In a film industry somehow capable of rescuing itself from crisis to crisis, as part of which its magic is being systematically stripped away layer by layer, location sound has a smaller and smaller role to play. It has separated from filmmaking as such to become something like a peculiar accessory of the film industry. Any rhetorical shows of appreciation for it are for the sole purpose of motivating location sound recordists to participate in the first place. After all, who’s champing at the bit to be a necessary evil? The tonmeisters, typically permitted to participate from a side room, have been degraded to the status of soundtrack managers. They lead schizophrenic existences on the threshold of postproduction, to which they now belong, having lost touch with the shooting location not just spatially but also energetically. With the rise of AI, this process has only accelerated. Sound people are becoming superfluous, with it now being sufficient to simply mount a microphone on the camera or install a box that picks up the sound at it source.
Fortunately, this dystopia bears within it a redemptive utopia, a counterpoint world that begs to be rediscovered. For spaces are opening up and new movements are rising that elicit location sound-driven creativity, with sound people once again being invited to join the fray—in the middle of the set, at that.
This new world is that of the funambules du son direct: film sound’s tightrope-walkers.
Stepping back: Where is location sound actually headed?
In and of itself, a film’s location sound is “the sound” that’s captured right then and there—sometimes unrepeatably, for the most part authentically. Which, surprisingly, is a highly complex affair. It’s not simply about what tools are employed, what sounds are produced and required, in what acoustic they’re to arise, what (yet-to-be-written) audio-visual score serves or governs all this, or what story’s ultimate audio-visual telling is at issue in the first place… It’s in fact about all of this, in combination and simultaneously. Every one of these levels revolves around qualities that require decisions and awareness on the part of sound people.
Though their arms may hang in the air, they’re anything but lost in the clouds—for their feet are centred firmly on the ground. Their particular ground, however, is of a highly filigree nature—for it consists in every one of the myriad and interwoven levels on which they move. These tightrope-walkers hence navigate a multiverse where only they can (and may) be, with their consummate attentiveness and dexterity.
What does this mean, de facto?
These sound people have exquisitely mastered the skill of swinging a microphone boom. They follow the motions and emotions of the actors and the story in order to record the sounds associated therewith, whose spatial and temporal qualities they shape as “time-space sculptors”. In doing so, they take into account the changing perspectives of the camera(s) and the variable, often remote-controlled lighting within the context of the spatial givens. Much like in a multiple-level obstacle course.
With the sensitivity of clairvoyants, clairaudients, and clairtangents, they foresee the fluctuations that will take place in the energy fields of the events as they play out: the unexpected sentences that will indeed ultimately be uttered, or the new angles that will arise that they mustn’t block.
Resilience, flexibility, and creativity are born of psychophysiological coherency—and they are explored in Film Academy workshops by people being schooled on all of filmmaking’s levels. From screenwriting to editing.
