For the sound design of The Alphabet, I will be using a mixture of recording techniques. The primary ones featured in this blog will be hydrophones, contact microphones, and handheld field recorders. I will be discussing where I want to record for each of these types of microphones and why.
Hydrophone
Hydrophones are omnidirectional microphones designed to record sound underwater from any direction. Hydrophones were first used by countries during the First World War. People were sent into submarines and used hydrophones to pick up on signals from possible enemies. Hydrophones in more recent years are used to record the sound of the ocean or water in general, used by shows like Blue Planet to record the sound of a location underwater.
My use of the hydrophone will be to experiment with recording in water, and take those recordings and manipulate them in Ableton. I want to transpose them up, down, stretch them, and reverse them in order to experiment. I will be using the hydrophone to create the sound of blood, and other textures throughout the piece.
Where will I be using the hydrophone
I thought of using my sink with the hydrophone. I plan on cleaning the sink, then put the hydrophone in out of the way of the water coming down, so it doesn’t hit the hydrophone directly. I want to record the sound of the sink filling up and draining. When the sink is full and the tap has stopped running I would like to splash my hands in the water, run my fingers through it, and see what sounds and textures that create.
Diagram of a hydrophone
Contact Microphones
A contact microphone is a microphone that records vibrations when attached to an object (e.g. table). I find recording with a contact microphone gives whatever I am recording a dissonant, uneasy atmosphere.
I record contact mics through a dictaphone, my dictaphone of choice will be the Zoom H5 as it is very portable and has good sound quality. I will be doing lots of these recordings at home and or outside. If I record at university via using the foley room I will be using higher quality microphones.
Zoom H5 Recorder.
When recording with contact microphones through a dictaphone, using the gain stage on the dictaphone like an instrument can be very helpful. By either turning the gain up or down on each sound you find, you can create a different atmosphere. If it is turned up it can be distorted, and dissonant. Meanwhile if recorded on a lower level can be much calmer and clearer. You have to be careful about turning the gain up too much, as elements of hiss can come into the track and ruin it.
The idea of using the contact microphone in my piece was through having to restart my boiler at home. I loved the sound of the water coming through the pipes and the hum of the boiler. So that’s what I plan on doing as of now.
Stalker (otherwise known as Сталкер) is Andrei Tarkovsky’s fifth feature film, it follows a guide (stalker), a writer, and a scientist. The guide leads the writer and the scientist to a place called ‘The Zone’. They escape from what looks like a wartorn, rundown, and military-dominated city to the zone which is the polar opposite. Complete solitude and silence and green scenery meanwhile their home is covered with a brown dusty tint. Within the zone, there is a room that supposedly grants any wish you can have. Throughout the film, we follow these 3 men and their conversations about their fears and what may lie in the zone.
Stalker is a beast of a movie, boasting a 2-hour and 41-minute runtime, but this movie (among other Tarkovsky films) utilises the runtime incredibly well and we left with a very meditative, thought-provoking, and intelligent movie.
The Sound
Stalker’s sound reminds me of a David Lynch quote “Sound is 50% of the film”. This is very much the case with Tarkovsky’s Stalker. Stalker uses sound in a very effective and thought-provoking way. Music is only heard for 17 minutes of this 161 minute movie. But the film feels very dense and full of sound when music is not playing. In his book Sculpting in time Tarkovsky talks about how he feels movies don’t need music at all. This is a common trait throughout Tarkovsky’s films as most of his films (including stalker) rely heavily on sound design than traditional music.
The composer/sound designer for Stalker is Eduard Artemyev. Artemyev is a Soviet/Russian composer who was a frequent collaborator of Tarkovsky. Creating the soundtrack/sound design for Solaris (1972), Mirror (1975), and Stalker (1979). Stalker was their last collaboration together. Much like Solaris and Mirror, what you hear in Stalker is primarily sound design. Artemyev doesn’t follow the traditional rules of diegetic and non-diegetic sound in Stalker. He challenges the viewer’s perception of what sound design is by doing something uncommon, this matches perfectly with the surreal atmosphere of Stalker.
