Intimate Sound

This week’s reading about  “‘Perspective’ in Speech, music, sound” explains the importance of creating sonic “layers” to enrich our listening experience. By choosing between lo-fi or hi-fi sounds and adjusting their amplification, the artiste is able to mix multiple sounds together and direct their order of importance: figure, ground or field.

I remember, my acting teacher had said that our sense of smell is the most powerful tool for actors to drop into character. From the audience’s perspective though, we hardly engage our nasal glands. In a conventional theatre/cinema setting, I think the viewer’s sense of hearing becomes the most powerful tool to empathise with characters in the story, especially having watched The Illustrated Auschwitz (Jackie Farkas,1992) during our Cinema Screening (Contextual Strand).

The Illustrated Auschwitz utilises an audio recount of a survivor from the infamous concentration camp, accompanied by visuals of objects and snippets from Wizard of Oz. Even though we never see the protagonist’s facial expression and body language, her speaking voice is enough to paint a colourful picture of her experiences, successfully evoking sympathy from the audience.

There is also an intimacy and connection viewers have with the character. Jackie Farkas and Liam Egan achieve this by amplifying her soft and hoarse speaking voice to close the social distance between speaker and listener. We are drawn to feel as though we are in an enclosed space where she is physically within our grasp, vulnerable and generously sharing her story.

This technique is effective in drawing listeners in. I hope to incorporate this in PB3. Similar to The Illustrated Auschwitz, the project is a recount of someone’s experience.

Synesthesia

Rachel shared a short documentary with us titled, “The Beat I Was Born Without” by JC Leger.

It is interesting to learn how deaf people perceive sounds through feeling vibrations and understanding them through other senses. Sencity the “deaf rave” introduced in the documentary, allows participants to smell, see and feel sounds using aromatherapy, digital panels and vibrating dance floors. In this way, participants are constantly engaging all senses and associating scents, colours, movements and vibrations with each other. It is as though they are practising Synesthesia.

Synesthesia literally means joined perception“. It is an umbrella term that includes a myriad of neurological conditions which allow a multi-sensory experience. For example, one with Chromesthesia can see sounds while one with Grapheme-Colour Synethesia literally see specific colours associated with each number and alphabet, etc. Statistically, people with such abilities tend to have average and above average intelligence.

This makes it amusing how some hearing people may think the deaf stupid or disabled when in fact, the latter group would comparably engage more parts of the brain to understand sounds. It also makes me feel guilty because I used to see the deaf as “handicapped”. Their inability to hear has given them the ability to associate sounds with other senses. Even though a deaf person may not be clinically diagnosed with Synesthesia, it is no doubt that they perceive and associate with sounds much differently from an average hearing person.

I am thankful to Rachel for inspiring me to explore how films can visually (no 4D theatres, please) ignite and engage the audience’s bodily senses. Researchers and scientists have also identified other senses excluding our primary five! What a vast world of possibilities we live in!

Wachulookinat?

Standing in Melbourne Central, we are completely surrounded by media. Specifically, advertisements. Logos, LCD screens, banners, boards, stickers on the ground and mannequins – brands were promoted everywhere.

Brand Logo

LCD Screen Advertisement

Banner Advertisement

Poster Advertisement

Manequins Showcase

 

Surprisingly, there were not many forms of media that are informative. The only ones identified were signboards for directions and the metro schedule. Even the store directory is not easy to find.

Informative Signage

Metro Schedule

 

Then there is the more interactive and helpful media like QR codes and vending machines (this one sells power-banks and phone accessories).

QR Code Advertisement

Vending Machine for Power-Banks and Phone Accessories

 

Could media take on a more abstract form? Such as uniforms, lighting, upbeat background music and bright attractive colours.

Attractive Colour

 

Some patterns have also become synonymous with specific brands, like Sephora for example.

Iconic Patterns

 

Through this exercise to raise awareness, I realise that media has become such a grand, immersive environment we live in. I observe that advertisement/marketing makes up the largest fraction of media, be it in physical or digital form.

It seems that humans are generally more comfortable with less interactive media. In this crowded location, I only chanced upon one occasion when a sales person was physically communicating with a potential customer. Maybe humans have evolved to be less social now? Is there a point in arguing that we should “get out there” and interact physically?

“Just be Real, Man.”

Rachel asked, “Is there an authentic self through mediated comm? e.g. Facebook?”

Media is so integrated into our daily lives, so much that, it’s not something which “hides” our true selves. Instead, social networks such as Facebook has simply evolved to become a facet that displays another side of us.

Imagine being in a venetian mask ball: your partner’s face is hidden but you understand the kind of person he/she is through the choice of colours and patterns on the decorated mask. The mask also informs you of one’s identity; the identity that he/she wants to be recognised by.

Now imagine interacting with everyone in your life, individually. You’d realise that how you react from one to another varies. This is because you want to be identified differently by different people. You have always had an assortment of masks at your disposal, even if they are only slightly different (word overkill) to each other. How you present yourself depends on who you’re communicating with – family or friend, elder or younger. In this way, you have multiple “identities” and facets of a whole person. So, there is no “true self” or “authentic self”. There is only you, who chooses how to react to whom or what.

Communicating via media simply allows one to take charge of shaping your own public image. It is merely one of the many aspects of you.

I think it is more important that we do not obsess over people’s perception of us. How we communicate, physically or digitally, is not the issue.

Editing – Why So Negative?

Have you ever flipped through a comic book? (of course you have. marvel makes sure you see a few pages on-screen before the movie begins)

Pages on a comic book are filled with panels of graphics and texts. (i’m not gonna bore you about what’s within the panels) Have you ever thought about the importance of what’s between the panels? (yup, the clean white spaces between each panel; yup, there’s nothing there)

This negative, empty space between panels is called the “gutter”. Our minds land in the gutter (geddit?) to understand the process of events that connect the separate scenes from two consecutive panels. In “Blood in the Gutter”, Scott Mccloud illustrates that “this phenomenon of observing the parts but perceiving the whole has a name. It’s called closure.”

As a reader, it is more fun to be allowed space for my own imagination and commit closure. The artist is also challenged as one decides when to allow readers to do their own “work”. Orchestrating the harmony between negative, empty spaces and the positive, illustrated panels, is similar to the art of editing films. The editor is in charge of deconstructing and reconstructing the scenes, directing when/how to cut and place a “gutter” or to allow the scene to continue.

(i believe this technique, a balancing act between positive and negative spaces, is paramount across all art forms, including architecture, photography and performing arts – especially apparent in Kabuki. this is definitely something I want to delve more deeply into but for now, let’s return to this post.)

During today’s lectorial, Jeremy Bowtell shared some editing advice by Walter Murch (“In the Blink of an Eye”):
1. EMOTION – Does the cut reflect what the editor believes the audience should be feeling at the moment?
2. STORY – Does the cut advance the story?
3. RHYTHM – Does the cut occur at a moment that is rhythmically interesting and “right”?
– Eye-Trace
– 2 Dimensional place
– 3 Dimensional place

Inspired by the short clip from “Casino” (dir. Martin Scorcese), edited by Thelma Schoonmaker, I want to explore:
– The rhythm of cuts in relation to rhythm of character (e.g. excited, wary, etc.) and rhythm of movement (e.g. intimate, danger, etc.)
– How do you shift from one rhythm to another? Does the change happen due to a sudden cut/scene change, or the character’s action, or a sudden-occurring event in a scene?
– How to play with positive and negative spaces? Can a shift happen in a negative space? How?

Then I had the idea that…
Perceiving the film as a whole, the editing is a negative space while the characters’ lines are the positive space. So editing needs to play in harmony with the script as well.