Sound design, as we discussed in class, can cover a fair range of work from film work to toasters. A manufactured sound should have a purpose or function but does that sound faithfully reflect that function. The form of the sound may deliberately be non complimentary to the image or device that it will be attached to. Perhaps it would be acceptable for the latest version of Unreal Tournament to have a baby burp each time a gun is fired instead of a huge machine gun sound or perhaps each time your microwave sets of the annoying piezo ding it could instead say “Oi dickhead, get your crap out of this oven!!” Hmm, perhaps not.
I was going to jump right into talking about Ben Burtt but as far as film sound is concerned I couldn’t possibly have a blog on the subject without mentioning Jack Foley. So there you go. I mentioned him and so I don't go too far over the word count you'll have to look him up yourself.
The ‘lightsaber effect’ created by Ben Burtt for the 1977 film Star Wars is no doubt one of the most recognisable sound effect there is and people immediately recognise it and associate it with George Lucas’ epic saga. It has been sampled and used in a few other films since then, but people more often than not make a comment like “hey that’s a lightsaber noise.” The whole idea of the sound was to be unique while still sounding organic. Lucas apparently wanted to get away from the simple electronic sounds and effects of science fiction films of the time for his used universe. A lightsaber obviously doesn’t exist in the real world so Burtt was able to use artistic ideas to represent the form of the sound, but still kept a certain functional element to it by recording a doppler effect (which involved waving a microphone in front of a speaker while it played the buzz/humm noise) to create a sense of movement. For anyone interested in knowing anything further about the work of Ben Burtt, there is an excellent documentary on the DVD Star Wars Episode II – Attack of the Clones named “Films Are Not Released; They Escape.”
And while I’m in full nerd mode, a free cookie goes to the person who guesses what this is from.
Haines, Christian. 2007. “Audio Arts-What is Sound Design?” Seminar presented at the University of Adelaide, 24th July.
The Art of Foley. Philip Rodrigues Singer. “The Story of Jack Foley” http://www.marblehead.net/foley/jack.html (26th July 2007)
FilmSound.org. Sven E. Carlsson “Sound Design of Star Wars” http://www.filmsound.org/starwars/ (26th July 2007)
2 comments:
mmmm, anything to do with transformers by any chance ???
Hmm maybe, but definitely not from that piece of crap they're trying to pass off as a Transformer film. :)
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