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Hi my name is Tony and this is Every
Frame a Painting. Let's take a drive.
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Today’s subject is Martin Scorsese
and the art of silence.
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Even though Scorsese is famous for his
use of music, one of his best traits
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is actually his deliberate and
powerful use of silence.
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In interviews he’s credited Frank Warner
for helping him do this on Raging Bull.
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--After a while, we had so many sound
effects, we always talked about pulling
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them out of the track and
letting things go silent.
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Again, like a numbing effect as if you
were hit in the ear too many times.
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Here’s a famous moment where
Jake LaMotta sets himself up
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almost a religious slaughter.
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If you go through Scorsese’s filmography
there are lots of interesting variations
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on this concept. And you can actually
compare him directly to others.
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For instance, in the original
Infernal Affairs,
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this crucial story moment
plays with music.
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But for the remake
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Regardless of which one you prefer,
there’s a full course of study material
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if you watch and compare these two films
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Sometimes, Scorsese builds the
entire film to a climax of sound
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and then silence. This example is
actually kinda extreme because
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the loudest moment in the entire movie
is immediately followed by the quietest.
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Other times the silence is the central
dramatic beat of the scene. Famously:
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--How the fuck am I funny? What the fuck
is so funny about me? Tell me.
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Tell me what's funny.
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--Get the fuck outta here, Tommy.
If you go back through fifty years of
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his career, you'll actually find a lot
of fascinating ways of using silence
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to heighten the subjectivity of a moment
to make a creepy scene even creepier
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to show us love at first sight
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and to bring our happiness
to a screeching halt.
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Well, maybe not a total halt.
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--I'm not leaving
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--I'm not fucking leaving
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I think best of all, these sound design
choices derive from character.
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The characters are all making important
choices that will have consequences:
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choosing to take the money
choosing not to fight back,
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choosing to hide their emotions
choosing not to trust someone,
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choosing to wait out the discomfort
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choosing to get back in the game
choosing to ignore that
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they aren't wanted.
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And because these moments are repeated
sparingly and deliberately in each movie
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the silence feels different
and it’s tied to a different theme.
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It also lets Scorsese build a cinematic
structure around the use of sound.
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For instance, in Raging Bull, almost
every fight scene is actually preceded
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by a quieter domestic moment.
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This lets him do certain things
like harsh cuts into punches.
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But it also underscores the theme of
the film, which is that the violence
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in the ring is just an extension
of the violence at home.
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By the time he’s attacking his brother,
you actually hear the same sounds
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that you heard in the ring.
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And it’s not just Scorsese who does
this kind of cinematic structure.
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For instance, Saving Private Ryan is
bookended by two long battles.
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And in each battle,
we get moment like this.
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At the beginning, we don’t know
any of these people.
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At the end, we know all of them.
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Now, you might disagree
with my interpretation here,
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but I’m convinced this character knows
he’s going to die, and in both moments,
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he’s accepting that and
continuing to fight.
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And I think it's a great example using
sound as an overall cinematic structure
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for the whole film.
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I do want to point out, this stuff isn’t
just a matter of good sound mixing
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though there is that. The sound mixers
can’t do this stuff if you design the
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movie with wall-to-wall
dialogue, effects and music.
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--I don't have anything
against a film being loud
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for a moment or two or a short period of
time. I think that's appropriate
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but if you have a sequence that's loud
for 20 or 30 minutes
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you've forgotten what it's like
to be quiet and so
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nothing really seems loud because
everything is loud.
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In popular cinema, writers and directors
have moved away from having
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any silence at all, or misusing
the silence they do have.
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And this is something that gets
appreciably worse each year.
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Consider. 1978.
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You might find that a bit cheesy,
but at least this movie is willing
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to use silence to make us
feel the character’s loss.
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And it’s willing to stay with him
through that entire silence.
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Meanwhile, in 2013
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This might seem silent but
there’s always music underneath.
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More importantly the “not-quite-silence”
is used to reward the character:
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he murders someone and gets a hug.
But if you watch the whole movie
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literally ever time there’s silence,
he gets a hug.
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So consider your silences
and deploy them deliberately.
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Don’t cheapen them by overusing
them for any dramatic scene.
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If you can build the film, structure it,
so that the silence derives
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from your characters and what
they’re feeling, then you get
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something better than just
silence: an emotional reaction
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--Which would be worse?
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To live as a monster or
to die as a good man?
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--Teddy?