Pervert’s guide to Cinema is a documentary by Slovenian philosopher and psychologist Slavoj Žižek where he analyses films through psychoanalysis concepts, to argument how Cinema is a medium where humans express their deepest and darkest desires. Žižek in this documentary also includes sound and music to his analysis and how it evidences his point. When watching this documentary I became aware of psychoanalytical traits in the narrative of the short film I am scoring and I decided to approach the sound design for it with this concepts in mind.

The most important concept and idea I learned from the documentary was between the 14:10 min and 31:00, where he discusses the role of the voice in films and connecting it to Freudian concepts. Žižek references films like The Exorcist, Mullholland Drive, Alien and Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator. In a short summary Žižek argument that the voice is not an organic component of the body and that the voice works as an autonomous entity that live inside of us, humans have been constantly trouble by the internal conflict between the self and this autonomous entity and this concept is currently expressed in films. For example in The Exorcist, the voice of the demonic being possessing the girl changes from her normal voice and by so separating the two individuals. Žižek finishes his point explaining that the only way to get rid of the autonomous entity is to become it, referencing the psychoanalytic concept of catharsis.

Now connecting what I learned to my own project, in the movie I’m using the main character is always in conflict with the figure of the city and the isolation it provokes. There is a distinctive separation between the character and the city, this can be seen by a reoccurring motif of a building every time the character is in distress. At the end of the film the character faces the building and it that way becoming it, achieving catharsis. Even though the scene I’m working on is not the ending scene it is important to acknowledge this concept, specially because the whole film including my scene has no dialogue but only narration, that is in a way the voice that Žižek was referring to. The way I’m going present this sonically is to alienate the narrative voice to make it sound fake or unreal, but the effects I will use will be very subtle, so the audience only perceive it in the subconscious and not be distracted it. Aesthetically I’m gonna achieve this with some slight pitch modulation and phasing manipulation.

Last Saturday I had an intensive foley session in the studio, where we manage to record the essential foley material under three hours. We where two sound engineers in the control desk and one foley artist in the foley room. It was my first time in the studio as well as for the foley artist so our approach was very intuitive instead of methodical. The recording went through all of the film, recording steps, clothes, breathing and some special effects like the movement of cutlery and plates. We managed to be very efficient in our work, I think this was due our great communication throughout the session, we regularly spoke on the talkback and everyone shared ideas equally.

For the session we used a stereo pair of Neumann KM 184, positioned in the lateral sides of the foley room, and a Neumann U87 in the centre. It was crucial to use condenser microphone to get a very clean signal, specially for the high end of the sounds. The film is going to be mixed down to stereo because it is intended for streaming platforms, so low end was not really needed.

In the picture above you can see the right position KM 184, the centre U87 and the foley artist dealing with some props in the middle (guy with grey shirt). In several occasions we made use of the foley pits that the studio has to record footsteps and other sounds, for example in the picture we can see a box over the foley pit that created a specific sound when moved around.

For recording the steps taken on an electric staircase, we used a small steel lather with metal steps and some old prop shoes. This gave us a very realistic result that was what we where searching for. Also in the picture above you can see the left KM 184 that could not be seen in the first picture. I don’t know yet if I’m going to mix some of the foley stereo but it is nice to just have the recordings for just in case, those recordings could even used to create special effects in scenes where the main character is walking through specific environments.

Finally we recorded everything into a single session. In the picture above you can see that we projected our film in the tv of the studio, this made the recording process much more comfortable since I had only worked on a laptop before.

The next step in the production is to correctly organise all the sounds recorded in the sessions in clearly named tracks, so it’s easier to work with. Then I will have to edit each audio clip to be correctly synced with the film, this might take a while because we recorded a lot of sounds and after that the diegetic sound section of the film will be completed.

To get ready for my booking in the foley room and sound studio, I decided to rewatch the film with the reference sound recorded in the camera (which was used in the filming). When watching it I notice with more attention the subtle details of the foley sounds (steps, the rumble of clothes, etc.) and then plotted them in a timeline corresponding the sequence of each sound. I did this with the purpose of having a check list of all the sound I needed when recording in the studio, to be more prepared for recording. I also added some tiny notes to not forget while recording, for example the material of the clothes in a specific scene or if it was raining in a scene (the footstep would sound a bit wet).

