Year: 2012

Sound cues in Inception

Inception (2010)
Inception (2010)

I think that Inception by Christopher Nolan needs no introduction. However, what may need a brief introduction are few sound design/musical terms that will be used throughout this article. So, here we go, starting with my most favorite – pitch shifting!

Pitch Shifting

Pitch shifting is about changing the pitch of a sound. With pitch shifting we basically detune the sound up or down in semitones (=musical half-steps) or even cents (extremely small finite intervals) (1).

To give a real-world example, try to imagine a fast lift in some skyscraper: When it slows down or accelerates, you’ll hear a change in the pitch of the sound.

Or if you play a musical instrument, particularly keyboard, there might be a pitch wheel located to your left that changes (raises or lowers) the pitch of a note being played.

By the way, there is a great talk by my favorite sound designer Randy Thom, who talks about pitch shifting in SoundWorks Collection sound show: How to Train Your Dragon. If you’re interested in sound design and haven’t seen it yet, I highly recommend it! (Or if you are interested in pitch shifting only, he starts to talk about pitch change at 00:24:00 and gives away one of his secrets btw.)

Reverb

Reverb is actually pretty tricky to describe/explain. Therefore I think it is best to use an example. Imagine yourself singing in a bathroom and than in a church.

First, you’ll hear your voice, but then it will be followed by sound waves reflected from the surrounding surfaces (=reverb). The type of reverb you’ll hear depends on the type of surface (ceramics tile vs. stone) and space (bathroom vs. church).

In any case, each place or space has a specific reverb that helps you orient where you are.

Tempo

Tempo is a musical term that dictates the pace/speed of any musical composition (2). In other words, it dictates how fast or slow should we play the musical composition. The tempo is usually given by BPM (beats per minute) or using words (Largo, Adagio, Allegro, etc.).

Sound Bridge

Sound bridge can lead us in or out of a scene (3). It connects seamlessly two scenes together by overlapping the sound from one scene to another. Either by overlapping the sound from previous scene to the following scene or by playing the sound from following scene into the previous scene. It is the same as J or L cut technique in editing.

Anyway, the best sound bridge is when the sound not only overlaps, but transforms to something else. That’s pure cinema!

SOUND CUES

Inception is pretty complex and complicated movie when you watch it for the first time. When I was leaving the theater I had only a rough idea what was and what wasn’t a dream. But at the same time, I knew that this wasn’t a simple mind fu*k and immediately wanted to see the movie again.

The characters travel into various levels of a dream (=dream within a dream within a dream), so especially the first time, it was quite difficult to keep the track where we are. However, sound works as a guide for us, the audience, to help us orient whether we are in a dream and whether we are transitioning from level to level. Here is how the sound cues work:

Pitch Shifting

Change in Pitch

When we transition into another level of a dream, pitch shifting occurs (4). Not all the time, because that would be totally annoying. But in some scenes, when the characters fall asleep and start dreaming (or travel into another level of a dream), there is a change in pitch of surrounding sounds.

When we transition into deeper level, the pitch goes down (and vice versa, when we transition into upper level, the pitch goes up as well.)

Change in Speed

In the case of Inception, pitch shifting changes also the speed of the surrounding sounds (4). When we transition into deeper level of a dream, the surrounding sounds slow down (and vice versa, when we transition into upper level of a dream, surrounding sounds speed up). This directly correlates with the time-flow in various levels of the dream. The deeper the level of a dream the slower the time-flow (and vice versa).

Sound Bridge

Lastly, pitch shifting may work as a sound bridge at the same time in some scenes. For instance, interior jet roar becomes traffic when we transition to the first dream level (4). Or tire screeching becomes metal screeching when we transition to the second dream level. Very, very cinematic use of sound!

Music

Hans Zimmer used throughout the movie leitmotif from Edith Piaf’s “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien” (5). The music slows down based on the dream level we are currently in. The deeper we are, the slower the music plays back (and vice versa). Again, this directly correlates with the time-flow in various levels of the dream. The deeper the level of a dream the slower the tempo of music.

To illustrate this, watch the video below that went completely viral.

Reverb

Dreams feel usually very real. But there is always something that is just not quite right. It could be weird behavior of people you know or messed up physics, like different time-flow or unnatural reverb.

So in some scenes, you’ll hear a very unnatural reverb. Especially when a piece of glass shatters or breaks. This tells us, that we are in a dream.

Sound Cues – Audio Examples

If you skim through the articles I wrote so far, you’ll notice that the vast majority are examples of visual storytelling. The reason for that is that examples of visual storytelling are easier to describe and explain. You can simply see it. However with sound, it is much more difficult. Even the most skilled writer is not able to fully describe the visceral feeling and sensations that sound has to offer.

I used to spend a lot of time at filmsound.org and now I’m spending significant amount of my free time at designingsound.org. I’m deeply in love with film sound design, because it is one of the most powerful storytelling weapons that filmmakers have in their arsenal. Heck, the very first article written for CINEMA SHOCK is in sound design category.

Anyway, the reason that there are so few articles about film sound design is that I was afraid (and still I am) of uploading copyrighted material to YouTube.

Fortunately, there are few exceptions. One of them is the principle of Fair Use. I sincerely believe that the following video I made for this article is in accordance with this principle. Enjoy!

