On April 26, Beijing time, the 93rd Oscar Award Ceremony came to an end. The film "Voice of Metal" won the title of "Best Sound Effect" and won another sound award during the awards season. Compared with the visual enjoyment, the auditory level of feeling is the key to the breakthrough of this film.
"The Voice of Metal" is not the first movie to focus on the hearing impaired, but it may be the most special one among them.
Facing such a feature film composed of hearing impaired actors, hearing impaired language (sign language) and hearing impaired culture, sound designer Nicholas Becker spent a lot of thought on simultaneous recording and post-production to construct an unprecedented "Hearing World".
Isn’t this time listening to the movie? Let’s talk about how this famous work during the awards season used sound design to polish the movie.
From "listening" sound to "perceiving" sound
The protagonist of the film, Rubin, is a heavy metal band drummer. Long-term exposure to high decibels has caused irreversible damage to his hearing. During a tour, he was suddenly deaf.
In the face of emergencies, Rubin was unprepared. This auditory and psychological change is obviously difficult to understand just by "seeing."
The sound designer Nicholas once served as the foley for the movie "Gravity". His rich work experience enabled him to notice sounds that are real but difficult to detect.
In order to restore the real hearing loss experience, Nicholas used a large number of contact microphones when shooting. Unlike traditional devices, contact microphones pick up sound through the vibration of an object instead of airborne sound. These specially designed miniature devices are placed in the mouth and boots of actor Riz Ahmed in order to collect the smallest sounds emitted by the body.
Technology itself is not a spectacle, but the right use gives it meaning. The way that some hearing impaired people, represented by Rubin, perceive sound complements the working principle of contact microphones.
In the early days of deafness, Rubin's heart was manic and restless. At that time, he was still under the control of "hearing", but with the help of Joe's guidance and the help of his deaf community partners, Rubin's "sense" ability became stronger.
Rubin uses the slide to communicate with children in the community, perhaps the most moving scene in the movie. From the auditory point of view, the sound is inaudible to the two people and the audience, but the rhythmic vibration can be transmitted through the slide.
This is also the turning point for Rubin from "listening" to "perceiving" sound. The sound of drums and cymbals has gradually changed from an external sound wave vibration to his inner rhythm. The recording techniques used by Nicholas and the real and natural sound captured make this change no longer abstract.
Sound is a memory
Joe once told Rubin that a bomb exploded in his ear during the Vietnam War and he was deaf. Decades passed, he still remembered the music that sounded in his ears at that moment.
For people who are deaf, like Joe and Rubin, sound is a memory.
To this end, director Darius Mader interviewed a number of acquired hearing impaired people, based on their memories to construct the world after hearing impairment-the sound from the outside world is not evenly weakened, but filtered out Most treble, leaving only the low frequency part.
In order to immerse the audience in the auditory sense, Nicholas and his team reproduced this feeling through mixing, and the sound into the audience's ears became as low and dull as sinking into the bottom of the water.
But Nicholas did not apply this technique to the entire movie, but to let the sound change as the plot progressed.
In the pharmacy, on the dining table, in the classroom... the voice heard by the audience is sometimes clear, sometimes dull and mixed with metallic noise. Behind this choice of sound is the movement of viewpoints, allowing the audience to switch naturally between subjective and objective perspectives: sometimes Rubin listens to us, sometimes we listen to Rubin.
This change is also reflected in the strong contrast of sound loudness.
At the beginning of the movie, Rubin gets up to use the juicer and wiper in a very clear voice. But as his hearing deteriorated, these voices gradually disappeared, and the vibrant morning became silent.
During this period, Rubin could not tolerate the low-decibel environment, and "making a sound" was his way of proving his existence. For this reason, Rubin repeatedly screams to make noises, which are particularly prominent in a quiet environment.
The boundary between subjective and objective, reality and memory has also become more and more blurred in the changing of voices.
Hearing impaired communities and "silent" culture
In the opinion of actor Ritz, when using sign language to communicate, people can see each other's expressions and body movements clearly, and it is difficult to conceal each other.
This unmodified sense of nature is also reflected in the sound design.
When Rubin first participated in the hearing-impaired community mutual aid meeting, the room was full of people's sign language rubbing against cloth, and the sound of insects outside the window was also clearly audible. Here, the ambient sound can be highlighted.
For a long time, Rubin lived under a double barrier: his hearing loss prevented him from living as before, and his lack of sign language made it difficult for him to integrate into the hearing impaired community.
But as Joe said: Hearing impairment is not a problem that needs to be repaired. The real obstacle only exists in people's hearts. Every adult in the hearing-impaired community has his own responsibilities, and Rubin's task is to learn to be a "deaf person."
In this process, the choice of movie sound perfectly fits Rubin's mood.
When he first entered the hearing-impaired community, the group life calmed Rubin's irritability to a certain extent, but the news about his girlfriend's exposure made him anxious. During this period of time, the change of voice appears chaotic and noisy;
When Rubin was disappointed to find that the cochlear implant surgery did not allow him to hear the sound as he used to be, the music that people enjoyed, the banquet and even the singing of his girlfriends turned into harsh noises.
When designing the sound effects for the cochlear implant, Nicholas layered the recorded sound, removed the comfortable part, and recombined the remaining sound into a maddening metallic noise. This is undoubtedly the most uncomfortable part of the film’s auditory sense. At this time, Rubin is also experiencing fierce struggle in his heart.
At the end of the film, the church bell from the cochlear implant echoed like a cymbal, and Rubin took off his hearing aid. All the sounds in the movie are erased, except for the pictures in Rubin's eyes and the breathing of the audience in front of the screen.
Even for people who have completely lost their hearing, the real "silent" moments are rare. The sound processing here is actually an imagery expression: at this moment, Rubin seems to have reached what Joe described " "God's Realm", there is peace he has never experienced before.
If sign language breaks through the barriers of communication, and people use it to understand each other, then the film uses "sound" to express "silent", and the sound design attempts are similar to it.
The movie does not focus too much on the identity of Rubin's "band drummer", but the metallic sound is throughout-from the dry metal music to the harsh and uncomfortable noise, when the lifestyle it symbolizes is gradually reduced After breaking, the voices buried deep in my heart became clear.
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