David Sonnenschein is our special guest of the month. We already published an interview with him, but you also have the opportunity to make your own questions to David.
You can do it by using the contact form, or leaving a comment on this post.
Art and technique of sound design
by Miguel Isaza
David Sonnenschein is our special guest of the month. We already published an interview with him, but you also have the opportunity to make your own questions to David.
You can do it by using the contact form, or leaving a comment on this post.
David, I have a question for you that sort-of relates to your Sound Spheres idea I’ve been reading here on DS. In my experience, there has been a trend in Hollywood to make sounds hyper-real (for example, Indiana Jones’ cannon-sounding handgun). I have, on a couple occasions, operated a device and thought to myself “this doesn’t sound right” only because I had first seen it in a film. I think most of us can relate. Do you think this hyper-realism will have an effect on perceptions of young sound designers? I feel like this event throws a bit of a wrench into your spheres model since the experience is “I think” and “I see” but at the same time “I don’t know.”
One of the reasons for the “hyper-realism” in many films is because the physical design of speakers cannot reproduce realistically the subject matter being displayed (Gunshots, explosions, car crashes, basically anything very loud with extreme transients). Additionally even if they could there are a number of situations where you wouldn’t want to reproduce realistically due to possible hearing damage. Hyper-real in these cases is used to communicate an emotion similar to the one felt in the real environment without having to delivery a physically correct model.
The solution for new designers is simple, don’t just learn from movies. Go out and experience things, learn about the subjects you are going to work with in the real world with operators who make their living working with these tools. You will then have a realistic idea of both the sound and the emotion involved.
Your gun example is perfect. You watch a movie and have an expectation of what a gun sounds like and then you go shoot one and it sounds different. Why?
1. Speakers don’t explode, they can’t deliver the volume of air at the speed that a chemical explosion can.
2. You were wearing earplugs when you shot a gun (or you should have been). In the majority of the situations that movies present the characters would not be wearing earplugs. Go to a range without earplugs and you’ll have hearing damage by the end of the day.
3. The locations are different. Especially with regards to explosions, the reflections off location specific elements are the majority of the perceived sound.
Not knowing doesn’t negate the spheres model because you never “know” anything. Your perception (which is what the spheres model is all about as far as I can tell) is always fluid, and while it is legitimate, it is not fact.
It’s not that “you don’t know” it’s that “you cannot know.”