Synthetic wind in harakiri

For my “re-sound” of Harakiri I figured that wind would play a very important part of the mix, in the original the wind which screeches in the ears of the two characters helps to establish the setting it is the main focus in the mix and sits on the same level as the sword clashes. For this reason I wanted to get it right, I felt that I needed to have some degree of control. While I could go out and record wind somewhere in london I felt that the technique of using a white noise generator would help me a great deal. The generator in question that I used is called noise. I got it a while back and knew that, if tailored correctly, it could be incredibly useful for synthesising wind at some point. After a bit of tweaking I eventually got it to a point where it felt like it fit with the amount the grass and the clothes of the characters were being buffeted by the wind. There is a certain quality to it that I feel matches the aesthetic of this slightly older film, it doesn’t sound extremely synthetic and has a slight fuzziness which I really like.

I think I will do a different, slightly more aggressive version which would come in at the most tense part of the fight, to really help with the tension.

NEW DIRECTIONS FOR RADIO DRAMA , notes

I recently went on another Jstor downloading spree and downloaded a piece written in the 80s by Geoffrey Hepinstall, the following is a series of notes and observations I took whilst reading that I’ve transcribed from my notebook.

“Radio as a dramatic medium needs to be more than a clearing house for work which can translate to its more prestigious rivals”

“when one thinks of the films of Peter Greenaway… or the fictions of Peter Akroyd, one asks why there are no equivalent names in Radio?

It’s not as easy to do abstract that will be actually listened to because it requires a certain attention that people doing their laundry and commuting to work can’t give, the audience for abstract work is already narrow but in a medium that is famous for being background listening it becomes even harder, this is still true today with podcasts and is definitely a concern of mine. Hepinstall talks about how he finds that there is a rigidity of roles and wants more space for freelance work. Ultimately he definitely has gotten what he wants, there is a wealth of producer/actor/sound editor/writers, myself included.

“the greater concern is with.. a lack of confidence in the medium”

I think this is less of an issue with podcasts, it is so easy to create and indie audio drama and you don’t really need to go through anyone else to get something made anymore.

“a narrower precept of serving the audience can result only in a slackness of presentation of presentation which will end in an eventual diminishing interest of any sort”

It’s clear that Hepinstall is thinking in terms if the mainstream, he is talking about BBC radio plays and how to make changes in the mainstream. He talks about how keeping in with mainstream and engaging audience sympathies canbest be done by subtly enlarging what they’re interested in.

“we may abandon the description of ‘radio play’ for that of ‘radio fiction'”

Audio paper draft

The following is the state my audio paper is currently in, right now it feels as if the majority of the paper will be centred around the discussion with the crew of Ghosts on a Train, I do not produce an actual play podcast and so instead of speculating I am going to go to the AP podcast in the network I am in.

I am going to talk about the relationship between the listener and the storyteller and the place that a sense of immersion takes in this relationship. In this case with a much more modern framing. I come from the world of Audio drama podcasts, the cousin of audio drama is the actual play podcast. Actual play is a form of storytelling where you have (usually) a group of people playing a tabletop role playing game. This can go from the extremely popular Dungeons and Dragons to more niche systems like Ghost Lines. 

Audio drama is what I do, it is the form of storytelling where a script comes to life, sometimes with a narrator, sometimes with sound effects, and sometimes with voice actors. The story can be emphasised with sound effects, the images conjured up by the words are strengthened in the minds of the listener with the help of ambiences and sound effects. There are whole extra narratives happening in the ambience of an audio drama: take, for example, the sounds of gunshots off in the distance which suggest many things, but can be more solidified into a moment with the context of the words, be it by narrator or character. Audio drama in this sense of well produced worlds lends itself really well to a sense of immersion. It’s something I feel Audio Drama can do so well and is one of the mediums strengths. This is not the only way of thinking though, 

“one must make it quite clear that the urge of the listener to imagine with the inner · eye is not worth encouraging, but, on the contrary, is a great hindrance to an appreciation of the real nature of wireless and the particular advantages that it alone can offer. “ 

while it is written in the context of radio in 1936, its still an interesting thought about what it is AD should be doing

This way of thinking I feel comes from a time when people in the world of radio were feeling threatened by cinema, its rising popularity in the 1930s and 40s represented a threat to what was previously the dominant form of entertainment. I can only speculate, but Arnheim perhaps felt the way to keep radio (or ‘wireless’ as he refers to it) relevant was to cover areas that cinema could and did not. Now though the landscape is different, podcasting has brought the audio medium a new aspect and a new life which I believe is not so threatened by cinema (a medium which is currently being threatened in its own right)

