Latest / Film Moon Stone - Film Reviews and Recomme / S01 - The Sound of the Void — Foley Art, Ice Acoustics, and Atmospheric Dread

Transcript

S01 - The Sound of the Void — Foley Art, Ice Acoustics, and Atmospheric Dread · Film Moon Stone - Film Reviews and Recomme

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: A pitch-black recording booth in the dead of winter. A heavy,
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: jagged block of frozen lake ice rests inside an aluminum tray.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: A sound artist wearing oversized studio headphones leans forward in
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: total silence, carefully pressing a copper contact microphone directly against
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: the frozen surface. He takes a pinch of coarse rock
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: salt and drops it onto the ice. Through the monitors,
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: you do not hear a simple crunch. You hear a terrifying,
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: metallic shriek, the microscopic fractures screaming like dying stars as
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: the frost splits open under internal pressure. In cinema, what
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: your eyes see on the screen is only half the spell.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: What your ears hear in the shadows is what truly
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: haunts your soul. Tonight, we step behind the acoustic curtain
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: to explore the hidden art of sound design, tactile foley craft,
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: and the terrifying power.
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: Of negative space in atmospheric cinema. This is Phil Moonstone.
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: I am Alberto Van Stone. Welcome back into the darkness
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: of the screening room, my friends.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: Before we dive into the sonic architecture of cinema tonight,
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: a heartfelt bow to our listening.
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: Community across the globe.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: Over on Instagram, Handel at Analog Real Archive sent in
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: a wonderful video restoring a vintage 1970s tape echo machine,
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: capturing that rich magnetic tape point. On YouTube, Sophie in
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: Montreal commented that she listens to our episodes on her
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: studio monitors with the lights completely turned off to catch
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: every subtle layer of sound.
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: And on Facebook, Liam Vance wrote, that a great film.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: Soundtrack should feel like an invisible character breathing right beside
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: you in the theater. Our standout comment this week across
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: all platforms, with over 8,900 likes on YouTube, came from
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: an aspiring audio engineer.
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: Named David, handler at Foley & Film.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: David asked, Alberto, we spend so much time discussing anamorphic lenses,
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: lighting ratios, and 35mm film grain, but what about the
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: sound of dread? When a film takes place in an
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: Arctic wasteland, a haunted forest, or an empty Gothic corridor,
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: how do sound designers create that suffocating sense of isolation
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: using practical Foley props, contact microphones, and the weapon of
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: absolute silence? David, my friend, you have struck the deepest
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: frequency of cinematic art. Because long ago, legendary director George
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: Lucas famously said that sound is 50% of the movie-going experience.
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: In dark fantasy, gothic cinema, and psychological horror, sound is
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: easily 80%. Today's chapter is called The Sound of the Void, Foliart,
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: Ice Acoustics, and Atmospheric Dread. Let us begin with a
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: fascinating psychological challenge. How do you make an audience sitting
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: inside a warm, comfortable, heated movie theater feel physically, bone-chillingly cold?
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: You cannot change the temperature of the room. The image
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: on the screen can show falling snow, but visual snow
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: on its own is merely white pixels or silver.
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: Halide crystals on film.
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: The sensation of freezing cold must enter through the auditory nerve.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: This is where the tactile genius of the Foley artist
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: comes alive. Foley artists are the unsung magicians of cinema
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: who perform and record everyday sound effects in sync with
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: the picture. To create the sound of footsteps trudging through
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: deep freezing Arctic snow, a Foley artist never uses real
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: snow because real snow melts under hot studio lights and
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: turns into silent slush within two minutes. Instead, they use
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: leather gloves filled with cornstarch or potato flour, rhythmically pressing
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: them into a wooden trough filled with dried cat litter
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: and rock salt.
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: The microscopic squeak of.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: The starch granules rubbing against each other perfectly mimics the
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: high-frequency crunch of compacted snow.
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: Crystals below zero degrees.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: When your ear hears that specific dry, sharp squeak, your
