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If you wish to see, listen

The role of sound design
Larry Sider

Abstract
Editor Walter Murch coined the phrase ‘Sound Designer’ to describe
the person working on film responsible for the soundtrack. Like a
Director of Photography, the Sound Designer would have overall
control from pre-production through to the final print, modernizing
long-established but conservative approaches to sound editing.
Currently, the role of sound designer has fragmented: a creator of syn-
thesized sound effects, a composer who integrates effects with music,
or a sound editor with higher aspirations. Film music, on the other
hand, fuelled by merchandizing tie-ins and the convergence of film
production, music sales and online offshoots, has changed dramati-
cally. Film music now more readily integrates all forms of music and
tends to reflect the use of music in other media. Meanwhile, sound in
film remains, as it has for decades, a more or less technical exercise
tacked on to the end of post-production. In this article, Sider explores
shows how sound is virtually ignored within current film practice gar-
nering, at best, 3 per cent of Hollywood budgets. He shows how an
awareness of sound needs to be created for young film-makers, creat-
ing a paradigm in which sound and image ‘dance’ in a symbiotic rela-
tionship. Using examples from his own work, from feature films and
documentaries, he presents a model for integrating sound more fully
as a means of engaging with the picture rather than merely decorating
it.

In the 1960s, Walter Murch invented the ‘sound designer’. At the time it
was his way of describing the work he did in designing the then new
six-track surround-sound format what has become the Dolby 5.1 stan-
dard and then figuring out how best to have the sound take advantage of
that acoustic space. The new format made possible a new, more sophis-
ticated and complex soundtrack. And that soon necessitated a new role
in film sound production, a person working on a film with overall respon-
sibility for the soundtrack, from pre-production through to the final mix.
No longer were the traditional titles of location recordist, sound editor
and sound mixer sufficient to describe the person who might combine
elements of all three jobs in designing or realizing a film’s soundscape.
If not an intentional intervention, the invention of the sound designer was
a strategy to modernize the soundtrack, integrating sound more fully
and effectively into the production process.
Given the fertility of film-making in the 1960s, advances in technol-
ogy (portable cameras and recorders, ‘rock-and-roll’ mixing studios), a
vibrant experimental sector, burgeoning film schools, and the experi-
mentation with sound through the relatively new magnetic tape

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recorders, the time was right for such an evolution. Murch, along with his
collaborators and contemporaries, film-makers like Francis Ford
Coppola and George Lucas, were among the first film-school graduates
to advance into the mainstream industry. They had been steeped in the
work of the new wave of European film-makers and exposed to the
avant-garde and experimental work of both Europe and the United
States. Murch, himself, became interested in sound as a teenager
through musique concrète and the works of Pierre Henry and Pierre
Schaeffer.
Murch’s concept of sound design never really took hold, though.
Only Murch, usually combining his roles as film editor and sound
designer and a few others working at the high end of the film industry,
can accurately call themselves sound designers, practising the kind of
control over a soundtrack that Murch foresaw. Instead the role of sound
designer has become something else or, should I say, has become
several things: the person who has overall responsibility for the sound-
track, the creator of sound effects that cannot be recorded and must be
synthesized, the composer who integrates effects with music, or the
sound editor with higher aspirations.
As New York audio producer Larry Loewinger wrote, ‘By the late
Nineties, sound design has come to mean something smaller, a little less
reputable and even a tad controversial ... Sadly, the concept of Sound
Designer someone who takes responsibility for the sound from begin-
ning to end, just as a Director of Photography does for the image never
took hold. Why? Was it the hold of powerful work habits, the introduction
of digital technology, the long-established hierarchy of film production,
the refusal of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to rec-
ognize the term, or was it just not necessary?’ (Loewinger 1998: 24).
The titles are different, the technology has changed and film sound is
more complicated, but it still holds the same place in film production as
it did thirty years ago. By and large it is decorating the picture rather
than entering into a dialogue with it. As producers, broadcasters and
film-makers are always on the lookout for innovative styles, the creative
use of sound would seem to be an obvious and inexpensive area to
explore. Instead, sound is, admittedly with some exceptions, mired in its
traditional use as an add-on or embellishment for the picture, a throw-
back to radio, theatre and silent film accompanied by off-screen sound
effects. It is clearer, wider and denser but its narrative role is small.
Using the speed and flexibility of digital editing for more than budget-
cutting and schedule-shortening, sound could become more effective,
more integrated with the image, taking film sound out from under the
proscenium arch, creating for the audience a more engaging audio-
visual experience.

