Jump to my Home Page.
I am often asked, by those who are not part of the theatre community, what a Sound Designer does. This is a deceivingly complex question, and most of the people posing it aren't interested in reading a discussion such as this one. Deena Kay and James Lebrecht say that
Whatever your other duties may be, your primary responsibility as Sound Designer is to make the artistic decisions that form the basis for the surrounding musical and aural atmosphere of the entire production. (Kay & Lebrecht P.2)Even this relatively simple statement is more than most people want to hear, or try to digest. I usually respond that as Sound Designer, I am responsible for everything the audience hears. This is usually of the depth most folks are looking for. Invariably the next statement to come out of their mouths, if they remain interested is "Oh, you do sound effects!" usually stated with a slightly triumphant air. Well... yes... sort of.
If the questioner continues to show interest, I explain that Sound Designers work in areas ranging from radio commercials to Hollywood mega-hits, to community children's theatre, and everything in between. I will go on to talk about how most of the technology and techniques are the same regardless of the medium, and that theatre is a great environment for mastering a wide range of styles and techniques. I will also point out that, with the advent of high quality consumer sound equipment, the average audience member has a much higher awareness of and expectation for the quality of the audio they listen to. Therefore Sound Designers who are able to effectively utilize the ever expanding plethora of sound production tools to create a satisfying aural experience for the audience are in increasingly high demand.
I was once asked "Why sound design?" and found myself
floundering about, somewhat coherently, trying to come up with an
impressive answer. After all, the person asking me the question was looking
to hire a "sound guy", and I needed a job. I was surprised
that I couldn't really formulate a good answer, I just knew that I liked
sound design. This got me to thinking, seriously. If I was going
to pursue sound design as a career, I had better well know why! At
the time I was in the middle of preparing for the opening of Bloody Poetry
(a fascinating play by Howard Brenton),
and my mind was on many other things. Looking back several weeks later,
I realized that the reason I do sound design is that I like the way I feel
when the designs work. I don't mean that the ocean cue was loud enough,
that the audience understood that the scene happened at a
beach, or that it faded out at the right spot so that the dialogue wasn't
obscured. What I mean is the feeling I get when the sound begins
to come alive, when it fills the space and penetrates my body, when
it takes hold of my spirit.
Antonin Artaud put it this way.
These ... widely diffused sounds disgorged from many sources, combine to overwhelm the mind. (Artaud P.64)
... this theatre is immersed in a profound intoxication which restores to us the very elements of ecstasy ... (Artaud P.65)
The other elements, the text, sets costumes etc. speak to our intellect. We have eyes that limit our visual experience. We only have a certain field of view, unlike our ears that take in the entire 360 degree sphere of our reality. We can close our eyes, or turn our head and choose not to look, can we do the same with our ears? I have often wished that I could. Even though the text is experienced through our ears, the words and sentences are symbols that represent ideas, which must be interpreted by our minds, only then can we experience the text with our emotions. Sounds, on the other hand, are experienced directly, without being filtered or processed by our minds in order to be understood.
A great example of this is music. Music is simply, very organized sounds. How many of us have been moved to some extreme emotional state by a piece of music? I know I have. Mozart's Requiem, or Pink Floyd's Shine on You Crazy Diamond can take me from great excitement to great sorrow just by listening. Have you ever seen footage of, or been part of a big Rock and Roll concert? Just watch the audience members in the mosh pits. Could any human being put themselves into that kind of cathartic frenzy if the music didn't move them? I don't think so. I believe that our human bodies have a kind of genetic, memory. This is the memory that protects us from the dangers we experienced through the countless eons of our evolution, and that also moves us to wuch extreme emotions today.
Certain sounds create an immediate, physical reaction in human beings. When I was working as a Ranger in the New Mexico mountains, I saw the reaction that people have the first time they hear a rattlesnake in the wild. Most people have only heard that particular sound on TV or in films. Upon hearing this unique sound, live and in person, your body instantly reacts, the adrenaline rushes into your blood and you become incredibly alert. You begin to search for the source of the sound before your mind even realizes that there is a potential crisis at hand. I have seen this reaction in others and I have experienced it myself. Young or old, tenderfoot or experienced mountaineer, the reaction is always the same. Having worked in that area for 7 seasons, it happened to me many times, and though I have the experience and knowledge necessary to handle the situation, I still have a very intense reaction every time I hear a snake rattle. With my sound designs I wish to affect the audience on this sort of emotional level. I do not necessarily want to frighten them, but I want to cut through all of the layers of evolution and civilization and touch the primal part of the person.
Artaud makes a similar point in his essay No More Masterpieces. Here he is talking about snakecharmers and their subjects.
If music affects snakes, it is not on account of the spiritual [or intellectual] notions it offers them, but because snakes are long and coil their length upon the earth, because their bodies touch the earth at almost every point; and because the musical vibrations which are communicated to the earth affect them like a very subtle, very long massage; and I propose to treat the spectators like the snakecharmer's subjects and conduct them by means of their organisms ...(Artaud P.81)
In order to create these direct, emotional and organic reactions, we have to bypass or overwhelm the mind. Artaud states:
... sounds, noises, cries are chosen first for their vibratory quality, then for what they represent. (Artaud P.81)
In his book In the Blink of an Eye, Walter Murch (criticly accalimed film editor and Sound Designer) explains his "Rule of Six". These are the six factors he considers when making a decision about the actual placement of an edit in a film. He places the emotion of the scene first, with an importance of 51%, next is the story with 23% and third is the rhythm of the scene at 10%. His last three factors deal mostly with film and don't need to be discussed here. What is interesting to note though, is that even in a visual medium that is based heavily in realism, emotion comes first and has a higher percentage than all the other factors combined.
