Being tasked to write a blogpost for a scene concept admittedly has at this point in time left me a little lost. I should have considered it earlier but I was on radio last night from 2am to 6am and am now making a concerted attempted to meet this deadline although I am at work with quite little energy in the tank.

As I’m writing this though, I’ve started to think about a scene concept that confronts or concerns the state of mind that I’m in. The other day I watched this film called High Life with rRobert Pattinson and in the opening scene RP is comforting a baby, and the sound design really communicates like a reaction similar to an ASMR reaction, and other things to note aboout this film is that the entire set design is a full scale version of “cheating it” in the way we do in this studio, as the setting of the film is a spaceship, and of course Claire Denis didn’t have one, but rather created a spaceship through different filming locations

That latter point was mostly an aside though, the former point in regards to the use of relaxing ASMR in sound design to further communicate scenes that induce or facilitate tiredness is something I have been thinking about now. That is, shots or scenes that facilitate tiredness, trying to work out what can cause this and what facets are worth considering to facilitate this. Instantly I can think of a few points

• slow temporality
• ambient/amsr sound design
• the tone of voice of actors, very considered, calm, collected
• colour grading, maybe more dimly lit?

Another show that really does induce a similar situation is the Netflix television show Samurai Gourmet, as it very much induces or breeds into ones tiredness.
When I think about what it is about these shows that is causing this I think there is sound that is extremely ambient, and in Samurai Gourmet there is a distinctly relaxing tone of voice that is so soothing, and in High Life and Samurai Gourmet the shots are very static and seamless and relaxing

What I think when I mean a scene design that is very cnducive to a tired mood, and in order for this to be the case pretty much everything has to be relaxed a bit more. Action films are not what i’m thinking about; obviously.