One of the more common things I’ve heard about film is how sound is the ‘second most important’ aspect of filmmaking. I’ve always found that to be an odd thing to say.
In my favourite Tony Scott film, Crimson Tide, a radio technician getting a signal is all that can stop a nuclear holocaust — Denzel Washington’s Hunter tells him, “I’m telling you if you do not get this radio up, a billion people are gonna die; now it’s all up to you, I know it’s a shitty deal but you got it, can you handle it?”
Suddenly he’s the most important person in the world.
A film set is no different. Except for the nuclear weapons.
While I’m sure people are mostly oversimplifying when they say sound is secondary in significance, I think it exposes a vibe — that ever-elusive quantity — that can be felt on some sets.
Filmmaking is collaboration. To say sound is second to vision means everything else sits somewhere in line, and in my opinion that’s not how it works. The vision is only as good as the lighting, production design, costumes, make-up, location — and on and on — make it. I’d hope the crews I’ve worked with walked away feeling that’s my point of view. It’s not just respecting the talent and time being invested in your vision as a director, but also having an appreciation for what others go through to make something happen.
There’s a famous story from the production of Jurassic Park: Spielberg was driving home, blasting music, and noticed with his rear-view mirror vibrated with the beats. ‘What an effect!’ he thought, passing the idea onto the special effects team; the mirror should vibrate. Water in a cup should vibrate. That’s how big the T-Rex is!
The SFX team lost sleep over the idea. They couldn’t figure it out for months and months. The solution completely eluded them. They could make the entire car shake, but not individual items within it. How do you send these vibrations through the car?!
One night a member of the team sat a drink down on his guitar as he plucked a string.
It happened. The team used a similar setup on the car and sent the vibrations through to the water and the mirror, making a truly iconic effect in a legendary scene.
All the while Spielberg had no idea this was happening, and has said in interviews he feels bad about the stress he put on the crew over what he thought was a simple idea. He appreciated their work, which allowed him and Janusz Kaminski to get some remarkable shots, which were then uplifted by Skywalker Sound’s unforgettable audio work.
On a film where they needed to achieve the impossible dinosaurs to come to life the suspense built at the beginning of the most critical scene relied on one guy putting water ripples in a plastic cup. That’s because every department is filled with radio technicians… so to speak.
I’m going to follow this post up with some thoughts on sound sometime soon; I love sound in filmmaking and am very lucky to be friends with a remarkable sound recordist, Piotr Wasilewski, so I get to talk about it a lot.
Joshua Lundberg is a Writer and Director at Barking Mouse®, and co-Founder along with Producer Georgia Woodward. Together they create films, web series as well as commercial and corporate content for clients.