Actual play is a medium in which sessions of various tabletop role-playing games are recorded. These have existed in some form or another since the early 2000’s the more modern version of actual play podcasts owe their popularity to one of the most prolific and widely known actual play podcasts ‘critical role’ which was released in 2015. The typical setup of an AP podcast has a Game Master, and a few players. The role of the player is to create a character that they act as, rolling to see how successful their actions might be and having conversations in character. The players typically know little to nothing about the story that is being created. The GM however has control over the story and will plan out the situations that these characters find themselves in, they will also take the role of narrator and any character not played by a player.. The plot is constantly evolving, it is almost a living organism that responds to certain stimuli and will change depending on the circumstances (often a player behaving in a certain way or doing well/poorly with a roll) This, almost conversational, approach to telling a narrative is really quite unique. The role of sound is similar, it is used to emphasise and immerse, there is a slight challenge though as it is common practice for the GM and players to talk both as themselves and as the character/narrator, to discuss a ruling or crack a joke. This creates a strange sort of in-between space, where the sound can halt or continue and thwehe

I talked with Greg Carrobis of the actual play podcast Ghosts on a train about the experience of creating an actual play.

1) I’ve identified a sort of ‘grey space’ where the gm and players act as themselves for a moment, I can’t help but view everything from a more theatrical pov because of my parents but it’s sort of breaking the fourth wall right? In all mediums there is the understanding that this is fiction and there is a necessary suspending of disbelief, but when it comes to AP it feels like this suspension has to happen pretty frequently and the fourth wall is kind of… leant on a bit. I was just wondering what your thoughts are on this?

2) What’s your approach to doing sound in these grey spaces? Do you encourage them or try to edit it out mostly?

Experimental Foley, audio paper

For my audio paper I recorded a few sound effects for the purposes of emphasising the words in my audio paper, one of my ideas was to have a voice actor read out any citations I make and do sound that would suggest that they are a character in a scene, thus creating the feel of an audio drama. With this in mind then I recorded some foot steps which I intend to pan left and right as if the speaker is pacing up and down as well pairing it with clothes rustling and a general ambience.

Another sound I intend to use is a wide array of dice rolls, I think a large part of the paper will be in a discussion about actual play podcasts with a group from a podcast that I am in a network with. In order to give the listener a sense of what an actual play podcast sounds like, this will include ambience and sound effects that come in and out as well as the sounds of occasional dice rolling, added in at times that I feel will become clear

I find that a large part of what I talk about, in relation to audio drama at least, will involve talking about ambience as well as sound effects and so a large amount of my point will be emphasised by any atmos I end up making.

No-input score, Harakiri

Within the duel scene in Harakiri there are two instances of score, there is a slow buildup to when the enter the field, the long strings punctuated by the call of some animal follows them before the enter the field, the second instance is drums/strings which come in with a shot of the wind swept grass, we don’t see or hear the duel in this moment and it helps emphasise the sense of tension built up by the lack of score up to this point.

In order to work with no input I would have to take multiple takes of a score attempt, because no-input can be so unpredictable it is important that I give myself as many options to choose from and edit. By having a huge diversity of takes I will have my options opened. In my experiments I’ve found the sounds produced by no-input are very aggressive and demanding of attention and so my biggest challenge will be matching the energy of the scene in its silent tension building.

It is not impossible to be subtle with this technique. The pioneer of no-input mixing, Toshimaru Nakamura, manages to produce eerie soundscapes which are totally subtle and provides for me, in a way, a good example of what I should be trying to do and most likely the end product will be.

Ryoji Ikeda, data

Earlier this year I went to see an installation at 180 studios by artist Ryoji Ikeda. Ikeda uses an incredible mix of sound and visuals to explore the world of data and audio in what he calls “raw” states. The installation was a series of rooms each with a different display. There was a consistent aesthetic of black and white with occasional deviations, particularly in the last room. This room was a large space with 3 huge screens displaying various visualisations of different kinds of data, seismographic, weather, brains scans, mapping etc. All accompanied by a soundscape that perfectly embody the sounds of data, in my own practices of importing programs as raw data there are definitely sonic qualities in common. The soundscapes throughout utilised frequencies at the border of human hearing, the whole experience is like stretching out muscles that you barely use its uncomfortable at first but slowly becomes easier and feels more natural.

Overall the whole installation was a really unique experience, I think I have been waiting a long time for something as different as this. For installations and art pieces I always put huge value on if it gives me an experience I’ve never had before and can’t really get anywhere else, with this installation I totally felt as if I had been transported to a different realm and I have most definitely not experienced anything like this before.

