Peter White who will be taking us through basic lighting principles and camera setups has suggested visiting the Australian Cinematographers Society ( ACS )- find them on facebook.

Here is a link to an upcoming event. Tickets are cheap and these sorts of q and a’s are an invaluable source of education for all of us:

https://www.facebook.com/austcine/posts/1229390420423547

Here are some quotes out of the Walter Murch playbook:

“It (sound) should strive to create a purposeful and fruitful tension between what is on the screen and what is kindled in the mind of the audience. The danger of present- day cinema is that it can suffocate its subjects by its very ability to represent them: it doesn’t possess the built-in escape valves of ambiguity that painting, music, literature, radio drama and black-and-white silent film automatically have simply by virtue of their sensory incompleteness — an incompleteness that engages the imagination of the viewer as compensation for what is only evoked by the artist.” Walter Murch

“By comparison, film seems to be “all there” (it isn’t, but it seems to be), and thus the responsibility of filmmakers is to find ways within that completeness to refrain from achieving it. To that end, the metaphoric use of sound is one of the most fruitful, flexible and inexpensive means: by choosing carefully what to eliminate, and then adding back sounds that seem at first hearing to be somewhat at odds with the accompanying image, the filmmaker can open up a perceptual vacuum into which the mind of the audience must inevitably rush.” Walter Murch

Starving the eye will inevitably bring the ear, and therefore the imagination, more into play …

This week we are discussing sound design and starting the process of creating our shooting scripts and schedules. With PB 3 looming on the week 7 horizon make sure you are spending time engaging in creative sketching and experimenting. There are plenty of studio activities to get going on. Make them count. Aim them towards your film concept and never stop looking for that single inspired idea that might just pin the whole project together.

We watched videos of Walter Murch imparting his seemingly endless wisdom on the post production process and we analysed some of his work in the films Apocalypse Now (1979) and Rumble Fish (1983). We also looked at David Lynch’s Eraserhead (1977), famed for its foreboding, industrial and dystopian sonic atmosphere. Next week we will pick up on some more examples from these same filmmakers and further scrutinise a complex scene/sound structure.

Can you think of any scenes or films where a strong conceptual sound design is used? Blog about it!

Here are the videos we looked at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqlqp3OT13U