Randy Thom inteview: Part Three

Hey everyone this is the final part of  randy thoms interview, in the last post I wrote down some of the bullet points that randy thom mentioned about what sound can do for a film, I will talk about how you will be able to do some of things with examples that you could use

Heres the list again.

·      Suggest a mood evoke a feeling

·      Set a pace

·      Indicate a geographical locale

·      Indicate a historical period

·      Clarify the plot

·      Define a character

·      Connect otherwise unconnected ideas characters, places images or moments

·      Heighten realism or diminish it

·      Draw attention to detail or away from it

·      Indicate changes in time

·      Smooth otherwise abrupt changes between shots or sscenes

·      Emphasize a transition for dramatic effect

·      Describe an acoustic space

·      Startle or soothe

Set a pace: this works hand in hand with the picture, for example the film city of god the opening chicken scene is cut really fast with lots of different scenes within a minute and the sound is acting in the same way along with a fast paced song.

Indicate a historical period: one way to do this that you can use even without a picture is the sound of spurs, when you hear this sound you automatically think of an old western.

Connect ideas or images together: this is one of the simplest ones you can do, you can basically have a sound linger onto the next scene or have music playing over a montage of images which tells the viewer that it is connected in some form

Emphasize a transition for dramatic effect: this one if a pretty fun one to do, I don’t remember the film name but it one scene it went from a woman screaming to the sound of a drill, it worked great.

There you have a few examples of the list, try to imagine how you would create the other asp

Randy Thom interview: Part two

 Hey everyone so this is part two of the Randy Thom interview, this next part will talk about the topic of editing picture with sound in mind, this will primarily focus on film editors rather than sound designers however its useful to know if the editor your working with has sound in mind while editing.

One technique that he mentions is a technique that walter murch uses who is a film editor and sound designer as mention in my previous blog posts. The technique involves editing the picture without hearing the synced sound track, you are editing the picture in silence. He says that this approach can ironically be a great boon to the use of sound in the movie. He also says that if the editor can imagine the sound which might eventually accompany a scene rather than listen to the rough dis-continuous, often annoying sync track then the cutting will be more likely to leave room for those beats in which sound other than dialogue will eventually make its contribution. I think this makes a lot of sense, I have only edited a few times and while editing the scenes together the audio was quite annoying and distracted me from making certain cuts and transitions that I might have done if I were working in silence.

He also lists a few bullet points of what sound can do for a film

·      Suggest a mood evoke a feeling

·      Set a pace

·      Indicate a geographical locale

·      Indicate a historical period

·      Clarify the plot

·      Define a character

·      Connect otherwise unconnected ideas characters, places images or moments

·      Heighten realism or diminish it

·      Draw attention to detail or away from it

·      Indicate changes in time

·      Smooth otherwise abrupt changes between shots or sscenes

·      Emphasize a transition for dramatic effect

·      Describe an acoustic space

·      Startle or soothe

Randy thom interview: part 1

So I found this interview of Randy Thom who is one of the best sound designers in my book as well. His works include forest gump, flight, how to train your dragon, coralline, bolt, Madagascar and many many more! Like always feel free to view his extensive list of works on IMDB to find out all the films he has worked on.

So this interview I found he talks about a lot of things, which is why I have to break this down into about 3 parts. Oh the name of the interview is designing a film for sound, you can find it here, you should definitely read it whenever anyone has the chance to.

One thing that he talks about that’s really interesting is how sound can influence the picture as well as vice versa how picture influences sound. What he means by this(also taking other aspects of the interview in context) is that you cannot create a great film thinking that the picture side is its own entity compared to the sound side. They should be influencing each other within one another; he uses the films stars and apocalypse now as an example of sound and picture influencing each other. In an earlier post I wrote about the scene in apocalypse now that had the helicopters flying into the village, that scene is a perfect example of both picture and sound being equal aspects of the film, without the other the scene would not make sense or would not have the same emotion or context that it gave.