Sound Doctrine: An Interview with Walter Murch

Walter Murch picture edited The Conversation, Apocalypse Now, Julia, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Ghost, House of Cards, o!eo "s Bleeding, #irst $night, Godfather """, The %nglish &atient, The Talented 'r( ipley, and numerous other films. Plus, he has written a concise and highly readable study of editing, "n the Blin) of an %ye. But note this. The following interview concentrates, not on Murch the picture editor, leaning over an Avid in a cutting room, assembling a film's image trac , but on Murch the sound designer and re! recording mi"er. #or once, the eyes don't have it, and the term $soundtrac $ is meant literally. %t refers to every sound&to the collage of voices, noises, and music&that a movie!going audience hears coming through spea ers, not 'ust to a potentially mar etable collection of music isolated from the film it accompanied. Murch cares about soundtrac s. (isten to TH*+,,-. )*+,*-, The Godfather )*+,.-, A!erican Graffiti )*+,/-, The Godfather/ &art "" )*+,0-, The Conversation )*+,0-, Apocalypse Now )*+,+-, Cru!b )*++0-, The %nglish &atient )*++1-, or The Talented 'r( ipley )*+++-. Murch mi"ed them all, and they each possess an audio allure. They sound as good as they loo . %t's hardly surprising, then, that Murch ended up remi"ing and re!editing 2rson Welles' Touch of %vil )*+34-. Welles, more than any other director before him, employed sound&to evo e cinematic worlds, establish mood, and raise goosebumps. #or e"ample, in Citi0en $ane, the audio montage that condenses 5usan 6ane's singing career into a di77ying burst of music and noise anticipates $Tomorrow 8ever 6nows,$ the Beatles at their e"perimental best. And as for the opening se9uence to Touch of %vil: 8ow that Murch has replaced ;enry Mancini's studio!mandated mambo with the audio!v<rit< trac that Welles originally designed, it recalls nothing so much as !usi1ue concr2te )Pierre ;enry- or electronica )=osh >avis?>= 5hadow-&or, yes, the soundtrac to A!erican Graffiti. %ndeed, the newly reali7ed Touch of %vil&for 0@ years a virtual movie, a movie that Welles hoped against hope Aniversal would edit and distribute&might register most forcefully with a contemporary audience schooled on films, such as A!erican Graffiti, that Murch edited and mi"ed. We've learned to see and hear the film that Welles intended. %n short, Murch stands as an important figure in cinema because he and a handful of peers reali7ed possibilities offered by multi!trac recording. )2r in materialist terms, the development of multi!trac recording technology significantly broadened options available during postproduction, creating a niche for Murch and his peers to fill. %t was, thus, crucial to the outpouring of independent films in the late '1@s and ',@s.- #or while the possibilities of editing and mi"ing sounds had been glimpsed early on&long before the arrival of the tal ies&they remained largely inaudible until magnetic tape emerged as an economically viable and practical recording medium. Tape made sound malleable, much li e celluloid made visual images malleable. And that e"poses an anomaly. %f we want to understand the history of edited images we start by loo ing to the films of Bisenstein, Certov, and Pudov in. To understand the history of edited sound, we do well to listen to Murch's wor with (ucas and Doppola. '"CHA%L JA %TT3 Has fil! sound led us to hear the world differently4

WA(TBE MAED;F Ges . . . sure. % hesitate only because Welles was doing the same ind of thing with radio bac in the *+/@s. Then he continued to innovate when he got into film. %f you listen to many of his films, including Touch of %vil, if you donHt watch the picture, you ind of hear the sort of things that he was doing on radio, both with dialogue and sound. 8ever before in history, before the invention of recorded sound, had people possessed the ability to manipulate sound the way theyHd manipulated color or shapes. We were limited to manipulating sound in music, which is a highly abstract medium. But with recorded material you can manipulate sound effects&the sound of the world&to great effect. %n the same way that painting, or loo ing at paintings, ma es you see the world in a different way, listening to interestingly arranged sounds ma es you hear differently. 5ound ca!e to fil! in the late 678s/ but when it arrived/ it anticipated the even later arrival of tape( ThatHs very true. Whenever you wor in film, youHre wor ing with tape. %t 'ust happens to be tape with sproc ets on it. Gou find things being e"amined in one disciplineI people develop a facility within that area. When they suddenly can e"pand into another area, thereHs a ready!made disposition. They already now how to do it, in a sense. Touch of Bvil recalls the!es and approaches developed in your own wor)9the the!e of surveillance/ the use of source !aterials( :as wor)ing on it so!ething li)e ga0ing into a !irror4 %n a way, yes. %t wasnHt a film with which % was intimately familiar before % began wor on its restoration. %Hd seen it a couple of times, but % hadnHt studied it the way some people have, on a frame!by!frame basis. 2bviously, when you do a restoration, you really have to get down with the film on a very deep, technical level. But yes, %Hd done wor on The Conversation, which was all about surveillance, and A!erican Graffiti, which was all about the creative use of source music. Welles had anticipated both of those things in Touch of %vil.