The split between sight and sound

As composer/theorist Michel Chion writes,

... films, television, and other audio-visual media do not just address the
eye. They place their spectators, their audio-spectators, in a specific per-

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ceptual mode of reception, which ... I shall call audio-vision. Oddly

enough, the newness of this activity has received little consideration. In
continuing to say that we ‘see’ a film or television program, we persist in
ignoring how the soundtrack has modified perception. At best, some
people are content with an additive model, according to which witnessing
an audio-visual spectacle basically consists of seeing images plus hearing
sounds. Each perception remains nicely in its own compartment. (Chion,
1990, xxv-xxvi).

It is exactly this schism between sight and sound that is replicated at

each stage of the production process. If the role of sound in screen pro-
ductions is to change, this split must be removed both in the minds of
film-makers and technicians and in the way they use the technology.
Whether it is credited as ‘Sound Design’ or ‘Sound Editing’, sound
for film is still largely considered a technical domain only fully under-
stood by a film’s sound department. Young film-makers adopt this atti-
tude early in their training in film-production classes. Rarely is sound
included in theoretical analyses of dramas or documentaries. Possibly
because of its omnipresence, sound is rarely considered in film pre-pro-
duction. Unlike the image, sound does not tend to require special equip-
ment or preparation. All the sound dialogue, effects, atmospheres will
be recorded with the same selection of microphones (usually a boom,
radio neck-mike or some combination of the two) and one recorder
possibly with a back-up for safety. No matter what equipment you
choose, the costs are relatively low. Camera equipment, on the other
hand, is expensive and in the case of tracking shots, aerial photography
or steadicam scenes it requires extra technicians. The director, director
of photography and production manager are, therefore, required to
analyse carefully each of the film’s shots to assess the camera equip-
ment and crewing needed. The images (and not the sound) are, there-
fore, being created even before the shooting begins. On location, of
course, the image must take precedence over all other concerns; sound
can always be recreated in post-production. All of this suggests that
sound is waiting patiently in the background; out of sight, out of mind.
The ease and cheapness with which sound can be produced reduces its
importance in the overall process. Hollywood films allocate an average
of 3 per cent of the budget to sound. Clearly, what costs most is most
important.
The only way to change this balance is to create an awareness of the
value or effectiveness of sound in the final film. For sound is 50, 70 or
sometimes even 100 per cent of a scene. A scene can be defined by
sound just as a series of neutral shots can be given meaning through
audio effects and music. Yet, in accepted industry practice - a practice
taught and reinforced in most film courses - the addition of sound is left
until the end of post-production. The professional post-production
process is based on budgeting and scheduling which assumes that
sound is a separate process, done completely by specialist technicians
and does not impact on the meaning or structure of the already edited
picture and dialogue.

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1. The School of Sound The problems with current post-production practice

