Week 2 [Reading Notes] - The Rise and Fall of the “Hollywood Renaissance”

The Rise and Fall of the “Hollywood Renaissance”

Reading 1:Beck, Jay (2016). Designing Sound: Audiovisual Aesthetics in 1970s American Cinema. Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Chapter 5: ‘Francis Ford Coppola’s American Zoetrope and Collective Filmmaking’, pp. 87-109. 

In an effort to distance himself from the vicissitudes of filmmaking in Hollywood, Francis Ford Coppola set up his own studio, American Zoetrope, in San Francisco and launched a filmmaking collective in the process. With collaboration as its keynote and with the relaxed union regulations of the Bay Area, this led to a new method of filmmaking and dynamic experiments in sound techniques. (p. 87)

The Rain People (1969)

"Coppola had been able to pick his associates, and on Rain People he learned to trust them, to discuss things with them. On location he made take after take of single scenes, waiting to see what would emerge from the final shaping on the editing table; and the sound, although less central to the film's concerns than the track of The conversation was almost as complex and sophisticated. Coppola learned to put himself mo:e at risk, to allow a team to develop his ideas. " This collective approach to film sound was the cornerstone of his working method, and the tension among competing sound practices in the film would eventually coalesce into Coppola's personal sound aesthetic. (p. 88)

The freedom for Boxer to operate as the main sound person on set  on Rain People was only possible due to the relaxed system outside Los Angeles. The close bonds established with the directors and cinematographers were a direct byproduct of this relaxed production approach. This direct communication between Boxer and Coppola enabled him to create a number of carefully recorded production tracks that balance the demands of dialogue recording, cinematography and lighting, and the narrative demands of the story. (p. 90-1)

The Godfather (1972)

It is common practice in The Godfather for the audience to enter into a mode of reduced listening to consider the qualities of sounds themselves as bearing their own meaning. This is at the heart of Coppola's metaphorical sound use and he encourages the audience to listen to the sounds in the film for more than their literal meanings. (p. 95) Refer to page 94 for an in-depth analysis of the opening scene of the Godfather with Don Corleone

In the case of the voice, much screen time is spent malting the audience listen to not only what the characters are saying but how they say it. Arguably the classic example of this is Marlon Brando's voice as Vito Corleone. Like his extensive makeup that enhanced the aged quality of his character, he repurposed his voice to develop a gruff susurrant quality befitting the Don's age and experience. In The Godfather we don't know whether this voice is the result of some past accident or trauma, like the conspicuous dent in his forehead, or if it is the mark of a wearied and downtrodden old man. But more than just affect, his voice is a cultivated construct that establishes and reinforces his power. His hushed vocalizations make his interlocutors, as well as the audience, listen closely to his words and their delivery. (p. 95)

[MORE TO ADD]

The Godfather Part II (1974

The Conversation (1974)

The primary concern addressed in The Conversation is how to render hearing in a primarily visual medium. This is obviously not a simple question to answer, and the depiction of Harry Caul (Gene Hackman) recording and reconstructing an illicit conversation for an unknown employer places him at the centre of a crucial matrix of ideologies.

- His job resonates the recent events of the time - Nixon and the Watergate Scandal. The film takes on extra significance due to its release shortly after Nixon's resignation.

- Harry's inability to relate to the world around him is indicative of the sense of disconnection present in American life during the 1970s.

- As a way to isolate him from the world surrounding him, Harry relies on technology as a protective shield. 

(p. 105)

Gene Hackman's character stands as narrative surrogate for Coppola the film- maker, but his work in reconstructing a complete conversation out of pieces of recorded dialogue emulates the act of sound editing and mixing for films. (p. 106)

In regards to use of sound in the opening scene of The Conversation, there is a mismatch between sound and image that not only serves the surveillance narrative but also foregrounds the constructed nature of the sound track itself. The film relies on this deconstructive gesture as a way to open up a sense of doubt in relation to the recording technology and Harry's perception. The sound mix is heightened to emphasise what things would sound like to someone who spends his life listening in on other people's conversations: everything is louder, more present than normal, and offscreen sounds are suppressed. (p. 106)
Murch (Walter Murch, the Editor) expressed the effect by saying that "the most successful sounds seem not only to alter what the audience sees, but to go further and trigger a kind of conceptual resonance between the image and the sound: the sound makes us see the image differently, and then this new image makes us hear the sound differently."

As a way of adding a conceptual depth to the picture, Coppola and Murch played with the notion of intelligibility in cinema by making it difficult for the audience to hear all the lines in the film. Scenes take place in Harry's cavernous workshop where a plurality of voices and reverberations make comprehension difficult. (p. 107)

Coppola and Murch understood the possibility of using film sound as a way to expand the story and to engage the audience on a higher level than through a simple correlation between sound and image. The recording of the conversation in the park was both a tool for advancing the narrative, with the materiality of sound forming the heart of the story, and a device that enunciates the constructed nature of cinema. (p. 108)

The use of sound in The Conversation was possible because of the freedom of the sound mixer to work closely with the director and to marshal the sound track to the service of the narrative. But this period of opening for cinema sound was short-lived in its potential. Concurrent with films like Star Wars in 1977, Dolby Stereo introduced new rules of film sound recording and mixing that effectively served to cover over the gap created by prior sound experiments. (p. 108)