Time Persists by Matthew Silva
In the short film Time Persists, the director’s use of sound is strategic and engaging. The video starts off with a fairytale song played on a child’s xylophone, this continues throughout the video, providing an almost eery childhood feeling. The shots consist of people in there late teens playing children’s games in the woods. All the sounds in the video are amplified, almost as if to bring out the idea of attention, and the mind of a child becoming captivated over every detail.
Towards the end of the video, people in black suit appear in the forest and everything goes quiet, for the first time the xylophone stops playing illuding to the feeling something is wrong. Soon we find these suited people are there for the kid’s childhoods. This is shown through the previews xylophone music and the fact the opposing party are dressed in suits. Instead of going freely the teenagers resist, each pulling out a weapon. As they draw their weapons each has a very specific sound, these bits of audio in the surrounding quit draw attention to the weapons and add a feeling of disruption in the silence.
The two opposing forces clash and the movie ends, the credits roll and the xylophone comes back as if to revamp the earlier impression of childhood one last time.
Joe by Sasha Wolf
The video starts off with a melancholic jazz song, quick shots of a boy, the footage is set in black and white. The music stops and we see him putting on his shoes, the audio is crisp and descriptive, he begins pacing around the room, we hear the squeaks from his shoes and footsteps as he walks down the hall. As he walks around a hospital we hear every sound in great detail. It seems the sounds are what the character is hearing through his own ears. This puts us as watchers of the footage into the place of the character. This provides a feeling of being trapped inside the character’s mind. At the end of the film the music begins to play once again, almost a relief from the detailed sounds, the character looks at us breaking the third bearer and the film ends.
There were three to five layers of sound. The general sound effects of the character going about his day, and the music in the beginning and end. As well as more of the dramatic sounds throughout the video. There was no dialogue, except a nurse who laughs, this might be considered background noise.. Although relatively simple, the sound creates an immersive experience and gives a feeling of discomfort in some situations. The sounds that seem to affect the character are amplified. The film was shot in black and white which added to the feeling of the film, almost increasing the few sounds and amplifying the slow mundane feeling of the film.
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