is an international Any layman visiting a film cutting room or editing suite would be sur-
annual forum to
explore of the use of prised to find that sound and particularly music is usually left to the end
sound in audio-visual stages of post-production. It is only logical to ask how something so
media. Organized by important can be left to last. This exemplifies the sound/image schism:
Larry Sider, it has
been held yearly in music, which has the potential to alter the meaning of a scene, not to
the UK since 1998. mention a whole film, is put on last. In a lecture at the ‘School of Sound’1,
film director Mike Figgis explained this predicament: ‘I spend maybe 18
months working on a film from script through picture editing. During
that time I work out a series of complex psychological relationships
between the characters, giving the film its meaning and drive. Then a
composer is assigned to the film and in the last 5 weeks of editing he
can completely change all those relationships and the meaning of the
film.’
This problem is even more heinous in documentaries for which, in
the last fifteen years or so, music has become a requirement. I edited
one episode of a television series called A Love Divided (Channel 4,
1989), three films about couples kept apart as a result of the prevailing
religious and political conflicts in their countries. The film I edited dealt
with a German couple separated by the Berlin Wall. Able to see each
other for only one day each week, their relationship was a long string of
railway-platform goodbyes as the girl returned to West Berlin every
Sunday evening. During filming the Wall came down and the boy moved
in with his girlfriend in West Berlin. But now, because he had been
accepted at a college in Munich, it was he who was leaving by train
each week returning to school. The goodbyes on the platform contin-
ued. Despite the monumental changes in their country, their situation
ironically remained the same.
The last scene of the film is the boy leaving by train. We see the
station and families of immigrants with their belongings, people sud-
denly on the move from Eastern to Western Europe. The station
announcer calls the trains over the public address system. There is a
sense of uncertainty, of journeys with unpredictable ends. In voice-over
we hear the boy’s father eloquently express the dilemma former East
Germans find themselves in: Was the life they had so bad? Will the
uncertain future necessarily be better? The train begins to pull away, the
couple kiss through the carriage window, the girl continues to walk
alongside as the train gains speed. Fade to black as train and girl are
framed in the vastness of the station’s arched girders. We are left with
ambiguity. And we are given the time to consider for ourselves what has
been said as all of the film’s ideas and arguments come flooding back.
That is how it was edited. As I am something of a purist and feel that
documentaries should not rely on music, I cut this scene without consid-
ering the use of music.
But in the last weeks of picture editing music was composed for
several scenes in the film including the last one. Now we hear the
father’s thoughts but with the addition of single piano notes punctuating
the silences between his words. These notes are in the same key as the
chimes signalling announcements on the public address speakers, cre-

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ating the impression of an echo. Then as the train pulls away we hear the
rising voice of a very melancholy, slightly jazzy, tenor saxophone. It is
saying, ‘This is the end, and the end is sad’. This creates two effects.
First, we have been told how to feel: everything that has happened or
will happen is sad. The movement of the film is simplified into one melo-
dramatic emotion. Second, the music telescopes the image. Instead of
scanning the whole frame we focus on the kiss and the lone figure
walking down the platform. Nothing else matters. It is as if an old-fash-
ioned Hollywood iris enveloped the scene and closed into a point. The
composer has decided the meaning of the film.
Many would say that the scene is beautifully constructed and unusu-
ally moving for a documentary that includes so many political ideas. The
piano underscoring the father’s words adds a sense of poetry and the
saxophone’s reverberation accentuates the station’s immense interior
giving the impression of two small people venturing into an unknown.
Touching, yes. But it was not what was intended. Rather than allow the
audience to come to their own conclusions the music presses an emo-
tional button that tells the audience what to feel, overriding the words
and thoughts of the film’s characters. Music carries too much emotional
weight to be used in most documentaries, especially those produced
under tight television budgets and schedules that dictate the addition of
music at the last minute. Once music has been composed and recorded
it is rarely removed from the mix. As Kieslowski puts it:

It’s interesting - drawing out something which doesn’t exist in the picture
alone or in the music alone. Combining the two, a certain meaning, a
certain value, something which also determines a certain atmosphere,
suddenly begins to exist. (Stok,1993,179)