For example, throughout the film, we see a few instances of fire being on screen. We see fire on screen we expect to hear the hiss of fire, and the crackling of firewood, but instead, we hear the sounds of water. One example of this is early on in the movie (9:30 mark), we see the character wash his hands and brush his teeth. There is a fire next to him. We never hear the sound of fire though, only the water that is coming out of the tap. He lights the fire with a match, but we only hear the match striking, we never hear the fire being lit. There is only one scene where the sound of fire is audible, they have a campfire at the 1:14:00 mark which is the sound of crackling firewood is audible. The use of water instead of fire seems like an intentional choice by Artemyev and Tarkovsky. Water is a recurring motif throughout stalker, with many scenes taking place in water or surrounding it.
Another interesting sound design choice happens at the 24:19 mark, A soldier is walking around looking for our protagonists who are escaping to the zone. The man walks to his motorcycle and as he is walking it sounds like a spring reverb being plucked, instead of the usual walking foley that would be used in most other movies.
Stalker really inspired me for its intentional minimalism, the score in the film is used sparingly and feels more impactful when used because the film is mostly sound design and foley. Tarkovsky and Artemyev treat sound design like it’s a part of the musical score which improves the film and the immersion of this world. My piece will be using primarily sound design with some traditional music elements. This film taught me to treat sound design like it’s apart of the overall score.
The Alphabet is David Lynch’s second short film, released 1968. The film is a combination of both animation and live-action, with the only actor starring in the movie being Lynch’s then-wife, Peggy Lynch. The idea for The Alphabet came from a visit Peggy had to her parent’s house. Lynch commented, “Her little niece was there, I think in a darkened room in a little bed, and was having a nightmare and repeating the alphabet in her nightmare”. Peggy’s strange story inspired him to make The Alphabet for the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. This film awarded him a spot at the American Film Institute, where he went on to produce his first feature film, Eraserhead.
What is it about?
David Lynch famously keeps the true meaning of his films a secret, as he wants the audience to have their own interpretation and experience of the work. After numerous watches and some research, I believe the film is about the fear of learning and growing up. Throughout the film, we follow a girl that is scared and tortured by the alphabet. We see different interpretations of the girl, both through abstract animation and live action. Children are a recurring theme in both this film and other Lynch works, such as Eraserhead. Lynch had a daughter (Jennifer Lynch) with his first wife Peggy Lynch when he was 22. Lynch’s thoughts on children are “I love all my children and we get along great, but in the early years, before you can have a relationship of talking to them, it’s tough,” he said. “And I would get divorced and stuff — I’ve got four kids and three divorces“. Since it was made around the time of his first child, we can assume that The Alphabet (and other films like Eraserhead) take inspiration from his own experiences as a father with a young child.
We hear the sound of a child crying, and the animation of the film has a childlike look to it which adds an eerie and uncanny atmosphere. The use of collage, colourful dots and the hand-drawn aesthetic makes it feel somewhat childlike as it feels like we are seeing everything from the girl’s perspective.
One line of dialogue said directly to the viewer near the end of the film, “Remember you are dealing with the human form”, represents that we are dealing with people, in particular children. Children are young and inexperienced and need to be taught about the world around them. When a child doesn’t understand something or a teaching style doesn’t fit them well, learning can be difficult and scary. This resonates with me personally, and I think this is Lynch critiquing the educational system. This still rings true 53 years after this film was released.
