Sound Observations

Chandler's Warf
I sit on a bench with a thud and close my eyes. I hear an airplane that must be flying very low, it is loud. A woman is on her cell phone talking loudly, but I can't tell where her accent is from. I hear tires in the parking lot next to me, crunching slowly on the gravel. The water in the little wade pool behind me is slapping rhythmically on the cement slabs. The wind is wooshing in my ears, and rustling the leaves on the trees. There are a lot of trees, so there is a lot of rustling. I can hear the feet of little birds on the concrete slabs in the wade pool behind me. They sound like they are hopping around on rocks, concrete, and twigs, probably looking for food. They are making soft chirping noises at each other. Two men are walking on the boardwalk talking. Their voices are very low, and their feet make a deadened thud on the wooden walkway. I hear those birds again, plopping their beaks or heads in the water. I hear a constant noise, and since the restaurant behind me is closed, I realize that I am near the bridge, and the rather low rumble is the cars constantly going over the bridge. A motorcycle engine is revved, and a man coughs. My notebook flaps in the breeze. Cars drive by the nearest street and I hear the radio in the car. Stupid rap music. A woman's cell phone rings on the board walk, and it sounds like a chandelier tinkling. A man jogs past me, I hear his heavy breathing coming in gasps, and his feet sound like they are dragging so much I wonder if I will hear him crash to the ground. I don't. Three women walk by, two slurping on some kind of drink through plastic straws. The third is licking her ice cream cone so loud its embarrassing. As they walk past me I hear three pairs of plastic flip flops flapping on the wood. I hear a car door open and close, then a car trunk close. An engine starts, it sounds like a newer car. A speed boat rumbles past me loudly. A family walks by with a stroller, the wheels make an uneven thumping rhythm on the boardwalk. The kid is running ahead, his feet making that little kid thumping noise that always seems like a louder noise than their body weight can create. He is laughing, and his dad is running after him calling.

Bella's Cafe
The air conditioning is loud and low, and blocks out a lot of other sounds. The ice machine adds its own even louder, even lower monotonous tone. There is music playing quietly in the background, it is generic alternative music. A woman is tapping her plastic pen on the granite counter very quickly. Two other women are whispering so quietly that all i can here are their "s"'s. The door opens, and the classic two note bell rings, first a high note then a low note. The blender is now grinding ice, and someone is walking across the floor tiles. A man is talking, and I hear footsteps that are so uneven I have to look up. Oh, he has a peg leg. A flier next to me rustles from the air vent. Some piece of machinery is squeaking. I don't know what it is, but it is high pitched and constant. The peg leg man sighs as he flops down on a vinyl couch. The noise sounds like plastic deflating, if thats even possible. A girl is tapping her foot on the floor. A newspaper is crinkling. A plastic water bottle is plopped down on the granite counter. The cash register opens with a pop, there are high pitched buttons clicking, the noise of fingers picking up change from the register, the register closing, and finally the clinking of the change as it moves from cashier to customer.

Walter Murch Response

I thought this quote/short article thing was really interesting, especially when I reread it directly after reading the Bela Balazs article for this week. When reading it in class, I completely agreed that it was strange that the first sense we have in life does not stick with us once the other senses come. In many other aspects of our early life, our first impressions do stick. Our young years are said to be the best years to teach children everything from good manners, to multiple languages, to family relations. Even when we get older and become independent, our first experiences and habits tend to stick with us. I would think that spending 4 and a half months in a sack of nastiness that I probably wouldn't want to see anyhow, and having my only relief from what I can only imagine being a crappy period in my life, be the ability to hear everything around me including love from my parents and brothers, that I would not forget that first impression so quickly. Even though I much prefer to have the ability to see, obviously, I felt like the natural path for people to take would be to use sight as an accompaniment to sound, rather than vice versa.

Once I read the Balazs article, I started to understand parts of the question that Murch left unanswered. While Balazs does back up my thought that sight should accompany sound by pointing out that "science tell us in fact that the ear can distinguish more delicate nuances than our eye", he also explains the pitfalls of hearing that does not occur with sight. He explains that while our ears are more perceptive to subtle differences, sounds cannot be isolated from its acoustic environment as, in the context of the article, a close up shot in a film can be isolated from its visual environment.

In relation to the cinema, I absolutely love the sound track of a film. When making a project of my own, the sound effects, voice over and music can change the mood and tone of the film entirely. When I am in a theater I like the sound to be really loud because it is truly what draws me into the visuals of a film. However, it is true that when I leave the theater, I rarely talk about the sound, but about the movie, and therefore the visuals. But my decision on whether the movie was great or terrible is greatly influenced by the sound, even if it is in a more subtle way.

Reading Responses

Intro to "Avant-Garde Film"
I thought this article was pretty interesting, mainly because I really don't know much about the history of experimental filmmaking aside from what I learned in 6x1. I thought it was a really good point that even when people make films that are as far from conventional as humanly possible, dominant cinema is still implied because commercial film is what is drilled into our heads since birth. I never thought of it that way, that how I react to "avant-garde" is entirely related to my relationship with dominant cinema, but I guess it is true. I thought that was interesting because I always try to keep an open mind, but I suppose this isn't entirely my fault. I also thought it was interesting that MacDonald connected "pioneer" avant garde filmmakers of the 1960s to the pioneers of original movie making. It makes me wonder that if those first movie makers went the route of "avant-garde" from the very beginning, if what we now consider "conventional" would be the road less taken.

The Film as an Original Art Form
mm I'm not sure I buy into this one. It seemed to be way more judgmental than I would agree with. He seemed to be saying that just because narrative film borrows from other mediums that it is therefore inferior to documentary and experimental filmmaking, which is in his opinion more "pure". That seems strange to me because before film, artists still borrowed ideas from other mediums, and I don't see how it was okay for other types of art but not for film. Painters paint stories that they read from ancient literature or the bible, and sometimes writers write stories based on paintings or sculptures that they see. Some painters make extremely realistic images, and others are more "experimental" work. I feel like film has many parallels to other art forms, and it doesn't make sense that all of those similarities that film has with the "original" art forms are the same qualities that Richter is using to accuse film of being unoriginal.

Artist Manifesto

As a person, I believe in living to learn, explore, and enjoy the resources that I have. As an artist, I feel that it is important to bring those values into my work. I love to capture real life rather than the imaginary, which come in various forms, whether it is capturing a real person or event in the form or documentary, or attempting to capture my own real feelings and interests in the form of experimental filmmaking.
As a person I would rather spend my money on experiences and memories rather than plastic toys that will be forgotten the next year. Memories are never forgotten when they are captured on film, whether it is a single moment, or a year's worth of memories in motion.
I love to buy from garage sales, because buying a bike that was loved and has a long history is far more meaningful than a shiny new bike from a factory. In my experimental art, I love to take used objects and forgotten toys and give them a new life of abstraction and meaning through film. While I am far from perfect, I strive to live for the moment, learn everything I can, and reuse what I have to create new and honest work and experiences.