Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1353865
M OT I O N P I CTU R E S O U N D E D I TO R S I 57 How can we summarize your book, Sound for Moving Pictures: The Four Sound Areas? The book Sound for Moving Pictures: The Four Sound Areas is fundamentally designed to be a guide, or a road map, for four specifi c types of people: those who are new to the topic of sound design and are beginning their studies or commencing their professional practice; those who either teach sound design or would like to include soundtrack analysis in their fi lm studies lectures; those who are picture-centric professionals such as directors and picture editors and fi nd diffi culty in communicating about sound; and the established sound professionals who are either curious or interested in considering the construction of their soundtracks in a freer way than within the rigid constraints of dialogue, effects, and music stems. For students especially, it is also an attempt to vocalize the importance of the soundtrack; and particularly the way in which they consider and approach something that makes up at least half the experience of watching their fi lm. We know very well that sound is still given far less priority than it deserves, or is required, in almost all of the schools that offer fi lm production courses; which is why it's not surprising that the biggest challenge to new fi lmmakers is how to deal with their sound acquisition, and the subsequent editing and mixing of those assets; and this is exactly why on so many low-budget fi lms, the biggest audio post-production exercise is the restoration (at best), or the attempted salvaging (at worst), of the soundtrack; rather than the more sensible scenario of the supervising sound editor spending time and money on creating a soundtrack that is able to further the story. In these cases, the book is designed to help build a strategy that allows directors to have a framework in place, around which they can plan and build their soundtrack, having gained a better understanding of how important sound is to the narrative; and to provide a common language for the fi lmmaker to talk about their expectations and wishes for their soundtrack with sound professionals. The presentation of the Four Sound Areas "Mix Disc" and "Mix Wheel" concepts also helps with this task, by providing a visual representation of how to consider emotional sound design. Can you tell us in brief about the Four Sound Areas? By breaking down the aural content of a scene into its Four Sound Areas constituent parts, what I have called a soundtrack's Narrative, Abstract, Temporal, or Spatial elements, a full soundtrack can be built in such a way as to link the emotional intention of the director, the picture editor, or the sound editor to the types of sounds used by the sound editor in the track lay; and the emphasis placed on certain aural components in the mix can be plotted and steered by the re-recording mixer. For the benefi t of academics and students, I wanted the Four Sound Areas to be a way that they gained a clearer understanding of how the magic of a beautifully balanced mix occurred: because for the re-recording mixer, it is a visceral experience; it's the kind of thing you know is right when the hairs stand up on the The Four Sound Areas logo emblem.