Bob, what you call "natural sound" adds texture to the scene and without it, the viewer would feel that something wasn't right, yet would not be able to quite discern what it was that wasn't right. In the hands of a talented sound designer on a Hollywood production you could be fooled into thinking that the wild sound was being used. Rest assured that that isn't the case. Except for the truly indigent or clueless moviemaker, wild sound is seldom used except as a guide for post audio layering.

Adding the right ambient sounds adds to the perceived realism of the scene, without it, movies would just be moving pictures.

n.b. "Foley" is named in honor of Jack Foley who first developed the technique of using a bakelite panel and drum sticks to provide the sound of tap shoes in Fred Astaire movies, where miking the taps was impossible due to the wide shots used for most of the dance sequences.

Hard to generalise, but the lack of ambient sound for some sequences can add a dramatic "surreal" quality - as if fate has taken over the present.

important... yep .....crucial or some stronger word which i can't come up with right now

I have always felt that one should be able to close their eyes and "see" the
story in your mind just from the sound track and to some extent the music bed.

Remember old time radio programs!

RC, I would have to respectfully disagree with your statement.

Cinema, e.g., film and video--moving images--is a medium of the visual. Radio is a medium of sound. Two entirely different mediums with two entirely, and opposite, approaches to story telling.

Alfred Hitchcock would also disagree. He was of the opinion that you should be able to turn off the sound in a movie and, from the pictures, still be able to follow the story.

This is the problem with the majority of most films today. They rely far too much on the sound, instead of the image.

Hello everyone,
Dave, perhaps the word you might use is essential ...
In some cases, the sound is required, and the story doesn't move, or convince anyone, without appropriate sound ... in other cases, not so much.

SciFi is a good example ... we all know that there isn't any sound in space, yet how many of us would miss the laser fire and explosions if every exterior scene was completely silent... ?
On the other hand, action movies sequences don't require every natural sound - simply the squealing tires and sirens ... in the Blues Brothers, for instance, there was a shot of the junk on the dashboard sliding across the screen shot looking out the windshield ... did I miss the sound of the items hitting the far side of the dashboard and windshield? Not so much ...
A final example might be someone walking down a lonely hallway toward his office in the dark ... if all we hear is the foot steps - it brings suspense ... in an identical scene, if we hear a television playing with an old episode of Candid Camera filtering into the hallway and sounds of kids playing around the corner - it sets up a completely different emotion.

So, once again, the answer becomes it depends (grin)

It is up to you to determine if the sounds are essential; are used to set an emotional backdrop for the scene; or simply build the emotion you're trying to establish (suspense - informal ease - or nervous tension) ...

I recall a performance where a dancer did a tap routine without music - I had no floor mic ...
Fortunately, I was able to find a music track that matched the tempo and contained a bit of clicking sounds in the background that could be mistaken for the sound of the dancer's shoes... I was able to save the silent performance from disaster (and a lot of personal embarrassment - grin) ... so was it essential for me to have sound? Yes! Was it essential to have the original sound? No. All that is required is simply a hint of tap dancing to convince the viewer...

I also agree with Jay in his disagreement over radio and video - they are apples and oranges.
begin personal opinion
As a librarian, radio was the start of the decline in our culture's lack of interest in books ... it became a way to entertain and educate without reading ... although newspapers and topic specific magazines held their own through it all... Now the multimedia format of the Internet and the increase of topic specific online video and television shows has once again assaulted many of us to give up books ... not to mention ebooks ...
end personal opinion

Until that time... Earl J.

"begin personal opinion
As a librarian, radio was the start of the decline in our culture's lack of interest in books ... it became a way to entertain and educate without reading ... although newspapers and topic specific magazines held their own through it all... Now the multimedia format of the Internet and the increase of topic specific online video and television shows has once again assaulted many of us to give up books ... not to mention ebooks ...
end personal opinion"

The interesting thing in your comment is "once again assaulted many of us to give up books...". Even though Radio was thought to kill our interest in books, it didn't. Look how many books have been published and read since the advent of radio. Millions, I would guess. You can take my books away when you pry them from my cold dead hands, as they say.

