-
I want to start by doing an experiment.
-
I'm going to play three videos
of a rainy day.
-
But I've replaced the audio
of one of the videos,
-
and instead of the sound of rain,
-
I've added the sound of bacon frying.
-
So I want you think carefully
which one the clip with the bacon is.
-
(Rain sounds)
-
(Rain sounds)
-
(Rain sounds)
-
All right.
-
Actually, I lied.
-
They're all bacon.
-
(Bacon sizzles)
-
(Applause)
-
My point here isn't really
to make you hungry
-
every time you see a rainy scene,
-
but it's to show that our brains
are conditioned to embrace the lies.
-
We're not looking for accuracy.
-
So on the subject of deception,
-
I wanted to quote one
of my favorite authors.
-
In "The Decay of Lying,"
Oscar Wilde establishes the idea
-
that all bad art comes from copying
nature and being realistic;
-
and all great art comes
from lying and deceiving,
-
and telling beautiful, untrue things.
-
So when you're watching a movie
-
and a phone rings,
-
it's not actually ringing.
-
It's been added later
in postproduction in a studio.
-
All of the sounds you hear are fake.
-
Everything, apart from the dialogue,
-
is fake.
-
When you watch a movie and you see
a bird flapping its wings --
-
(Wings flap)
-
They haven't really recorded the bird.
-
It sounds a lot more realistic
if you record a sheet
-
or shaking kitchen gloves.
-
(Wings flap)
-
The burning of a cigarette up close --
-
(Cigarette burns)
-
It actually sounds a lot more authentic
-
if you take a small Saran Wrap ball
-
and release it.
-
(Cigarette burns)
-
Punches?
-
(Punch)
-
Oops, let me play that again.
-
(Punch)
-
That's often done by sticking
a knife in vegetables,
-
usually cabbage.
-
(Punch)
-
The next one -- it's breaking bones.
-
(Bones break)
-
Well, no one was really harmed.
-
It's actually ...
-
breaking celery or frozen lettuce.
-
(Celery breaks)
-
(Laughter)
-
Making the right sounds
is not always as easy
-
as a trip to the supermarket
-
and going to the vegetable section.
-
But it's often a lot more
complicated than that.
-
So let's reverse-engineer together
-
the creation of a sound effect.
-
One of my favorite stories
comes from Frank Serafine.
-
He's a contributor to our library,
-
and a great sound designer for "Tron"
and "Star Trek" and others.
-
He was part of the Paramount team
that won the Oscar for best sound
-
for "The Hunt for Red October."
-
In this cold-war classic, in the '90s,
-
they were asked to produce the sound
of the propeller of the submarine.
-
So they had a small problem:
-
they couldn't really find
a submarine in West Hollywood.
-
So basically, what they did is,
-
they went to a friend's swimming pool,
-
and Frank performed
a cannonball, or "Boba [Fett]."
-
They placed an underwater mic
-
and an overhead mic
outside the swimming pool.
-
So here's what the underwater
mic sounds like.
-
(Underwater plunge)
-
Adding the overhead mic,
-
it sounded a bit like this:
-
(Water splashes)
-
So now they took the sound
and pitched it one octave down,
-
sort of like slowing down a record.
-
(Water splashes at lower octave)
-
And then they removed
a lot of the high frequencies.
-
(Water splashes)
-
And pitched it down another octave.
-
(Water splashes at lower octave)
-
And then they added
a little bit of the splash
-
from the overhead microphone.
-
(Water splashes)
-
And by looping and repeating that sound,
-
they got this:
-
(Propeller churns)
-
So, creativity and technology put together
in order to create the illusion
-
that we're inside the submarine.
-
But once you've created your sounds
-
and you've synced them to the image,
-
you want those sounds to live
in the world of the story.
-
And one the best ways to do
that is to add reverb.
-
So this is the first audio tool
I want to talk about.
-
Reverberation, or reverb,
is the persistence of the sound
-
after the original sound has ended.
-
So it's sort of like the --
-
all the reflections from the materials,
-
the objects and the walls
around the sound.
-
Take, for example, the sound of a gunshot.
-
The original sound is less
than half a second long.
-
(Gunshot)
-
By adding reverb,
-
we can make it sound like
it was recorded inside a bathroom.
-
(Bathroom gunshot)
-
Or like it was recorded
inside a chapel or a church.
-
(Church gunshot)
-
Or in a canyon.
-
(Canyon gunshot)
-
So reverb gives us a lot of information
-
about the space between the listener
and the original sound source.
-
If the sound is the taste,
-
then reverb is sort of like
the smell of the sound.
-
But reverb can do a lot more.
-
Listening to a sound
with a lot less reverberation
-
than the on-screen action
-
is going to immediately signify to us
-
that we're listening to a commentator,
-
to an objective narrator that's not
participating in the on-screen action.
-
Also, emotionally intimate
moments in cinema
-
are often heard with zero reverb,
-
because that's how it would sound
if someone was speaking inside our ear.
-
On the completely other side,
-
adding a lot of reverb to a voice
-
is going to make us think
that we're listening to a flashback,
-
or perhaps that we're inside
the head of a character
-
or that we're listening
to the voice of God
-
or, even more powerful in film,
-
Morgan Freeman.
-
(Laughter)
-
So --
-
(Applause)
-
But what are some other tools or hacks
-
that sound designers use?
-
Well, here's a really big one.
-
It's silence.
-
A few moments of silence
is going to make us pay attention.
-
And in the Western world,
-
we're not really used to verbal silences.
-
They're considered awkward or rude.
