The sound of movies

We are almost an hour into the film. So far, the black and white film has been silent, with no dialogue or sound effect to accompany what’s happening onscreen. There’s a background score, yes, and a bloody effective one too. Right then, the lead actor places a mug on a table, the action resulting in a sound that goes ‘thuck’. The character is bewildered, you are surprised. The filmmaker wants to tell us that his story is now moving into the era when sound was made available to films. While his character, a Hollywood film star of the silent era, is clearly affected by the event, so are you as an audience: a new dimension has been added to your viewing experience — the sound effect.

A small section of the audience at the recently held Mumbai Film Festival was lucky to have fought its way into the auditorium screening The Artist. Michael Haznavicius’ film starring Jean Dujardin and Berenice Bejo wowed the crowd with its story of a Hollywood star, George Valentin (Dujardin) and his love affair with actor Peppy Miller (Bejo), the silent film era providing the backdrop. Soon, silent films make way for the talkies, and Valentin’s life changes forever. So does cinema. The Artist is a tribute to cinema itself, combining a great idea with great acting, direction and music, which makes it a veritable treat for film lovers.
But more importantly, The Artist transports you to an era where we got by without sound in our films. Can you imagine what cinema would have been without dialogues, or effects, or music? Think Star Wars without its theme song, or Sholay without the effects, or Inception without a background score.

“When you’re watching a film, the visuals hold your attention. But the sound is telling you the story,” says sound designer Rakesh Ranjan. “The dialogue aids the narrative, the ambient noises create the mood, the background score involves you. It makes movie-watching an easier experience for you.”

Hindi cinema’s ‘loud’ design
A number of people work on different stages of creating sound for a film: the sound recordist records ambient sounds while filming, the dubbing recordist is responsible for what the actors are saying, there’s an ‘effects supervisor’, while the sound mixer brings all these elements together. The sound designer of a film usually oversees all of this.

Ranjan, a veteran sound designer who has been in the industry for more than three decades, and has worked on films like Ghayal, Sadak, and Dil Hai Ke Maanta Nahi, is still waiting for a time when sound design replaces ‘loud design’. “Most Hindi filmmakers believe too much sound is good sound,” says Ranjan, pointing out that it’s our cultural background that guides what we see/hear in our films. “We are influenced by the Jatra culture, where theatrics are important. The West has a more subdued sound because that’s how they like their films. We like more sound.”

Indeed, most Hindi films over the years had a strong background score that overpowered everything else — even the dialogue sometimes. A chase sequence, an emotional scene, the climactic action, even a rape sequence had set pieces playing on full throttle in the background.

But Ranjan says that newer filmmakers are willing to give sound its due. Recently, he designed the sound for Tigmanshu Dhulia’s Saheb Biwi Aur Gangster, which, in spite of a modest budget, shone in the sound department. Ranjan gives credit to Dhulia for letting the script dictate the sound design, a rarity.

Filmmaker Neerav Ghosh, who debuted with Soundtrack recently, says that 6 out of 10 Hindi films have good sound design nowadays. It was after films like Rajkumar Hirani’s Munnabhai MBBS and Shimit Amin’s Chak De India that sound design gained prominence in our films, he says. “Earlier, only a few filmmakers really knew how to make an impact with sound. Feroz Khan is one example,” Ghosh points out the “basement sequence” in Qurbani. Khan drives a Mercedes owned by the film’s villain Amrish Puri around the parking lot, destroying it in the process. The car crashes through pillars, its tyres screeching, engine blaring; the scene used very less background score but the effects made it memorable.

Nakul Kamte, who was among the first designers to have worked on sync sound in Lagaan and Dil Chahta Hai, says that getting the sound right is sometimes the last thing on a filmmaker’s mind. “For a recent film I worked on, I was asked to get my work done in six days flat. Comparatively, the film had been edited for six and a half months before it came to me. If time and money can be spent on editing, then why not on sound?” questions Kamte.

However, Kamte agrees that the overall quality of sound design has gone up, and some filmmakers are willing to go by a designer’s vision. “Taare Zameen Par is one of my better works. Even after the final mix was ready, I asked Aamir (Khan, director) to remove at least 12 music pieces from the background, which he agreed to. When the writing is powerful, and the acting good, why ruin it with unnecessary music?”

When silence is golden
Ranjan says that he will feel truly liberated when filmmakers let him use the one thing he likes best about sound design: silence. “It’s a sound designer’s most important tool: knowing when NOT to use sound. Hitchcock’s films had that. Take Psycho, for instance. You remember the shower scene, the blood-curdling scream of the actress, the tune when the killer appears, etc. But in the moments preceding it, the use of sound is minimal. It leaves you unprepared for what follows. It’s the silence that sets you up for the shock later.”

You can’t expect silence in a Rohit Shetty or an Abbas Mustan film, given the genres they dabble in, but surely can in a Dhulia, Vishal Bhardwaj or Farhan Akhtar film, says the designer. “Among the older directors, Subhash Ghai and Rajkumar Santoshi understood sound.”

Kamte concurs. “In sound design, less is more.” Kamte recently worked on the Indian schedule of Christopher Nolan’s next in the Batman series, The Dark Knight Rises. “The professionalism among the technical departments, including sound, was unbelievable. And Nolan gave me complete freedom to work the way I wanted. I mean, he’s Christopher Nolan! But even he knew that a sound designer has to be left alone to do his job.”