Dave T2

Jay,

My feeling is that the reason films are so full of sound now, it makes it easier to edit. Remember in old films or even some newer ones, you could hear the ambient noise change between cuts or you could hear the cuts in the dialogue as they used different takes. But add some music or loud ambient noise and that is not as much a problem. Even with digital editing, it still makes covering up those bad audio recordings and ADR mismatches easier. And I think a lot ot this is to blame on Lucas and Spielberg who overwhelmed us in their movies with musical themes and ADR dialogue. (now I am a big fan of Lucas and Spielberg, especially the original Star Wars, but even then it bothered me that the dialogue did not sound live, which is wasn't).

A good film will mix video and audio. I don't think a good film requires that it stand on its own without sound, but I do think Radio is a lot better without images. ;)

Dave T2

Great thread this . . .

Walter Murch using the sound of the room-fan blade dissolving into the sound of the helo blades, which were in slomo . . . in "Apocalypse Now!" The text I just wrote that eventually lead to the title of the picture I was referring to . . . And to get closer to Bob's queries and concerns . . like the visual transition, if it is done very fast or even slowly the brain>eye/ear will accustom and tolerate and be stimulated by the next thing it needs to comprehend. And now we are moving towards the levels of "needs" that we have become highly selective and responsive to. As sentient beings we have learnt that to survive we need to know what comes next - that's what filmmakers depend on. Put a slug or even a goldfish in the audience and they will not have an inkling about narrative! They'll slither or swim out of the cinema shaking their heads demanding their money back. But for us poor ole sapiens that have learnt to thrive and die on narrative, it is our life blood. As long as the narrative is there - it can be 2 minutes or 2 seconds long ("Blink of an Eye") - we need that narrative. We have been hardwired for narrative. Recognise that then every thing else kinda falls into place?

Oh yes, do break the "rules" but always have a nod towards what we have, as animals, have come to absorb, into every fibre and cell . . . and I'm still learning too.

Grazie

Jay, you're saying several interesting things here.

My understanding of sound in older european films (Specifically the french new wave classics) is that they pretty much all were shot MOS and then overdubbed afterwards. So you could pick a handful and compare the amount of work done after the fact, knowing that it was all added afterwards.

Even if you're planning to recreate everything with ADR and foley it's helpful to record reference audio. In fact for ADR I suppose it's mandatory.

Another thing about older movies is that they work well in older theaters. The Castro theater in San Francisco used to have an out of date sound system and I felt that the only movies you could hear there were old enough to match the system. New movies were just too complex. The theater's been updated in the last 15-20 years and sounds fine now.

Is there a need for foley? I think as long as it doesn't draw attention to itself it enhances the experience. You can probably strip it down to "just enough" though.

Rob

,,,radio was the start of the decline in our culture's lack of interest in books ... it became a way to entertain and educate without reading ...

Before radio there was the lecture circuit. Samuel Clemens earned a very, very good living from it. He also sold a few books because of it, some were sold by subscription where you'd get chapters shipped to you as they became available.

Why do I know this? I read books ;-)

I heard a radio interview last week with an ebook publishing guy talking about the novel idea of selling ebooks by subscription. It kind of made me laugh.

Rob

Baysidebas had this to say:

"Adding the right ambient sounds adds to the perceived realism of the scene, without it, movies would just be moving pictures."

I'd go a little further, simply based on my gut reaction to being in the position of playing out a scene with and without natural sound. The natural sound seems to draw us into the scene. Without it we are observers of the scene. Both can be valid. Take a crane shot, 40' up in the air, we possibly don't want the viewer to feel they're dangling in the air with no visible means of support, we might just want them to enjoy the view...or not. On the other hand in a bedroom scene we may want the viewer to feel that they are indeed intimately in the room...or not.

As to the more general discussion of audio in movies in general.
A few years back I was doing tours of duty playing at projectionist in cinemas. I think I can safely say more money is spent today on cinema sound systems than projection. In the typical two racks of audio gear and 1,000W amps these cinemas also had SPL meters. Watching them was quite an eye opener. Pretty easy for a modern movie to push over 100dBA into the cinema. We're pretty close to reproducing sound as it is in the real world.
We've come a long way since the days of optical soundtracks. There's got to be a couple of octaves more of the audio spectrum reaching the audience and at least 30dB more dynamic range. Those subs can move the walls of the projection room quite a bit!
At the other end of the dynamic range cinemas today have some degree of acoustic treatment and are much quieter than they used to be. We can hear a pin drop.

