Monday, January 30, 2017

Response to R3 content: the power of sound

In movies, there is nothing quite like the sounds that situates us in the world or confirms what an object. Very few Hollywood movies are filmed entirely on location. An excellent example of how soundscapes can do this is in Iron Man, If you think back to the original Iron Man movie, the first few scenes where Tony Stark has been captured by the terrorist group, why do we believe he is in a different country captured by terrorists? We believe it because of the music that we hear in the background, the variety of languages spoken, the sounds of terrorist soldiers moving their weapons. When the Iron Man's suit powers up for the first time, why do we believe that its made of a hard metal, or moving based on a series of mechanical parts? We as audience members certainly cannot see all of the mechanical parts that move to run suit. We do hear the sound of hydraulics and gears moving in succession with the suit to indicate to us that it the suit moves using all of these mechanical parts. 

We know that the suit made of a specially made metal because every time any piece of the suit interacts w some other object with any amount force, we hear the trademark high-pitched metallic sound. Sometimes this is even to a fault when Stark sets the suit's metal face mask onto a wooden table yet it still makes the same noise like so: https://youtu.be/6S-lvDEvgpE?t=3m48s. When he escapes, Why do we believe he is in a press conference when we don't see the reporters in every scene? The clamoring of reporters and camera shutters (along with flashes of light from the cameras) help to situate us in that location.

Sound can often be too overlooked in student films and when we attempt to create these fantastical worlds, one of the most important ways we can situate an audience in our world is to give them a soundscape that reflects the world we want to convey to them.

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