Sound design and non-music

There is a lot to discuss. This coming Saturday I have another workshop. This time I am working on two new scenes between Claire and Sophie. Besides trimming and readjusting the dialogue, I have been continuing to find new ways to approach choosing and setting up shots.
This time I wrote a parallel visual narrative. This is from the viewpoint of what we might know from the outside of the scene, without reference to the dialogue. Then I drew up a storyboard of shots, again trying to think less, and draw with reference to the actors and how they might be set in the frame from an emotional point of view. That is to follow my instincts.

But I know I did say that I would talk about sound and my visit to Roland's new studio.
He has set himself up with a 5.1 surround-sound system. Very sexy in a sound geeky way.
The best part was that he introduced me to what might we have crudely termed sonic experiments. Perhaps non-music would be better? Liminal music? These sounds that sit at the threshold of sound becoming music.They suggest a music that never arrives.
These sounds are created by the interference between sine waves. That is two waves meet and reflect off each other creating a third sound. These can only be heard on a set of speakers. You hear three sounds, left, right and middle, but removing one sound removed the middle sound as well - it could not exist. It was created inside our heads.
A lot of these experiments were developed by the composer Alvin Lucier, but the music Roland played for me was created by a friend who for now is only known as Ashley. So we will shall see where the experiments take us. If we decide we want to try them I will meet up with Ashley and we will go from there.
The effect is disconcerting to say the least. I think these are the sonic equivalent of the Rothko images, those at the edge of perception. I have included them at a number of places throughout. I have almost already dismissed them from the Norway segment. They just don't seem to make sense there. I need to explore their use in the middle segment, but so far they have been most effective in the first segment. I have taken them to be a part of the calling theme, that is the sense that Claire is being affected by something she does not understand. This is part of the idea of looking into, into the opacity of the object.
As you watch you are not certain that you have actually heard the sounds, and then even more strangely you begin to hear the sounds in all sorts of places, even though they are not present. You brain begins to manufacture them on their own accord.
Of course the idea of this music is linked to the Rothko ideas, the liminal image, at the threshold, the edge of perception.
I need to develop their use more, and I integrate more of the other sounds that Roland passed my way. And then there is the workshop on Saturday, so more about that.

The workshop edit

The weekend was rather full, so I can't say I have gone far enough with the edit but perhaps I am just a little closer to I want.
My aesthetics is never to use the same shot twice, that each moment will have it's own shot, but when you are shooting a scene with dialogue? The need to return to the other party as they discourse? Does this become a pointless convention? Well I suppose first you avoid the ping-pong of dialogue, but sometimes...
Next, forget the geometry, and consider how you represent what is actually happening.
Part of the solution is apparent when you watch directors like Antonioni, who defies convention by cutting from one shot to another with out varying the angle, eg. a medium-shot straight on to the subject to a medium close-up of the subject.
I tried this in the workshop. Here we are shooting a scene outside the bar. Paul and Claire have been having a great evening. They come out of the bar and into the street. They are giddy, a little drunk, by mostly giddy fro each other's company.
























Does it work? I cannot say I have the objectivity to be certain as yet. I have an insurance shot to place between the two if this fails, but having tried using it I really dislike the whole idea.
And also I wonder if this is skill? How each shot is framed, the intensity of what is happening...perhaps I just need to dig deeper?
So what I was playing with during the workshop is to vary the angle just slightly, so that as we cut from subject a to subject b, and then return to subject a, the angle has varied slightly and/or the camera has moved in closer. This choice is very much down to serving the scene.
The viewer might not be conscious of the change but it changes the emphasis and creates a form of intensity, eg. the viewer is still forced to learn the new shot, they are kept off balance.











Here Paul begins talking to Claire. Then the waitress interrupts him and I cut a side-on shot.












We return...












Now closer, but also with Paul on the left. I did not considering what this means. As I said I tried not to think too much.
It just felt that we needed to feel off balance. And that he trapped himself.
Now what if I were to cut out the intervening shot, and cut from one to the next directly?












Here is the angle I go to, when the waitress enters.












And later, for this finally words, a slight variation. Looking at it might think of varying this a little more in the shooting, but the idea is there.
Meanwhile I am reading an essay on Robert Bresson, The Rhetoric of Robert Bresson, by P. Adams Sitney:

...he has further emphasised the isolated "take" , or camera set-up, as an independent molecule of narrative, rather than as a facet of an illusory crystal.

This approach might be referred to as linearity, as opposed to geometrical, which is the preference of most formalist filmmakers. Not Bresson.

...he has linearized the metonymic principles by discrete movement of the camera which change carefully set-up long shots to significant close-ups, and vice versa, in an effort to attain maximal economy of means.

So on Saturday I am off to visit Roland in his new sound studio. Very exciting.

Workshop update

Okay, workshop number one is complete.
It was over so quickly, partly because I did succeed in not spending so much time worried about psychology.
I spent very little time talking. I shot and shot, set up the camera quickly, just worried about where the camera was placed, in relation to other shots, and for the most part left the actors to do sort it out themselves. We trimmed the dialogue in parts, mostly to make it less explicit and long-winded, and only spent a little time discussing what it meant. In all I shot over 60 minutes of video.
I have this weekend to edit the scenes together, and I may find out that I have made a mess of it, so we shall see.
I am quite certain that the second scene will be more difficult to judge. This is because it is meant to take place in a bar and I will have very little in the video to suggest this. When I show it, my viewers will really have to use their imagination. I will have to layer it out with sound effects and loud music to suggest the location.
Now to that end I am finally meeting up with Roland in his studio the weekend after next. I am quite excited about this, as he has set up proper studio with a 7.1 sound system, and Dolby encoder. I am thinking of all the possibilities of the sound as part of the edit. But for now, we are just there to play and so more on that later.

Workshop preparation

So we are set for the workshop to take this Saturday. Scheduling issues mean we are focusing on the relationship between Claire and Paul.
The work with Claire's friend Sophie will have to wait.
The three scenes we will devise comprise of the latter part of a day out for Claire and Paul.
We have already see them travelling in the car, and then drinking at an outdoor pub.
But what this is really about is about the nature of their relationship, and in this too, where Claire is at this moment, so that we will know where she started from.
At the same it is also to show how the relationship does work when it does. I have already said that Claire cannot leave this relationship because it is bad.
Finally, it is about adding another layer or texture. Noise. Speed. Volume. Crammed. Crowded. Stuffed.

Now I think I keep saying this, but I would like to try a new way of working.
I am very comfortable speaking from the perspective of psychology. Do I believe in it? No, I just feel like I can play it.
I often write instinctively. When challenged as to the meaning of this or that I find myself rewriting to make sense of it psychologically, and so rationalise it. What comes out is rational, but bloodless too? It has lost something.
So now I wondered if what I need to do is develop this in another way, emotionally, instinctively.
I need to move out of my comfort zone.

How could I start?
Writing in the opacity, that is writing what we see, without including what the character is thinking.
In dialogue, pushing away from the psychology of what is said, and working on the surface. Don't look for what is behind it.
Of course get rid of the spoken word, or even just dialogue.
Leaving the psychology to the actors. Never justify, let them do that, if that's what they do.
And perhaps another experiment? What if I could rewrite this scene, without dialogue, include only what we see from the outside, the way that the light reflects off them, the way they are.
And from here to the way that it is shot? That this instinct must be indistinguishable from the form that records it. This is something I have always wanted, but I know I have not achieved.