The
POWER OF SOUND project
Brief: "Films are 50 percent visual and 50 percent sound. Sometimes sound even overplays the visual." David Lynch
This project is designed to get you to experiment with the power of sound. The project requires you to film a sequence based on a piece of music that you will ‘lucky dip’. Part One: Listen to your track and then film a sequence that is totally opposite to the lyrics of the song. So, if your track is ‘Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now’ by The Smiths, you need to film a response that contradicts the tone, mood, atmosphere and lyrics of the song. By doing this you will be creating a Contrapuntal (or asynchronous) Sound. Your lyrics and visuals will be opposite. This can be a really powerful technique to use in your project. Part Two: Choose a song that you think suits the tone, mood or atmosphere of the short sequence you film. In other words you add a song that matches the film. This is known as Parallel Sound.
What you will submit: One filmed sequence with two different sound tracks or soundscapes: One that uses Contrapuntal (or asynchronous) Sound (based on the ‘lucky-dip’) The same film sequence, but this time using Parallel Sound (you choose the song or sound FX or create a soundscape using Adobe Audition or Audacity).
When watching a film, the sound we hear usually complements what the audience see – happy sounds for happy images, exciting music for exciting scenes – sad music at sad moments etc. This is PARALLEL SOUND and as the name suggests, the music tone and mood matches (hence ‘parallel’) the action on screen. Sometimes when we are watching a film, we hear sound that doesn’t seem to match what we are seeing. The most famous example of this has to be in “Jaws” when we are watching scenes of happy holiday makers on Amity Beach but we hear the ‘dur dur’ motif of the shark – a deep sinister and haunting sound that we have, by this stage in the film, be conditioned to hear as a signal for the imminent arrival of the man-eating shark. Thus, what we see and what we hear DO NOT match. This is called CONTRAPUNTAL SOUND. ‘Contrapuntal’ means ‘at a counterpoint to’. Some people call this ‘asynchronous sound’ – as in NOT synchronous – that is not in synch. It doesn’t matter which you use – use the one you’re happiest with but stick with it – be consistent.