Something About Sound Design, Gardening & Mutants
Notes from a Mayfield Classroom
Dear Students, Alumni, Faculty, and Trespassers,
Welcome to the first Unfound Peoples Videotechnic newsletter. The Unfound Peoples Videotechnic newsletter will be delivered:
Infrequently.
Irregularly.
I will try to keep it brief. I will try, too, to add value.
The value in this first letter is threefold.
A second video lecture
First, I would like to announce some news. The news is that a second video lecture in association with Slow Film Festival is planned for 26th December, 2020. Some of you may know that date as “Boxing Day.”
The workshop will have a cardboard theme. The cardboard theme will relate to production design. The production design lecture does not yet have a title.
I will send a newsletter with further details when I have them.
Some homework
Unfound Peoples Videotechnic first operated as a meatspace institution at Kino Klub Split in 2016. At the end of October, 2020, the Videotechnic operated its first virtual workshop/lecture as part of Slow Film Festival.
Many of the subscribers to this newsletter subscribed that day. I assume many of today’s readers ‘attended’ the lecture.
After the lecture, I noticed that I forgot to issue the homework. Whoopsie!
Here is the homework assignment:
If you like, you can send me the finished film. A video hosting site link will suffice. I believe you can reply to this email and it will reach me. Please indicate if I have permission to share your video through our media channels.
New instruction: Diegesis
Regular visitors to the UPV website will note the occasional addition of instructional texts. Here follows a copy of the latest. It was excised from the Sound Design lecture due to durational restraints.
Diegetic is a word most commonly used in the realm of film, and most commonly used in the aspect of film sound.
The diegesis is the expression of a film story’s world. Diegetic expression includes everything the audience sees and hears that originates from the film’s physical universe. Everything that happens on the far side of the screen. We call any sound, object, or atmospheric condition that occurs within the story’s world ‘diegetic.’
Anything added from the audience’s world is non-diegetic. The score, usually. The credits, usually. The edges of the frame. All those things we use to reassure the viewer that the film is over there and the audience is over here.
We call music playing on a radio in the hero’s garage ‘diegetic music.’ Diegetic radio music. If the filmmaker adds music ‘over’ the scene, which cannot and could not be heard by the characters, we call it ‘non-diegetic music.’
It works the same for any sound. There is diegetic sound (originating in the physical universe of the movie). And there is non-diegetic sound (with no source within the hero’s world). Usually the audience is able to identify the diegetic source of a diegetic sound. They may have to think hard.
The source could be the radio. It could be the hero’s car engine. It could be the hero’s neighbour practicing tap, off-screen, in next-door’s kitchen. Here are some common diegetic sounds:
The chime of a tin can tossing in the gutter during a strong breeze.
The knock-knock-knocking of a doomed character’s knuckles on the wrong door.
The ringing and ringing of an old telephone.
The echo of a telephone bell after it has stilled.
The footsteps of tens of thousands of swarming army ants.
Rustling, the ceaseless rustling of clothes from start to end of the movie.
The rustle of leaves, too.
The world in which a film story takes place expresses itself constantly. Sitting there, expressing itself. Just like the audience’s world expresses. A dried paint drip on a lamp post. Can you see and hear the world expressing around you?
Some sights and sounds are a long way away in the movie’s world. Too far away for the audience to see or hear. Some are too small to sense. Should our working definition of diegetic matter include all those sights, sounds, and occurrences that happen in the hero’s universe that we don’t sense?
Unsensed phenomena have little-to-no bearing on the current of the film. Still, they are there. Somewhere in the diegesis.
A recommendation
Here is some bonus value: a tip! My friend and colleague Nina Queissner recently broadcast a series of podcasts. The podcasts were about Sound Ecology.
Queissner is an excellent soundist and thinker. And her approach is on a similar trajectory to that of Unfound Peoples Videotechnic. What I’m trying to say is that here is a recommendation you might find appropriate: https://www.mixcloud.com/NinaQueissner/the-sound-ecology-series/
Thank you for reading the newsletter. Study diligently and drink plenty of brown tea.
~Graeme Cole.
(Principal)
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