The Sound Edit and Clarity

In the picture edit, the rough assembly begins the process of narrative clarification. The goal at the end of the rough picture assembly is a clear narrative in which performance and story progression can be evaluated. The goal of the rough sound edit is equivalent: to achieve believability of performance and a progressive sense of the story. Issues of dramatic emphasis and metaphor are left for the fine cut for sound as well as visuals. The finetuning of the sound edit is discussed in the next chapter. In this chapter, the concerns are achieving a narrative exposition parallel to the picture edit, developing the necessary sense of realism, and deciding how much or how little dialogue is necessary to achieve those goals.

Because sound is more rapidly processed by the viewer than are the visuals, the problem of believability is magnified. If the sound does not seem believable, the visuals will be undermined and audience involvement will be lost. Believable sound is thus central to the experience of the film. Consequently, the most urgent task of the sound edit is to create believable sound.

This chapter suggests the practical agenda for the first phase of the sound edit. Narrative clarity and believability are the primary goals. To set the process in context, it is useful to examine an overview of the sound edit. The issues of sound are specifically discussed in Chapters 2 and 24, and sound is an important topic of other chapters.

The three general categories of sound are dialogue, sound effects, and music. In documentary and sometimes in fiction film, the fourth category of narration (or, as it is called in the United Kingdom, commentary) is added.

Sound clarity in dialogue is so important that separate tracks are used for the principal actors, and other tracks are used for important secondary characters. Separate tracks are used for sound effects, and separate tracks are used for music. This degree of separation provides maximum flexibility for the sound engineer when the sound tracks are eventually mixed together. The master mix might incorporate from 6 to 60 individual tracks. The greater the number of tracks, the greater the flexibility for the sound mixer. Sound separation, whether of effects or dialogue, allows sounds to be layered and provides the clarity that ensures that a key line of dialogue is not undermined by a sound effect or drowned out by music. The producer, director, editor, and sound mixer look for more than clarity in the mix; they also want dramatic emphasis and highlighting. They use contrast to underscore meaning. The key word here is orchestration. When mixed, the sound tracks yield levels of meaning that are unavailable from a single sound track.

The separation of sound effects makes possible a smoother transition from one sound to another. The mixer need only fade out one effect and fade up another. An equally useful technique is to use a continuing sound over two disparate visuals. Even if the visuals take place in different locations and relate to different dramatic purposes, the continuity of a sound, whether an effect or a piece of dialogue, implies a link between the two shots or scenes. The sound mix can thus separate or link; it can imply the passage of time or the continuity of time. How to use sound is decided in the sound mix.

The work associated with the mix itself is substantial: the creation of up to 60 tracks in a feature film. Not all of those tracks are created on location or on a set. Original sound is an important element in the creation of the sound tracks, but manufactured sound is equally important. In sound effects and dialogue tracks, sound is manufactured in the name of believability during the post-production process. Dialogue is often redubbed or looped to strengthen intonation or intention. This is done in a studio with the performer redelivering her lines as she watches a projection of the performance.

Sound effects libraries, re-created effects that sound like a slap or a cricket or a footstep, and synthesized sound effects are all available during the postproduction process. Music, however, is created and re-created separately in post-production. Narration is often written at this stage to underscore or clarify the visuals.

All of these sound details are worked out in the editing phase. What the production has not provided in original sound will be created in postproduction. Because of the number of tracks used, the sound edit is even more elaborate and requires many more decisions than the picture edit. Because a wrong decision can undermine the visuals so readily, the sound edit is complex and critical. Without an effective sound track, the visuals will not succeed.

   GENERAL GOALS OF THE SOUND EDIT

The first task that the editor faces is determining the narrative point of the scene. The narrative point must be supported or, more precisely, surrounded by sound. In a film like Gillo Pontecorvo's The Battle of Algiers (1965), which was a dramatic re-creation of the Algerian struggle for independence from France, authenticity is central to our involvement with the film's story. Because the film was composed entirely of re-created footage (not newsreel footage) of the war, the sound effects and the timbre of the sound had to mimic the authenticity of the news. Nothing on the sound track could suggest a film set. Consequently, the “liveness” of the effects and dialogue had to be as close to cinema verité as possible. Particular sounds unique to the Algerian location and culture had to be included to reinforce the film's sense of place and time.

