That old Chevrolet
My
first
encounter with Ritwik Ghatak’s cinema occurred in a summer afternoon in
1993.
It was a screening of Ajantrik on
television, as part of a retrospective of his films aired on the
regional
channel. People of the neighbourhood flocked to our house as we had a
battery-inverter to solve the problem of recurring power cuts. I
remember how
the light from television fell on the faces of people sitting in
darkness, the
screen size shrinking due to the low voltage. And I remember the sound
perspective of the old Chevrolet on the roads of Netarhat in south Bihar, the area around where I
spent larger part of my
childhood.
A
recurring sound
from that old engine and occasionally from the wind-horn of the car
formed an
essential element in the soundscape of Ajantrik.
There was also a recurrent motif of Oraon songs on the soundtrack,
suggesting
place associations. Both diegetic and non-diegetic mounting of sound
helped the
film put in place a soundscape of southern Bihar.
However, it remains to be seen if this soundtrack represents the
demography of Bihar
or it merely stems out of the film space. In the
eyes of filmmaking, it is a sound reconstruction of any of the 50’s
small
townships around the Bihar
coal belt, taken
out of sound actuality of that geographical area. Within the dynamic
range of
this sound field, there are many sounds; but in the film space a
selected few
remain. To locate the selection, we can mention the music performance
in an
Oraon village, sound from the market, silence of the landscape, and so
on. Each
of them is part of the ambience the film creates, to form a specific
soundscape. But soundscape of the actual locale is much more detailed
and
diverse. The film track doesn’t take everything but creates its own
soundscape
reproduced at the screening. With each filmic experience, this
reproduction
plays on the fringes of memory, invariably shifted from the aural
experience of
the actual locale. To me the Ajantrik
soundtrack is a displaced image from my own aural recollection of south
Bihar.
Nevertheless, it settles in my memory, rather in
my sound memory.
An
attempt to
define a soundscape: There is a vast space of sound actuality
continuously
occurring around us. For example, as I write this text, the prevalent
sound is
from the laptop fan blowing air. In the range of my immediate
perspective this
is the closest one other than my own breathing and the occasional
keyboard hammer.
As the depth of the field of hearing goes beyond this proximity, sound
from
distant traffic is perceived in the silence of this room; but there is
no
actual silence, as the fan is blowing continuously with a relatively
lower
frequency than the laptop fan, hiding itself as a sound source. It’s a
matter
of pointing out the sources of sound, to locate them through an active
effort;
otherwise, they stay off our conscious level of hearing. As I continue
listening to more accurate sound fields, there are birds, one airplane
moving
through the clouds, and so on. In case of a subjective approach to
different
sounding objects around us, our hearing will lose or pay attention to
only some
sounds. If an omni-directional microphone replaces this hearing with a
given
depth of field closer to the ear, it will record all the sources to
form a
soundscape of this given space. While reproducing, we will be surprised
to find
the perspective of aural depth; will be able to hear the details from
our
surrounding sound field. Soundcape is a linear representation of a vast
field
of environmental sound. Soundscape serves as a selection of sound elements
scattered within the active aural space
around us. As part
of the acoustic
ecology, soundscape provides information and ideas about our aural
communication with our surrounding space.
We
are talking
about film-soundscape here, and we have to take account of the fact
that doing
sound for film still falls under visual domination. In a typical sync
(location) sound situation, camera establishes a shot and the sound
recording
device follows it to capture a limited sound field within a frame,
giving
attention to the available sounding objects according to the mise-en-scene. In most cases, the
director and the camera person decide locating and selecting sound over
the
period of a living shot that ultimately determines microphone
placements.
Spoken dialogue is given ultimate importance if not the performers’
movements
as source of sync sound effects. Within the given space and time of
shot-taking,
different sources of sound are scattered, and most of them, which are
not
related to the sound-script are termed as noise, being unwanted. This
way the
recording freedom of a microphone is reduced by controlling its
directionality,
in order to obey the script. Within this limited dynamic range of
recording,
available sound sources as reproducing agents are also narrowed down.
Most
elements of the sound field get lost on recorded medium.
In
spite of the
aural range being limited and suppressed, some stray sound elements
intrude
into the prescribed soundscape of film, and turn out to be able to
carry
meaning in the narrative. Let us remember the sequence of Indir
Thakrun’s death
in Pather Panchali: the sound of
close friction between tree-branches in a low breeze coming from the
woods in
high and middle frequency. Here the sounding object is off the frame
but an
unassuming non-diegetic effect
of its aural
texture adds to the soundscape of her death. In one way it functions as
a kind
of prayer for the time of death, a sublime dirge to an ending, like a
requiem.
