Deluxe Wows Me

On Tuesday March 17th our class went to Toronto to visit Deluxe, which is a house for film, video and audio production for big budget television shows and movies.  The studio has won ten Academy Awards for technical excellence - and let me tell you their studio is impressive.

The day started off in the Deluxe boardroom where we were greeted by three high-ups from the studio.  These guys were pretty funny - all really into what they do.  I found it pretty interesting how two of the guys weren't really much older than I was, but I was blown away by how much they knew and the advice they had to give to amateurs like the class.

From there we checked an isolated sound booth where actors come into the studio and do voiceovers and replace audio that wasn't captured great or doesn't sound great off the original take. The head guy, I think his name is Paul, was saying that actors hate doing this sort of thing and many have a hard time getting into character to re-enact the voices and such.

We checked out several things inside the studio but I'm only going to talk about a few of them. We were allowed to enter what they called the Foley Room, I believe, where diegetic sounds are produced in a studio to make them sound much better than if they were taking organically from the original film.  This sound-proof studio they had set up was amazing - it was actually littered with ordinary and bizzare objects and items that the sound artists use to make audio. Several different types of doors were on one portion of the wall, different floor types on the ground, sand, water, bathtubs, toilets, guitars, shoes, an old car, chairs, anything and everything!  In my opinion this was the coolest studio in the Deluxe house.

One of the last rooms we checked out was the room where they convert and copy film and video.  This room was crazy! Definitely a few million dollars worth of equipment sitting in there.  Paul was saying that older copies of movies and such are copied in that room, and there was tapes everywhere.  The room house many machines which also meant a lot of people, it was the busiest room in the house.

What I liked most about this trip though were the three people that gave us the tour of Deluxe. They were young, extremely knowledgeable, and most importantly, they are pretty similar to what I'm like - well at least I think so anyway!  It was really refreshing to hear people talk about their work with such enthusiasm.  Great trip.

Response to Walter Murch

So I had some time this past week to pick up "In the Blink of an Eye" by Robert Murch and read a piece or two from it.  Murch is an Academy Award-winning film editor and sound designer, and is best known for his sound designing work in Apocalypse Now and Return to Oz - which he directed.

What I'm going to specifically focus on for this entry is the problems Murch defines when film made (or makes) the transition from analog to digital.  In the early 1980s, hard drives were bulky, primitive, and didn't really work all that well, so film was stored on analog forms of media, such as videotapes or laserdiscs.  But then in the later 1980s, technological devices such as hard drives and more advanced ways of storage started making its way into the film world.  Film began being digitized directly onto a computers hard disk, and I'm pretty sure its safe to say it scared film industry people back then - technology still scares people now.

Now more onto a more personal level.  My dad used to teach film and television broadcasting at the university and college level up till the early 1990s, when he passed away due to stomach cancer.  This obviously meant that my dad new a great deal about cameras and filming, and I can remember massive cameras laying around the house and stacks of film sitting around.  Yes, the film industry had already made their way to the digital era, but for people who weren't in the industry, analog was still the way to go.  Now instead of hauling around huge video cameras like my dad used to do, I can easily carry a video camera comfortably in my hand.  Not only this - the cameras consumers use today are high-definition, something that would of been out of the question back in my dads time.

Alright, now back to Murch.  Right.  Murch points out a couple negative aspects that come with this move from analog to digital, all of which I find quite interesting.

1. The Amount of Memory - early hard drives didn't really have much memory anyway.  This meant that films couldn't be stored as one large chunk, and moving from one chunk of the film to the next meant swapping hard disks which the film was stored on.  Not fun.
2. Bottleneck - Early machines and digital forms of storage were so expensive that buying more than one was next to impossible.  This meant that the key people involved in producing the film had to work in shifts, simply because there was only one machine to use.
3. Complicated, Inconvenient and Expensive - The big editing machines were bulky and expensive, and copies of dailies had to be specially made to be read by the machine that Murch calls the EditDroid. 
4. The Quality of the Image - Image quality is something that is most important for people who watch television or movies today - people go gaga over large screen displays.  In order to store films onto digital media, the data would be shrunk down, where a lot of resolution would be lost in the process.  Murch says that this makes it impossible to see hidden problems. 
5. Ease of Making the Cut Itself - These editing machines like the Avid were keyboard intensive, which was not what most film editors were comfortable with.  We still see this today - video editing programs like Final Cut or Premier are extremely keyboard intensive.  I'm not even sure if you could properly edit a film or video without a keyboard.
6. Works Best When Needed Least - The machines couldn't handle too much, and editors would often get a message that they had maxed out the machines processing abilities.  Murch says that this would cause things to go out of sync.  Dropped frames, anyone?
7. Reliability of the Edit Decision List - the edit decision list is conformed to match what is in the computer, which turned out to be super problematic on early editing machines.  This all comes down to difference in frame rates.  In Europe, film and video run at 25 frames per second, and in the United States and other Western countries, film runs at 24 frames per second while video runs at 30 frames per second.  This meant that some mathematical equations needed to be done before doing any transferring or copying.  Messing this up would probably result in a massive headache for editors.

And thats Murch's list!  I think there will always be an argument over analog vs. digital.  

 

Robert Bresson Response

After a great deal of thinking about what this new experimental video will take to construct, I've been coming back to Robert Bresson's "Notes on Sound" writing.  Our class received the reading during week one - a long time ago, but I'm writing on it now since its becoming a bit more important to me.

The plan I have for this journal entry is to state each of Bresson's points from the reading, and then explain its importance to video and video editing.  At the top of the list, Bresson explains that the list has been compiled to know what business that sound (or that image) has there.  In other words, the list is for people to understand why something has been done the way its been done, why something sounds like it does, and why something has been edited the way it has been edited.

1. What is for the eye must not duplicate what is for the ear.

By this I imagine Bresson meaning that we should try not to create images with sound. Everything must look aesthetically pleasing to the eye, and audio should not be a contributing factor to this.

2. If the ear is entirely won, give nothing or almost nothing to the ear.  One cannot be at the same time all eye and all ear.

Bresson means that we should not go overboard with audio and video at the same time.  They must play off of each other and not create distraction.

3. When a sound can replace an image, cut the image or neutralize it.  The ear goes more toward the within, the eye toward the outer. 

In other words, do not use images when audio would be better suited for the situation or the viewer.

4. A sound must never come to the help of an image, nor an image to the help of a sound.

If the audience or viewer cannot pick up what the image is saying literally or metaphorically, then something is wrong.  The same goes with audio. 

5. If a sound is the obligatory compliment of an image, give preponderance either to the sound or the image.  If equal, they damage or kill each other, as we say of colours.

I imagine that Bresson is saying that an importance must either be put on the sound or the image and not both.  If both are important, the resulting video/film will not convey the message you want it to convey. 

6. Image and sound must not support each other, but must work each in turn through a sort of relay. 

As mentioned above, I think Bresson means that both cannot be given equal importance at the exact same time.  Sound and image must flow together. 

7. The eye solicited alone makes the ear impatient, the ear solicited alone, makes the eye impatient.  Use these impatiences.  Power of the cinematographer who appeals to the two senses in a governable way.  Against the power of speed, of noise, set tactics of slowness, of silence.

I feel that Bresson means that these impatiences can be used as a form of building suspense or irritation.  If the sound does not sound how the audience thinks it should sound, it may make the film either more enjoyable, or less enjoyable. 

That is Bresson's list. 

New Experimental Film

Just thought I'd post two videos that inspired me for my second video assignment. You can view them below. First is Weezer's "The Good Life". Second is Blink 182's "Always".