5o :elles was less a direct influence than you both followed the logic inherent in recording technologies( 2nce you ta e sound seriously&you thin , $;ow can we use it to the best effect:$&itHs almost inevitable that youHll start coming to the same conclusions as somebody else who was thin ing along the same lines. %Hd seen Touch of %vil. Who nows how subconsciously it influenced what % did. Are there people in fil!/ besides :elles/ that you regard as anticipating later acco!plish!ents with !agnetic tape4 Dertainly Murray 5piva , who was one of the premier and earliest sound editors. ;e wor ed on $ing $ong. Gou'll find the most creative use of sound in films li e $ing $ong or in Warner Brothers' cartoons of the '/@s and '0@s&and >isney to a certain e"tent. They weren't limited by reality, and so they recorded interesting, fantastic sounds and, then, arranged and combined them in interesting ways&more so than features. #eatures were late in developing that sensibility. % grew up on Warner Brothers' cartoons. When % was five or si", % felt that they were fantastic. They laid down a very rich bed of information that % became aware of only much later. By all accounts the division of labor at $;/ where 6ing 6ong was !ade/ and at :arner Brothers/ with Te< Avery/ ay!ond 5cott/ and Chuc) Jones/ wasn=t as strict as elsewhere( "deas could circulate( B"actly. Eemember that sound alone, 'ust the fact that there was sound at all, was a huge thing in the '/@s&for ten years. We've had >olby sound in theaters for almost double that amount of time. Gou can imagine the sense of accomplishment in getting any sound at all and, then, to investigate stories with spo en word and a certain amount of sound effects: Plus, it was a corporate world in the sense that there were very few independent motion pictures, and those that there were made had tiny budgets. 5ound was e"pensiveI they couldn't do much inventive wor on that level. The push had to come from the director&somebody li e ;itchcoc or Welles&who said, $% am interested in sound.$ 2therwise, the tendency was to do a 'ourneyman!li e 'ob and not spend too much money because they'd already 'umped over the post so to spea , since there was sound to begin with. The really creative use of sound was something that too time. But there are many e"ceptions to that rule. Eenoir, for e"ample, claimed to be the first person to record a toilet flush and put it in a movie. ;e strung a microphone from the studio's sound department to a toilet, flushed the toilet, recorded it, and put it in a film he directed in the very early '/@s. Ta)ing an e<a!ple fro! your own wor)/ when you edited sound on American Jraffiti/ did you have an entire radio show recorded that you could reference as needed4 Ges. We produced a two!hour radio show with Wolfman =ac as >=&with commercials, with the songs. Jeorge K(ucasL built that show himself. While he was editing the film, he edited the songs, the commercials, and the dis !'oc ey patter. That is what's called a $B!trac .$ %t ran alongside the dialogue during the editing of the film. And what did you bring to the production4 The acoustic treatment of worldi7ing it, so that it seemed to be something that e"isted in real space. The idea was that every teenage car in this town was turned to the same station, and, therefore, anywhere you went in the town, you heard this sound echoing off the buildings and passing by in cars. Jeorge and % too the master trac of the radio show and played it bac on a 8agra in a real space&a suburban bac yard. % was fifty!or! so!feet away with a microphone recording that sound onto another 8agra, eeping it in sync and moving the microphone ind of at random, bac and forth, as Jeorge moved the spea er through *4@ degrees. There were times when microphone and spea er were pointed right at each other, and there were other times when they were pointed in completely opposite directions. 5o that was a separate trac . Then, we did that whole thing again. When % was mi"ing the film, % had three trac s to draw from. 2ne of them was what you might call the $dry studio trac $ of the radio show, where the music was very clear and sharp and everything was in audio focus. Then there were the other two trac s which were staggered a couple of frames to each other, and on which the a"is of the microphone and the spea ers was never the same because we couldn't remember what we had done intentionally. 5ometimes, Wolfman =ac would be on a"is on one trac , but he would be off a"is on the other trac . % was able to blend those three trac s to get the right amount of atmosphere. % could ma e transitions from a live, very present sound to something that sounded li e it was very distant and bouncing off many buildings. % could create a sense of movement too&hence, the moving microphones. This is what % discovered Welles had done in a more primitive form in Touch of %vil. What he had not done was combine the original recording and the atmospheric recording. ;e simply positioned a microphone, static in an alleyway outside Aniversal 5ound 5tudios, re! recording from a spea er to the microphone through the alleyway. ;e didn't have control over the balance of dry sound versus reflected sound, and he didn't have the sense of motion that we got from moving the spea er and moving the microphone relative to one another. This creates the sonic e9uivalent of depth of field in photography. We can still have the music in the bac ground, but because it's so

