Why filmmakers never think about sound

19 February 2006

by Graeme Watson

Organisation

The most common chant heard around FTI is ‘Story, Story, Story”, it’s our number one directive to new filmmakers – tell a story. The second most heard chant directed at students is about sound, ‘remember sound is half the film’

There is a common phenomenon that occurs with new filmmakers, the mystery of the silent film. The experience of having a new and emerging filmmaker ask you to see their first serious work, and you are transported back to as time before ‘The Jazz Singer’ is not an uncommon one. We see these completed films that have virtually no sound, there may be dialogue, but these visually rich worlds are aurally poor, lacking the subtle and complex architecture of sound design that fills fifty percent of the senses we use in experiencing cinema.

Lecturers often point out; that it takes a while for students to ‘get’ sound and in an average class there will only be a few who really excel in this field, displaying a passion for sound. Sound professionals are often the most in demand members of the screen industry and Production Managers are often to be seen searching for ‘Soundies’ for upcoming projects, when for other positions there are queues forming at their office doors.

There may be a simple explanation for this obstacle in a filmmakers development though, in 1983 Dr Howard Gardner, Professor of Education at Harvard University proposed a theory about the way we learn. Gardner concluded that the common IQ test was too simple an explanation of human thinking; in turn he proposed that there are 8 different types of intelligence that have an dramatic effect on the way we learn, think and in turn the occupations we are drawn towards.

Gardner’s eight categories of Multiple Intelligence are Linguistic, Mathematical, Spatial, Kinesthetic, Musical, Interpersonal, Intrapersonal and Naturalist. It’s a theory that has been successful used by educators to improve teaching delivery and career counselors to advise on suitable occupational choices. We know that the large majority of film makers are spatial learners, visual thinkers who can easily conceptualise objects in a 3D form, while those successful in sound editing are more likely to be Musical Learners who have a predilection towards aural based stimuli. It’s no surprise the two most popular courses at FTI are Camera skills and Editing with fewer people interested in Sound.

There are some easy ways to spot a visual thinker, they are unlikely to ever be lost, reading maps is easily to them, they are the people who instinctively know which way to turn when you get out of an elevator, in meetings they will be big time doodlers, in discussions they will favour phrases with visual connotations such as ‘Do you see what I’m saying’, ‘Let’s get a different perspective’ or ‘I can’t picture it’.
The challenge for screen educators is finding effective pathways that assist visual thinkers to begin to think like aural thinkers. Techniques like watching identical footage with radically different sound can be helpful, blindfolding filmmakers for a screening will ensure an improved focus on sound, potential filmmakers who have a strong interest in music or a musical ability are far more likely to have a natural understanding how sound works, developing ways to depict sound visually in diagrams and models will assist the transition.

This only now leaves the problem of what to do with all those silent films, we could edit them strangely, play parts backwards, mess around with the colour grading and call them experimental… but then that would break the first rule we chant at FTI.

Find out about the next sound course at FTI

This article by Professional Development and Training Manager, Graeme Watson, originally appeared in FTI NEWS in February 2006.