What I feel music can do is to provide the mood and space for the audi-
ence to think and imagine. (When asked what aspects of his films he
discusses with his composer, Angelo Badalamenti, director David Lynch
answered in one word: ‘Mood’.) Philip Glass’s score for Errol Morris’s
feature-documentary The Thin Blue Line (1988) is an example of incor-
porating music into the fabric of a documentary, creating an atmosphere
that frames the film’s narrative information. The Thin Blue Line investi-
gates the killing of a Dallas policeman in 1976 for which the wrong man
was imprisoned. Through testimony from the police, lawyers and wit-
nesses and stylized reconstructions, we experience what happened
before, during and after the murder. Glass’s music (mirroring the black
backgrounds against which the interviewees are filmed) provides an
impassive presence behind the Rashomon-like story of who committed
the murder. The stability of the music counterpoints the witnesses’ con-
tradictory stories.
Mike Grigsby’s documentary Lockerbie: A Night Remembered
(Channel 4, 1998) revisits the site where sabotaged Pan Am Flight 103
crashed to the ground in rural Scotland. The film attempts to understand
how a catastrophe of such magnitude affects a small, tight-knit commu-
nity. Most of the film consists of interviews with Lockerbie residents who

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relate moving, often horrific, sometimes surreal, accounts of their expe-

riences during and after the disaster. But Grigsby doesn’t allow the film
to wallow in morbid details for his focus is on the event’s effect on a
group of people in a particular place. To maintain his point of view he
uses a simple piano refrain (mixed in with wind and other location
atmospheres) with shots of the countryside, clouds, or the passing
Glasgow to London train, constantly reminding us of Lockerbie’s isola-
tion and innocence. In fact, the music was composed and played by the
film’s sound recordist. The audience is provided with interludes in which
to reflect on what they have heard and seen, combining those thoughts
with their own feelings and knowledge. He allows the viewer to synthe-
size the images and sound on their own. (Is this true interactivity?) The
result is much more powerful than if Grigsby constantly hit home the
tragic events with continuous underscoring.

Sound changes the image

‘Sound changes the image’ - in fact, some would say it multiplies it. This
is a concept that any director, editor, composer or sound editor must
become acutely aware of. And it is the reason why sound post-produc-
tion can twist and distort the meaning of a film. To understand the
potency of the statement all one has to do is look at any scene in any film
first without the sound and then with it. How you view the frame, what
you look at, which actions stand out, how you interpret expressions; all
these are influenced (if not completely controlled) by the soundtrack.
This is widely experienced by animators who spend months, if not
years, creating mute images. Finally reaching post-production, the ani-
mator adds carefully chosen music, music that was always considered
an integral part of the film. The usual reaction is: ‘What happened?
Where’s my film?’ Movements, gestures and areas of the frame that
seemed important on the storyboard and through the viewfinder now
recede as the music shifts the eye’s attention to other parts of the
images. The areas of attention in a mute moving image are different from
those of one with sound. Music not only imbues the image with emo-
tional or cultural resonance, it also guides the viewer’s attention. It
accentuates different movements depending on how musical rhythms
sync up with actions in the picture. Move the music a few frames and dif-
ferent movements show up; move the music again and a different set of
actions will stand out. Atmospheres and reverberation (on music or
effects) further enhance this sensation by giving a sense of depth and
increase the illusion of 3D. These elements can make a radical change
to the feel and mood of a scene.
To appreciate more fully this phenomenon, editors and directors
must analyse separately the sound and images they work with in order
to understand how they affect each other. Michel Chion writes,

In order to observe and analyse the sound-image structure of a film we

may draw upon a procedure I call the ‘masking method’. Screen a
sequence several times, sometimes watching sound and image together,
sometimes masking the image, sometimes cutting out the sound. This

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gives you the opportunity to hear the sound as it is, and not as the image
transforms and disguises it; it also lets you see the image as it is, and not
as sound recreates it. In order to do this, of course, you must train yourself
to really see and really hear, without projecting what you already know
onto these perceptions. It requires discipline as well as humility. (Chion,
187)

