While procrastinating with my housemate, we watched these Michael Cusack films/animated shorts. At first I was like, ‘we need to stop… I have to analyse soundscapes for research’, but then I was like, ‘oh damn these are pretty good soundscapes’.
The above, Cinema Experience, is a great video because it is about sound, and how one small horrible sound can ruin EVERYTHING. In this case, it is some fool rustling with a packet of chips in the cinema. As a frequent cinema goer and cinephile, I understand the protagonist’s frustration with this man. People should not eat chips in the cinema. They are a noisy food. They sell popcorn in an open box for a reason. They don’t sell chips for a reason. If you go to a cinema and they sell chips then you can kiss your all consuming cinema experience goodbye.
Anyway, so in this the sound of the chips rustling crescendos as it gets more and more annoying to this man. As a technique, I would describe it as drawing attention to one sound in a soundscape to highlight it’s importance to the narrative/story.
Also, as the chip rustling intensifies, you get different chip tracks coming in from different sides of stereo. It’s pretty intense. It’s as if everyone around him is rustling chips and it’s driving him insane (although we know it’s just the one guy).
For my project, I could try using different tracks coming in from L and R in stereo, and layering them in that way. I could also try singling out one sound and intensifying it… Maybe a milk sound… Or the sound of the wind…
Anyway, back to ‘legitimate’ study and not just ruminating on youtube videos.
