This past week, I went down to Mornington peninsula with 4 other friends on a photography expedition. Armed with a Canon EOS 1200 DSLR and a Nikon FE2 film SLR, it was a nice break from the world to go down south and indulge in the incredible natural world.
There’ll be a follow up post about the developed film, but I gotta say, it was a little daunting. I only had about 25 shots a roll, and neglected to bring more than one. Oopsie! I was also nervous because the night before, I had managed to tear apart my last film roll trying to take it out of the camera. Lesson learned: Read the manual.
The shoot itself was daunting, because the beach (whose name I forget) and rocky rock pools that we visited was the epitome of ‘treacherous nature.’ Clambering up rocks and over agonisingly lumpy stones was exhausting, but worth it entirely as we saw the ocean breathing and crashing so close to us.
I like to think of Australian film director and former music video director Baz Lurhmann as a king of sound design. He uses diegetic sound in a way that is powerful and gripping, creating vibrant worlds that seem to assault the senses with exaggerated noises, foley and sound effects.
A scene that perfectly embodies the Lurhmann use of sound is from his 2001 film Moulin Rouge, early on in the narrative when protagonist Christian (Ewan McGregor) enters the Parisian nightclub for the first time.
Here, Lurhmann’s experience in making music videos is shown clearly; this is essentially an enormous music video. We hear several different songs, all MODERN songs, not of the year the film is set in (1899): Because We Can (Fatboy Slim) Lady Marmalade (P!nk, Lil Kim, Christina Aguilera, Mya) and Smells Like Teen Spirit (Nirvana). Lurhmann often uses contemporary, catchy and rhythmic music in his films regardless of whether or not they fit with the time period; this is seen and heard in the Great Gatsby (2013). The use of modern music, particularly music associated with dancing and partying, creates a surreal atmosphere. It feels surreal in the sense that despite being in a different era and time, we can relate across time periods to the partygoing atmosphere.
Additionally, throughout the scene, the diegetic sound is clearly pronounced; the partygoers stamp in time to the beat, their clothes rustling is exagerrated, and as the scene progresses these sounds become more exaggerated, and emphasise a sense of the wild, rambunctious and unbridled excitement of the club. Additionally, the audience feels sucked into this hypnotic psycadelic whirlwind of the Moulin Rouge, and the use of the modern upbeat soundtracks allow them to relate to the scene; a wild Friday night at a bar or club.
Baz Lurhmann’s unbridled and indulgent use of sound and music sets him apart from other mainstream filmmakers, making him a king of sound design.
The most I’ve understood about anything related to sound in my life has been how tempo and beat works; I used to dance when I was a kid, and you’d get a glare if you missed your cue. Thus, I have little interest in the finetuned details of the physics and nuances of sound/music/etc.
At the same time, however, I have always had a significant interest in editing films with sounds, music, soundtracks, foley, etc; so clearly, I have a little work to do in terms of getting a sense of the whole shemozzle.
Going through the reading given on Sound was my first step in understanding sound in media, and focused on the technical and physical aspects of how sound occurs, how we hear it, and how we can record it. Now that I know big words, like that cardioid, super cardioid and hyper cardioid microphones are the kinds of mikes good for recording sound from a single perspective, I feel as though I am clearly the no.1 expert on everything aural even though just trying to press the chords on a guitar cramps up my arm.