Foley for Harakiri (1962)

Doing the foley today was not my first attempt at foley, however it is definitely my first try at doing it to video, I’ve done bits here and there in my audio drama Chain of Being (my favourite being flapping my coat at the mic for the wings of a gargoyle). However this is definitely a different process, there is far more guidance in the form of having the actions of the actors to follow along with, the force and timing and length of any action is layed out for you and as a performer you have to follow along in kind.

Today I mainly wanted to do the sword sounds, sheathing, and clashes. I brought in a spatula which has a really nice ring which we didn’t really use to its full capabilities but it was nice to be able to control it by placing our fingers further along to deaden the ring. I think for the other parts i will try and do more location based foley. The footsteps, for example, are one of the most prominent parts of the scene, they guide the audience through the scene and are going to be heard the most. Because of this I think I would like to do footsteps at a location in order to get more variety per step in order for it to not become grating. There was also a part in the scene where a sword is cut in half and while we did record he sword clash, I feel that it will require a bit more sound design than foley.

In terms of microphone choice for the unsheathing of the swords we used the Sennheiser 412 shotgun mic. This recorded in mono but the sounds of the unsheathing was not so important to capture in depth, and because I want to pan and mix these to be more directional it makes more sense to have them be mono. For the sword clashes though we figured that switching to the Neumann mic which records in stereo, because the number of actual sword clashes is quite few, having a more in depth sound makes more sense as it will make each one a lot more impactful.

I think choosing a scene with relatively few sound effects allows me to really focus in each one individually and give them a lot more care, the whole scene oozes tension and I really want each individual element to reflect contribute to that.

Storm Evol Devol group improvisation

In listening back to the group improvisation I find that they are both much lass chaotic than I expected. In being a participant I feel like I was struggling to consider my own place in the collective and focus on where my no input mixing fit. I had felt at the time that the sound was totally overpowering but in the recording it comes off as really subtle. The whole piece, indeed, feels really harmonious in the way all the elements come together. The musical elements sat really nicely on top of everything else, they don’t feel like they take the attention too much, or at least the whole thing doesn’t feel like a ‘song’ per se, just a composition which happens to use instruments.

Harakiri, Masaki Kobayashi (1962)

Harakiri is a film about Hanshiro, in some way avenging the death of his son in law, his daughter, and his child. He goes to Kageyu, a feudal lord, and requests permission to use his courtyard to perform Harakiri, a suicide ritual. What follows is the story of Hanshiro and how his past relates to a previous samurai, Chijiiwa, who came to the courtyard with the same request.

I chose this scene in particular because of the tension that builds up throughout its course, the simplicity brings total focus on to the characters, the sword clashes are few but when they do happen they are quick and short lived. Only much later does any music come in to act as a build up to the end of the fight. I would love to approach this sound with more modern techniques in mind, create a sense of immersion in the viewer, a well worked soundscape using good spatialisation techniques and good field recordings could help the viewer get a bit more lost in the scene.

In talking about the films soundtrack Andrea Grunert writes for thebigpicture:

Takemitsu’s soundtrack includes sound effects as well. The frequent clashing of swords, the noise of a fan being folded, and single chords on the biwa create a kind of acoustic punctuation. The minimalist use of music parallels the sobriety of the architecture, which Kobayashi explores in long travelling shots. The mise-en-scène is built on the oppositions between light and shadow, linearity and chaos, and other oppositions too – namely sound and silence – are fused into the soundtrack.

This could be a really interesting approach to take for a kind of score/soundscape to overlay certain moments in the scene in question, doing something with sounds which match the style and time period keeping the audience immersed in the film whilst still using more modern techniques

We Need to talk about Kevin, sound and point of view

I watched this film and, like many, was intensely disturbed and frustrated for Eva, the blame for the actions for her own child who she had great difficulty raising. It was, in the end, not really her fault yet the whole world seems to act as if it was.

The whole film is very clearly placed, figuratively, on the shoulders of Eva. We drift in and out of memories and day dreams in a way similar to her, a soft toy falling over in a memory shares the same foley as a basketball being bounced in the present. Her memories of La Tomatina are paired with the red-paint-filtered light coming in through her window. The sounds often do not match up exactly with what she is experiencing and this helps to get us in to the mindset of Eva, she is constantly disassociating, drifting in and out of reality, we are in her mind and so feel all this from her point of view. The most prominent example of this is the sounds of the sprinklers, a sound which has become intertwined with the memory of coming across the bodies of her husband and daughter. All of these pairings help to convey that every aspect of Eva’s life has been scarred by Kevin, everything is a reminder, be it by the looks and attitudes of people in the town or by sudden involuntary reminders.