When dane Davis, a sound designer and director of sound editing, Davis M.P.S.E. Motion Picture Sound Editors Certified Member of the American Film Sound Editors Guild) attended the audience screening of The Matrix (1999), and neither he nor the directors Lily Wachowski and lana Wachowski sisters (who were brothers at the time) knew what to expect. "Our concepts are groundbreaking, but you never know what these things can do," he said, a caution that comes from the experience of making The Amazing Flowers, a 1996 debut for the Wachowski siblings. "Everybody loved Crazy Flowers, but it didn't win the audience," recalls the sound editor, who was the sound designer for that film. "It was a very frustrating experience."
The huge sensation surrounding The Matrix, when I watched the on-demand screening, I had high expectations. I still remember the excitement and excitement at the crowded Westwood Cinema. The Matrix didn't disappoint me, nor did it disappoint the rest of the audience in the theater. Bullet time shocked me, but the powerful, engaging sound effects exhilarated and energized my work. The film's popularity was iconic to me, so it's no surprise that the film swept the Oscars for post-production, including the Oscar for Best Sound Editing.
The Matrix is a tribute to science fiction writer William Gibson's 1984 novel Necromancer, a fusion of Japanese animation, Hong Kong kung fu films, science fiction films and Hollywood Westerns, as well as the emergence and transformation of feelings of social anxiety, the technological shift of cinema from analog to digital. "The world is just beginning to think about the Internet." Davis said, "Overall, the digital production of the films that we have experienced is completely revolutionary, and everyone can confront Neo, who thinks that what is true is not true." ”
Dane Davis (Dane A. davis ）
Davis' background in independent experimental film was the ideal person for the sound design of The Matrix. When high school teacher Jerry Lipezki handed him an 8mm camera and asked him to do something creative, it ignited his passion for film. He was also a musician, and Davis found himself increasingly fond of composing soundtracks for practice projects for himself and his classmates at the California College of the Arts, where he studied film. He is particularly fond of composing soundtracks for experimental short films. "I didn't know I would be able to make a living from this in the future," he recalled. He continued to do these things in his spare time, and soon found that he could make money from this.
Before working on The Matrix, his career was a success. He listed Psychedelic Cowboy (1989), Bill and Ted At The Ghost Gate (1991), The Sky Is Gone (1992), Bloodstained Romeo (1993) and Unruly Nights (1997), all of which were his favorites in sound production. Davis and the Wachowski sisters met through the film editor Zach Staenberg. "He called me up and said, 'You have to meet these filmmakers — two carpenters from Chicago, they made a great movie,'" he said, "I went to see the first cut of their debut film, 'Flowers of the World,' and they sat in the audience with Zach and listened to the sound effects I made myself." They were crazy, we ended up talking and it was a stinky smell. The sound scenes are very creative, and they exaggerate the sound in many ways in the film, reinforcing subjectivity. I had a lot of fun doing it in "Crazy Flowers". ”
"Crazy Flowers"
The Wachowski sisters also cherished talent, so when The Matrix was finally approved for filming, they brought their crew, including Davis and Stromberg, to work with them and won an Oscar. Davis had already read the script for The Matrix while working on The Amazing Flowers and was fascinated by it. "From my cinematography and sound point of view, this film is going to be very remarkable." He recalled.
In fact, a year and a half before The Matrix was fully approved for filming, Davis had already created a sound effect for the bullet time passage, thus proving the core concept of the Wachowskis sisters' The Matrix. "The sound of gunfire and the sound of the F-22 fighter creates a strong airflow, which in turn creates a strong sense of fear," he explains, "and then I did the experiment until I found the right balance between the two." Later, for the official filming of bullet time in the film, Davis remade the sound effects of this passage.