diffuse, you can't find edges to focus on and, therefore, the dialogue which is in the foreground and which is in focus is clearly what you're supposed to be listening to. That was the defect of all previous systems, e"cept for Welles' system. %n them the music was 'ust filtered and played low, but it still had its edges, and, therefore, it became hard for the mind to separate out the edges of the music versus the edges of the dialogue. We came up with a way of ta ing music that might, at one point, be fully in the foreground&in focus and loud&and, then, during a scene transition, sent way into the bac ground and thrown out of focus so that people could tal in the foreground in dialogue and not have you driven mad. 8o other film before that one had had 0. songs bac to bac . They would have maybe three or four, five or si" at most, scattered throughout the film. The sonic space that=s created in American Jraffiti really gets opened up in Apocalypse 8ow( A!erican Graffiti was in mono. Apocalypse Now was my first stereo film. All of the films %'d wor ed on up until that point were mono. 5o % 'umped with both feet into the fire, not only doing a stereo film but doing the first dramatic 9uadraphonic film. :ith it/ the audience gets a sense of being surrounded by sound( There are sound sources in bac) and in front of us( Gou have to be very careful about what sounds you put behind the audience. They can distract attention away from the screen. We had a whole list of do's and don'tsF sounds that were permissible in the bac and sounds that were not permissible in the bac . 5o a tiger leaping/ if it=s done 1uic)ly/ could !ove fro! bac) to front4 That, specifically, is a sound that we would not put in the bac . 5ounds that have great definition we ept in the front. ;n Apocalypse 8ow you and others had to edit an enor!ous a!ount of fil!( :as there a co!parable surfeit of audio tape4 8o. At the time of shooting almost no usable sound was recorded for the film because of the difficulties of production. We had what is called a $guide trac .$ We had to recreate the whole sonic environment, item by item, for the finished film, including almost all the dialogue. 2nce you have the image, then that immediately begins to narrow down what you will use for sound. %tHs still a huge amount, but when you have sound, youHre, than fully, being guided by what you see in the picture. How did you get the helicopter sounds in that !ovie4 We got the Doast Juard to cooperate. We went up to Washington 5tate and for three or four days recorded all inds of different helicopters. At the beginning of the film, where we wanted a more abstract approach, we too the helicopter sound and recreated it element by element on a synthesi7er. %f you listen to a helicopter approach from a distance, fly overhead and, then, away, itHs got many different stages that it goes through. We too each of those stages and said, $Alright, here weHll hear only the flap of the blade. We donHt hear any motor. (etHs do a flap.$ 5o we fooled around on the synthesi7er until there was a flap that we felt was suitably abstract but helicopter!ish enough. And then the other elements, the turbine whine, the whoosh of the thing through the air, and all of those different aspects of it. >ou?ve written that you were led to a career in sound design by hearing &ierre 5chaeffer?s musi9ue concrMte( "t?s stri)ing to note si!ilarities between 5chaeffer?s co!positions and the sound of :elles? fil!s( A lot of what Welles did in Citi0en $ane and what heHd done earlier on radio is a ind of !usi1ue concr2te. 5chaefferHs innovation was to apply the then!new technology of magnetic tape to recording and assembling sound, and, then, to give performances in musical venues and call it !usi1ue concr2te&concrete, as opposed to abstract, music. 8obody had done that before. %t was a big revelation. But if you listened to what was produced for films and to much of what was done on the radio by innovators such as Welles, it was the same ind of thing. "t also turns out that the first piece of musi9ue concrMte&Ntude au" Dhemins de #er9features train sounds( 5chaffer anticipated your use of train noises in American Jraffiti, The Donversation, and The Jodfather( "n American Jraffiti/ we hear a train when Curt @ ichard AreyfussB sabotages the police car( "n The Donversation/ when Harry Caul @Gene Hac)!anB first sits down to edit the tape that he and his crew have recorded/ there=s the sound of a train=s bell that you/ then/ reintroduce in the fil!=s drea! se1uence( "n The Jodfather/ there?s the sound of a train when 'ichael @Al &acinoB )ills his father?s ene!ies( :hat do you !a)e of this reoccurring !otif4 Gou have to remember that those films were all made within about a year of each other. Trains were on my mind. Apart from that, % love the sound of a train. %f you thin of it as a musical instrument, itHs a very comple", interesting sound. Gou can go into record stores and find whole bins full of train sounds.

