Abstract
Many documentaries rely on people talking—typically the main subject and other people who talk about the subject. These discussions are usually illustrated by what’s known as b-roll, footage that helps visualize what people are saying. However, this approach often fails to provide a cinematic experience for an audience. In this paper I examine how sound design in documentaries can be utilized to create what is unsaid in a scene of emotional subtext in David and Judith MacDougall’s ethnographic film, To Live with Herds (1972). I discuss this in context with sound designer Walter Murch’s concept of metaphoric sound. Furthermore, I explore how I applied these ideas to scenes in my award-winning documentary, Steve Roach: Life in the Soundcurrent, to show how the cinematic experience can be heightened when approaching work by the creation of visual sounds. As MacDougall notes in The Looking Machine (2019), the “spoken word” belongs “to a specific cinematic register. […], represent[ing] only a fraction of our experience of life or what it is possible for a camera to record” (179-180). Indeed, he feels that both fiction and documentary films become “impoverished […] when they exploit only the verbal side of life” (180). This study unpacks this theme by exploring how filmmakers can shift the focus of the “verbal side of life” in documentaries to by utilizing images and sound design in a non-literal way.
Presenters
Kurt LancasterProfessor, Creative Media and Film, Northern Arizona University, School of Communication, Arizona, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Sound Design, Steve Roach, Documentary
