 +0000

[...] The Role of Breaths in Film Sound [...]

By: Chris

Chris — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 23:00:50 +0000

Because I spend so much of my life cueing, recording and editing ADR I do everything I can to make it unapparent. I’m the first to admit that it sucks when it’s obvious, but in it’s defense there are plenty of moments where it works very well and I feel happy when a director tells me that they feel a performance – a whole scene or even a character has strengthened due to the work done in ADR.

Which is where breath comes in… I began to notice a while back that the reason ADR often seems so unnatural is because the lines are devoid of breath – in, around and between the utterances. And I’m not talking about “breaths” cues either, where characters puff, pant, rasp, wheeze, snort or sigh. I mean in the dialogue itself.

Human beings that don’t breathe are dead, I guess, and must feel dead to a film’s audience, so it strikes me that this is a core problem with ADR that can be helped by ensuring that the performance of ADR includes the necessary respiratory detail that gives it life.

Sam Neill has a reputation for being good at ADR and this was outstandingly the case when I worked with him on Under The Mountain. Sam is completely aware of the importance of breaths informing his performance and the detail he provided was fantastic and deeply satisfying to a dialogue editor and great for the film.

But there certainly are breaths that feel unnatural. For example actors who work a lot on the stage can sometimes over push their breaths. Like the old school pretense of doing “great acting” entrenched in english TV and cinema; the hammy technique of suck and hold the breath, pause and deliver the line that doubtless works well on stage but for me at least the “great” actor who does this on screen immediately appears to be acting, which is an anathema to the suspension of disbelief that we all try so hard to uphold.

“She with one breath attunes the spheres, And also my poor human heart.” – Henry David Thoreau

By: tim

tim — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 20:42:35 +0000

from @terminalgarden “I’m surprised that even a brief consideration of breathing in film sound didn’t pick up on 2001.”

true, and true of all space films – the recent film MOON had some highly emotive moments where breaths played a key role, similar to the respirator they also reinforce life support

By: jeff p

jeff p — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 19:03:59 +0000

there would be a tons of ultra low budgets on that list

ohh you mean good movies with no adr :p

By: Designing Sound » The breaths in Film Sound

Designing Sound » The breaths in Film Sound — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 17:21:30 +0000

[...] Prebble from music of sound has published an interesting article talking about the role of breaths in Film Sound. Having suffered a nasty respiratory virus for the [...]

By: Stephen

Stephen — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 12:47:41 +0000

Famous breathers in film?

Dennis Hopper in Blue Velvet comes to mind…

By: tim

tim — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 02:41:51 +0000

Wow, well done Phil!! Thats an amazing achievement on everyones part, especially the production sound team! There are plenty of complex, ensemble scenes in the film too… If tis ok I’ll be quizzing you more about Punch Drunk Love, once we start the Film Sound Study on it – I want to rewatch it this weekend but I thought it was a brilliant soundtrack, showing real restraint & character….

ps It would be an interesting list to see; of films with no ADR at all

By: jeff p

jeff p — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 02:37:51 +0000

I worked on a film with primate creatures ripping apart young kids on an island (why not ) and for the breathing part of the vocal design I took horses breathing and did some micro editing on the exhales (cutting a good chunk of the exhale out) so the creatures sounded like they inhaled more then exhaled. It made them sound very strange and horrific and when many were on the screen at once it became very chaotic. Really fun