P.S. During my research and preparation for this article, I “watched” the movie with my eyes closed. Try it someday as well with your favorite movie; you’ll be surprised what you’ll hear! I know that this might sound like a totally weird idea, but hey, welcome to the club! 🙂

Resources

  1. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cent_(music)
  2. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempo
  3. classes.yale.edu/film-analysis/htmfiles/sound.htm
  4. designingsound.org/2010/08/inception-exclusive-interview-with-richard-king
  5. www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/21/AR2010102107408.html?sid=ST2010102203520

Inception and Sound Design

SoundWorks Collection: The Sound of Inception from Michael Coleman on Vimeo.

Movies that question state of dream/illusion/reality

Visual accident in In Cold Blood

Let me start this article by a great quote by Scott Adams:

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.

If you work in some creative field, you know that mistakes happen from time to time. Well, I like to call them happy accidents. One of the best examples I can think of in music is Cher’s ‘Believe’. The vocal effect that is on the record is basically a happy accident resulting from experimentation with vocoding and filtering.

Here is a historical footnote from Sound on Sound article (originally published in February 1999):

It was the first commercial recording to feature the audible side-effects of Antares Auto-tune software used as a deliberate creative effect. The (now) highly recognizable tonal mangling occurs when the pitch correction speed is set too fast for the audio that it is processing and it became one of the most over-used production effects of the following years.

However, the happy accident is not enough to make a monster hit record like Cher’s ‘Believe’. It’s just a starting point. So the reason why the record sounds so great is that the producers (Mark Taylor and Brian Rawling) used it very creatively – they applied the vocoded sections only to parts where they had the most striking effect and not to the whole vocal track. Overall, it was very painstaking process, but well worth it – Cher was amazed!

This blog is focused on the art of cinematic storytelling, so I won’t write more about recording process of Cher’s song, since this was supposed to be only a short introduction to happy accidents, but if you are interested in music, sound design or just curious, I totally recommend reading the whole article at soundonsound.com, where you’ll learn more about the recording process of Cher’s ‘Believe’.

Now, back to the art of cinematic storytelling! Today’s article deals with a purely visual accident that happened in one of the last scenes in In Cold Blood.

The scene in question is when Perry Smith (played by Robert Blake) is about to be hanged at the end of the movie. It’s very sad and you do feel sorry for him, even though he committed such brutal crime.

The whole scene was shot on stage – they made an artificial rain and they also had a fan to the side, which was blowing the spray from the rain against the window.

When they were rehearsing the scene, Conrad L. Hall (cinematographer responsible for such great movies like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Cool Hand Luke or American Beauty) noticed a very interesting light effect that happened once on Perry’s face. He loved it immediately.

After the discovery, they changed the blocking (staging) so that the light effect would stay on Perry’s face all the time.

As the water is running down and light hitting his face through that window, it seems like he is crying. It makes the scene extremely emotional and hard to watch. He talks about his father, how he hates him and loves him at the same time. He is not crying, but the visuals are crying for him. I think this has to be one of the most beautiful examples of cinematic storytelling.

And the best part about it is that it was “just” a visual (happy) accident, it wasn’t planned at all!

Now, there are other examples of rain running down on window used for similar purposes. One of them is a scene in Toy Story 3. In this case it wasn’t an accident probably, because Pixar storyboards everything very carefully. Nevertheless, it is still a beautiful example of cinematic storytelling.

Toy Story 3 - Lotso
Toy Story 3 – Lotso

The picture above was taken from a scene, where Lotso learns, that he was replaced by another toy. Even though he is not crying, the visuals tell everything!

I usually have problem with the last sentence in my blog posts, what to write, how to finish, but here it is easy: Make mistakes, use your tools in unusual ways, think outside the box, look for happy accidents and who knows – maybe one day you’ll make a monster hit record or an unforgettable movie scene!

Links

Other Examples

Team America - Gary Johnston
Team America – Gary Johnston

Camera angles in American Beauty

American Beauty is one those rare movies you can watch again and again and still find something new every time you watch it. Not a single word, sound, body movement, edit or camera setup is wasted opportunity to tell a story of a man going through a life change. There is intent, purpose and deeper meaning behind everything.

In this article, we’ll look at camera angles that help to portray the change of Lester Burnham, who, from a gigantic loser, becomes a man in control over his life.

Camera Angles

Camera angles do basically two things – they show someone’s:

  • power (and/or)
  • status

Now, let’s look what these angles generally do on the emotional and psychological level (the following three picture are print screens from Clash of the Titans 2 trailer):

High angle

Clash of the Titans 2 (2012)
Clash of the Titans 2 (2012)

High angle shot reduces the height of a character; this makes the character seem smaller and inferior. It seems like the character is belittled, looked down upon, helpless and insignificant.

Low angle

Clash of the Titans 2 (2012)
Clash of the Titans 2 (2012)

Characters viewed from low angle seem to be superior, dominant, bigger, powerful or ominous. Low camera angle gives them a symbol of authority and respect.

High and low angles work also on the emotional level – the audience tends to (most of the time) identify with the inferior character, that is, the one viewed from high angle.

Clash of the Titans 2 (2012)
Clash of the Titans 2 (2012)

However, it is important to mention, that this works only when the camera is placed around the eye level. You could place the camera on the ceiling to get high angle (or on the floor to get a low angle), but this would be perceived as a creative camera placement, rather than portrayal of someone’s status or power.

American Beauty – examples

So let’s start from the beginning, I’ll show you pairs of opposite pictures and hopefully, you’ll be able to tell, who dominates the story at that point:



Lester starts to be in control over his life…

American Beauty (1999)
American Beauty (1999)

…and guess what happened… 🙂

American Beauty (1999)
American Beauty (1999)

This change is also nicely portrayed and documented in body language of Lester Burnham – thanks to amazing performance by Kevin Spacey!