script, what is the opposite kind of sound? Perhaps a very smooth, high frequency, soft sound to contrast? This is an example of how you might contrast in the sound design as you would contrast in the dramatic flow of the story.
What sort of equipment do you use to do your kind of work?
Sonnenschein: The traditional Hollywood industry standard is Pro Tools. It has been for a couple of decades and is used in most large productions. There are other very good tools including one that I like a lot – Sound Track Pro, which is a part of the Final Cut Suite and integrates with Final Cut Pro. It has a lot of advantages being an integrated system. Pro Tools is more of a hardware based system, and you have to buy a box that plugs into your computer, which makes it a little bit more expensive. If you want to do higher end with lots of tracks, then you’re talking thousands of dollars with Pro Tools. There are certainly other tools and programs you can use… There’s a free program called Audacity, and then there’s Sound Forge and Vegas. Then there are a lot of programs that you can also use for sound sculpting and music -- a good example would be Logic, which is a very popular and high end program.
Can you cite some films that have made large contributions or have significant examples of sound design playing a major role in the film?
Sonnenschein: Oh, I would say that there are a few films that are all about that which I like to refer to. One is called THE CONVERSATION, by Francis Coppola. Walter Murch (Apocalypse Now) did the sound on that film. It’s about a detective who is using sound to spy on people, and the story revolves around what happens to him and the interpretation of the sound when it turns back on him. It’s very interesting use of sound to tell a story... I think that Star Wars was fundamental in developing sounds in certain areas that didn’t exist before. Creating the sounds for R2-D2 or Chewbacca, for example. Those kinds of characters which were really expressive without using words, but sounds. It was genius in terms of its ability to transmit exactly what was going on and become not only effective in the film, but really become a cultural icon. You also have the lightsabers – people hear that sound and they can see the image of the fighting, they know exactly what it is. The respirator sound of Darth Vader is another great example… Before Star Wars, it might have sounded like a hospital respirator or scuba tank. Now everyone worldwide recognizes these sounds, and it really
-- you see a door close… It may be that you need a door that has more impact than the door that you had on the set. It isn’t always exact in what you see and what you hear. You have to find the right sound to go with the right image to make that work. That also includes ambient sounds such as a busy street… You may want to make something sound like a busy street, but when you’re filming, you don’t want it to sound too busy because you’ll muck up your dialogue tracks. So you have to find the right sound that is going to make it work.
Then, on the third level you have to find the sounds that are going to give you the most emotional impact. Often the biggest challenge of that is aligning with the director’s vision so that you are serving the film, not just your own imagination. A music composer has to deal with that all the time. A lot of times you can use references from other films or other pieces of music and such. Lastly, the biggest challenge is getting all that in the time and budget constraints that are allowed.
So when you’re discussing the film with the director about his vision, and trying to find ways to match that with sound, how can you best achieve that feel that he (or she) is looking for?
Sonnenschein: As a screenwriter I am using tools – and this is definitely what I propose in the book -- using tools for diagnosing the script and analyzing the character development and emotional arcs so that you can literally be on the same page with the director. When a character overcomes one struggle and moves on to the next, how are we going to represent that on the soundtrack? We align this kind of character growth and movement to the theme of what this film is about. Is it good versus evil? Rich versus poor? Old versus young? We look for the underlying dramatic dynamic of what the whole film is about. In so doing, we identify how each scene then is moving towards one pole or another pole, which I call the “bi-polarities” of the story -- the extremes of the dramatic conflicts. Then, we look at what is naturally happening in those scenes with the characters and events. By identifying those sounds when someone is experiencing, lets say, the most evil nature, you can determine what sound would best fit. We look at the sound qualities of this – what are the specific levels of volume, pitch, rhythm, and speed that are going on with those sounds. For the most evil, for instance, you might have a very loud, percussive, low frequency sound. So we would say on the opposite end of that, when we‘re in the most good part of the
collaboration with the Sound Designer at the picture editing stage. Of course, once the picture is locked, the Sound Designer is there to obviously clean up the dialogue, to balance all the elements and get a realistic sense of the environment and time period, etc, to the scene.
Thirdly, the sound designer tries to use the sound creatively to help boost and draw the emotion and inner subtext of the characters that is required to make the scene work.
So with such a wide range of important tasks for the Sound Designer to fill in here, why is it that in Hollywood, they are typically brought in at the post production phase as opposed to at the beginning like you mentioned.
Sonnenschein: Habit, tradition, and status quo... That’s the way it’s always been done for decades. Producers are not typically aware that sound plays such a pivotal role as I’ve already mentioned. They’re not usually tuned into that – it’s not a natural thought unless you’ve already done it. They may be concerned that it would cost them much more to have the sound personnel in earlier on, and I debate that – I maintain that you can actually save money. Bringing the sound designer in for just a consultation, you’re not going to be asking them to work on a daily rate at that point – you’re just asking them to come in and check it out. Sometimes this may not be possible… That person may not be available; they may be on another job, in which case it may not be viable.
What are some of the main challenges in doing sound design, especially on time or budget constraint?
Sonnenschein: The challenges are that you have to give priority to dialogue to make sure that it is really “king” and really heard clearly in the soundtrack. If you don’t get that right, it doesn’t matter how creative you are, especially if you are missing important information or emotion in the characters voices. Sometimes that isn’t done very well in production and you have to really work at it in post-production, and that may include trying to get the actors back into the studio for ADR or looping. It’s not always that easy to synchronize with the original recording or to get the emotional level perhaps as it was originally….
The second challenge is really being able to create the authenticity or the realism of the scene or the environment. You might not necessarily use the exact sound that you would imagine that you should. For example
