MICHEL CHION AND THE SILENCE IN THE LOUDSPEAKERS

MICHEL CHION AND THE SILENCE IN THE LOUDSPEAKERS

by: Larry Sider


Not only did Walter Murch write the forward to Chion's Audio-Vision, but both share the same influence in musique concréte and composer Pierre Schaeffer: Chion studied and worked with him; as a ten-year-old growing up in New York, Murch heard his recorded performances on the radio. So it was serendipitous that the two should meet for the first time at the School of Sound. Their meeting was also symbolic of what the event stood for: the synthesis of film practice with film theory.

In his introduction to Audio-Vision, Murch details the American invention of sound for film and Europe's reluctant acceptance of this threat to silent film, the one form of entertainment and art that could overcome the continent's Babel of languages and dialects. Sound film can be seen in the rise of Hollywood's economic and cultural influence while the powerful European silent film studios collapsed, many of their leading directors emigrating to California. Murch reflects: 'Sixty-five years later, the reverberations of this political, cultural and economic trauma still echo throughout Europe in an unsettled critical attitude toward film sound-and a multitude of aesthetic approaches-that have no equivalent in the United States'(1994: xii).

By exploring and synthesising a theory of sound without polemics, Chion's work is accessible and of equal value to the academic or practitioner and useful to filmmakers from any culture. His ideas are essential for anyone working with film as he has formulated a practice-based theory (or, a theory of practice). His lecture allowed filmmakers in the audience to step back from their work and consider exactly what the soundtrack does. How does sound relate to images on the screen? And what is the effect of a development like Dolby? Is it an inevitable technical advance or does it fundamentally change the experience of hearing/seeing film?

Using sound in film creatively is usually suggested with romantic overtones as an ideal, some sort of unattainable cinematic artistry. For seventy years, filmmakers have played with sound but usually within the confines of dialogue-based productions: sound effects are decoration; music is the predictable explanation of a narrative's emotional subtext. All this is added after the film is edited and its themes and rhythms determined. The editors, composers and technicians 'collaborate' separately, working against any unity of sound. Post-production sound is considered, by and large, as a technical chore.

The crux of Chion's discussion is to de-emphasise the importance placed on the soundtrack's components - the effects, dialogue, music, etc. - by mapping out a physical landscape (the confines of a Dolby Surroundsound cinema, the sensory relationship between the audience and the film) where these elements merge. Just as environment and ambience can transform a meeting between two people, the soundtrack alters the relationship between viewer and film.

Through Chion's ideas, any editor or sound designer should have a clearer idea of how (s)he affects that space. Far too often the editor/designer concentrates on building an amazing artifice, understanding the individual components and the technical complexity of achieving an effect; but what is not taken into account is what these effects say, how they modify the film or how they are perceived by the audience.

The overriding characteristic of this acoustical space is intimacy. Where the acoustic limitations of pre-Dolby, monaural tracks created a unity of sound, the precision of Dolby presents sounds discretely, accentuating the silence between them. This intimacy and the emotional intensity of silence present a challenge to filmmakers used to relying on continuous dialogue or ubiquitous music. For it is this silence that must be filled by the audience creating, in Murch's words: 'a purposeful and fruitful tension between what is on the screen and what is kindled in the mind of the audience - what Chion calls sound en creux (sound 'in the gap')' (1994: xix). Intimacy makes the individual image more prominent and allows the viewer to take in the separate elements of sound and vision, interpreting them in his or her own time. More often than not, this calls for less dialogue, longer shots, more considered composition - all of which means the soundtrack impacts on areas of filmmaking not confined to post-production sound.

Whereas film images have come out of painting and graphic arts, film sound has never had a creative mentor. Its advances have been largely technical, making it louder and clearer but rarely altering its role or composition. Chion has reinterpreted film sound's technical developments as a conceptual evolution. He defines and makes tangible the dynamic space created by filmmakers and technicians, inhabited by images and sounds and, most importantly, experienced by the audience. His thesis challenges the editor, director, et al, to use their new technology - particularly Dolby - to fill or empty this space skilfully and artfully.

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Larry Sider is an editor and sound designer, who has extensively worked with Koninck Studios and Keith Griffiths, on the films of the Brothers Quay, Patrick Keiller and Simon Pummell. He is the director of the School of Sound.


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References

Chion, Michel (1994) Audio Vision: Sound on Screen New York: Columbia University Press.

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(link this is reposted from):
http://www.frameworkonline.com/40ls.htm