In another way it signifies nature’s indifference to death - dry,
non-lyrical
and unavoidable. At the time of recording the optical recorder picked
up this
sound element as stray ambience (stray
ambience are ambient sound clips recorded after
shot taking gets over, in order to collect the location ambience for
future
use.)
which may be perceived as an
environmental
noise to some extent, but at the level of design it helped to
reconstruct the
space and the mood of a death sequence.
How
does environmental sound influence our hearing? Its presence is taken
for
granted: a child gets exposed to sound in the mother’s womb much before
a
visual experience, and then becomes conscious about the visual presence
of
things keeping away sound in the subconscious level;
an aural
realization appears on the
surface only when it’s actually absent in perception.
This is somewhat like a blind person feeling
insecure when objects around him are dislocated. But film is a
construction,
not a replica of our perceived world. In the value system of
filmmaking,
environmental sounds are in most cases perceived as noise; a film
soundtrack
decides about inclusion and exclusion of particular sound elements
depending on
the story. If its use is diegetic
then the deciding factor is not to disturb audience’s subjective
attention from
the camera focus. In case of non-diegetic usage, it is to underline
sounds
which may not exist in actuality, but added as tone colours in
post-production
stages. In this approach some
environmental sounds can be used as refrain comparable to musical
motifs. In
Ghatak’s Meghe Dhaka Tara, sound of
night-crickets was coming back again and again to build up an
anticipation of
catastrophe, even in daylight.
As
far as the
logic of hearing goes, the use of environmental sound or the natural
location
sound in film can reinforce spatial aspects of a frame. In terms of
film
making, it designs the depth of a shot by establishing psycho-acoustic
connections between the viewer and the locale; an individual viewer can
relate
him/herself to the bio-acoustics of the film space. Environmental
sound, if
present within the frame, can supply layers of vibrant aural colours in
place
of a one dimensional flat surface of background score, while the
dialogue-background score-sound effect scheme of film sound merely
serves the
visual authority of the film narrative.
Ghatak’s
films
were not much into location recording. On location, pilot recording was
approached in order to get a guide-track, whereas ambience was taken
separately
as stray sounds. On the editing table, Ghatak himself used to
manipulate the
available sound to design his soundtrack. On the other hand, Ray’s
early films
were made mostly from location recording. Pather
Panchali was recorded with a
Kinevox
optical sound machine. It is quite evident from the quality of sound
captured
on the film plane: a clear presence of ambient sound layers with
available
depth of field recorded on location.
There
were not
many options to sound layers before the late 60’s. Until 1954 film
sound was
mostly direct location recording; sound recorded on location was
directly used
on the soundtrack. If we follow the history of film sound recording in India,
location
sound was recorded on optical machines before the magnetic tape emerged
around
1970. Magnetic
recording de-mystified
sound making for film. Recording sound became a democratized affair
with the
advent of ferrous tapes. The recording machines became portable and it
was
possible to erase tracks whenever required, creating scope for
re-recording.
With the emergence of magnetic recording, sound studios became popular
for
doing post-production sound on a mass scale. As an outcome, film sound
became
increasingly distanced from recording sound on location.
Gradually,
a
synthetic technique of film sound design emerged as the dominant mode.
Dubbing
and Foley recording were major technological advances in sound
engineering. The
studio system invited more investment in sound post-production. Tools
and
techniques like loop recording, mixing consoles and track laying opened
up
possibilities of parallel resource of sound reconstruction other than
dependence on location recording. Stock sound became available
commercially as
a bank of sound object from where one could pick up elements for
ambience and
sound environment, although, in most cases, ambience was least bothered
about
in sound design. Films were being shot more and more on pre-designed
set inside
studios, and film-sound was becoming a mere dialogue-sync
effect-background
score scheme. To summarize: A practice was brought about by a
collective effort
of industry-dependent sound practitioners to construct sound
environment for a
film out of synthetic means of sound sources using rapidly developing
technologies, or not giving any attention to it at all, which in a way
went
closer to sound abstraction of a film locale.
The
contemporary
location sound engineer and sound designer work with virtually
unlimited tracks
in the recording and track laying stages, and handle immensely powerful
microphones with accurate directionality. In the last ten years or so,
film
sound has gone through a massive transformation from analog to the
digital domain.
It has been perceived as a sea change in reproduction formats, working
modes
and norms. A new trend of ‘sync-sound recording’ has become popular and
is a
glorified term nowadays. In this method, it is expected that sound is
recorded
on location, and these original recordings, in sync with the visuals,
will be
used in the post-production stages without any asynchronous mode of
sound-making. This requires new technological improvement of the
existing
set-ups. And sync- sound technology is being supported by recent
developments
in gadgets like the robust Hard Disc-based location recorders with
multi track
options, dolly boom recording gear with greater flexibility and access
to reach
any point of the shooting space, or application software like Pro-Tools
with
super-precise control over each recorded clip. Post-production
techniques also
experience a faster technological development in editing, mixing and in
projection/reproduction.
