Diz – love your idea of sonic set design and on-stage foley! You got me thinking…

Hi Christian, thanks for your reply.
I have to share the tiger’s metaphor, so clear…

I’d like to hint at some free thoughts arising from your notes on shifting the “cross-pollination” in the theatrical production. This strays a bit from the discussion about time, nevertheless it builds on the general issue of the collaboration between different actors in the production timesteps.

I love theater, I think it yelds a privileged playground for experimentation in sound things. I mean, theatrical incidental music is nice and ordinary, and though it can sometimes sound a little detached or contrived, it’is commonly accepted and perceived as an emotional commentary to what’s happening on the scene.
But we have sound effects, ambience, foleys… all of them mean an extensive uncharted land, they can really play an “acting” role, tied to their more diegetic nature. Not speaking of mere mimics, they can also work at abstract levels.
So in theatrical creations the term “sound design” can match a really comprehensive implementation, providing a unique opportunity to summarize many sound specialisms.

The theater features also the potential of the “live-stage” dimension.
In this regard, theatre could possibly be compared to cinema in the same way that live sound relates to studio-produced music. No room for post-prod here, pre-production is king!

I often picture some acts – be performance or spoken theatre, drama or comedy – with one or more live musicians on stage. Quite similar to the playing bands physically spotting here and there in some movies of the masters Fellini and Kusturica. Could it possibly be a foley artist playing live with the act? And what about an exclusively sonic-set design? We can even think of a piece or performance without visual scenery, wallpapers and theatre props, where ambience and live-generated sound fits in the plot to create an abstract fictional scenography.
Guess it would be a bit profane, but wouldn’t it be so curious, visionary and charming too?

Now I realize I always end up stretching far and wide… so looooooong posts!
Thus pardon – thanks again – and best regards,

“diz” daniele

Great example diz! I’ve actually never seen that movie, but the way you described it, the whole scene played quite vividly in my head.

I must say that in my day job as a set builder (theatre), I, too, could use some more of that early cross pollination and influence. When it does happen, it really helps the whole production, sometimes in much the same way that David Sonnenschein describes it in his book – suggestive sound enhancing or even taking the place of expensive visual production.

You don’t actually need to SEE the tiger to know the jig is up – just the sound of it breathing somewhere in the dark…

Great post, Mr Thom!

naturally ;)

Especially the example taken from Coen brothers’ Barton Fink made me come up with another film of Coppola, his lovely masterpiece Cotton Club.

I point out to one of the last scenes, when Dutch and his gang are all killed.
The sequence rolls in with Sandman jumping into the club floor and starting his tip-tap figures. After about 35 secs, an external night scene drops in, showing the boss Dutch with his wingmen in a car, rolling away from the Cotton after a rough tussle.
Well, we can hear that the sound of Sandman taps holds on in the background shifting as an extra-diegetic sound, and creating a textural effect that drives the entire episode (the global sequence sums up to 4mins:10secs). There’s extradiegetic music too, but the tip-tap beats are intentionally mixed-in so as to estabilish themselves as the real glue of the whole sequence.
The more the scene evolves, the more the footsteps pace blends in it, moreover they end up moulding the cinematic flow, and reach the climax in sync with the growing violence and the precipitation of events. At some point, the hail of taps exactly overlaps and echoes the burst of gunfire…

Though the Coppola instance is more expanded in time and leans itself mostly to a parallel montage scheme than the Coen sample, nevertheless I thought it could play another majestic example of a sound idea that stretrches over time and over its primal significance, to structure the narrative process itself.

Here you can see most of the sequence, missing only the first-preceding 40 secs, where Sandman starts dancing (the beginning of the scene is cut because the whole clip is merely a custom juxtaposition of 3-4 main scenes of the movie, edited by an YT user):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=3SI2DOFcqi8#t=266s

Greetings,
“diz” daniele

Have to agree 100% here. Although the ideal is definitely to be involved from the beginning.

Possibilities can still exist even if the “early planning” didn’t occur…provided there’s flexibility during the post-production process. The article I’m prepping for next week will have examples from a film where all of the clever uses of sound were developed between the picture editor and sound designer…after production was completed. They had the benefit of a director who was willing to give them the time to experiment, and the results are undeniable. I only mention this, because I don’t want younger people to assume that is impossible to achieve these kinds of moments if they haven’t been included from the beginning. While it does help, it’s more important to have a director who is cognizant of, and invested in, the power of collaboration. Make the case for it, regardless of when you’re brought onto a project.