I then showed the check list to the director of the film and he approved it, he also suggested me to focus in specific sounds in different scenes to contribute to the aesthetic of the film. I noted down his suggestions and was ready to record.

Recently I saw David Lynch’s Blue Velvet in the BFI, it was very interesting to see such a surreal film in such a calm environment as a cinema theatre. Hearing the reactions from the crowd helped convey the different emotions and ideas that the screen projected. It amplified the weird nature of Blue Velvet and it was satisfying to encounter the surreal with the company of a full theatre. I am a great fan of the sound design in David Lynch films, the great use of drones draws your attention in, creating a float like sensation, fluttering between consciousness states.

Sound is smartly used to set spaces and boundaries between scenes, associating each space with a motif and feeling. With the use of sound Lynch gives characters to spaces, helping with the narrative of the film with deep symbolism. Those such techniques peer discretely in the human psyche, manipulating the subconscious, engraving the film’s message and themes in the mind of the audience. A great example of this is a scene in the later half of the movie where Jeffrey the protagonist enters to Dorothy’s apartment and discovers the source of the missing ear. In the scene the song ‘Love Letters’ plays in the back, creating a weird juxtaposition between the happy music and the horrific images. Then Jeffrey quickly escapes the room towards the hall and the sound changes drastically, adapting to the scenario and space of the hall. The great contrast between the ambiences of both rooms draws the audience into different worlds, it gives the illusion that each different schenography is independent from the rest.

For doing the sound design of my project I will create a similar effect such as the ones in Blue Velvet, using slight changes of sound to determine spaces in different scenes. My approach is to make such changes as imperceptable as possible, such as the sound hits purely in the subconscious. I will use this techniques to convey the theme of the battle between the real and the illusion.

Perspective or point of view is one of the most important elements in the narration of a film. It works as a foundation where the branches of the story can grow. The arguments and themes of a narrative are always tilted to the subject with the point of view. A Feminist Approach To Sound in We Need To Talk About Kevin – Is an article posted in Screen Queens that discusses how the film was created through a feminist voice and point of view, and how this is evidenced by the sound design of the film.

The article argues that the sound design of the film breaks with the patriarchal linearity of the narrative, making it have a female perspective (The author references Helen Cixous’s, L’ecriture Fémenine). The sound design does this by creating juxtaposed connotations to symbols, for example she uses the sound of a water sprinkler, that normally symbolizes the environment of an ideal suburban house, and changes its meaning to become a motif of the tragedy that is about to come and so destroying the heteropatriartical dream. Also the article explains how the sound of the film is usually contrasting with the image, it is mostly non-diegetic and it mirrors the emotions the main character is experiencing.

Sound design can be used as a great technique in narrative and to characterize a point of view. We Have To Talk About Kevin is a great example of how sound can represent an ideology and character.

I’m currently working in the sound and score for a short film created by a friend of mine. I will use a scene from this film for my Sound for Screen assessment. The theme of the film is the relationship of the individual with the city, and how alienating can society be in the city life. In the scene I have chosen, the main character is traveling from his work to his house, traveling across the London underground. In the scene the audience looses the sense of time and reality because of a non linear narrative, creating the sense of loosing perception of reality.

My approach for the sound design of the film will be to contrast natural diegetic sound with experimental coded synthesis, to mirror the conflict between the main character and the city, creating a barrier of what is real and what’s not. Also the score of the film will be generative music, to convey the non-chronological order of the scene, the audience will not be able to get attached to a melodic motif in the music because it will be ever changing. I will use mainly Supercollider to create the generative music and the sound design.

Michel Chion is a french experimental music composer, recognized for working along Pierre Schaeffer in the development of Musique Concrete, coming up with theories of the relationship between sound and film. He wrote one of the most important books in film audio theory called Audio-Vision (1994), in this text Chion presents concepts such as Acousmétre and Added value, techniques that have remained relevant throughout contemporary film. As mentioned before, Chion was deeply influenced by Musique Concrete and his works follow the methodology of french avant-garde music. It’s really interesting to see how early tape manipulation and experimentation formed the building blocks of the audio-visual practice.

I found this lecture from Michel Chion, published by Liquid Architecture (2017), where he explains in depth his works and experiences. I found this video very informative and interesting.

https://liquidarchitecture.org.au/events/michel-chion