While The Matrix was shot on film, digital software was also used to make the film, and Siborough edited the film on avide. Davis also used a professional sound design software that had just been acquired by Avid. "Because The Matrix is about the digital world and virtual reality, I don't want to use external sound devices," he says, "and I want to put all these sound effects on my computer's hard drive." ”
pro tools hd
"With this professional digital sound design software for tdm (time-minute multiplexing) mode, I could turn an editing project on and off at will, and all the sound effects plug-in settings could be recorded on the track, which was revolutionary," he continues, "and while pro tools wasn't that powerful and stable at the time, it did everything I wanted to do." In terms of my experience in sound design, this is a major breakthrough. ”
The Wachowski sisters didn't give Davis much specific guidance and advice. "We discussed all the details," he says, "and they only have three demands on sound: to make everything as cool as possible, to focus everything on the story, to make everything cooler!" ”
The Wachowski sisters also gave Davis a list of Hong Kong kung fu movies for him to watch. "They want to get cool and exciting inspiration from those movies, but avoid the pitfalls," he says, "and the voices in those movies are full of passion and power." In addition, there is a feeling of multiple repetitions, a bit of cliché. I had to find a way to maintain that strength and passion without too much repetition. ”
At the time, Andy Wachowski (brother) and starring Keno Levi Kerry-Ann Moss
An important directive of the Wachowski sisters: in the "real world," everything they use is part of a century of war with machines. "So their ships, communications equipment, weapons, and so on had to reflect a handmade texture rather than something industrially made," he says. ”
Davis made another sound aesthetic setting to avoid any sound produced with a synthyming flavor. "I know that everyone's experience resonates in the 'real world,' and like Neo, we never think that our auditory experience is fake," he says, "and to achieve this, we all used real recorded sound footage as a source to make all the sounds in the film." The only exception was the hologram on their ship, which contained an audio synthesis chip to render the operator's voice, so I used a very primitive audio synthesizer program, made these sounds in the final mixing stage, and saw the holographic visual effects for the first time."
The first sound he recorded was when Neo took the pills provided by Morpheus so that he could discover what was behind the perceived real world. "This scene is the most subjective because we are experiencing the process by connecting with Neo's pov so that he will be aware of his presence." "The key challenge with sound design is that when the camera takes us into Neo's virtual throat, we create a sound turning point where he doesn't know how the real body screams," Davis said. My approach is to start with the apparently high bitrate sound of his virtual sensory input, and then degenerate into his quantified, grained sound, to simulate the digital transformation, so that his eyes and ears can feel it directly, rather than decomposing it into high bitrate again through the computer's wires and software. ”
To do this, Davis employed techniques he developed for early experimental films. "I call it a microcirculation, and it really makes a lot of tiny, almost superfluous, sound fragments that are glued together and pushed forward at the same time," he says, "and I'll adjust where they start to create the feeling of being scanned through the sound." It gives me complete control over the conversion of sound and offers the advantages of digitalization. "He passed the sound file to the Wachowski sisters in Sydney (in 1998, it took 8 hours to send the minute file)." I enjoyed doing this, so I stuck with it," Davis said.
Another early sound he recorded was a "lot of effect tones" made for fight scenes. "In my opinion, the only way to achieve a goal is to try extremes with colleagues," Davis said, "and I have a theory that in the world of the Matrix, the matrix doesn't fully understand the laws of real physics or the right proportions, so you hear every action." He recorded the actors' fingers, wrists, shoulders, hips, and then asked the sound editor Julia Evershade mpse to manipulate them to give them as much character space as possible. ”
One of the key sounds in the movie is "keyauoww -w-www!"" Trinity, Neo and Morpheus slowed down the camera as they swung their punches. I recorded the actors' shouts with soundhack, and slowed their voices by about 6 octaves — steadily descending, returning to normal pitch after their speeches," he explained, "and I was able to shake the whole room with one track!" We came many times to try to change the sound curve, and each time it took 15 minutes to render the sound, and I used a chart to plot each step of the update. ”
The Sentinels (or Squids) are the killer flying machines in the film, but Davis describes them as having a childlike personality of "absolute zeal and dedication to killing." He used children's faulty toys to create the gruesome sounds of the "squid" propulsion system, including mcDonald's children's meal toys, and used a space transport shuttle, a six-axis flyer and miniature wheels to create a high-frequency, harsh metal sound.
Neo was distracted by the sound of the cleaner outside his boss's office washing the glass, which was Davis's favorite passage. "Foley artist John Roche, foley supervisor Tom Brennan and I did several versions of the washed glass for the Wachowski sisters," he says, "because this scene is the key to Neo's discovery of the truth of the 'real world,' the sound of hanging glass becomes a real conversation in Neo's head." This may be the hardest scene for Lana and Lily to shoot, but everyone loves it! ”
At that time, they were still brothers and Wachowski
From the beginning of The Matrix, Davis was as busy as ever, but never too busy to take calls from the Wachowski sisters; He has recently completed their latest work, Jupiter Ascendant, another sci-fi action-adventure film released in February 2015. "This is the sixth film I've made for them," he said, "it's crazy, but it's also fun." We already have a good tacit understanding. ”
Source: http://cinemontage.org/
by debra kaufman
Translation: Rockyao 1986