However,
developments in a given technology do not necessarily imply an
improvement in
the ability to achieve a creative standard.
Often the availability of a number of technological
options distracts us
into a futile and sterile quest for perfection. Working with unlimited
tracks
in the digital domain, a sound practitioner gets fascinated but also
somewhat
confused by the innumerable possibilities of going about a particular
task.
Technology tries to overpower him while he loses identity as a decision
maker.
“We liked the restriction of 24 tracks because it forces you to make
decisions.” This is what sound engineer Robbie Adams said[1] on
recording U2’s
album Zooropa.
Within
this copy
and paste norms of work in film sound design, however, sound elements
can be
controlled with utmost precision. On location, multiple options of
keeping
number of tracks of ambient or environmental sounds, sync sound effects
and
dialogue can open up the scope of recording a larger number of sound
elements
and working with multiple layer of sound.
Whether
it is
multilayered or single-layered scheme of sound capturing and designing,
Indian
cinema has generally seemed to be
hostile to environmental sound spectrum as ambience on married
soundtrack even
when a film is shot on location. On a location, sound is usually
controlled as
it enters film space and in a film set, sound is limited to mere voice
and sync
effects, making construction of a soundtrack completely dependent on
asynchronous means of sound sourcing such as available stock sound. In
the
process, film sound, instead of representing the established locale,
drifts
away from documenting the sound of an original space, Sound making goes
closer
to a synthetic design by a sound operator working under the specter of
mechanical craftsmanship; the sound practitioner’s religion of open
hearing
loses validity.
That
sound so far
has been marginalized by the visual aspects of the cinematic space is
no new
knowledge to the sound practitioner. Sound has been taken for granted
as a mere
appendage of the world of experience that cinema produces. It has
hardly ever
been conceived as having an independent, distinct identity of its own
with
depth of field, focus, and lensing, which could acquire a separate
entity as
soundscape. Sound has not carried a parallel narrative, which it can,
but has
merely played a supportive role to the story-telling. It is rarely a
complete
aural journey to the listener with closed eyes in the cinema. Right
from the
beginning of sound-films, sound in Indian cinema has been associated
with
culture- specific use of songs and orchestral background music. The
compulsory
song sequences and typical background score take up most of the space
of the
soundtrack. The remaining layers go to dialogue of the characters.
Performed
voices and hyper-real sound effects float on the background score, and
song
sequences are the relief points/punctuation marks within the narrative:
this
has been the usual structure of soundtrack scheme for Indian cinema
since the talkies began.
Now,
when sync
sound recording has found a sort of revival, the location sound
technician,
with immense power to capture even the micro-sounds, still depends on
the
signal of decision makers in the hierarchy of film crew. The whole
ambience of
shooting is driven by an invariable script that is bound to tell a story. From the location recording to
post production stages this scheme of ‘story telling’ has been
maintained with
utmost loyalty by the film technicians. The practice of sound in Indian
cinema
developed its own aesthetics of providing a support system to the
hundred years
of story-telling on celluloid without giving attention to the creative
possibilities of ambience or to the task of documenting environmental
sound of
a location.
A
creative use of
ambient or environmental sound can now derive a new authenticity in the
surround sound syntax of sound mixing and reproduction. In surround
sound
mixing process different channels of sound are directed to different
speakers
present at the reproduction end of the projection house. This is made
possible
by a kind of encoding and subsequent decoding of the channel routing
that a
surround sound system consists of. There are dialogues, effects and
background
music (if we forget about songs) as separate channels of sound. A sound
technician’s job is to send these channels of sound to different
speakers
according to the wish of the production head of the film. For example,
industry
norms are bent on sending dialogue to the centre speakers while music
moves to
the surround speakers. To speak of the viability of a sound
practitioner’s
artistic scope with multi-channel sound let me quote reputed American
sound
designer David Randall Thom from his entry on ‘Sound-Article-List’
‘A…mono
track is
always better than a mediocre 5.1 track (if the channels don’t hold
significance) no matter what kind of movie (film) it is; …some of the
filmmakers are using 5.1 channels because they think there is something
magic
about the technology itself. …More channels don’t always equal better
art (if
they don’t have anything to say).
If the
sound is artfully done, and if the structure of the movie is friendly
to sound,
then the number of channels almost doesn’t matter in the success of the
track.
Some of the directors I have worked with understand the relationship
between
images and sound very profoundly, much more deeply than I do. On the other hand, most of
the directors with
lots of films to their credit are approximately as naive about the use
of sound
in film as the average person on the street’[2].