2ver time people have had a lot of associations with trains. Perhaps not so much now but certainly when % was growing up, trains were the thing that tal ed to you about travel. %f you wanted to go anywhere, you went on a train. The whole idea of moving from place to place in the world was dominated by that sound. 5o it was a mi"ture of all those three things. "t see!s that Cust as trains forever altered our consciousness of space/ shortening distances/ they also changed the sonic landscape( Ges, very much. % remember tal ing to people in Bngland in the *+1@s who were old enough to remember when trains were first put through in remote parts of the country. They always tal ed about the thing that changed was the sound&that you couldnHt go into that part of the world anymore without the presence of that sound. 5o they thought of trains primarily in terms of sound and only later in terms of their visual effect. The train sounds in the fil!s " !entioned create a sonic trope/ a signature( How did you co!e to introduce that sound4 To deal with the most specific first, on A!erican Graffiti we were doing some pic !up shooting, a couple of shots after the main photography had been done. We were at the used car lot. % heard a train in the distance. %t was li e two oHcloc in the morning. %Hd been trying to figure out how % was going to do that section, and % thought, $2h, yes, % could do a train.$ 5o in a weird way that location and fate made me alert to the possibilities of using a train there. % was mi"ing Graffiti when we were shooting Conversation, and that sound was, again, suggested by the actual environment in which ;arry Daul KJene ;ac manL had his warehouse, which was really five or si" bloc s away from where American Ooetrope, the studio, was. There's a shot, 9uite early on, after the first apartment scene in which ;arry tal s to his landlady and plays the sa"ophone. ;e goes to wor the ne"t morning, and you see him pic ing his way across railroad trac s in order to get to the entrance of his warehouse. %n fact, 'ust on the other side of that warehouse is the main switching yard for freight and passenger trains coming into 5an #rancisco from the south. 5o the idea was triggered by what's actually in the environment. % always li e to thin , not only about the sound of the space a character is in, but also about what's outside&to brea the wall and invo e some ind of presence of the e"terior. 2f course, it has to be a reasonably loud or percussive sound, something with a tonality to it, in order to penetrate through walls. 2therwise, you hear a generali7ed wash of city noise, which sounds li e pin noise. %t doesn't have much character. 5o it was a matter of loo ing for sounds with character that could get through the window and which were also true to the environment that ;arry's in. That's really the e"tent of it. %f the environment in which ;arry wor s has trains in it, then he and, by e"tension, we are going to associate that sound with that environment. Because they are in the atmosphere, trains are going to worm themselves into ;arry's dreams. And then the train beco!es a !etaphor for the process of editing( 2h yes, li e putting one car after the other. There's also an affinity historically between films and trains. The first film at which an audience paid to see a film was The Arrival of the Train, the (umiere Brothers. And the first feature was Porter's The Great Train obbery. 5omehow there is this affinity between trains and film. The two rows of sproc ets are ind of li e the two trac s. %t's all a geared and mechanical ind of world, certainly when film started out. %t's shifting now with digital machines, but if you loo at old film e9uipment and listen to an optical printer while its going, you hear this clac ity!clac , clac ity!clac , clac ity!clac sound. %f you slow the pro'ector down far enough, it will sound pretty much li e a train, too. %t's 'ust that it's going so fast that you don't hear the separate clic s. The other thing about trains, which is what % mentioned with helicopters, is that they are very complicated, big mechanical ob'ects that move at various speeds through space. As they do that they reveal a ind of chromatic array of the components out of which they are made. The very distant train has a very particular ind of soundI the close!up and idling train has another sound. 5team trains are more interesting sound!wise than diesels. "n your boo)9%n the Blin of an Bye9you outline si< rules for editing i!ages( Are there co!parable rules for editing sound4 Gou have more freedom with sound than you do with picture. There are, conse9uently, fewer rules. But the big three things&which are emotion, story, and rhythm&apply to sound 'ust as much as they apply to picture. Gou are always primarily loo ing for something that will underline or emphasi7e or counterpoint the emotion that you want to elicit from the audience. Gou can do that through sound 'ust as well as through editing, if not more so. Ehythm is obviously importantI sound is a temporal medium. And then story. Gou choose sounds that help people to feel the story of what youHre doing. That e"ample of the elevated train in Godfather is something thatHs primarily an emotional cue. ThereHs rhythm to it but only to a certain e"tent, and story!wise itHs a little ambiguous. $What is that sound: What is it doing in the film:$ ThereHs not an easy answer to that. But emotionally you absolutely understand what that sound is there for. Gou understand it in a subconscious way, but it provo es the audience, partly by virtue of its mystery. %tHs a mysterious sound that is nibbling away at their subconscious, and people, being people, li e to resolve things in some way. 5o subconsciously they will say, $What is that sound:$ Because thereHs nothing in the picture that is anything li e a train&although itHs reasonable that a train might be heard in that part of the Bron"&the emotion that comes along with that sound, which is a screeching effect as a train turns a difficult corner, gets immediately applied to MichaelHs state of mind. ;ere is a person who is also

