Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound

Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound (Midge Costin, 2019)

 

This one's on me. Maybe, it's too technical, I don't care. Maybe you don't like learning "how sausage is made." I don't care if you're interested in watching it. I don't care if you'd just as soon watch something else.

 

Just be aware that if you watch something else, this nifty documentary covers something that you might not be aware of. 

That what you're hearing in movies, commercials, TV shows, whatever...is faked.

People do this for a living. They try to make things better than reality...or, more crudely, they're "selling" you something that you have every intention to buy, whether you're conscience of it or not.

But, I think it's important that people know stuff like this. I sometimes read comments from people, or see things that people have posted, and it's apparent to me that an awful lot of people know very little about "the magic" than can happen in post-production to enhance what we're seeing...and now, we're of an age where one can't accept anything "on faith." Sounds (which this doc focuses on) and images can be produced or manipulated that you should probably not believe what you're seeing.

Ben Burtt recording the bear that made up the bulk

of the vocalizations of "Chewbacca" in Star Wars.

Why do I care? Because I used to do this for a living. In my past-life, I used to do "post-sound" for radio, television, film, and computer programs. It was something I was interested in when I was a kid, and somehow managed to do it when I grew up, taking "the kid" with me. And it was fun...it could be a lot of fun and had an inherent joy in making things "work." But, it could also be painstakingly tedious (which was readily apparent whenever I showed somebody "my work"—the attraction to the process would always "thin" for observers).

But, the thrill of the finished project always made it worth it. I especially loved when I made something out of elements so completely different from what the visuals were and people "bought it" anyway. It was a little conspiracy I played with an audience that took advantage of their natural proclivities to see an image, hear a sound with it and put two and two together in their heads. Manipulative, sure. But, nobody cared because they were "in on the act."

And I was lucky to get in on this when everything was changing, when sound wasn't part of a corporate department to be done using stock sound effects that had been in the vaults for 30 years, but became something new and creative—I remember sitting in the Crossroads theater to see THX-1138 (sound-designed by Walter Murch) and being stunned by the sounds and created environments I was hearing and wanting to do stuff like that. Then, American Graffiti. Star Wars. I was blown away attending a very early screening of Apocalypse Now (also designed by Murch, but more importantly he'd also personally set up the speaker arrays in the theater!) and having my mind blown when the helicopters in that first sequence flew right through my head. Murch and Ben Burtt and the others in their foot-steps would become as much a reason to see the film as the actors or who directed it.

And Making Waves shows all of that—the technical advancements and the advancements in creativity—of what was possible, without compromise. Of how the old ways of doing things were left by the way-side because the new ways became better and took over, so that now the sound isn't just a paint-by-numbers formality, but is, in itself, its own art.

 

Now, all of that is behind me. I watch things and don't even notice the sound-design anymore. Oh, I do if something's "off" or if I recognize an old library sound that I used a couple decades ago (it happens more frequently than I'd like!). These days I appreciate when a film doesn't throw a sonic kitchen-sink at everything. I appreciate the silences...the judicious choices...the spareness...and the realization of what's important. 

And I appreciate the time spent doing it.

WALL•E

Written at the time of the film's release...

Spare-partacus
or
"All creatures tread across the rubble of ruined civilizations. The trick is to keep moving. No animal ever goes about dispensing shallow compassion."                                             Rita Mae Brown

After what I felt was a genre and craft high-point with the 2006 Ratatouille comes the last of the original Pixar concepts (devised on a napkin at a lunch just before the completion of Toy Story between John Lasseter, Peter Doctor, Andrew Stanton and Joe Ranft, which included story ideas for A Bug's Life, Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo and this film) directed by Stanton, whose Finding Nemo was, itself, the craft high-point for its time. By now, the work of the Pixar pixilators is so assured that, really, all they have to do is show that they can do variations of tone, and they do that with Wall•E, the little trash-compactor that could.

This charming film starts out on a barren, blasted planet Earth, devoid of all life, save for one cockroach and a mobile trash-compactor, whose sole preoccupation for the last 700 years (when humans vacated the planet on elephantine space-cruise-liners) is to pick up the trash, scrunch it into cubes, then make big piles of said cubes, like rusting ancient Aztec ruins, dwarfing their man-made counter-parts, city skyscrapers. Wall•E is apparently the only Waste Allocation Load Lifter (Earth-Class) left, stripping others of his type for parts, and he works his dutiful existence scrunching by day, and collecting odd bits of human jetsam, and perpetually watching an old copy of Hello Dolly!, and yearning for companionship, before backing-up onto his rotating work-bench, and rocking himself to sleep-mode.

It is a melancholy vision of Hell, not unlike the empty, echoing, New York of I Am Legend, but with pelting dust-storms and no signs of life, not even encroaching vegetation. One watches a fast scene of Wall•E giving chase in a rubble-strewn long-shot and can't help marveling how far the artistry has come from Toy Story. Not only do things look photo-realistic, but there's also a fine atmospheric haze over the scene, giving it life and depth.

The film is also rich in satire, with the future Earth a global economy dominated by the BnL (Buy n' Large) Stores, which have control of everything. The human populations are adrift in ocean-liner-type space barges, that might be called "The Lard Boat" as the human passengers have become infantile all-consuming non-producing blobs in floating lounge-chairs while television screens perpetually float six inches in front of their faces.

It is funny, touching, and definitely dark in its view of the future, and Wall•E finds himself the cog in the wheel for a robot and human revolution against mechanical Masters eager to maintain the Status Quo.

Two quibbles, nothing alarming enough to distract from any enjoyment of the film, but still things to ponder: Ben Burtt provides the voice of Wall•E as well as the sounds of all the other things in the film as sound designer and mixer, and he does the same thing here that he's done with the recent re-mixed "Star Wars" films, which is prioritize mixing the sound effects over the music, thereby drowning out Thomas Newman's quirky, enjoyable pastiche score--let him sound-design and mix his work, sure, but keep out of the final mix; and, one wishes that Pixar had the scrap to end the film on a minor chord, rather than it's crowd-and-kid-pleasing major one. If they had left the fate of one of the characters ambiguous, Pixar would have had their own version of Chaplin's bittersweet ending for City Lights.

These are small quibbles, and certainly don't detract from the mammoth effort and resulting entertainment that keeps coming out of "Pixar," which is becoming the only real sure-bet in Hollywood.