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: brain instantly triggers a physical memory of shivering, and the
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: hairs on your arms stand up. And then, consider the
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: extraordinary world of acoustic resonance and contact microphones. When filmmakers
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: want to capture the ancient, primeval dread of frozen northern landscapes,
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: traditional microphones often fail. because they only pick up airborne vibrations.
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: Pioneering sound designers travel to frozen lakes in Norway, Sweden,
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: and Canada, carrying piezo-contact microphones and hydrophones, microphones designed to
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: be frozen directly inside blocks of ice or submerged into
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: freezing deep water. Have you ever heard the natural sound
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: of a frozen lake shifting under sub-zero temperatures? It does
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: not sound like a cracking twig. Because sound waves travel
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: four times faster through solid ice than through air, the
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: high frequencies arrive at the microphone before the low frequencies.
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: This acoustic phenomenon is known as acoustic dispersion.
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: The shifting ice produces long, haunting, futuristic whistles, descending lasers,
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: and deep subterranean booms that sound like metallic whales calling.
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: Out from the abyss.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: When sound designers subtly weave these genuine natural ice recordings
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: underneath the music of a dark fantasy film, your subconscious
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: mind senses an ancient, indifferent intelligence waking up beneath the
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: frozen ground. And yet, the most sophisticated tool in a
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: master sound designer's arsenal is not sound at all.
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: It is the calculated weapon of absolute silence.
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: In modern commercial blockbuster cinema, sound has become deafeningly relentless.
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: Modern action movies suffer from what audio engineers call the
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: loudness war. Every explosion, every gunshot and every orchestral swell
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: is digitally compressed and turned up to the maximum volume threshold.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: When everything is loud, nothing is impactful. The human ear
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: experiences auditory fatigue and the tension evaporates completely. The true
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: masters of atmospheric cinema, visionaries like David Lynch, Andrei Tarkovsky,
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: and Ingmar Bergman, understood that the loudest moment in a
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: movie is the sudden absence of sound. Consider how a
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: master director builds dread in an empty hallway. They do
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: not blast you with an aggressive jump scare chord. Instead,
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: they gradually strip away the layers of sound. First, the
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: musical score quietly fades away. Then, the ambient outdoor wind disappears. Suddenly,
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: the acoustic space collapses until all that remains is a
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: low-frequency room tone, a subtle, vibrating hum recorded inside an
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: empty basement, pulsating.
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: At 18 hertz.
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: 18 hertz is right at the absolute threshold of human hearing.
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: You cannot consciously hear it, but your chest and your
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: eardrums physically feel the air pressure vibrating. It triggers an
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: innate biological response that ancient predators are near. And then,
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: in that suffocating vacuum of silence, the director drops a single, isolated,
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: practical sound. The wet drip of water from an iron pipe.
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: The slow, wooden creak of a floorboard shifting two rooms away.
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: The faint, rasping breath of an unseen creature hiding behind
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: the bedroom door. Because the silence around it was so complete,
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: that tiny sound hits the audience with the physical force
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: of a sledgehammer. Silence forces the viewer to lean forward,
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: hold their breath, and project their own deepest childhood fears
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: into the empty acoustic void. That, my friends, is the
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: true alchemy of cinema sound. The camera shows you the
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: world outside your window, but the microphone reaches straight into
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: the dark architecture of your own subconscious mind. It proves
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: that true terror and genuine wonder cannot be manufactured with
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: volume knobs or digital synthesizers. They must be carved out
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: of physical texture, real resonance, and the sacred courage to
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: let the darkness be completely quiet.
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: Thank you for listening to Phil Moonstone.
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: Make sure to follow the show wherever you get your podcasts,
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: leave your thoughts in the comments, and keep your wonder
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: alive in the dark.
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: I am Alberto Van Stone, and I will see you
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: on the silver screen.