screeching as he turns a difficult corner. This is the first time he is going to ill somebody face to face. ;eHs doing what he said he would never do. ;e wanted not to be part of the family, and now heHs overcompensating. ;eHs doing what he alone can do for the family. Ao you recall how you ca!e up with that idea4 #rancis KDoppolaL wanted to not have any music in that scene. ;e wanted the music to come in after the murder was over, after Michael had dropped the gun the way Dlemen7a told him to do it. 2nly at that moment would these big operatic chords come in. ;e felt that, if he had music earlier, it would dilute the effect of the music. ;e was 9uite right. Get we loo ed at the scene and said, $Gou now, it 'ust ind of sits there unless we have something. Well, letHs try some sound effects.$ %t being the Bron", and since % grew up in that part of 8ew Gor , % remember&again, 'ust li e in A!erican Graffiti&% remember those inds of places always being close to elevated trains. 5o % came up with this idea of the screeching which % remembered from my youth as being a provocative ind of sound. We did a test&tried it, and it wor ed. 5o it went in the film. Basically/ you?re saying that audiences should be able to wor) with sound in a !anner si!ilar to the way %isenstein said they should be able to pu00le out the !eaning of edited i!ages( ThatHs the ey to all film for me&both editorial and sound. Gou provo e the audience to complete a circle of which youHve only drawn a part. Bach person being uni9ue, they will complete that in their own way. When they have done that, the wonderful part of it is that they re! pro'ect that completion onto the film. They actually are seeing a film that they are, in part, creatingF both in terms of 'u"taposition of images and, then, 'u"taposition of sound versus image and, then, image following sound, and all inds of those variations. % always try to be metaphoric as much as % can and not to be literal. When youHre presented with something that doesnHt 9uite resolve on a normal level, thatHs what ma es the audience go deeper. Again, that train screech in Godfather is a good e"ample. %t doesnHt ma e any sense from what youHre loo ing at. Gou havenHt been shown a train anywhere in the neighborhood. The loudness with which you hear it is too loud. Bven if you were in a restaurant right under an elevated train, it wouldnHt 9uite be that loud. 5o the audience is presented with a discontinuity. TheyHre loo ing at very still images, close!ups of people tal ing in a foreign language, and yet theyHre hearing something completely different. That forces them to say, $What is that: What could that be:$ Again, not consciously but subconsciously. And, as a result, they come up with a feeling about MichaelHs state of mind, and then they re!pro'ect that feeling onto his face. And in addition to what Al Pacino was doing, thereHs this whole other dimension that gets added to that. 5o though you wor) !etaphorically/ you e!ploy sounds that have a plausible origin in the fil!?s world( Ges. %f you stretch it too far, it 'ust becomes absurd. Gou havenHt given the audience enough of the circle to now whether itHs a circle or not. That leads to the 1uestion of deter!ining the line between !etaphor and catachresis9the absurd i!age( Gou have to use intuition and trust your instincts. At a certain point thereHs nothing else to guide you. And then, also, try stuff out. >onHt be afraid. What %Hve always found, consistently, is that you can go much further than you thin you can. 5o if you 'ust thin about it, you would hold yourself bac , but if you actually do it and loo at it and see what the effect is, you reali7e, $2h yes, this is great. % thin % can go even more with it.$ 5o you eep on going with ideas and with approaches until you sense, $2ops, thatHs too far.$ And again, who is there to tell you youHve gone too far: % donHt now. %t's 'ust you and your relationship to the wor . 5o itHs a combination of faith, that something li e this will wor . %tHs an e"periment to prove, as much as you can prove, what the edges of this world are. When youHve gone too far, you hopefully will reali7e it. Ao you thin) you could co!e up with an auteurist theory describing the way sound is e!ployed in fil!4 Ao you recogni0e auteurs of sound4 Ges, in the sense that different people have generally different approaches. But itHs so influenced by the director and by the ind of film it is that % donHt thin you can 9uite entertain that idea to the same e"tent. Are there !ovies that you would Cust as soon hear as view4 %tHs the interaction between sound and image that % li e. Although as % did mention, itHs an interesting e"periment to turn off Touch of %vil, the picture, and 'ust listen to the sound. %Hm sure the same would be true with Citi0en $ane although %Hve never done that. % see very few films myself. %'m not a film buff. Ao you listen to !usic4

