The Sound Wagon

"Part of me mourns the sophisticated cineaste I might never become; part of me is grateful for all the time I’ll save now that I am a bit more choosy about the aspirational viewing in which I engage."  (Kois "Eating Your Cultural Vegetables" 2011) For the past two weeks, I've found myself immersed inside the world of commercial fantasy films. This is something I hadn't experienced since high school. Don't get me wrong, I've always enjoyed these kinds of movies and I often slide in one or two RomComs a month. However, as I grow older I now lean towards heavy pretentious dramas because for some reason, studying Film sometimes makes you forget that it's okay to watch movies purely for the sake of entertainment. So every time I have two to three hours to spend, I tend to go for the ones that fall into the library of films a professional in the industry should have seen or should see (whatever that means). I do enjoy these kinds of movies, it's...

"Less" is more—however— "less" can also be difficult to achieve. With sound, I always find films with subtle soundtracks to be more enjoyable than films that have hundreds of sound effects all popping on at the same time. As we get closer to the Academy Awards, I'm interested in analyzing two of this year's nominees for Best Sound Editing: Roma directed by Alfonso Cuarón and A Quiet Place  directed by John Krasinski These two films really speak to me sonically because of the elegance in their simplicity. I personally take pride in achieving realness with foley—human elements. To me, it's harder to make a human sound, well, human. The concrete steps, the movement of the pants hitting the leather boots every time this person does as much as taking a full step forward are always crafted perfectly to match the character on-screen. When there's no music, when there's nothing more than digital silence, our ears go straight to the loudest sound that...