1. The scene I have chosen if from the “Jiro Dreams of Sushi” (2011), from 11:56 to 12:16, it is a scene recorded chef Mizutani making a nigiri sushi. The sound in this scene is very silent; there is nothing except the sound of sushi making. Very silent sounds of the knife cutting delicate textures onto the fish and the “cling” sounds made by the containers were included in the scene, this silence continues until the sound of the interview kicks in when the sushi was almost finished then put on the plate. Overall this is a very silent scene, but this is also when the details can be shown. The very tiny sounds can represent the delicate process of making a sushi and how focused the chef was that he was not making any sound. In my opinion, this kind of scenes can make the audience focus harder than usual, because this scene is so different, it is unlike most parts of the film that are cover in human voices. This kind of detailed sound can bring the audience closer to the actual making of sushi due to the rarity of these sounds since you might not be able to hear it even though you are sitting on a sushi bar watching the chef making a sushi. Martin (2014) also stated “Documentary film strives to be closer to reality than feature film, closer to the object of its observation.” (p.288) So I think this kind of scenes really helped bringing the film to a higher level.
  2. For the sounds in my own documentary, I will mainly focus on the interviews. Because my whole film is composed by 2 or 3 interviews and those interviews will decide the flow of my film, I will try my best to make sure the audio quality is high enough. To record the clearest sounds I decided to use the wireless microphone so the sound can be recorded from the closest distance. As the cinematographer of this film, I am recording the journey of Samantha looking for the answer of “what is authentic Chinese food?” So in the introduction of the film I will use some footage that was shot on the street and the ambient sound of traffic will also be included. This sound can represent the journey and also let the audience feel like she is actually running to many different locations trying to find the answer.

 

Reference: Martin, J. (2014). Being there: the creative use of location and postproduction sound in documentaries. In W. J. Jong, E. Knudsen & J. Rothwell, Creative Documentary: Theory and Practice (pp. 288-304). Taylor and Francis.

Dustin Petersen. (2015, March 22). Jiro Dreams of Sushi 2011 720p BluRay [Film]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/Yu-RogMGslg