MEGHAN KHARSYNRAP
THE ART OF
Sounds
MAKING
A loud crash bellows as a girl falls off her horse , the harness clashing together , her subtle thump on the soft sand . Her horse shakes violently its hooves create and erratic CLOP CLOP sound as it runs away . I ' m watching her from within a local movie theatre .
It ' s late night outside but the movie is set in the afternoon - and I fully believe it is when coupled with the sounds of bird chirpings . I ' m immersed into the movie . But take away the sounds from the film ? Would I be feeling the same way ?
Movies today are a lot more immersive than they have ever been , cleverly incorporating the use of all our senses to gratify our needs for entertainment . It ' s not often one thinks about sounds in movies , and by sounds I don ' t mean just background music
or just the ambient noise . It is the sound of footsteps in a long marble hall ; it ' s the whoosh of the sea breeze into the cove of your ear ; it ' s bones breaking and flesh tearing apart ; it ' s the sound of anklets on a woman dancing and it could be the sound of stabbing - it doesn ' t always sound pretty but it sounds realistic . The sounds I ' m talking about are the incidental ones . The ones that make the movie seem natural or set in the real world .
It ' s HIGHLY unlikely there ' s any real bone breaking and flesh tearing happening on set . So who makes the sound ? Hence , the introduction of the Foley artist . Foley and its processes is extremely developed and recognized in the West courtesy of the talents of Jack Foley , a sound engineer who worked in post production who pioneered the field in the 1920s and 30s . In India , Foley is a small sector in the Bollywood industry . They ' re the ones who recreate sounds using an assortment of stuff : pots and pans , cloth and sand , coconut shells and brushes , wooden crates , fruits ! How ?
A foley artist would simply tell you to snap a handful celery or carrot apart if you want something to sound like bones breaking . Foley artists are geniuses in their own way , in their dimly lit , heavily stocked studios they create sounds for the craziest things , things that don ’ t exist in the natural world- like web slinging from spider man , or wizards and their spells . A Foley artists imagination is wild . It has to be if they can think up that the crackle of fire could be replicated by simply scrunching plastic . They ' ve figured out how to use empty coconut shells to make the sound of horse hooves galloping through the land . They just press the shells on a muddy surface rhythmically matching the visual in the film . They cut open raw coconut with fleshy insides to sound like chopping a head off .
Sounds don ' t just characterise scenes in the film it also gives you perspective or context . It ' s why in an adventure film if you hear the water rushing through before you can even see it you might assume its a stream . You ' ll unintentionally want to navigate the lost kids in the movie to the stream . Sounds can also create moods .
The sound of thunder and drizzling can make you feel gloomy , birds chirping could be associated with a bright morning , empty halls and resonating footsteps could give you a sense of being watched or a sense of loneliness and when coupled with matching visuals the movies and sounds create worlds altogether .
The Score Magazine
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