Abstract Interpretation
Peggy Lynch as the girl
In the abstract interpretation, we see what looks like a collage of a person. In the collage, we see a multitude of different art forms. The face is very abstract meanwhile the breast looks like it’s from an old renaissance painting from the 1500s. The rest of the body is made up of different types of abstract art. The fact the face and breast are the only human parts of this collage could be representing the girl becoming a woman. The sound in this part is very frightening, we hear the sound of a baby crying, and the baby crying sounds slightly sped up and broken which adds a sense of surrealism to the film. Since we see the collage being built and the vagina giving birth to the letters this could be related to the themes of birth. We hear the sound of the siren which gives a feeling of alertness, the siren sounds very similar to the baby’s voice, and the siren is shaky and slightly differs in pitch adding to the uncanniness of this short.
We see the use of nudity in the animation, the character has a breast and we see what looks like a penis fill with blood then switch to a distorted face. Next to the person a red box grows out of the ground and turns into a vagina, the letters A, B and C then come out of the vagina into the head of the person. This happens a couple of times until the collage gasps and then cut to the girl gasping too. The face of the animation then disintegrates with blood pouring down it. This is eerie and uncomfortable to watch, prompting the viewer to also feel scared by what is happening to the girl. I believe the use of nudity is used to portray conception birth and the letters represent teaching the child. Another representation of birth in this film takes place earlier in which a capital A gives birth to a lowercase A, which is another tie to birth. Throughout this entire scene, the siren is the most prominent sound.
During the final sequence of the film, the girl recites the alphabet. When she gets to the letter G, there is a close-up of the girl’s face where she looks terrified. I find it interesting why they stopped at the letter G. Does the G represent growing up? Girlhood? I think stopping at G was intentional. After finishing her reciting of the alphabet she spits blood all over the bed and then it cut to credits. My interpretation of her spitting blood is that she’s been infected by the alphabet, she sees adulthood as a disease and something she does not want. The alphabet and this whole film is a metaphor for both a fear of learning and growing up.
The Sound
The sound of this film is very human. There are non-diegetic sounds of a child crying, the voices of children saying the alphabet, and a siren. The human voices link with the quote, “Remember you are dealing with the human form”, reiterating the theme of humanity. There is also the diegetic sound of the girl reciting the alphabet. There are wind-like noises that sound like they’re made by a person, a ‘shhh’ noise. This again exhibits the recurring theme of humanity and people. The sound of the film was revolutionary for the time, no films were doing sound like this to score their films. Most film directors used orchestras and traditional means of composing. SInce Lynch was somewhat of a oneman band he had a lot of freedom to do what he wanted sonically. It could be seen as a bit crude nowadays given this sound has been done better by Lynch after this and it does sound a tad amatuerish but for the time it was quite polarizing. It still does hold up today as a terrifying piece of sound.
The way Lynch captured the sound of the crying child was by recording his newborn daughter, Jennifer Lynch, with an Uher tape recorder that was broken. The broken tape machine gives the crying a warbled and sped-up sound, it sounds like a baby but somewhat tampered with. A Uher tape machine is a german manufactured reel to reel tape machine, they were supposed to be portable unlike a lot of other reel to reel machines of that time (1960’s). This whole film would have been recorded onto tape. So I’m considering possibly using tape in some way for my recordings.
Uher Tape Machine
My Ideas
The Alphabet gives me a lot of inspiration for what I could be doing sonically. Ideas of musique concrete, field recordings, and noise started coming to my head the more I watched it. I would be interested to work with tape and digital. Using equipment like hydrophones, contact mics, Sennheiser 416 and collaborating with friends to create sounds and atmospheres. I would like to do a mixture of sound mixing/recording in the foley room/recording studio next door. This will give me good experience in working in a more professional manner. I plan on using pro tools but will be using ableton for experimentation and recording at home.
References
Hood, B. (2018). David Lynch knows he’s not the best dad. [online] Page Six. Available at: https://pagesix.com/2018/06/25/david-lynch-knows-hes-not-the-best-dad/
Picking a scene for this project proves a slightly difficult task. For me the reasons are…
Picking a scene that you can stylistically work with.
Pick a film in which you can break down and understand its full context.
