Sound Design: The True Third Dimension.
I remember when I was a kid I visited my Dad’s village in India for the first time. It was a tiny rural farming community that at the time didn’t have television, had a single road, and entertainment was done the old fashioned way, which was to tell stories on the porch. That was in the early 80s, and now everyone in the village has a cell phone.
Back then I was a snooty American kid who didn’t want anything to do with his mother culture, so I drowned myself in my Walkman, listening to my favorite Skinny Puppy and Ministry tapes. One of the locals sat next to me and asked what I was doing with this thing on my ears, and I let him listen. I still remember to this day his reaction. His eyes opened as big as galaxies and he looked at me. He pointed in the middle of his forehead and said: “the sound is right here!”
It was a telling moment that always reminds me of the spatial magic that sound can create. Stereo sound is all-encompassing, and when engineered correctly in concert with a 2-D image, it can create an infinite level of depth and immersion. It is, for all intents and purposes, the true third dimension to filmmaking. In that regard, filmmakers have been making 3D movies for almost a century.
I’ve spent the last few months with dälek and the creative geniuses at HOBO Sound Studios in NYC building up that third dimension for Lilith, and its been an incredible and fulfilling experience. We’ve been adding dozens of layers of tiny sounds and massive beats, giving texture to already-textured images. I can never underestimate the leap that a film takes when it is properly sound designed and cleaned up.
When I say cleaned up I’m talking about one of the most labor intensive aspects of filmmaking, which is the removal of extraneous sounds from the dialogue tracks. It’s a detail which should never be overlooked, and no expense of time or resources spared.
Essentially we’ve worked so hard to build an edit of the film, but the edit is not continuous piece of footage - it is an assembly of disparate parts and moments that were all shot at different times, so if we listen closely to the ambient background noise, the sound from each clip will always be different. Air pressure, wind, birds, airplanes, even the cadence of the performers changes. So along with the eventual adjusting of levels (which we’ll get into on a later post), the sound has to be meticulously cleaned up to make it harmonious, to make it sound like it was all recorded at the same moment, to make us believe that the edit is a chronological progression in real time.
Believability is also built in infinite details of the sonic world. Try this little exercise - step away from reading this blog and close your eyes for ten seconds. Listen to the thousands of small sounds in your environment, from the hum of your computer, to birds outside, to cars in the far distance. There are tons of elements that make up our natural world, and the more we build into our sound design, the more our film will replicate our everyday experience. My Director of Sound on Lilith, Chris Stangroom, has together with his team at HOBO Audio built a meticulously detailed environment that give veracity to an otherwise absurd premise for a film, a girl trapped in hell.
Director of Sound Chris Stangroom working the big board and ProTools for the sound design of ‘Lilith.’
It’s been such a joy working with Chris as he builds the environment and the creature sounds of the various inhabitants of hell. I hear an arcane and bizarre sound coming out of the speakers and Chris demystifies it for me, showing me an alchemical mix of polar bears, lions, birds, and even his own voice twisted into something dark and tortured. Just another moment of movie magic.
I’ve tried to inculcate an artistic, interpretive approach to sound, and I can say I’ve honestly tried to do that with every department in the film. We’re making a movie about a girl in hell, so we needn’t be so literal in our interpretation of the surroundings. Yes they will have the depth and detail that makes it believable, but every sound should have a motivation, and sometimes even a metaphorical meaning. Any sound designer can make a door creak, but how that door creaks can tell a completely different and fascinating story, and it is this richness in detail which a creative mind can bring to the table. Walter Murch gave a ceiling fan the sounds of a helicopter in Apocalypse Now, and transformed the overall impact and meaning of the sequence, and the way we experience cinema. The marriage of interpretive sound with image, along with the tools of the picture edit, creates a confluence of experience and emotion that only the artifice of cinema can provide. Such is the power of focused, open, and creative post-production work. It’s as creative an endeavor as writing, directing, photographing or acting, and to call post-production folks terms like ‘engineers’ and ‘programmers’ is a cold disservice. They are artists, true artists, through and through.
I’ve been blessed with some of the most creative collaborators I’ve ever known, and it’s been two months of sonic exploration and discovery. I absolutely loved every minute of the process.
What magic lays in this machine? Besides the fact that it fucking moves BY ITSELF.
With sound design complete, all that remains on Lilith is the final audio mix and color correction. I’m not downplaying the importance of these last two steps, and nor am I downplaying the level of detailed work involved in those two endeavors, but in terms of adding or subtracting material from the film, Lilith is finished. It is the story which will appear on the screen, in image, performance, and sound. I burned two copies of the film on Friday morning and shipped them off to the Toronto International Film Festival. Premiering at Toronto would be a nice way to reward everyone, including me, you and everyone who has ever worked on or supported this film, for all their hard work and dedication. I’m confident that we’ve put our best foot forward for Toronto, and I hope whoever watches it will appreciate the love and meticulous attention to detail and craft that we’ve committed. Fingers and toes crossed until we hear the word, which won’t be for another few months.
But life goes on, and distribution, a trailer, and other goodies lay ahead!
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darkacademy said:
Sridhar- Excited to read that you are going for Toronto- I wish you the best of luck! I’ve been offered an all access pass if I’m able to get up there- it would be great to watch the fruits your hard work lighting up the big screen.
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