Welcome to The Queue — your daily distraction of curated video content sourced from across the web. Today, we’re watching a video essay about how the sound design of ‘Gravity’ balances realism with what “feels real.”
When it comes to sound in cinema, what feels real and what is real are not always the same thing.
A kind of crass but effective example is the T. rex roar in Jurassic Park. Scientists have good reason to believe that the iconic bellow immortalized in Steven Spielberg’s film is not actually what dinosaurs sounded like. But when you’re watching the film, it feels right. And ultimately, in those moments of terror and awe, a fabrication serves the story best.
This dichotomy is more nuanced and a little stickier in Alfonso Cuarón‘s Gravity. The film begins with title cards that remind us there is no sound in the vacuum of space. What follows is a film filled with creative negotiations to this narrative obstacle. While it’s all too easy to wag a dogmatic finger at the screen decrying the sacrilege of scientific fact, the reality is that, in fiction, space doesn’t have to sound like space.
Not only that but as the video essay below explains in greater detail, to dismiss Gravity‘s noisy space loopholes ignores a broader and more fascinating push-pull in sound design. Namely: a tension between environmental fidelity (what we hear reflecting what we see) and rhetorical intelligibility (what we hear clearly deploying narrative information).
The moments in Gravity where the subjective overrides the spatial are subtle and fascinating, from changing point-of-audition to a score that smuggles in sound effects. All told, Gravity is a marvellous case study of the difference between realism and what feels “real” in sound design.
Watch “Sound and Silence in Gravity: Fidelity vs Intelligibility“:
Who made this?
This video essay is by Jordan Schonig, who holds a Ph.D. in Cinema and Media Studies from the University of Chicago. They are a Film Studies lecturer and make video essays on, what else, film. You can subscribe to Schonig on YouTube here. And you can follow them on Twitter here.
More Videos Like This
- Here’s another taste of Schonig’s work, on how to read pattern as form in Alfred Hitchock’s Rear Window.
- And here’s another video from Schonig, on the phenomenology of lateral camera movement.
- If sound design tickles you, might I suggest this video on the aural design of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
- And here’s INDEPTH Sound Design with a breakdown of the natural and abstract sound design in Fight Club.
- And here’s The Royal Ocean Film Society with an exploration of the sound design of Pixar’s Toy Story.
Related Topics: Filmmaking, Gravity, The Queue