Another strategy is to play a variety of sounds or music over a sequence

having cut out the sequence’s original track. Immediately the picture will
offer a resistance or attraction to certain sounds. Different pieces of
music will create a selection of sync points where music and image find
a synergistic relationship, making something new out of the two sepa-
rate elements. This is the approach I take when working with animation
and the blank canvas it offers. If I started an animated film’s soundtrack
by simply putting sound effects on the moving objects, I would go down
the road of decorating the image, adding layers of realistic detail without
necessarily gaining meaning or mood. Instead, I choose random sounds
and atmospheres in order to discover what the image is ‘saying’. In an
almost chemical process, some sounds ‘stick’ while others are shunned
by the picture. From this I can determine a narrow palette of sounds
from which I build up the track.
This was the approach taken when producing the soundtrack for
Simon Pummell’s animation Blinded by Light (Channel 4/Arts Council of
England, 2001). The eight-minute short is based on case histories of
people blind from birth who have gained sight in middle age. The
trauma of this experience is related by a live-action character speaking
to camera in close-up. In place of his eyes are black rectangles within
which are small short sequences of animation and visual effects (draw-
ings, rhythmic patterns, dissected models of an eye, X-rays, shifting
shadows), metaphors for the mechanism of sight. As the man’s dialogue
takes up most of the space on the track and would have to be favoured
in the sound mix, I had to find a soundscape that would work in the gaps
and blackouts between sections of the film. Working with an assistant,
our original concept was to ‘illustrate’ sonically what the man would
have heard before he could see. Initial attempts at small montages of
incidental everyday sounds proved completely uninteresting and banal.
The concept was simply too literal and added nothing to the film. So we
began laying random sounds against the picture, a collection of effects
and atmospheres taken from CD libraries and our own DATs. What
fused seamlessly with the picture were electronic and mechanical
whirrs, solenoid hums, and slight metallic springs and hits. These were
the smallest and most delicate sounds we had. When placed in a loose
sync over the range of animated effects, they unified the diverse images
and focused the viewers’ attention on that part of the frame. Lightly
mixed in behind the character’s voice, their audibility came and went. It
was as if we were inside the man’s head hearing his eyes and brain at
work. The sound concentrated the scope of the film’s story within the
character rather than creating a ‘back story’ or external space.

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Something which in retrospect is so simple but could only have been

achieved through trial and error.
Just as a director plans the look of a film, s/he must be able to
imagine the sound of the world s/he is creating. A film’s fictional world
will include certain sounds and not include others. Between the director
and sound editor/designer, through trial and error, the sound of their
world must be discovered. Merely relying on a factory approach (clean
up the dialogue tracks, add Foleys, heighten the background atmos-
pheres, commission incidental music) usually results in a middle-of-the-
road, functional soundtrack. It rarely adds anything to the film’s narrative.
Sound post-production should be active, organic, a procedure that
encourages evolution. David Lynch (in a video interview) describes this
process as ‘action and reaction’ - constantly being aware of and
responding to what the film is ‘saying’, how it responds to the sounds
and music that you add and delete. Eventually you find the balance
between pictures and sound, often creating a soundtrack dramatically
different from what was conceived at the start of post-production. And, in
turn, a different type of soundtrack produces a different film.
There is a corollary to the idea of sound changing the picture: the
picture can change the sound. The Indian director Mani Kaul relates an
experience of watching/listening to a movie on a transatlantic flight. The
film was an American, mainstream picture of no great consequence,
somewhat boring. Feeling drowsy, he closed his eyes but kept the ear-
phones in place. Mani found that the film’s soundtrack was actually
rather engaging, not unlike a radio drama. He heard well-written dia-
logue between two characters, effects and atmos were woven in and out
and the music created the desired emotional tension. But when he
opened his eyes, the bland cutting between medium, over-the-shoulder
shots of the protagonists neutralized the soundtrack.
One episode of Simon Schama’s History of England (BBC, 2001) pro-
vides another example of editing obscuring the sound. The track was
primarily Schama reading passages from his book on which the series
was based. Along with Schama speaking to camera his words were
illustrated with re-creations of historical scenes, paintings, etc. One
sequence detailing a series of battles and wars was particularly hard to
comprehend. Schama, whose writing is normally vivid and stimulating,
sounded as if he was reading someone else’s poorly written text. Yet,
when I closed my eyes, his words became clear, like the writing I was
acquainted with in several of his books. The problem was the picture
cutting. Covering an extended sequence of narration with shots lasting
no more than five seconds each created a tension between sound and
image that distracted from the narration’s meaning. Fast picture cutting
made nonsense of Schama’s distinct, descriptive prose. Maybe the
format was not right for Schama’s writing ... or his writing was not right
for that kind of television.
When teaching, I ask sound design students if they would have the
nerve to tell a director that their film or part of it would work better
without sound. When working as a sound designer I’ve found my job
often entails convincing the director to use less sound and to simplify the