We could debate the importance of sound and vision however one fact remains. We are far more acutely aware of sound than vision. If evolution or our maker hadn't made us so we probably wouldn't be here, we'd have long ago all been tasty morsels for sabre toothed tigers or become black goo between a T Rex's toes.

So from what I've heard and observed when it comes to natural sound in our soundtracks, played in a modern cinema, we have to be careful. Tiny sounds that decades ago would have been lost in tape hiss are now quite audible and can be very distracting to the audience who while they're enjoying our narrative still have a subconscious keeping an ear out for a tiger about to grab them.

Bob.

Yes, I think several have made some good observations in this thread.

In readings Bob's latest post (4:48:50 AM), I was reminded of another of Hitchcock's philosophies (is it too obvious I'm a Hitchcock fan?), "Dialogue should simply be a sound among other sounds, just something that comes out of the mouths of people whose eyes tell the story in visual terms." In order to fully understand that, it must be put in context.

In screenwriting, well-written dialogue is merely a representation of how people really speak. If it were written how we really talk, it would be extraordinarily long and boring. I think this is what Walter Murch is getting at in his use of limited sound. Cinema sound should be a representation of what we hear in life. His point in using limited sound is that you can build up so many layers and so many decibels (and then add music and dialogue to the mix) that it becomes nothing more than a cacophony. That's what I've been hearing in so many movies these past several years (with the advent of Lucas and Spielberg). Just because we can do it, doesn't mean we should.

In the documentaries Visions of Light and Cinematographer Style a few of the ASC members lament that sound came into cinema too early; it didn't have time to fully develop a visual language. Rudolf Arnheim, film theorist and perceptual psychologist, espoused the same idea. Perhaps this is where the cinematographers' thinking originated. In any case, one can't help but agree with them.

Yes, sound is important, but the "moving image" should not take a backseat to sound in cinema. When it doesn it becomes radipo with pictures.

P.S. Arnheim's book Film As Art is an excellent read if you really want to learn more on the subject of pure cinema.

Graham, you bring up a very interesting point. How do you define "narrative?"

Jay, it can be almost anything . .anything, anything that captures my attention .. but then . . somehow . . . . . leaves me thinking that there is something that is going to . . . . happen . . that may well threaten my ease . . . appealing to my needs . . . .

I once did a small vid about some bees in my Garden. The buzzing came and then went and then the bee (actually several) became the narrative - a day in the life of a bee.

Grazie

"Yes, sound is important, but the "moving image" should not take a backseat to sound in cinema. When it doesn it becomes radipo with pictures."

I'd say nothing should take a backseat to anything in cinema.
You must get everything right or the illusion is lost.

We must also not forget that cinema is just one part of the entertainment business and a diminishing part at that. Live theatre is on its last gasps, we need to be nimble if cinema is not to go the same way.

Bob.

"... leaves me thinking that there is something that is going to . . . . happen . . that may well threaten my ease... "

Wow, sounds like you've been talking with Hitchcock. ;o) That's pretty much the basis for all his films--"there is something that is going to... threaten my ease."

What you've so eloquently described, on a visceral level, is "story." You are absolutely right. We all want to be told a good story.

The reason I bring this up (and asked for clarification) is because of the references made above to radio. Wikipedia gives an interesting definition of narrative as: "... a story that is created in a constructive format (as a work of writing, speech, poetry, prose, pictures, song, motion pictures, video games, theatre or dance) that describes a sequence of fictional or non-fictional events."

There are nine general mediums (oddly enough radio was omitted) in which story may be told. Each medium defines the "format" or means by which the story will be told; each has its own strength. For example, theatre and cinema are similar, yet they are different in that theatre relies primarily on the spoken word and cinema relies (or should) upon the visual image to tell a story, or present a narrative.

