After choosing my clip which will be the section of A Quiet Place, I wanted to do a bit more research into the Director and the Sound Designers in the movie. I felt that from last year knowing about the foley for the movie and the concept of it I should do some research into the themes and ideas and the conceptual things the sound design incorporates in this specific context. I haven’t watched the movie just yet but for now, I’ve just done a lot of research into the sound for the film.
To start off I looked into the movie as a whole, I watched this video above which spoke on a lot of things and featured interviews from both John Krasinski and both sound designers Erik Aadahl and Ethan Van der Ryn.
One of the most important things about this movie is the way sound was incorporated into it. From the beginning of the conceptual stage and even to the scriptwriting the sound was implemented into it. The sound is the main character in this movie says the sound designers. It was written and planned during the screenwriting stage.
In this Indiewire blog, they speak to the scriptwriters of the film and how they got around the ideas for it. “It’s hard to write a silent movie. You can’t use dialogue to crutch the movie. Usually, in a screenplay sound design is written in addition to and around dialogue.” I found this interesting as this was going to help me with my assignment. It will dictate to me that the sound is everything for this movie if I choose to interpret it this way.
They also speak on the script, and that if there is silence it is underlined. It’s clearly underlined to showcase its importance. They also used font sizes to dictate silence loudness and tension for the script.
Sound directions were written in the script which helped a ton for the sound designers to start working, they felt like they were part of the storytelling instead of accentuating what was already there. The sound designers love it. Especially in this movie, the sound is extra important in the storytelling.
The sound designers also speak on how they used sound to communicate things. They said “Within any storytelling process there are moments where we want to experience what the characters are experiencing and sound is one the of key tools to use that.
For example, experiencing the POV from the hearing aid.
They really wanted the audience to experience the story events through the point of view of the character. The daughter Reagan played in the film is deaf in real life and in the movie and they felt it was important to experience sound through her way through the cochlear implant. This is to help the audience connect to her character. Experiencing the film through Reagan’s perspective helps you build empathy with her character. And the jagged chops that happen between the pov switching accentuate the jumps.
Another interesting part I found was about dynamics. They spoke about the mixing process when deciding on the overall volume of the film. As they felt like through the first run of the movie the overall sound was similar and quiet and that didn’t fit. It felt boring. They had a film where the sound was everything with very little dialogue and they had to somehow make the silence loud.
So to fix this the sound is really dynamic, so sequences start at a really low volume and increase over time. And it directly mirrors the plot design of the scenes. So they remain quiet until they both reach a breaking point. But even then the plot or sound stays at 100% for a very short amount of time and then the volume drops low again as the tension resets.
Silence sometimes is the best suspense, in a particular scene at the end of the movie there is digital silence right before a chaotic fight with the monster. They also speak on how to balance the loud from quiet by saying “that before another loud dynamic event it is key to give the audience cathartic sounds to reset them”.
The sound designers also believe the best movie have sound ingrained into the script. The screenwriting was unorthodox and this movie shows us what sound design can do. Emphasising characters and the sound is effective when used dynamically to emphasise transition.
I want to look into the script for the film and see what it says. And reflect on the rules of the universe for how the characters survive. I feel at this current moment I want to try and follow the rules and ideas of the current sound designers and see if I can replicate it with authenticity. I’m going to do a bit more research to follow up.