Ges, but % also listen to the environment that's around me. When %'m ma ing a film, %'m li e a particularly thirsty sponge and will pull up things in the environment and thin , $2h, % could use that.$ A trivial e"ample is in Apocalypse Now. At the end of 6ilgore's beach party, there's the sound of helicopter turbines starting up. %t pre!laps the transition to when the helicopters are already in full wing. At a party he'd thrown for Marty 5heen, #rancis had arranged a helicopter to ta e Marty from 8apa to a baseball game at Jiant 5tadium. % was at the party, and % heard this sound of the helicopter turbines starting up, and % immediately saw that transition and thought, $;ey, this would be greatP That sound could pre!lap the cut. Then, when we do cut, it could hit very hard with the sound of do7ens and do7ens of helicopters idling on the ground.$ Eather than simply cut with that sound, we had something slowly building illogically underneath 6ilgore's dialogue. There are no helicopters at night when he's saying, $Dharlie don't surf.$ But what you hear under the dialogue is this turbine whine accelerating. Musically, it gives you a sense of anticipation and a windup. 5omething's about to happen. And then, of course, there's this cut, and the sound is very loud. >our response to environ!ental sounds recalls the reco!!endations of John Cage( % was a big fan of =ohn Dage in my teenage years. :hat are your feelings about nondiegetic !usic4 "f you could always e<ercise your will/ would you use it4 >o you mean ordinary film music: % generally thin music is used too much. But the general principle, for me anyway, is that although music is an effective rallier of emotions&it can provo e emotions in people&itHs best used in film as something that directs or channels emotions that are already present. %f a film becomes too dependent on music to create the emotion, thereHs a ind of steroid!li e artificiality that comes into play. The audience, without nowing it, begins to feel manipulated. $They want me to feel sad, so they play sad music.$ What %Hd much rather have happen is that the scene itself&and that scene from Godfather is a perfect e"ample because it provo es an emotion&%Hd rather, when music comes in, that it tell the audience where to channel that emotion&what twist to put on that emotion. %s it a safe emotion: %s it a heroic emotion: %s it an uncertain emotion: 2r any word you care to apply to them. That's when music, to me, is most effective. Godfather overall is a film that could be used as the te"tboo for that sort of use of music. And, Welles, too, did the same sort of thing. The use of !usic that you?re reco!!ending posits an audience intelligent enough to bridge the gap between what?s seen and what?s heard( % always assume that an audience has intelligence. They're e"tremely intelligent. %t's 'ust that, if you donHt allow people to use their intelligence, then they start losing their ability to function with it. %t's li e if you live solely on a diet of 'un food, your taste buds after awhile 'ust give up, because they are assaulted daily with very strong doses of salt, sugar and fat. After awhile, you loose the ability to discern subtle variances in flavor. And so the overuse of music can become as addictive as eating 'un food. Clarify for !e the role of re+recording !i<er versus the role of sound designer( >ou?re credited as doing both tas)s ( %t's a nebulous area. The origin of the term $sound designer$ goes bac to Apocalypse Now when % was trying to come up with what % had actually done on the film. Because #rancis had wanted to do the film in this 9uadraphonic format, which had never been done before, that seemed to re9uire from me an analysis of the design of the film in a three!dimensional space of the sound. % thought, $Well, if an interior designer can go into an architectural space and decorate it interestingly, thatHs sort of what % am doing in the theater. %Hm ta ing the three! dimensional space of the theater and decorating it with sound.$ % had to come up with an approach, specifically for Apocalypse Now, that would ma e that wor coherently. %n my case, that was where $sound designer,$ the word, came from. (ater on, people appropriated it, which is certainly their prerogative, but it also has become nown as the person who designs interesting, uni9ue sounds. 5o if you have a sound that you canHt get from a library, that you canHt go out and record yourself, but that you have to concoct out of a different number of contributing sounds, then that becomes what the sound designer does. #or instance, the sound of the flashbulbs in aging Bull that #ran Warner came up with and the sound of the punches that he came up with in aging Bull were uni9ue. They were not simply punches or flashbulbs. They had a strong emotional component to them. 5o in that sense he was a sound designer, although heHs the last person in the world to use that term. But thatHs what he was doing. Dombining a number of different sounds to ma e a single sound, that&in miniature&is e"actly what a re!recording mi"er does. They ta e all the different sounds prepared for a film and mi" or blend them in an interesting, developed way that can be sustained over a two to two! and!half hour period. But the conditions under which mi"ers and sound designers wor are very different. The sound designer usually wor s in a ind of sound laboratory, whereas re!recording mi"ers wor on a sound stage, usually with the director present. Time is of the essence. Gou have to eep moving and producing so many reels per day. The demands on a re!recording mi"er are very different than those on a sound designer. And, some re!recording mi"ers are sound designers and vice versa.