This is not to say that sounds which help the audience clue into a setting, offstage event or whatever, cannot work on this deeper, organic level I am talking about. In my design for Bloody Poetry there were several scenes that took place at a number of different beaches around Europe. It was important in this production that the sound help clue the audience into the location of the scenes due to the fact that the set was a single amorphous unit with no realistic elements whatsoever. The first beach scene in the show had a very gentle, soothing wave sound underscoring the entire scene. At this point in the play the characters are all very relaxed, optimistic and friendly. As the story develops the characters begin to hurt each other more and more. The beach sounds followed this journey. There was a progression to harsher and more rough waves and I used ever increasing amounts of processing to put the audience further on edge. They understood that the scenes took place at beaches before the characters mentioned that fact through dialogue. The audience was also given the emotional stimulus we wanted without having to disengage themselves from the reality of the play.
Warning, the following is a rant, my own personal opinion, so don't say I didn't warn you. ;-)
Unfortunately, in today's theatre the text rules as a tyrannical despot, intent on retaining its control. I told you I was going to rant. With the development of realism came the elimination of some of the best parts of theatre. Modern equipment allowed us to put actual, real places on the stage. Set Designers brought entire butcher shops or restaurants on-stage at great expense and this was considered good design! Microphones and portable recorders allowed us to capture and infinitely replay actual aural events in the theatre. And do you know what happened because of all this realism? Much of the creativity, the spirit and excitement, the MAGIC of the theatre went right out the door. Despite the fact that the wind cue in the earlier example would emote the feeling of night, and therefore not pull the audience's focus out of the reality of the play, the cue would not be real and it would be replaced by something that was, like the hootowl call. I have seen it happen time and again.
Many theatres, producers and directors today have set up a hierarchy of importance among the elements that go into a theatrical production. The text is most often first and more important than all the rest, followed by sets, costumes and lights with sound and music falling in last, if at all. Artaud, on the other hand, puts sound and lights first:
after sound and light there is action...(Artaud P.82)I have to agree with him, but then again, I am a Sound Designer. One of the reasons that lights and sound are most often the last two elements mentioned is because they are usually thought of as the newest of the design fields to emerge. Historically though, I do not believe this is to be true. I know this is a broad statement, but bear with me.
When the ancient ancestors of mankind recreated a hunt or some other tribal event (their theatre), they didn't sit down and write a script. They didn't get up and deliver page after page of monologue or dry dialogue concerning the great emotional trials they faced when stalking the mammoth. They didn't debate the meaning of life and they didn't worry about analyzing anything. They did, however, create artificial light and sound. Anyone who has sat around a campfire, late at night, telling ghost stories, will attest to the power of that magical, flickering, orange light. Also, I cannot imagine that they were silent as they re-enacted their heroic exploits. No, I am sure that as they told their stories they would vocalize and sing, pound on drums and stones and the earth with their hands, feet and bones.
Now, I don't know for a fact that any of what I have stated in the preceeding paragraph is at all true, but no one can prove me wrong either. ;-)
I have talked about today's idea that the text is king. Artaud wrote essay after essay describing a theatre based on spectacle alone. The real world, however, is a continuum, with true oratory at one end and true spectacle at the other. Most theatre today, in my opinion, is much closer to the oratory end of the spectrum than the spectacle end. When I say spectacle, I am referring to a type of theatre where the text is least important and evoking an emotional response from the audience is paramount. This type of production need not be manipulative. Also, I am not necessarily talking about negative emotions. This sort of spectacle can be joyous and awe inspiring, it can move men to war or to peace. The Cirque du Soliel from Canada is a perfect example. Their performances are extremely powerful and evoke many different emotions, however there is little or no plot or dialogue in their shows at all!
I am not advocating the immediate elimination of all scripts and conversion to spectacle. What I am advocating though, is a re-analysis of our ideas about what theatre is and what it should be. I want audiences to come into the theatre to have an experience they can't get anywhere else. I want the average person to re-discover or discover for the first time, the MAGIC of the stage. This will happen only if those of us who create theatre realize that television and film are far more capable of logical realism than we are. We need to discover for ourselves what theatre can give an audience that these other forms of popular entertainment cannot. We must absolutely come to understand what Artaud was saying in his essay No More Masterpieces. We must get away from the idea that great past works are best when produced exactly the way they were originally staged. Museum shows belong in theatrical schools and training programs. We must forget the idea that certain scripts are the penultimate theatrical events. We need to even the playing field of the design elements and learn to not make unilateral, unthinking decisions about where we will place our emphasis.
Sound Designers need to learn to design for the spirit. We need to get away from the simple, easy decisions. As designers we need to help our Directors and the visual designers understand what it is sound does for a production. The theatre has a long standing tradition of entertaining the masses of human society. With the rapid explosion of technology since the industrial revolution, mankind has found many new ways to spend his time and he has gotten away from the live, interactive theatre. The concept of the fourth wall and logical realism have further distanced the theatre and it's people from the mass of human society. The computer and internet have already shown their ability to further seperate people from one another, as well as bring them together. The theatre, if it chooses, CAN change. By giving our audiences an experience that is as high quality as what they get at home or the movies and that touches them in a way that the other forms of entertainment do not, we will insure the future of this unique and important art. Sound design can help us do this. More importantly though, is the ability the theatre has to affect people. Some would ask "But why do you want to affect people?" This answer is difficult. I think it is, and must be, different for every person who participates in theatre, artist and audience member alike. What is my reason? That is another good question. Let me think about it and I'll get back to you.