William Friedkin's Sorcerer (1977), a remake of the French classic, The Wages of Fear (1952), used a similar strategy to establish credibility. Although the story is fiction, Friedkin revealed the history of each of the four lead characters in the prologue. He made those histories as realistic as possible. One of the characters, a Palestinian, is shown on a terrorist bombing mission in Jerusalem. The attack is presented exclusively in cinema verité fashion. The sounds of daytime activity in Jerusalem, the explosion, and its aftermath are presented in a loud, unadulterated fashion. Friedkin seems to have designed the sound to be as raw as the visuals. This sequence is powerful until the artifice of the musical track by Tangerine Dream reminds us that we are watching a film. The music works against the narrative tone of the scene, but the use of music is not the sound editor's decision. The editor's goal is to find and deploy sounds that in tone and intent support the narrative goal of the scene.

A scene has an emotional intention as well as a general narrative point, and this too can be culled and supported by the sound track. In his classic Cries and Whispers (1972), Ingmar Bergman used an opening that relies exclusively on sound effects for its impact. The film tells the story of a young woman (Harriet Andersson) who is dying of cancer. She lives on an estate where her two sisters and a housekeeper attend to her. The opening sequence has no dialogue, and is lengthy at 5 minutes. It is dawn. A series of images of the estate are followed by a series of images of clocks in the house. Finally, we see the sisters, who are all asleep. The young woman who is ill soon wakes in pain.

The sound effects are presented in a heightened tone that is far louder than the natural sounds. A bell rings loudly to announce the time. When the character wakes, her breathing is added to the ticking clock and the ringing bell. Her breathing, which is labored and occasionally broken by a sudden pain, is as loud as the delivery of a line of dialogue.

The emotional character of the scene suggests the continuity of time and life. Occasionally, a change is brought home by the nature of breathing, which can be difficult or even threatened. The contrast of the temporary nature of life in the midst of the continuity of time, which is represented here by the clock, is both the tragedy of human life (it ends) and the essence of the natural context for life (it continues with the regularity of a clock). The close-ups Bergman used to visually present the clocks and the women are magnified in their intensity by the pitch of the sound effects and by the way they are used to break the silence. The title of the film couldn't be more apt; it refers to the sounds of dying.

In the next scene, the woman writes in her diary and speaks the narration. The same pitch is used for the sound of the lifting of the inkwell and the scratch of the pen. Both have more force than the voice of the character. They prepare us emotionally for the scene that follows.

It is not necessary to rely exclusively on sound effects for emotional tone. Istvan Szabo opened Mephisto (1981) with the presentation of an opera. The diva is clearly enjoying her performance, as is the audience. As the performance ends, Szabo held the applause and cut to a dressing room backstage where Hernrich Hofflin (Klaus Maria Brandauer), the Mephisto of the story, is torn apart with jealous rage. He cries and beats himself as the audience applauds the diva. This linking of her fame and his envy frames the emotional core of the story. Although he compliments her in the next scene, we know his true character, which was revealed through sound.

   SPECIFIC GOALS OF THE SOUND EDIT

Every story has a sense of time and place that must be created visually and aurally. We have already discussed the newsreel allusions in Sorcerer and The Battle of Algiers. This technique works fine, but not every film is set during the past 50 years. Many are set much further in the past or even in the future. The need of these films to establish credibility is no less than that of a contemporary story. Examples illustrate the problem and suggest possible solutions.

Jean-Jacques Annaud's The Bear (1989) is set in British Columbia about a hundred years ago. The film tells the story of an orphaned bear cub that is adopted by an adult male brown bear. Their experience of civilization, represented by two hunters, is the backbone of the story.

There is some dialogue in the film, but for all intents and purposes, the film relies principally on sound effects and music. Consequently, the sound effects are very important to the film. Annaud used them as most directors use dialogue. He created identifiable effects to individualize the animals. For the most part, he used a symphony of natural sounds. The only exception is the humanized sound that emanates from the bear cub. Throughout the film, the cub sounds increasingly like a human infant. Annaud's intention may have been to enhance our emotional identification with a nonhuman main character. Except for this one sound exaggeration, Annaud's use of sound was remarkably naturalistic to the point of austerity. The naturalism of the sound creates a believability about the time and place. The costumes and mode of speech only confirm that sense of time and place.

One sound moment is worth noting because it is the dramatic high point of the film. The adult bear comes upon one of the hunters who wounded him earlier. They have come back with dogs to search for him. The hunter left the camp to find some water. As he drinks, the bear approaches him. The bear does not attack, but instead roars his disapproval from about a foot away. The pitch of the roar is menacing and violent. The hunter covers his ears in pain and terror. This stand-off seems to continue for quite a long time until the bear decides that he has punished the human for harming him and leaves. The hunter runs to retrieve his rifle and prepares to kill the retreating bear. Then, however, he abandons his goal. The bear stood down his foe, the human, and by allowing him to live, invited him to change his behavior. This entire scene revolves around the single sound effect of the bear's roar. Never has the fury and the beauty of nature been more evocatively portrayed.