Your example of the bees video is a good one. When we "see" a bee, we may have a certain reaction, depending on our experiences with bees. Bob's point is well taken in that when we add the element of the sound--the buzz--that can, and should, elevate the experience to a whole new level. Either element alone will evoke a reaction, but both together can send it through the roof.

Again, using your example, Bob's question, if I understand it correctly, is how many more sounds do we need to add before it's too much? I think Mr. Murch has provided the answer to that question, and I'm paraphrasing, 'No more than is necessary to evoke an emotional response.'

In your example, the "buzz" is more than adequate.

Bob, please, forgive me for appearing to attempt to dominate this thread. That is not my intention. Our discussion has struck a chord with me on a subject that I am very passionate about.

"... cinema is just one part of the entertainment business and a diminishing part at that. Live theatre is on its last gasps, we need to be nimble if cinema is not to go the same way."

Why do you think such is the case? I agree with you, but why do you think these art forms, that have been so vital in the past, are flirting with death?

(Perhaps we should created a new thread?)

Again I apologize if I have high-jacked the thread!

" I agree with you, but why do you think these art forms, that have been so vital in the past, are flirting with death?"

Because we all want to be entertained and over the centuries our entertainment has become more immersive.
I'm probably from the last generation that will ever be entertained by true wandering minstrels. I know that term sounds quaint but quite by chance one night in India this family turned up in the garden of this rather run down hotel we were staying at and proceeded to put on a show. The kids were filthy but they could dance on broken glass, the parents staged scenes from Hindu mythology and all they wanted was enough for their next day's meals.

Today's generation plays video games in teams that span the globe in a virtual world. It has surround sound, has moved beyond 3D and into 4D. Sensory feedback is not uncommon. This part of the entertainment business is taking a larger slice of the entertainment dollar.

Thanks to Avatar it would seem that cinema can still put enough bums on seats to make a good return on investment for the bankers who fund this business. More recent flops really show that it has to be good, really good, to draw in the crowds. Yes, suddenly the image and the sound is the thing. I was amazed to read that parts of Inception were shot in 70mm, just to get the absolute best quality image in the wide shots. That's serious money just for the image. Maybe the story sucks, haven't seen it but I'd bet 10 years ago if you asked a studio to fund shooting 70mm they'd have laughed at you, no matter who you were.

I guess to answer your question as simply as possible: Because something better has come along and that's a story as old as the history of entertainment.

Bob.

"Because something better has come along and that's a story as old as the history of entertainment."

I guess this is the sticking point for me, personally. I don't see it as being "better." Immersion in that which borders on the mindless and inane is not better story telling. Granted, it is numbing, a form of escape, but at a certain point it's no better than an electronic opiate.

Has the technology has progrerssed? Certainly! Has it made cinema better? Not necessarily, not in my opinion.

Another interesting point you bring up is the concept of entertainment. It's like: All apples are fruit, but not all fruit are apples. Entertainment is not limited to cinema or immersive gaming. Heaven forbid! Like so many things, it's a matter of education (or the lack thereof) that will determine the outcome.

"Again, using your example, Bob's question, if I understand it correctly, is how many more sounds do we need to add before it's too much? I think Mr. Murch has provided the answer to that question, and I'm paraphrasing, 'No more than is necessary to evoke an emotional response.' "

No, my question was a bit more complex than that although indeed yes, you can overcook it and I do have to have words with the composer, my goodness, no, it's a family argument, not the arrival of The Terminator from 2100 :)

My question goes to what kind of emotional response.
In Grazie's case OK, we hear the bees, how many, where are they, how close, how far. Are they a threat, are they playful and harmless. I can take just the sound of the bees and twist the emotional response to the image of the bees.
Or we have a couple having a picnic and one is distracted and swipes at something. The dialog explains it was a bee, not a fly. Do we hear that far off bee or not, how does that sound being there or not change the emotional response to the scene.

Bob.

Um, radio did not begin the decline of interest in books. Cinema existed before radio and Theater, both high and low, existed before then. Movie theaters were packing them in decades before stories were broadcast on radio.

There's always going to 20-25% of the country that doesn't read at all. Another bunch that reads sparingly and a top level that reads constantly.

The importance of Foley is the importance of sound. Foley just gives you more control over it.