Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1518296
M OT I O N P I CTU R E S O U N D E D I TO R S 41 from the film world's elements and hazards … until the music pauses, and diegetic sound returns just in time for us to hear Duke facing the inevitability of physics and gravity. Then we learn he's okay when he says "Caboom" immediately followed by a triumphant fanfare in the music score which then segues into everybody cheering in joy. In Toy Story 4, music is oftentimes used to accentuate emotions and sometimes even to steer the emotional direction of its scenes. A masterclass in the use of pathos by the sound department helmed by Ren Klyce. Roma and the Halconazo scene— a rhetorical analysis of the sound design. We've looked at a scene from Toy Story 4 to identify rhetorical elements in the soundtrack. Now let's look at a scene from Alfonso Cuaron's Roma (2018), where I worked as sound effects editor and Foley editor. One of the more ambitious scenes in the film was the "Halconazo" scene. Since we joined the project while it was still being shot, we were able to visit the set and record the thousand-plus extras singing the Mexican national anthem and the school chants that are heard throughout the scene. To keep the sound elements separated for the Atmos mix, we recorded the extras using three shotgun microphones installed on top of the furniture shop where Alfonso and the camera team were installed. This permitted us to get the sound from the perspective of the camera without getting in the way of the rest of the crew. Having the tracks in monoaural allowed me to pan them coherently in the edit as the camera pans around from inside the store. The goal here is to convey both the drama of the moment and the spatial logic of the scene through sound. The situation in the scene itself engages the audience emotionally but the story is always told sonically, from the point of view (POV) of the cámera. If the sounds in the scene weren't accurately mirroring the spatial logic of the camera, the scene would lose logical appeal or its logos. It's having the emotional appeal (pathos), the logical appeal (logos), and the credibility appeal (ethos), which makes the scene so powerful. The ethos appeal comes in this case from the fact that the scene depicted is a rendition of a moment in history that really happened and the figure of the director itself who is recounting a story of his childhood as he remembers it while growing up. Silences and pauses in sound design. Another powerful rhetorical device is silence and pausing. Great orators know this. Professor Greg Goodale refers us to Franklin Roosevelt's inaugural speech in 1933 as a reminder that a pause Still from Star Wars: Episode VIII – The Last Jedi (2017)