Jan. 20 marked the 75th birthday of David Lynch. Producing and curating artistic oddities from Eraserhead to Twin Peaks, Lynch has had made a vast impact on the film industry, and nowhere is this more relevant than in his sound design. Taking several years to make his film Eraserhead, Lynch emphasized one of the most important (and easily forgotten) elements of film: sound.
Sound has always been a part of film. Even with early silent films, there was a presence of sound. Particularly the uses of text to narrate what characters were saying and the music that came from the orchestra pits. Each in tandem creates the medium of Cinema. Divorced from sound, films became photographic montages or wide-screen comics.
The first film to use sound like modern movies was The Jazz Singer. Released in 1927, the film had small sections of singing that impressed audiences enough at the time to create the term “talkie.” Now a passé term, it was a revolutionary concept that influenced the medium of film.
Soon sound became a part of cinema, classics of the ’30s were never without sound and sound soon became an established rule of cinema. Exceptions coming from the most avant-garde of film such as the film Only God Forgives where Ryan Gosling plays a near-mute protagonist in a world of quiet killers. A common criticism of the film is the long periods of silence compared to other films.
However, on the road to deviation, is an establishment of the practice and use of sound. Sound has varied in films with musicals emphasizing each note with a heavy boot fall to thrillers creating a sense of mood and place within a soundscape. Though, nowhere is sound used to greater strength than the film A Man Escaped.
Following a soldier in his attempt to escape a POW camp, the film uses minimal sets and props, emphasizing sound instead. From the footsteps of guards to the natural sounds of the camp, the film uses sound to create a world beyond the lens of the camera.
This level of sound production was reproduced with Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation where an agent listens to the private conversations of a couple only to eavesdrop on a mysterious conversation.
Sound, up to the '70s, acted as a consciousness of a film. The sound design created an auditory landscape that is outside of the confines of the camera. Rarely delving into the abstract, sound became an extension of Film.
From this, sound design has been abstracted and made ancillary in films like Stalker, Star Wars and the aforementioned Eraserhead. Here the sounds created are beyond natural and evoke a certain sensation of the mystical or fantastic. Though it is hard to capture this sensation with a subtitle such as [laser blast] or [ominous hum], there is a special craft to sound.
In some current films, sound fidelity has become an issue. The film Tenet being a forefront example of poor audio quality. Though in part this is due to advances in audio technology and lack of speakers, it is also a result of poor sound mixing. Sound has been neglected in the making of some films in favor of the visual side of film.
The criticism of Tenet’s sound is well deserved. After years of sound design and innovation, films should sound as good as they look. Watching a film is a visual and auditory experience established over years of craft and innovation, making sound should be equal to establishing a shot.
Benjamin Ervin is a senior studying English literature and writing at Ohio University. Please note that the views and opinions of the columnists do not reflect those of The Post. Want to talk more about it? Let Benjamin know by emailing him be425014@ohio.edu.