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soundtrack. Animators, like the Brothers Quay, will often suggest leaving
sound off a shot so the audience can enjoy the animation for its own
sake. So, when editing or doing post-production sound, the first ques-
tion to be asked is, ‘Does the scene need sound?’ This question covers
every aspect of the soundtrack from the necessity of dialogue or music
to the appropriateness of added footsteps and other Foleys to accentu-
ate the reality of the scene.
Producing the soundtrack for Ruth Lingford’s animated Death and the
Mother (Channel 4, 1998) posed exactly this dilemma: how much sound
was needed? The film depicts a Hans Christian Andersen fable.
Monochrome and drawn on a computer in a style imitating a woodcut,
the film has the expressionistic look of a Kathe Kollvitz lithograph. A
music track goes throughout the film, tying together the story of a
mother whose daughter is abducted by the devil. The main body of the
film is the pursuit of the devil by the mother and the trials she endures
along the way. In order to create an intimacy with the characters, a full
Foley track (footsteps, breathing, body and clothes movements) was
recorded and mixed with the music. But the Foleys and spot effects
brought out all the wrong aspects of the animation. Instead of expres-
sionism it created a gawky reality, giving weight to the crudely drawn
characters, emphasizing their physicality. Rather than concentrating on a
facial expression or gesture hinting at the mother’s inner emotion, the
audience was drawn to footsteps, off-screen sounds and other bodily
movements. These all detracted from the rich, expressive animation and
its ability to convey a touching story through the black and white
images. In the end, all but a few Foleys were removed in favour of the
music.
Dialogue presents a particular problem to the sound designer. As it
is one of the more important reasons financiers, actors or distributors
will decide to take part in a film, few directors or editors will be able to
remove many of a film’s words during editing. At the same time, the dia-
logue largely determines the character of a soundtrack by dictating the
placement and volume of sound effects and music. At the School of
Sound, I asked director Mike Figgis how he allowed for the significant
use of music and sound in his films which, due to their funding, casting
and popular audiences, had to have a solid foundation of dialogue. He
replied, ‘When I write the script I cut 25 per cent of the dialogue. When
I’m in rehearsal I cut 25 per cent of the dialogue. When I shoot I cut 25
per cent of the dialogue and in the editing room I cut 25 per cent of the
dialogue.’ Figgis is constantly aware of the ease with which dialogue can
overwhelm a soundtrack leaving little room for anything else. He has the
confidence to create a film that leaves gaps for sound, knowing the
added music and effects will enhance the mood and work in counter-
point with the dialogue rather than merely fill in the spaces between
words.
In re-voicing dialogue and creating post-synchronized soundtracks,
the director, sound supervisor, mixer and (possibly) editor, must decide
at each moment in the film what will be heard and what will not. Each
footstep, passing car, cough or telephone ring is considered equally.

