Miten tehdä kolmiulotteista ääntä elokuviin?

Elokuvateatterissa näkee nykyään kolmiulotteista kuvaa, mutta miksei siellä kuule kolmiulotteista ääntä? Vastaus on tietenkin, että kyllähän jo stereokaiuttimilla ja -miksauksella saadaan ääni liikkumaan vaikka millaisiin paikkoihin ja että monikanavasysteemeillä äänen sijoittelu eri paikkoihin helpottuu entisestään.

Mutta oikeastaan kolmiulotteisinkin ääni on yleensä aika litteää. Hollywoodin äänisuunnittelun historiaa ja nykytilaa tutkinut Benjamin Wright selittää:

In practice, mixers often avoid pin-pointed sound in 5.1 sound space because of its potential to distract audiences from the screen. Which is why many supervising sound editors and final mixers aim to fill the rear channels with rich but undefined backgrounds

There are some theoretical issues that still lurk in the shadow of 5.1. Mixers may want more channels capable of reproducing localized sound, but they must first overcome the conventional logic of surround sound mixing: avoid localized sound in the far left, far right, and rear. Tom Holman once quipped, “In Top Gun, when jets fly left to right across the screen and then exit screen right, what may be perceived aurally is the jet flying off screen as well, right into the exit sign.”

Toisin sanoen ääntä ei voi sijoittaa kovin paljon valkokankaan ulkopuolelle ilman, että äänilähde tuntuu olevan elokuvateatterissa eikä itse elokuvassa.

Saattaa olla, että kolmiulotteisesti esitetyissä elokuvissa pelivaraa on enemmän. Uuden Liisa Ihmemaassa -leffan re-recording mixer (jolle saisi ehdottaa fiksua käännöstä; Elävän kuvan sanasto ei tunne koko termia) Tom Johnson kertoo esimerkin:

We used the surround channels a lot to enhance the three dimensional world of Underland. We tried to give a sense of things coming off the screen by often putting them slightly (or often even more than slightly) into the surround speakers. We did this with the music and effects a lot, but also with the dialogue as well. For instance, at one point Alice tells the Caterpillar that she wouldn’t fight the Jabberwocky even if her life depended on it. He responds, ”It will!” We put that line in the Center speaker AND the center surround speaker to give it a bit of emphasis as his head comes out into the theater. This kind of treatment does not work at all in the 2D version of the film; it was really distracting and we found ourselves looking around the room because we were really aware of the surround speakers (especially when it was dialogue we were putting there). But when we ran the 3D version of the film, this technique really seemed to work pretty well.

Bonesin käsikirjoittajan oppeja amerikkalaisen hittisarjan tekemiseen

Bones-tv-sarjan luoja ja pääkäsikirjoittaja Hart Hanson puhui alkuvuodesta Future of Story -konferenssissa. Hän lähestyi tv-kirjoittamista hyvin pragmaattiselta kannalta, jossa tärkeintä on suuren yleisön tavoittaminen ja miellyttäminen. Kiinnostavaa kamaa, josta läjä sitaatteja alla.

Taide vs massatuote:

To varying degrees, I believe the secret – there is no secret, first; I believe there is no secret – the secret, then, the secret to getting a mass audience… I didn’t make this up, I wish I knew who did, I’d give them credit. But if you cleave to, if you support – as an entertainer – the basic values of your culture and society, you have a much better chance of reaching a mass audience than if you challenge the mores and morals of a society. I hope a huge number of you are going, ”Well, that’s what artists do. Artists challenge what we think.” And I would say, that’s right. So I’m not an artist.

And I know I sound glib and flip about it, but when my job was to design a series that would go for more than three years, so that the people who hire me and pay me a lot of money would make their money off the investment… that three years of a television show is roughly 240 million dollars that they would spend. I should make them… it’s my job, I’m the showrunner and creator, to make them that money back.

Perusarvoista:

First of all, it’s a murder show, and that’s bad, so we should catch the murderer. And the murderer should be punished. That’s a very, very… that’s a safe value to… you know, you wouldn’t want to write a show like The Wire, that’s really, really good, where murderers get away with it. It seemed like a pretty good engine for mass entertainment.

The States, that culture is a very, very religious culture these days. It’s… a significant amount of it is very fundamentalist. My lead character is an atheist. The female character is a scientist and an atheist. The value that we were talking about there is faith. Not to get too personal, but I tend more toward her than him. […] So I put a lot of what I think into Brennan’s mouth. But in the end, because Bones is mass entertainment, the spiritual, religious man gets the last word.

Yleisöä ei sovi väheksyä:

You have to make it as best you can, you can’t write down, because they will know and they will hate you for it. I’ve had many TV writers come onto my staffs, mostly from the feature world but sometimes the novel worlds and they write down. They look down on entertaining the masses, and they get fired. It just doesn’t work. It always shows. The actors can tell. Everyone can tell.

Suuret yleisöt vs vielä suuremmat yleisöt:

Like, I don’t know a single television writer who doesn’t want to be on cable, where these rules can be relaxed because you don’t have to go after over 6 million people to stay on the air. You can easily survive at 6 million people. And that’s a smaller audience to go after. If you have to go for 10, 12, 16 million people, you have to make friends with the mores of your culture. You have to know the mores of your culture and make friends with them.

Tätä sopii sitten verrata David Simonin metodiin.

Elokuvallisia huomioita maailmalta 22.03.2010 – 23.03.2010

  • Last Action Hero, kaksi eri käsikirjoitusta – täydellinen ajoitus!
  • MoonTV: Filminnäkijät – uuden MoonTV:n uusi elokuvaohjelma pannaan tietenkin seurantaan
  • James Cameronin versio First Blood 2: The Mission -käsiksestä – Cameron's draft has some extra characters we focus on: The pilot's crew, a POW named De Fravio, and most notably a sidekick named Brewer. The plot has some meatier details, bloodier action and more bombastic moments. Overall, Cameron is willing to let Rambo share the spotlight with Brewer and De Fravio, and I daresay the story is richer for it. The willingness to focus on De Fravio makes the theme shine.

    Stallone took Cameron's detailed script and streamlined it. Vetoed the Brewer character (which was to be played by Travolta), made De Fravio nameless (taking away his lines of dialogue) and he also tweaked the kills so they were less complicated to film. He also gave Rambo his signature weapon, a bow, which made many of the kills more intimate, more personal (so we as an audience could connect with the war he was personally fighting inside himself).