Preferred invisibility

Canvasing people's thoughts on the prominence of sound in film or the heirarchy of sound vs vision debate, I thought it was interesting to note Kim C's "Film Music Goes Live" post on how presenting the music to a film in a 'live' situation, i.e. with orchestra in front of the screen, can really help to enlarge the experience of the music for the viewer and thus enhance the world of the film and its communication to the audience. I have experienced this myself for example, with live Wurlitzer organ in front of the screen and, and in a more extreme example where actual dominance of sound over the visual medium has occured. I.e.- In various local 'live' band settings over the years, a few images are screened at the back of the stage (usually partially obscured by the drum-kit) that play along with the music and are adding to the ambience of the music not the other way around as has been discussed by many class bloggers. Perhaps this effect was more to do with the lack of inspiring images or in my opinion, a kind of 'afterthought' approach in mapping the images to the music. Or simply these live gigs were more of the 'music and dancing kind'... not to say that this can't be re-engineered in a different way so all the media and people within it are working more seamlessly etc. but that's another blog!

What I wanted to highlight in Kim C's blog were her final words "...perhaps help[ing the music]to become more significant and less invisible". This issue of invisibility I think deserves more investigation from the point of view that some award winning sound designers and composers (names long since lost in the memory banks sorry) are actually basing their reputations on their creations being "invisible". Whereby, if the audience 'notices' or becomes aware of the sound then you're not doing your sound job properly. The craft or the spell of the 'heard but not seen' aesthetic is broken.

I thought this argument essentially about the craft of the sound maker and what they are often trying to acheive was beautifully illustrated in Nabeel's example of "American Graffitti" (1973), where we saw the sound designer being interviewed about applying different recording methods to mimic several acoustic sound environments. This was born out of a requirement to fufill the director's wish of having "wall-to-wall" sound throughout the movie as an important device in creating the 'teenage world' inside the movie. The sound designer then tried to meet this directive in interesting ways.

For example, the radio playing a song in the car was different acoustically to when the character fell out of the car and the song on the radio continued, but sounded acoustically different. Another example is when we hear music playing as the "love couple" dances. The music environment is slowly changed acoustically from sounding distant as if in a gymnasium, which enhances the audience's sense of 'spectacle', to one where the music reflects the characters 'inner world' and their intensity for each other, hence a subtle transformation to a more initimate sound acoustically.

The point is I never really noticed before... and that's great because the American Graffitti case makes me think of how many composers and sound designers are crafting their work to sit just under the radar of perception. I think this perspective can go a long way when thinking about which mediem needs to be noticed more or which medium is dominating. Some artisans are actually doing their best to remain in the background.

Peace
fiFA