Category: Sound Design

Establishing scene using sound in Mission Impossible – Ghost Protocol

As a small kid, I used to watch serial called JAG. I remember, that with each new scene, you would see a green text appearing in the lower left corner of the screen, telling you what time is it, place and location. It is a great way to establish the scene, but there is even better way.

Stories happen in time and place, which (both time and place) can be characterized by soundscape or acoustic environment. The acoustic environment can be created by sound effects, spoken word, music or all of these elements in combination. What is really important here is that it really doesn’t matter so much which elements will be used, but how they’ll be used and to which purpose.

For example, if you were to establish a movie scene using only acoustic environment (without any visuals), you’d probably think a lot about the sounds, which are really specific for the given time and location.

Time

The sounds you’ll hear during the day will be probably much different from sounds you’ll hear during the night, the same holds true for seasons like summer or winter. Sound can also be used to establish time period as well, think of sounds of 19th century (steam locomotive)  or sounds of 1990’s (tape recorder).

Place

Sound works also very well for establishing locations. You could for instance use sounds of drilling machine, cable crane etc., to establish a construction site. Or a dialogue between doctor and nurse to establish a hospital environment. Or music.

Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011)
Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011)

At certain point in the movie, IMF team led by Ethan Hunt has to go to India. The scene starts with the picture above, but what’s interesting here is the music playing in the background.

You’ll hear light percussions, sitar and other instruments typical for eastern music. In other words, the music establishes the location, telling us that we are in India now.

If we come back to establishing scene (both time and place) using only sound, we have to mention also some drawbacks. This method works mostly only with general locations (like construction site, but not specific, or 19th century, but not a specific year). For example, it would be really hard to establish the place where I live using only sound, unless someone would mention the name in the dialogue.

Nevertheless, if you have the opportunity to establish the scene using sound, by all means do it, it’s cinematic!

Dreamy world in (500) Days of Summer

Being in love is beautiful. When it happens, you just know it. Everything changes around you – to be more precise, you perception of things around you changes.

When you meet your dream girl (boy), you enter a new, imaginary world, where everything is possible, a world without any limits or barriers. Living in this world is great – it’s an endless source of inspiration, motivation and energy.

In this example, we’ll look at how sound effects were used, to create this gorgeous world.

When Tom walks by the water fountain (youtube video above at 0:26), instead of hearing the sounds of splashing water, we hear sounds of fireworks.  What a beautiful touch in terms of sound design!

The sounds of fireworks portray, how Tom perceives the world around him (hears what he wants to hear) and at the same time, visually it also makes sense – the water fires up, same as the fireworks do. Hopefully, you can see everything more clearly in the picture below:

(500) Days of Summer (2009)
(500) Days of Summer (2009)

However, you can’t live in this beautiful world forever. Someday, you have to leave. Needless to say, the leaving really hurts, a lot. The good thing about it though is that you’ll learn probably one of the most important lessons in your life…

“The movie’s conclusion hinges on Tom realizing that he can’t impose his expectations on her, and that adult relationships are about accepting people as they actually are, not how they’re fantasized to be, a place he can’t arrive to if he doesn’t begin by considering her as a unicorn.” [David Greenwald]

Read more:

GITS Script Reading and Analysis Series: “(500) Days of Summer”

Forest rain and bird chirps in Paranoid Park

Paranoid Park by Gus Van Sant was the opening movie at Cinepur CHOICE film festival in Brno in 2008. From all of the movies I watched there, it had the biggest emotional impact on me. The story is simple, but it is told beautifully and there is a lot of great examples of cinematic storytelling to look at.

One of my favorite scenes is definitely the shower scene. It takes place after an accident at train tracks, where Alex, the main protagonist of the movie, kills by mistake a security guard.

This would be a harrowing experience for anyone, and especially for Alex, who is just 16 years old. He is really confused, struggling what to do, thinking, if he should call somebody and say what happened.

That night, he doesn’t go home, but stays at his friend’s house. He takes off his clothes and puts it in a black plastic bag. After that, he goes to the shower.

Paranoid Park (2007)
Paranoid Park (2007)

The whole shower scene was shot in slow-motion and in close-up. Close-ups have the ability to make us feel as though we are experiencing everything through the point of view of the character. That means, we can get inside their head and experience what they are experiencing.

For sound designers, this is a great opportunity to play with the sound, especially in this case, where they can get into a mind of a 16 year old teenager, who killed a man.

So when we get into the shower, we’ll hear at the beginning only simple water drops, but this changes very soon. In a moment, we’ll hear some kind of processed bird sound (I might be totally wrong here), which rises constantly in the pitch. Meanwhile, the sounds of water drops change into a heavy forest rain. Then you can clearly hear bird chirps – notice the bird tiles in the background – and after a while, you’ll hear all sorts of other bird sounds. All of the sounds are slowly rising in their intensity and volume. So what we are hearing in this scene, describes perfectly the troubled state of mind of our main character.

I didn’t have the opportunity to read the original script, but I’m almost sure, that it was all scripted, including the bird tiles in the background.

Great screenwriting, great directing, great scene. What else to say? Perhaps only, choose carefully what tiles you’ll have in your shower cubicle, just in case…