&robably no other fil! e<ists in as !any versions as The Jodfather( "s that an effect of a short postproduction schedule paired with subse1uent opportunities to re+edit( That's a process that e"tended over .3 years. 8obody new that the original was going to be the success that it was. We all hoped, but there was always a doubt. There were some dar days toward the end of postproduction where we wondered if people would sit still through a three!hour film about gangsters. ;ad it not been a success, that would have been it. There would be 'ust one version. There's only one version of The Conversation because The Conversation was not a financial success. How did you arrive at the distorted sounds heard at the beginning of that fil!/ those sounds we hear when the recorded voices of Cindy :illia!s and #rederic #orrest brea) up4 We started shooting The Conversation in ',. and finished the film in ',0. But *+,/ was the year of The Conversation, for me anyway. Bven as early as that, there were already shudderings of the world of digital sound. %t hadn't hit yet, but we new that people were e"perimenting with it. A lab at the Aniversity of Atah was doing groundbrea ing stuff. % thought, $%t's slightly logical that ;arry Daul would have a digital setup of some ind. %n fact, the only way he would be able to do what he does&remove an overlay of drums and reveal a voice behind&is by some ind of digital subtraction. Along that line % thought, $%f he's recording and the signal goes off, it would be interesting if, when it went off, the digital algorithm that underlays it is revealed.$ %nstead of the signal 'ust getting wea er or instead of it getting staticy, it could somehow begin to brea down into its digital elements. % found a synthesi7er and sent the voices through it. % processed them&the control trac &with s9uare waves and various other things to get what was an appro"imate indication, to me anyway, of a digital signal. The motive was everything that %'ve 'ust been tal ing about. The means was sending the voice through an Arp synthesi7er, a fairly state!of!the!art analog synthesi7er for *+,/. The result is prescient( "t sounds li)e a lot of recordings being released by conte!porary !usicians such as 5canner/ Chessie/ or artists on the 'ille &lateau< labe( :hen did you shift fro! wor)ing with analog !achines to digital ones4 %t was fairly gradual. What %'ve done ever since The Conversation is edit the picture and, then, mi" the soundtrac s. Because the schedules were long on The Conversation and, to a certain e"tent, on Apocalypse Now, % was able to do all three thingsF edit the film, edit sound, and, then, mi" it. 5ince then, however, schedules have not allowed me to do sound editing other than the sound that %'m wor ing with when % cut the picture. % depend very much on collaboration with a sound designer or a sound supervisor&whomever it may be&to receive the ideas that %'ve developed during the cutting of the picture and to generate material that % can then use to mi" the film. The first film % wor ed on that had any digital elements to it was Godfather """ and, then, o!eo "s Bleeding, which was '+0. o!eo was the first film that % wor ed on where the sound was edited on wor stations. But % didn't do that editing. % edited that film conventionally, and a sound supervisor, >ane >avis, did the sound on a wor station. A couple of years after that, in '+1, % started editing on the Avid with %nglish &atient. :hile !i<ing the The %nglish &atient " assu!e that sounds were delivered to you but that there were a few sounds that needed to be pic)ed up or designed after you=d already finished editing4 Ges, loads&all of the sound effects in the filmF the sound of the planes, the sandstorm, many occasional sounds&footsteps, sounds that ob'ects ma e, the sounds of 'eeps, machine!gun fire, campfires, the whole atmosphere of the desert. %n reality, the desert itself was absolutely 9uiet, which made for great dialog recording, but the problem is, if you simply played it the way it was, it would sound artificial. %t's a parado" where reality sounds artificial. 5o we had to develop a signature of the desert, what you might call an active silence that had elements that fit with the desertF a sound that wouldn't raise any suspicions and that seemed 9uieter than if we had had absolute silence. Pat =ac son&who was the sound supervisor on the film&came up with a fairly complicated blend of sounds that included a very, very dry insect sound and the sound of grains of sand rolling down paper. 2f the total sound of the film&including the dialogue, music, and sound effects&probably eighty percent was added at a later date. As you were editing the i!ages/ would you send out a call to &at Jac)son/ as)ing her to obtain sounds/ or did you gather sounds/ too4 A little of both. %t was more li e, $;ey, % 'ust had a great idea. Why don't we do this:$ Then, Pat would say, $Ges, that gives me another idea. Why don't we do that:$ %t's collaborative filmma ing at its best. %'m naturally thin ing about the final soundtrac as % edit the film, but because of my hands being full editing the picture and, then, mi"ing the film, it's more efficient for me to collaborate with somebody. Pat recorded a bunch of stuff, found sounds at libraries, and ransac ed the production sound of the film for interesting sounds that might have been pic ed up here and there. The Bnglish Patient begins with a rattle of percussion that we co!e to associate with vials of !edicinal oils( At the beginning of American Jraffiti there=s the sound of so!eone twirling a radio dial/ locating a station( And we=ve discussed the sounds that start The Donversation.