A second example is Edward Zwick's Glory (1989). We have many photographs of the Civil War, but we have no sense of the sounds of that conflict. In this film, Zwick created an emotionally powerful portrait of war's violence and its opportunity for dignity and self-sacrifice. Glory tells the story of the 54th Regiment, which was the first black Union regiment to fight during the Civil War.

The regiment is trained and led by Colonel Robert Shaw (Matthew Broderick), a Boston blue blood. Zwick used the sounds of war—muskets, cannons, horses’ hooves, men's cries—to re-create the immediate character of war. Zwick also used music and dialogue to set in context the complex human issues of the film: the struggle to act with dignity to transcend the differences among blacks and whites, to find the common humanity that bonds these men despite their different goals. Zwick often relied on closeups to underscore the emotional character of the scenes. However, it is the orchestration of the sound that convinces us of the time and place.

Just as sounds that create a sense of time and place are crucial, so too are sounds that are associated with various characters throughout the film. The sound motifs condition the audience emotionally for the intervention, arrival, or actions of a particular character. They can and should be introduced as early in the editing stage as possible. They can be very useful in the rough cut, where they help clarify the narrative functions of the characters and provide a sound association for those characters as we move through the story.

The Seventh Sign (1988), by Australian filmmaker Carl Schultz, illustrates the successful use of sound motifs. The film, about an anticipated cataclysm that will destroy the Earth, is a struggle between good, represented by an angel (Jurgen Prochnow), and evil, in the form of Satan's representative, Father Lucci. Although the story moves from Haiti to the Negev Desert, the microstory is about a young couple (Demi Moore and Michael Biehn) from Venice, California. They are expecting a child. The angel rents a room in their home to protect the child.

The film's characters are surrounded by the sounds of nature, which are forcefully presented. Because the cataclysm that will destroy the Earth will be a natural disaster, the foreboding presence of nature is the sound motif that foreshadows the disaster. A liturgical chorus introduces the angel's first appearance in Haiti and signals his reappearance in the film. The sounds of children are associated with the pregnant woman. When we see her in the doctor's office, at a nursery school, or on a playground, she is surrounded by the sounds of children.

The use of sound motifs can help shape a story that requires many characters and many locations. They are not as necessary for less ambitious stories that have few locations. However, as an editing device, sound motifs are often useful and may be used even in small-scale films.

Finally, sound can be scaled down to move a scene away from naturalism and believability. In Valmont (1989), Miles Forman decided to work against the natural drama of the climax of the film. Valmont has provoked a young rival to a duel and has arrived at the appointed place in a drunken state. This is the final step in his self-destruction.

Forman chose not to show on screen the moment of Valmont's death. He used the sound in the scene to work against the expected emotional build-up. He stylized the sound effects to make them seem less than natural. The austerity of sound in this scene does much to undermine its emotional potential. The nonspecificity of the sound and its lack of directedness conform to Forman's visual approach to Valmont's death. Forman's subtlety is instructive to the editor: Sound can be used to build up or to down play a scene.

   REALISM AS A GOAL

Naturalistic sound effects and believable dialogue are the basis for creating a realistic film. How far should the editor proceed to achieve this goal? The answer to this question is as important as the editor's understanding of the narrative point and emotional character of a scene.

In the rough cut, the editor must begin to catalogue a series of sounds that will support the realism of a scene. These sounds can be the underpinnings to the narrative and dramatic center of the scene, or they can be deeper background sounds that support the film's sense of realism. It's likely that the sounds captured on location during filming are not pronounced enough to be dramatically useful because they are lost in the delivery of the dialogue. These sounds will have to be recaptured or re-created for the film's sound track. The first step is to catalogue the necessary sounds.

After the sounds have been recorded, they are laid down on one of the numerous effects tracks so that they can be tested with the visual to which they are related. This process is followed for all of the sound effects so that the various effects can always be heard in relation to the scene's visuals. To build up these tracks for maximum flexibility, the sound effects are laid down in such a way that they overlap other sounds. They can thus be faded in or out as needed during the actual sound mix. However, the editor cannot match-cut one sound effect to another as he would do for visuals that flow into one another. The effects must be available to highlight the visuals and make them seem more real, but the effects must be organized for the mix in such a way that one sound does not abruptly end or seque to another sound. This would be disruptive and would draw attention to itself rather than help create the necessary sense of realism.