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Location sound provides you with a soundscape from which some ele-
ments (but not too many) may be deleted and many more may be
added. But post-synchronizing offers a blank slate on which to add re-
voiced dialogue (ADR), the sounds of actors and props (Foleys), spot
effects and atmospheres. The mixer has full control over the volume of
each element and its placement in a mono, stereo or surround sound-
scape. The possibilities for orchestrating the various sound components
are infinite.
In high-budget (and most Hollywood) films post-syncing is com-
monly used for large portions of the film soundtrack. It was recognized
long ago that it was cheaper and easier to replace sound during post-
production than to wait for optimal sound conditions on location. Due to
the cost of hiring studios and paying the artists for extra days, post-
syncing is now most often used in low- to medium-budget films as a
remedial process to replace the odd lines of dialogue misread by actors
or whole scenes whose sound has been obscured by background noise
from traffic, planes or the operation of special effects machinery on the
set. This has created the attitude that post-syncing should and can be
avoided through good planning. But that ignores the creative use of
post-syncing. When editing Institute Benjamenta (Channel 4, 1995), by
the Brothers Quay, we accepted that about 5 out of 27 scenes would
have to be post-synced. Planes from one of the flight paths into
Heathrow Airport caused certain obvious problems while the camera
tracking over ancient and creaky floorboards caused others. During the
initial ADR sessions the Quays became enamoured with the re-voicing
process and the strange effect it produced. Not only did it provide a
second chance to direct the actors but while listening to the studio play-
back, the ‘new’ voice floating against a neutral background seemed dis-
engaged from the picture. This reflected the film’s empty characters
wandering through the ‘dead’ rooms and corridors of the Institute
Benjamenta. Then the mixer added a few of the Foley effects behind the
voices, creating small punctuations within the eerie limbo. This delicate
mix of sound matched the film’s highly stylized, shallow focus and
precise black and white imagery. The sets were large and the shots
often framed very wide, hence location recordings were reverberant,
almost documentary-like. But the new sound was discreet and careful,
framing the dialogue with silence and interrupting the silence with the
judicious footstep, rustle of silk or the tap of a walking stick.
Throughout the post-syncing process we were constantly made
aware of how the film’s mood was being created through the subtle
combination of sound and image components. If one talks about the
‘magic of cinema’, this is where you find it, in the montage and collage
that make up a film’s world. In this case, using location sound seemed
like a tawdry shortcut.

A way forward
The ways of working with sound that I have outlined require no special
technology, nor are they necessarily more expensive the usual post-pro-
duction techniques. Rather, they are the function of a different point of

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view, one that suggests that sound makes the picture more engaging. In
advertising the first School of Sound, I ‘stole’ a quotation used by
Manfred Eicher, the founder and head of ECM Records, in his
company’s own publicity. It comes from the twelfth-century French monk
St. Bernard of Clairvaux: ‘You wish to see? Listen; hearing is a step
towards vision.’
To more effectively integrate sound and image, film schools and film-
makers must break down the separation between sound and picture
editing, a separation based on industrial practices that began with the
introduction of cinema sound more than seventy years ago. This parti-
tion causes film-makers to disregard the creative uses of sound that are
routinely practised in experimental film and other audio-visual genres
such as sonic art, gallery installations and dance. Hence film sound has
become a rather staid, conservative form of audio production.
A film editor’s reaction to his film’s sound mix is often along the lines
of ‘If I knew the sound was going to be like that, I would have cut the
picture differently’. But it should be possible to organize post-production
so that the film editor, sound designer and composer have the opportu-
nities to react to each other’s work. This means introducing sound
design and film composition earlier in post-production. In describing a
film audience’s audio-visual experience, Walter Murch offers an
approach to this strategy:

In my own experience the most successful sounds seem not only to alter
what the audience sees, but to go further and trigger a kind of ‘conceptual
resonance’ between image and sound: the sound makes us see the image
differently, and then this new image makes us hear the sound differently,
which in turn makes us see something else in the image, which makes us
hear different things in the sound, and so on.
(Chion, 1990, xxii).

Shouldn’t this kind of synergy occur between picture and sound editors?
Unless picture editors learn more about sound, one way forward is to
have twin cutting rooms with sound and picture editing stations com-
bined in a network. Scenes could be picture edited, then passed to the
sound designer, then returned to the editor for reworking, and so on.
Admittedly this is a radical suggestion that would challenge most film
budgets. But imagine what the results might be ...

References
Loewinger, Lawrence (1998), ‘A Sound Idea: the rationale behind the position of
“Sound Designer” and why it never took hold’, in The Independent (the mag-
azine of the Foundation for Independent Film and Video), October.
Chion, Michel (1990), Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen, New York: Columbia
University Press.
Stok, Danusia (ed.) (1993), Kieslowski on Kieslowski, London: Faber and Faber.

If you wish to see, listen 15

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