-
So silence preceding verbal communication
-
can create a lot of tension.
-
But imagine a really big Hollywood movie,
-
where it's full of explosions
and automatic guns.
-
Loud stops being loud
anymore, after a while.
-
So in a yin-yang way,
-
silence needs loudness
and loudness needs silence
-
for either of them to have any effect.
-
But what does silence mean?
-
Well, it depends how
it's used in each film.
-
Silence can place us inside
the head of a character,
-
or provoke thought.
-
We often relate silences with ...
-
contemplation,
-
meditation,
-
being deep in thought.
-
But apart from having one meaning,
-
silence becomes a blank canvas
-
upon which the viewer is invited
to the paint their own thoughts.
-
But I want to make it clear:
there is no such thing as silence.
-
And I know this sounds like the most
pretentious TED Talk statement ever.
-
But even if you were to enter
a room with zero reverberation
-
and zero external sounds,
-
you would still be able to hear
the pumping of your own blood.
-
And in cinema, traditionally,
there was never a silent moment
-
because of the sound of the projector.
-
And even in today's Dolby world,
-
there's not really any moment of silence
if you listen around you.
-
There's always some sort of noise.
-
Now, since there's no such
thing as silence,
-
what do filmmakers
and sound designers use?
-
Well, as a synonym,
they often use ambiences.
-
Ambiences are the unique background sounds
-
that are specific to each location.
-
Each location has a unique sound,
-
and each room has a unique sound,
-
which is called room tone.
-
So here's a recording
of a market in Morocco.
-
(Voices, music)
-
And here's a recording
of Times Square in New York.
-
(Traffic sounds, car horns, voices)
-
Room tone is the addition of all
the noises inside the room:
-
the ventilation, the heating, the fridge.
-
Here's a recording
of my apartment in Brooklyn.
-
(White noise)
-
Ambiences work in a most primal way.
-
They can speak directly
to our brain subconsciously.
-
So, birds chirping outside your window
may indicate normality,
-
perhaps because, as a species,
-
we've been used to that sound
every morning for millions of years.
-
(Birds chirp)
-
On the other hand, industrial sounds
have been introduced to us
-
a little more recently.
-
Even though I really like
them personally --
-
they've been used by one
of my heroes, David Lynch,
-
and his sound designer, Alan Splet --
-
industrial sounds often carry
negative connotations.
-
(Machine noises)
-
Now, sound effects can tap
into our emotional memory.
-
Occasionally, they can be so significant
-
that they become a character in a movie.
-
The sound of thunder may indicate
divine intervention or anger.
-
(Thunder)
-
Church bells can remind us
of the passing of time,
-
or perhaps our own mortality.
-
(Bells ring)
-
And breaking of glass can
indicate the end of a relationship
-
or a friendship.
-
(Glass breaks)
-
Scientists believe that dissonant sounds,
-
for example, brass or wind
instruments played very loud,
-
may remind us of animal howls in nature,
-
and therefore create a sense
of irritation or fear.
-
(Brass and wind instruments play)
-
So now we've spoken
about on-screen sounds.
-
But occasionally, the source
of a sound cannot be seen.
-
That's what we call offscreen sounds,
-
or "acousmatic."
-
Acousmatic sounds --
-
well, the term "acousmatic" comes
from Pythagoras in Ancient Greece,
-
who used to teach behind
a veil or curtain for years,
-
not revealing himself to his disciples.
-
I think the mathematician
and philosopher thought that,
-
in that way,
-
his students might focus
more on the voice,
-
and his words and its meaning,
-
rather than the visual of him speaking.
-
So sort of like The Wizard of Oz,
-
or "1984's" Big Brother,
-
separating the voice from its source,
-
separating cause and effect
-
sort of creates a sense
of ubiquity or panopticism,
-
and therefore, authority.
-
There's a strong tradition
of acousmatic sound.
-
Nuns in monasteries in Rome and Venice
used to sing in rooms
-
up in galleries close to the ceiling,
-
creating the illusion that we're listening
to angels up in the sky.
-
Richard Wagner famously
created the hidden orchestra
-
that was placed in a pit
between the stage and the audience.
-
And one of my heroes, Aphex Twin,
famously hid in dark corners of clubs.
-
I think what all these masters knew
is that by hiding the source,
-
you create a sense of mystery.
-
This has been seen
in cinema over and over,
-
with Hitchcock,
and Ridley Scott in "Alien."
-
Hearing a sound without knowing its source
-
is going to create some sort of tension.
-
Also, it can minimize certain visual
restrictions that directors have,
-
and can show something
that wasn't there during filming.
-
And if all this sounds
a little theoretical,
-
I wanted to play a little video.
-
(Toy squeaks)
-
(Typewriter)
-
(Drums)
-
(Ping-pong)
-
(Knives being sharpened)
-
(Record scratches)
-
(Sawing sounds)
-
(Woman screams)
-
What I'm sort of trying
to demonstrate with these tools
-
is that sound is a language.
-
It can trick us by transporting
us geographically;
-
it can change the mood;
-
it can set the pace;
-
it can make us laugh
or it can make us scared.
-
On a personal level, I fell
in love with that language
-
a few years ago,
-
and somehow managed to make it
into some sort of profession.
-
And I think with our work
through the sound library,
-
we're trying to kind of expand
the vocabulary of that language.
-
And in that way, we want
to offer the right tools
-
to sound designers,
-
filmmakers,
-
and video game and app designers,
-
to keep telling even better stories,
-
and creating even more beautiful lies.
-
So thanks for listening.
-
(Applause)