Ghost Stories – How Audio Can Warp Visual Information

When we think about film our minds more often go to its existence as a visual medium, rather than an auditory one. I mean, it is called the ‘Moving Image’ for a reason. However film and television are dynamic relationships between the fields of sound and visuals which is something that our recent shift towards audio media creation in our workshops has reminded me of. In thinking about how audio can take hold of a narrative I was thrown back to the beginning of the year when I came across the delightful mess that is the English dub of ‘Ghost Stories’. The original script was almost entirely discarded as it was a bland and typical narrative that stood little chance of profit within the western anime market. With a couple of exceptions the voice actors were allowed to ad-lib and change huge portions of the dialogue, making a run-of-the-mill fantasy anime into a 4th wall breaking, crass humour-filled, shit-show that has developed its very own cult following.

Over the span of March I got through all 20 dubbed episodes and found myself curious as to the effect of this completely divergent audio. Of course the actors had to take into account the visual information of each episode, and tie their narrative to it but their adaptation is most definitely completely different to what the original script entailed, which had me curious as to how far they had gone; how much had they managed to distort the narrative simply through the audio?

I never watched the original anime, I think out of fear of ruining the experience I had with the english dub, which has left me with a quite wonderful sense of mystery as to the original script. Due to the audio having to be cohesive with the animation throughout the episodes it is safe to say that the ‘hero’s journey’, if you will, of the central characters remained predominantly unchanged; it was the characters and their interactions, however, that were entirely warped. The basic animation that is created in this sort of low budget anime production leaves huge space for creativity within the expressions and reactions of each character. These spaces allowed the show to change entirely, diverting from its position as a run-of-the-mill anime, to a satirical masterpiece unlike anything else in its field.

My knowledge that the characters I knew (their relationships, motivations etc.) were entirely different to the original, brought the realisation that sound can change the very heart of a narrative. Their journey had to remain loyal to the visual source material, but stories are never about the journeys themselves; they are about how journeys shape characters and their relationships with each other and the world they live in. They are about the way events change us and how those changes motivate us to continue or divert our paths. The core of this show were thus changed entirely, recreating the narrative without ever disconnecting from its visual counterpart.

It is easy, sometimes, to forget about sound within productions, especially blockbusters that put so much emphasis on the visual component of their films. Many in the industry work to make sound feel as native to the visuals as possible, so we barely notice. But this lack of attention does not mean that it is obsolete. Sound is a crucial element of the storytelling process and I am looking forward to exploring it further as a way of not only distorting, but enhancing my ability to present a narrative.