◡◶▿ Rhubarb

🗣️ The benefits of writing dialogue after the actors’ mouths have appeared to deliver it, a la Fellini. | Summer sound school #9

The common convention, in live action narrative filmmaking, is to record dialogue as it comes out of the actors’ mouths during the filming of the exact matching shots. “Synchronised sound,” if you will.

But Italian filmmakers have never been big on recording synchronised sound. The shots of Fellini and Antonioni, meticulously prepared for the camera but not the mic, are delivered without dialogue authentic to the photographed moment. Fellini wrote his dialogue after the scenes had been filmed. His actors would “rhubarb, rhubarb” their way through the day.

Rhubarb, rhubarb? Not quite. Fellini devised an ingenious system whereby his actors would count their way along their lines:

                    Character 1
     One two three, four five six?
                    Character 2
     Seven eight nine ten eleven!
                    Character 1
     [Shrugs eyebrows]

This way, Fellini controlled the length of each exchange. It also meant he could dial back his actors to:

• give a different facial expression when they reached “fourteen,”

• cough at “three,”

• hop up and down between “seven” and “eleven,”

for example.

Not recording sound on set has lots of other advantages:

• The director can use any sound she wishes to motivate her actors and crew.

• The crew can have a chat, cough, tap their feet impatiently, breathe at their habitual rate and amplitude, or eat a crunchy snack.

• If the actors aren’t given precise “rhubarb” to mutter, they can freely discuss:

  • the events of the day,

  • their innermost feelings, or

  • a complex metaphysical study into the nature of their real-life surroundings, getting more incisive, more revelatory with every take, while modulating their physical performance according to the needs of the movie, creating a curious ‘relief’ effect and situationist performance for the crew and other hangers-on.

Fellini’s technique is not so shocking when you consider that many filmmakers ‘script’ non-dialogue sounds after their film has been shot. In fact, most filmmakers leave most non-dialogue sounds for the post-production sound team to conceive and record. The post-production sound team could totally change the story!

The filmmaker who chooses to record sound simultaneously with the image, but who wishes to direct the performances mid-shot, will need to find another way to communicate with actors while shooting. Waving, for example.

Addendum 7/11/24. H/T @wallsallaround.

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