The first point is important, having a film that you can stylistically work with is crucial. It’s good to push yourself outside of your comfort zone and work on something you normally wouldn’t do, but it’s good to work with something you can stylistically work with. I love working with horror, experimental cinema, and thriller/disturbing films. So for this project, I am searching for a scene that is unnerving but has room for experimentation sonically.
The second point which is having to break down and understand the film’s full context is an important point people tend to forget. When working in film (or just media in general) it’s one big collaborative effort, so if you don’t understand what the work is trying to do or say, then how will you get the sound right? Lots of directors keep the meaning of their films a mystery, David Lynch is a good example of this, as he refuses to give away the main meaning of his films. But this doesn’t mean you can’t understand what the film is trying to say, and you can still gather what the general meaning is and your own interpretation too.
Also if a film takes place in a certain time period e.g. the 1960s. Do some research on that time period, and how that time period is used in the film. Also looking at how people used sound in films from that generation could be a way to possibly incorporate those techniques into your own work. For example, if they used a reel-to-reel tape machine to record the sound design or music. See if you can get your hands on one, or use a plug-in to emulate that sound. Experimentation is key! So I think understanding a film is important before you start working on whatever it is you are doing!
After some thinking and research, I decided to work with David Lynch’s ‘The Alphabet’ (1969). I really enjoy Lynch’s style of film and found this short film to be really inspiring and found it had a lot of ways that I could experiment with sound and create an interesting piece to go alongside the film. My next blog will be about my thoughts for what the short should sound like sonically.
We Need to Talk About Kevin is a Psychological thriller directed by Lynne Ramsey. The film follows Eva (Tilda Swinton) who is struggling to connect with her son Kevin (Ezra Miller), the film at its core is really about Eva and Kevin’s relationship, most of the film is spent showing us the struggle Eva goes through to bond with her son. She starts noticing increasingly dangerous behaviour which ends up leading to a mass shooting at his high school.
Throughout the movie, we flick between 3 different points of Eva’s life. The first being before she had a family and kids, she has aspirations of being a writer and a world traveller. The second is when she settled down with her husband and Kevin and her daughter is born, the final perspective being after the school shooting committed by Kevin.
The sound design for this movie is quite spectacular, it does a great job of putting you in the perspective of Eva and also uses lots of interesting tricks to play with the viewer. The opening of this movie has some interesting sound design choices. The film opens with a panning shot of an open door at night with a curtain obscuring the view of what’s behind. We hear a sprinkler noise which is used as a recurring motif throughout the movie, this creates a very uncomfortable atmosphere. Even though we do not know what happened the way the sound of the sprinkler and the panning shot is used lets us know something bad has happened.
We Need To Talk About Kevin inspired me by its use of taking average mundane noises like the sprinkler motif throughout the film and making them scary and uncomfortable. I have not chosen my film as of yet but am thinking of working in surreal horror and the use of field recordings to create horror in this film really clicked with me, and is going to be something I think about when I start creating my work.
Gaze is an Iranian short film about a woman who sees a man pickpocket someone on the bus home from work, after confronting the man she is stalked home in this very tense short film.
Gaze reminds me of Micheal Haneke, an Austrian film director who’s known for films with no music, slow pacing, long shots, and lots of tension. This short film in particular reminded me of his film Caché, which is a film that builds tension not through music but through sound design and cinematography.
Gaze is shot in a 4:3 aspect ratio which gives the film a claustrophobic feeling and the use of sound and foley to build tension adds to that feeling. In the final half of the short our main protagonist is being stalked by a man on a motorcycle, they used the sound of the motorcycle while it was off screen a lot of the time. You know the threat that the sound brings and it builds anxiety in the viewer and makes us think of questions like ‘Is she going to be caught?’ and ‘Will she make it home?’.
Overall I really enjoyed Gaze. I thought it was a thought-provoking, anxiety-inducing, and well-made short film.
