The Third Work-Extra Credit Assignment

The Third Work Extra Credit Assignment I attended The Third Work Symposium on Friday, November 13th at 5:15 pm. The discussion was titled “What’s the Score: Contemporary Sound Design in Documentary Cinema.” Discussed were the categories in sound design. The participants, Barker and Velez, talked about the relationship between image and sound and how they can create different meanings. In contemporary documentaries, emotion and tension rely highly on the score. In Contemporary fiction, designers have been relying on sonic textures rather than score. What opportunities does this arise for creators of non-fiction media and film? They defined foley as being what draws attention to the center, ambiance as what draws attention to the edges, and score as relating specific images to abstract ideas. The participants spoke a lot about the film II Castello, where people are shown packing lobsters into a box, and the sound of tape being wrapped around boxes is heard not seen. Even though we did not see tape, we can make relationships as to what the tape is being used for, hence, sound creating meaning. Then we were shown Double Tide (2009), where there was a still shot of a woman on sand, and foley sounds of her digging in the mud for oysters. The sound created a relationship between the figure and the world. Next we watched a clip from Manakamana (2013), a film about people in Nepal traveling to a temple in a cable car. The shots switch from different cable cars, where different people are shown making different noises. In one shot, the people were just sitting there, so all we could hear is the cable wire. In another shot, two women were shown eating ice cream. Sounds help to support and confirm actions performed by characters. Another clip we watched was from Last Days (2005), where it seems as though a man is trying to survive on his own in the woods. The sounds of nature, such as a waterfall and fire crackling, really take over the picture. In this case, the sound is in front of the image, perhaps to suggest that he is so alone that is all he can hear. I learned that foley sounds and sonic textures are more frequently being used in films, and how they can be manipulated to create different meanings.