If
ambience or location environmental sound
finds its due place within these expanded channels, one could represent
a
specific locale on film space with depth, details and clarity in a
‘surround’
image of film experience. In this range of sound design, environmental
sound
can take on importance, and its depth, spectral colours and contexts
can emerge
as signifiers, representing a visible and audible world. Film
soundscape, done
this way, will no more ignore the ambience of a given or intended
space, either
actual location or plastic film set. In case of location shooting,
microphone
will pick up distant sound objects outside the hearing range of
scripts, and
register them. In case of shooting in sets, layers of aural values
would be
added on the sound track while reconstructing the locale; separate
ambience
recordings associated with constructed space will be incorporated in
the place
of stock sound.
But
these are as
yet mere speculations. Location ambience remains unattended for most of
the
film productions. A vibrant and vast sound field gets lost on
soundtrack in the
process of film making. From this perspective, the history of film
sound is a
history of lost sounds. It is the medium’s failure to document aural
details of
an active sound space within a time that becomes the focus of
historical
evolution of film sound.
That
old Chevrolet, again…
What
stands out
in the soundscape of Ajantrik is
the
sound from the engine of that old Chevrolet with its fragile body and
wind
horn. Sound from tree branches in the woods reflects off the Pather Panchali
soundtrack. The vendors and the palanquin bearers on the
street in Charulata establish their
presence and stay in our memory of the film. They transcend the status
of being
mere sounding objects to become sonic images, play a vital role to
structure
our mental topography of a locale and our associations with it that
leave
indelible marks in our memory. I
have
visited Ajantrik many a time since
my
first viewing, but what remains unchanged on every such occasion is the
expectation of sound and songs from the Oraon villages. At every
viewing of Pather Panchali Indir
Thakrun’s death
sequence brings back anticipation of the sound of close friction of
tree
branches. Sounds that stand out in memory are sounds that strike our
hearing
with its uncanny-ness; uncanny because they rebel against an otherwise
flat and
plastic surface of film soundtrack.
They
rebel and
they die. That Chevrolet is no more a sounding object from our
environment;
this old model from the 1920’s doesn’t appear any more on streets. The
sound of
Oraon songs is almost lost from the landscape of south Bihar.
The Oraon community is already forgetting their own tunes, their songs
consigned to the status of an endangered oral tradition. Street hawkers
from North Kolkata
do not any more sound like they do on the Charulata
soundtrack, the palanquin is
gone. On the location of Pather Panchali,
new multi-storied complexes are coming up; sound from the woods is
exiled from
suburban Kolkata’s changing soundscape.
These
are sounds
forever lost, no more sounding in the evaporating present. How did the
sound
die? Is it simply because the object stopped producing sound? Isn’t it
an
inevitable aural gesture that died and went into oblivion? Sounds of
hand
rickshaw is no more sounding the proletariat’s bell and the sound of
the heavy DC
fan hanging from colonial walls is fading away. The sound of the AM
receiver is
replaced by evening soap operas and the evening soap operas by FM
handsets.
Sound changes and it keeps the record of the inevitable transformations
occurring around us. Metanarratives like globalization are recorded
through
their aural associations. A sound that is lost also means a loss of its
cultural content. It can be perceived even as a loss of historical
value.
The
lost sounds
should be preserved somewhere (In a dead archive?) Probably, some of
them are
still alive in the living collective called cinema, because cinema
provided the
scope to record sound on film. In fact, there was no other medium which
could
record sound from a landscape so extensively.
In
Pather Panchali when the
sweetmeat
vendor Srinivas enters the village the sound of his archaic chime is
heard and
thus preserved on film; Meghe Dhaka Tara
has kept for us the sound of steam-engine of 1960. Yet, there are very
few
examples of this registration. Thousands of films made since Alam Ara could have documented the
changing sound of our world, but by design they lost much more than
what they
captured. Sounds are forgotten for this reason in the film age, for our
failure
to register them.
Film
sound could become a collective
archive of
sounds if it could pay attention to the aspect of sound as an
independent
existence in actuality. Cinema cannot serve as a documentation of a
changing
society without recording its aural states. Film making with its own
compulsion
of marginalizing sound’s scope over its development in the last hundred
years,
has by and large missed out the possibility of registering an aural
society.
Our sound memory does not represent the repository of lost sounds.
Lost
sounds
gather in our collective unconscious, they strive for representation
within a
shadowy area of our remembrance. Sounds forgotten should be excavated,
to be
re-read as cultural history. The lost sounds should appear to us as
entities
eager to be rescued from an unheard medium of consciousness; they
demand the
recognition of the eternal return of sounding objects.
References:
1 Paul Tingen: Recording U2,
Audio Media (April
1994)
2 David Randall Thom in online
forum
Sound-Articles-List (13 May 2004). Read his articles
at filmsound.org.
Useful essays
and websites
Moving
pictures that talk: the early history of
film sound’ by Mark Ulano.
Filmsound.org
The
Emergence of
German Sound Film
The Early
Talkie
Sound
recording research at Bells Lab
Steven
E. Schoenherr’s Recording
Technology History online resource
