What is the biggest collaborative art form of the past fifty years? Its the visual arts of movies and television and its amazing. Whole universes are created for an hour or three. Just to tell a simple tale. Ok sometimes its not just a simple tale. Sometimes it is the narrative of an entire generation.
The Batman was released recently and will probably be at your cinema. There is a new Batman movie every six to ten years. Often in threes. They are all very similar. Batman has villains to catch and by the end he does. Usually with a lot of explosions and cgi effects.
The Art of Sound
Its all art. Every part of it. The costumes, the lighting, the editing. The editors make and remake the film so many times. The music. I am very confident that most people can tell certain movie scores without realising they know them. But what about the sounds?
I sat in an empty cinema. Ten in the morning on a Thursday. Just me, all alone. Normally there is a hubbub, a susurrus of the pop-corn, conversations, babies crying. None of that was there. Just me and the three dimensional sound.
After two years this was my second time in the cinema. Last time was a family trip for Spider-Man: No Way Home. But by myself it was me and the soundscape. It placed you right in the midst of the scene. If the scene was in the rain, it sounded like you were in the rain. It was very immersive.
Essential Sounds
This is an art form. One that goes back to the early days of theatre. Music and sound effects were always being elaborated upon. Wether the orchestra or other practical sound generation. Radio took it to another level. Then came movies and television.
Sound is recorded stored and reused. That laugh track on most shows, the canned laughter comes from a live audience from a long time ago. We hear dead people. We hear them through speaker systems that surround the entire room we watch the movie in.
Each speaker is programmed to take a certain part of the sound. Immersing you in the world of the movie. The little sounds from the bat-suit, the footfalls on different surfaces, sound of the lights as they flicker. All of this co-ordinated by the sound engineers to bring you into the world on the screen.
Creative Sounds
The illusion of the movies requires many art forms to bring us into the world on the screen. It is the culmination of multiple technical and artistic efforts. Placement of microphones, recording and effects to amplify the sound. This is just recoding sounds.
Creating sounds is another level. Effects engineers searching for just the right sound for the scary slimy monsters tentacles. What about dog food slowly falling out of the can. Its just one of many. A part of the movie experience that we often overlook.
So why not have a watch at the many youtube videos on Ben Burtt one of the main sound designers from the original Star Wars movies. This does not look like art as you know it, but it is. A creative use of sound. Closer to painting and sculpture than you realise.