The same principle applies to dialogue. If the sound of the dialogue seems imperfect, the performance or the position of the microphone undermine the visual. Sometimes a scene can be post-dubbed in a sound studio; more often, though, the scene has to be reshot. The delivery of the dialogue must contribute to the film's sense of realism.

   DIALOGUE AS SOUND

A key question related to the narrative goal of a scene is whether the dialogue plays a central role. Numerous directors use dialogue indirectly. Although this is the exception, some directors—like Robert Altman, Richard Lester, and, more recently, Jim Jarmusch and Terry Malick—have used dialogue as a sound effect rather than for the information it imparts.

This question must be asked throughout the sound edit because some dialogue is crucial, and some is not. For the editor, the distinction between the two categories is important. With the exception of Woody Allen (for whom language is central), many directors de-emphasize dialogue, which elevates the visual to greater importance and reduces language to the level of the sound effect.

This is perhaps nowhere better illustrated than in the work of David Lynch. That is not to say that Lynch is not interested in sound. In fact, his work is extremely sophisticated in its deployment of sound. Language, however, is nothing but another sound in Lynch's work. A good example is Lynch's key film of the 1980s, Blue Velvet (1986), the story of a kidnapping in a small town. The main character attempts to help a singer whose husband and son have been kidnapped by the town criminal (Dennis Hopper). The young man and his girlfriend are not so much civic-minded as they are bored with small-town life, and they become voyeurs.

There is much dialogue in this film, but it does not help us understand the narrative or the motivation of the characters. Blue Velvet is an antinarrative story, and Lynch used dialogue to contribute to the story's contradictions. Language, which is traditionally used to bring clarity to issues or situations, is deployed in this film to add to the intentional confusion.

Lynch, trying to create a sensational and sensual experience, attempted to undermine all that is cerebral or rational. The first victim is the dialogue. We can hear it, but it doesn't help us to understand the story. The sound effects are used to underscore the emotional character of a scene (note the primal asthmatic scream of Hopper's character during the rape scene), but the dialogue takes us away from explanation, its usual role, thereby leading us to even greater anxiety as we experience the film. Lynch's unusual use of language is available to the editor. This option is increasingly used by filmmakers.

   THE SOUND EDIT AND THE DRAMATIC CORE

Every film has a central idea that drives the story. This dramatic core may be reinforced by the film's sound. It is useful to find a powerful sound idea to support that dramatic core from the perspective of the sound.

The sounds of nature deployed by Jean-Jacques Annaud in The Bear were mentioned earlier. Clint Eastwood used jazz improvisation in Bird (1988), the story of Charlie Parker. Performance pieces punctuate the film, but beyond that, the improvisation dictates the dramatic structure and the interplay of shots within scenes. Parker was a genius and an addict; improvisation was at the core of his musical and personal lives. Improvisation is both the core idea and the basic sound motif of the film.

The core dramatic idea of Sam Peckinpah's The Getaway is that any mode of life is preferable to a life in prison. Sam Peckinpah used the noise of a cotton-weaving machine in the opening 5 minutes of The Getaway (1972). The story of Doc McCoy (Steve McQueen), a Texas bank robber, opens in prison, where McCoy cannot qualify for parole without the intercession of a crime boss who wants McCoy to work for him. The sound of the machine carries over from the factory floor to the exercise yard to the parole hearing to McCoy's cell. With its loudness and regimentation, the machine represents death to this character.

Peckinpah used this repetitious sound effect to make a point about McCoy's loss of freedom in jail. He cannot get away from the sounds of the prison factory no matter how hard he tries. The sound's constancy is a reminder of his loss of freedom. Peckinpah intercut scenes of the parole hearing with shots of McCoy in various prison locations and images of McCoy and his wife making love. All the while, the sound is constant, uninterrupted by fantasy or reality. The value of freedom is the core dramatic idea of The Getaway. McCoy will do anything to get free and to maintain his freedom. This core concept is highlighted by the sound of the cottonweaving machine.

   THE SOUND EDIT AND THE PICTURE EDIT

To understand the goals of the rough sound edit, it is critical to understand the goals of the picture edit because they must proceed in tandem. They should help to clarify the narrative, and they should support the emotional character of the scene.

The deployment of particular types of sound can help the audience maintain a sense of time and place and can clarify the movement from place to place. It is useful to use special sounds as motifs for particular characters. Sound should help create and maintain a sense of realism throughout the film. The sound should support a particular dramatic core idea, just as the images should.

Music decisions are not made during the rough sound edit, but decisions regarding the use of dialogue and sound effects are. The goal of the rough edit should be to build up the tracks as much as possible, using a flexible number of tracks so that there is adequate opportunity to balance them for maximum dramatic effect during the sound mix.