MTF Week 6 (August 29th, 2007) "Film Sound Production"

Film production to my initial understanding was simply a mindless task of placing a camera in front of a scene, and then overlaying it with emotive music to compliment the footage. My understanding of all this changed when this week's MTF guest speaker name arrived and gave the class a run down of the film industry.

It came of no surprise to me when Close described the size and scale of the film corps of Los Angeles, claiming it to be "the film capital of the world." However what was a surprise to me was the effort and detail that is exerted towards synchronising up the film frames with the sound and music. For this task, a person known as the "Foley Artist" is employed to add character and texture to the film by creating sounds that in real life, may not really ever be heard, but for the purpose for the film, it's necessary for impact.

Another fascinating area of the layering of sound, or sounds to create an event. Close gave us an example of how a gun shot sound may be layered to give an impacting sound, starting with the trigger squeeze, soon followed by a rush of air as the bullet exits the barrel, the shot sound, then the sound of the bullet impacting a surface such as wood, which also has a myriad of sounds to accompany it. Again the amount of detail here is immense, and one wonders the patience required of composing these sounds over an entire movie set, of say 2 hours where sound in a really important facet.

After Close’s talk on film, I’m glad many of my questions about sound in film have been answered, and I look forward to hearing what he has to say next week at the film corporation.