"There are always sounds to be heard and all of them are excellent.” - John Cage, ‘Silence’
Where do the sounds come from? One can settle for the technical explanation of transmission through sound waves and marvel at the complex mixtures of tones that the two holes on either side of the head send to the brain… analyzing, categorizing…
One can also orient oneself to the dominance of sight that has shaped our culture over the last 150 years: “I believe what I see” - and not be surprised by the metallic clang of a blacksmith's hammer on the anvil, by the unbearable noise of a climbing airplane propeller, or by the small, seemingly inconsequential sob of a child which has just cried for minutes and whose pain is now fading away.
One can love sounds simply because they exist for whatever reason. One can listen to silence or experience loudness like a drug; one can find calm or become distracted.
Sounds affect people universally, metaphysically, emotionally. Hearing a sound is a very personal experience. Musique Concrète pioneer Pierre Schaeffer said: “Everyone hears something different.”
Sounds are perceived to varying degrees, but since we cannot shut our ears, we hear even in unconscious moments like sleep. We are always listening, and we hear more than we consciously perceive. Sounds work subversively, sneaking into our lives as experiential values, as benchmarks for emotions. Instinctively, we turn down the car radio when we are looking for a street while driving - one needs quietness for concentration. One reads a book in the park, relaxed, surrounded by rustling treetops that remind one of a vacation mood by the equally roaring sea. Sounds seem to be the crucial emotional link for perceiving reality.
With the help of experiences from this reality, we construct a modern form of self-portraiture, cinema, film, as an art form.
We humans have always done this - cave paintings, ancient theater, opera, photography. We always place ourselves before a mirror so that we remain more real (with the help of distance) than we do in everyday life.
Pierre Schaeffer invented the concept of Reduced Listening, which assigns a right to existence to a sound, independent of its source. A produced sound is no longer just the end result of a process, but can now be experienced separately, independently, and almost mystically.
This ability of the human ear, or rather the brain, to select - listening to a bass line in music, isolating a single voice at a party from many voices - functions like an acoustic magnifying glass. This is akin to the creative work process in film sound design. Here, dialogues, sounds, atmospheric soundscapes, and music are separated so that these multifaceted tones can then be individually processed and mixed into an inseparable whole.
Water, for example, can be used in a film image in various ways depending on its volume, spatial area, tone color, resonance, distance, and volume. The sound of water lapping at the shore is different from rhythmic waves moving in cycles, or the powerless roar of an endless ocean.
In the sound design of the film England! (Germany 2000, Achim von Borries), I used these various sounds to imbue the suicidal end stage of a terminally ill man with emotionality. The waves splashing against the wood, which sound like a subjectively experienced tone, are embedded in the rhythm of a heartbeat that he is gradually losing, making him feel as if he is adrift in a wooden boat, lying in a coffin. A wide shot resounds with the immense sound of the sea in the distance, evoking a sense of profound loneliness. The man is lost.
Film sound, with its wonderful ability to operate subversively - so to speak, hidden and "quietly, softly" - sneaks into our (sub)consciousness with a new form of authentic perception. There, we learn to connect human emotions, intricate and widespread actions, not only with "their" sound but often to experience them solely through it. A large part of humanity learns about World War II, the vastness of the landscape in Mongolia, or the powerful, engulfing water during a supernatural sea storm on a ship, acoustically only through cinema. We associate these events with the emotionality of the (film) listening experience. However, these are by no means "their" sounds. They are all carefully chosen, constructed, and mixed by the creative workers of sound post-production for a specific purpose - be it action or poetry.
Even for small, everyday film events like car crashes, fights between men, footsteps on a lonely street, or a heartbeat, sounds are meticulously crafted. They are not real. But we believe what we hear, and that brings a new reality to our ears.
Sounds and Noises – the Secret Main Characters.
The thumping on the chest of the mega monkey King Kong. The activation of a laser from a sword and the ensuing battle. The punch of a boxing glove against the stomach and face of the opponent. Even when glass bottles are smashed over heads in Action or Western films, these are fortunately props made of sugar, which must first be given a sound to appear authentic.
In cinema, sounds can now represent the materiality of objects and events since sound levels have become more permeable through Dolby and digital breakdowns. The shattering of glass and the falling of shards have become emotional experiences, just like the almost crackling sounds of a mouth slowly and enjoyably preparing for a kiss.
In the past, sounds in cinema played a subordinate role. The recording and playback technology severely limited the authentic reproduction of sounds, making them often perceived as a nuisance. In typical dubbing of foreign films, filmmakers preferred to rely on individual sounds that acted as symbols: a horn for traffic, a bird for a nature scene. Footsteps, voices, and clearly anchored individual sounds like door slams or gunshots defined the main soundscape of a film.
When sound and mixing master Walter Murch opened our ears with The Conversation and The Godfather, and introduced surround sound with Apocalypse Now, which has now become standard, film viewers transformed into cinema listeners.
Since then, a new profession in creative sound work has emerged in the post-editing phase. It consists of the overall vision from the supervising sound designer and the sound editors of the individual departments - dialogue and effects editing, work on atmospheric sounds, music editing. In a large, well-funded film, there are numerous sound-related names to read in the credits. However, the dedicated work of a small crew can also elevate a film.
Alongside non-linear editing systems that have rendered manual work with tape, adhesive materials, and cutting tools obsolete, and the limitation of being able to hear only 2 to 4 tracks at once, careful sound post-production still relies on the essentials: inspiration, improvisation, innovation.
The element that shapes the cinematic experience is selection. Simply put: image and sound are recorded separately, and after equally separate processing, they are ultimately presented separately in the cinema space. The actual film is created in the viewer’s mind. In specialized sound work, selection is made within the sound concept to gain more creative influence over the overall picture.
In an interview with Walter Murch in 2008, he shared an interesting acoustic effect during the sound editing of the film The English Patient (USA/UK 1996, Anthony Minghella). A conversation in the desert seemed strangely unreal and artificial, almost as if a dialogue from a voice booth had slipped directly into a sound-specifically carefully designed and multilayered film. He noted that this was because there was almost no atmospheric sound present in the stillness of the desert. The sentences appeared dry, disconnected from reality, almost oppressive. So he added wind and rustling sand sounds to represent the "empty sound space" as true and realistic.
In the magazine Film & TV Kameramann, film editor Wolfgang Widerhofer talks about similar experiences with the absence of sounds in the film Pripyat (Austria 1999, Nikolaus Geyrhalter), which was shot near Chernobyl: "You can’t see the radiation, but it is present in... the silence. You hardly hear anything. It’s quite eerie, almost like in a horror film. The original sound is very reduced and thus very artificial."
Therefore, the removal of elements that contribute to the listening experience, especially regarding the reality of events through sound, can alter this and evoke a new auditory image. Accordingly, the negation of sound - namely, no sound - could also be considered a sound!
Silence and stillness acquire a creatively usable significance.
In the practice of filmmaking, original sound recording, as well as the post-production of sounds, should have a wide scope. The secret of interesting cinema sound experience lies where the secret of all sounds and listening in life lies: in their invisibility. Sound designers, sound masters, sound effects creators, and musicians consciously and quietly create bridges to social and emotional experiences in the world of audio art. Sound is an international language.
