The Third Work Symposium

I was able to catch the ends of the “Enunciative Acts: On the Materiality of the Voice” and all of “Strangers on a Journey: Mimetic Sound, Synchresis and the Attraction of Foley” and the “Live Foley Performance”.  Each panel expanded on or criticized how fiction and non-fiction media represent audio-visual relationships.

Panelists Irina Leimbacher and Pooja Rangan elaborated on the subversive status accorded to the voice. In editing interviews, typical practices attend to voice to lead attention on it by taking out the “uhs” and “ums”. It disinvests the power of voice, ventriloquizes the voice and body. It creates a disjunction of individual and personal experience. Rangan highlighted the voice and body are to be taken into equal consideration, but we should also acknowledge the voice is embodied to begin with.  

In the panel of Foley & Synchresis, Jackie Goss stated when sound and image have the same connotation, it becomes a less complex experience for the audience. She had shown a section of “Hello Photo” in which footsteps were the same Foley sound for every person. Humans can perceive the slightest noises. It was noticeable the current person’s footsteps sounded exactly the same as the person three seconds ago. She proposed, with the Robert Bresson definition, image and sound should not support one another. Goss featured “I Begin to Know You” and specified the exaggerated Foley, the never fully fused image and sound, and the continuous switch of Foley and music. She concluded Foley that uses space for confusion between image and sound has the most profound effect.  

Kelly Kirshtner performed a live Foley soundtrack to a short video loop from Jeanne Dielman’s “23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles”. The character enters the dining room, sets the table, and leaves. She continuously added additional sounds on each pass of the loop while Daniel Robert Kelly’s interactive program would decay older tracks, dismantling the soundtrack as new sounds were recorded. The sounds she produced disassociated from the image. She exaggerated sounds, used the closing click of a box or the sounds of swirling water to suggest the character doing something off-screen, and placed the ‘clink’ of glass milliseconds after the image sets two glasses down. It reinforced the original narrative and invented an alternative narrative simultaneously. 

Relationship Between Shots

The editing in the bar fight in Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015) plays a significant role to the pace and tone of the sequence. It starts with an establishing shot of the location, Black Prince bar, and cuts to a group of men opening the front door. The continuity isn’t disrupted as the character points to somewhere, which we find in the next shot to be Eggsy and Harry. It switches to a group shot that establishes the location, the group approaching the table, and the two men sitting. From there, the quick POV cuts are alternated by dialogue, reaction close up shots, and over the shoulder shots.

All of these shots are carried by the soundtrack of the ominous violin and cello. The tone of which creates a menacing atmosphere. The comedic aspects are built through the dread on Eggy’s face and the two “dun dun” violin sounds that replaces Eggy’s dialogue. The audience recognizes something is about to occur when the music picks up in pace and there is a shallow close up shot to Harry’s face. There’s a brilliant rack shot, just before the action starts, the group is walking towards Harry, focuses back on his face when he delivers his line, and then focuses back on the group.

Ultimately, the sequence doesn’t lose the audience by consistently editing the shots to work with the music to create a dramatic and comedic undertone while developing an anticipation by having shorter shots, cutting quickly, and faster and decisive musical beats.  

Audio Portrait