And the helicopters in Apocalypse Now. Ao you labor over that first sound that the audience will hear4 8o. %n the case of The %nglish &atient, that montage of little sounds at the beginning was a very late addition. %t was generated in the last two wee s of ma ing the film. 2nce we had the title se9uence in place, the film seemed to call out for something&a little montage of desert sounds to locate you in space and time. And so Pat came up with those things. % made suggestions about some of the elements, but she came up with everything else. "n !i<ing that opening !ontage/ you !ove fro! percussive to orchestral sound and/ then/ to !ale voices chanting( Those voice then resolve into the sound of an airplane engine( Aid you use &roTools or so!e digital !eans to tune the sound of the airplane engine or the voices4 The voices were in tune with the music that Jabriel KGaredL had already composed. 5o we tuned the airplane engine to them. We've been doing that for years. The sound of the outboard motor in Godfather "" was tuned to harmoni7e with the music that 8ino Eota wrote. This is when #redo was being ta en out into the middle of the la e. We tuned the engine, but in those days we did it by speed varying the tape recorder. "=d wondered how !uch tuning goes on versus how !uch we in the audience are re1uired to reconcile disparate sounds( Musical tonalities are very tric y. %f you're slightly off, it sounds bad. The audience can't say, $2h, that's a 9uarter tone out. %'ll resolve it.$ %nstead, you hear a dissonance that you can't resolve. Music is a good case where a gestalt completion 'ust can't happen, at least as far as tonality goes. Gou have to be in tune. 2therwise, it sounds bad. Through nu!erous dissolves/ the edited i!ages in The Bnglish Patient orient the audience( They help us )now where we are in space & geographically&and whether we=re in the narrative past or present( %dited sounds see! to function in an opposite way( They often blur one place into another/ or they lin) past and present( A good e"ample of that is the scene where ;anna K=uliette BinocheL is playing hopscotch, and you hear the sound of her hopping around and dropping the whistle or whatever the metal ob'ect is that she's throwing. That sound blends with the percussive sound of Arab music in Dount AlmQsy's KEalph #iennes'sL head until you can't distinguish one from the other. Gou, then, go from that environment into the desert. %n another scene there's a Benny Joodman tune with a clarinet solo, and out of a clarinet note comes the sound on an incoming artillery shell. All of a sudden, you're in Tobru during a siege and a lot of munitions are going off. %n that case, there is no picture dissolve, but the sound has made a transition for you from clarinet to artillery, anticipating what's about to happen. #or who! do you !i< a fil!3 for people who hear it in state+of+the+art theaters/ for people in s!all roo!s at cineple<es/ or for people who=ll catch it on video4 %t's always a compromise because you can produce only one mi". %t has to be a mi" that will play in both small theaters and large theaters. %t 'ust so happens that large theaters are less forgiving than small theaters. %f you mi" for a large theater, it will tend to play all right in a small theater. Gou can get into very serious trouble going the other way, mostly with dynamic range. The balance between the energy of average dialogue versus the loudest sounds in the film has to be very carefully controlled for a large theater. The large theater will suc up dialogue and yet reproduce sound effects and music very efficiently because of the energi7ing of the field that happens with music. Music is continuous, and, thus, it's li e it sets up a reverberant pattern that resonates within the theater. >ialogue is individual words separated by silence. They aren't capable of energi7ing all of the cubic feet of a large theater with the same efficiency that music is. Dompared to music, you have to raise the dialogue relatively loudly if you're mi"ing for a large room. Michael =arrett is an associate professor of Bnglish at the Gor Dampus of Penn 5tate Aniversity. ;e is the author of 5ound Trac)s3 A 'usical ABC/ Dols( ,+- )Temple AP, *++4- and Arifting on a ead3 Ja00 as a 'odel for :riting )5A8G, *+++-.