Director James Gray Emphasizes Sound as an Opportunity.

In the Nov/Dec 2022 issue of Post Magazine, Director James Gray (Armageddon Time, Ad Astra, The Lost City of Z) mentions audio when asked generally about opportunities in post-production:

"The thing about production sound is you can never reproduce all the magical little inflections of the actor on the day. [snip] Your performances have a greater authenticity."

"Dealing with sound and the mix is my favorite part of post.  Sound is half the experience and underrated, and I love the way a certain sound effect or an ambient track can change the whole mood of a scene.  [snip] It's how we really reach the audience subconsciously.  The audience is tremendously educated and advanced when it comes to visuals, maybe because of videogames and because it's a more obvious form of communication.  [snip] But I think our ears and all the audio processing is our biggest stealth weapon to get to your soul."

Sound Designer Christopher Boyes on Mixing 'Pirates of the Caribbean'

Some interesting quotes on the sound of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales in the June 2017 issue "Post Magazine" from Re-Recording Mixer, Supervising Sound Editor, and Sound Designer Christopher Boyes:

"It's like a sonic dance.  You have to keep the momentum going, keep the emotion going with the music, and come in and out with the effects while constantly protecting the dialogue.  That is job number one."

"If I'm putting in a sound and it's not propelling the story forward, then it doesn't have a place.  Our editorial team supplies me with a tremendous amount of wonderful sonic assets but at the end of the day, more than 60 percent of them don't make it into the mix.  Once the effects become part of the entire experience they really get held to a very high standard as to whether or not they raise the track."

"I figure out which components of the ambience are actually complementing the music or the dialogue. The choice is scene specific.  If we are out on the ocean we have to have a little bit of wind, a sense of the ocean, a sense of the rigging and the sails, and the creaking ship.  You don't need all of that all of the time.  It's this constantly evolving landscape of sound effects that are folding in and out. Then for the big action sequences, all of those backgrounds disappear."

For action scenes, "[I will] poke the hard effects in and out, always with the notion of maintaining clarity on the track in an overall sense."

Working in 100-foot increments (about 1 minute), "we go through it an say, 'Do you hear that line?'  Are we hearing enough ocean?  Are we hearing enough of this or that?'  We challenge each other, and that is when we really fine-tune the mix."

Writer/Director Darius Marder on "Sound of Metal"

... artful approach to blending sound, cinematography, editing and production design ...

... use sound and its relationship to emotion.

... use sound design to create a point of view ... putting the audience inside the character's head ...

... developed ways to allow the audience to 'hear' through the character ...

"Deafness is not silence.  It's a different way of experiencing sound and vibration."

"We are constantly playing with the dichotomy of omnscient sound and perspective sound."

Pearls of Wisdom from Ridley Scott and Warren Beatty

Several mentionables in separate interviews with Director Ridley Scott and Director/Actor Warren Beatty in the December 2016 issue of Post Magazine:

Scott:  For me, if you didn’t get it in the camera, you’re going to have serious problems and issues in post. You can’t save a movie in post, no matter how many visual effects you stuff it with.

The phrase "we'll fix it in post" gets tossed around a lot, but there's just only so much that can be done on the post-production end.  Try your hardest to make things right in production.  But how does one know what's right in production?  Experience, wisdom, expertise, and clarity of what's to be accomplished — Scott discusses this later in the interview:

Scott:  If you know what you’re doing you don’t need to spend all that time... For me, speed is good. It stops you over-thinking things.

Sounds like he's done plenty of experimentation, and often he knows exactly what he wants and how to achieve it, no more no less.  Laser focused efficiency.  On the flip side, Warren Beatty mentions how unplanned spontaneity can also be beneficial:

Beatty:  A film never turns out the way you first envision it. And you hope it doesn’t, because it gets better as you go along — or it should... I had all these initial ideas in mind, but sometimes you do your best work when you don’t have anything in mind and it just happens when you’re thinking about something else.

On watching and showing their work:

Scott:  I never watch any long-form version of my films till we have it all cut and put together. So you’re a virgin and you watch it fresh.

When creating, try to experience it with a first-impression mentality so you can critique and improve it properly for your audience.  Do not let your familiarity with the material equate to clarity of the material.  Beatty talks about another aspect of immediacy:

Beatty:   I don’t like to show a film before it’s ready, because with my films, they only get ready at the last minute. To quote Cocteau, ‘A poem’s never finished, it’s just abandoned,’ and that’s how I feel. I like showing it but not to people who then have to decide what they think of it. That’s dangerous, and you only have one immediate response.

When asked his opinion on music and sound being half the movie, Beatty responds:

I wouldn’t say half. I’d say more like 95 percent. (Laughs) It’s just so important and I choose all the music myself.

Interesting BBC Article On Influencing Public Behavior

Interesting read on the successful experimentation of exploiting psychological quirks to influence public behavior backed up by using metrics and analytics similar to those used in casual game developement.

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20161006-how-a-few-words-can-make-people-hand-over-millions

Alejandro González Iñárritu on the Importance of Sound in Movies

In an interview in the January 2016 issue of Post Magazine, Director Alejandro González Iñárritu provides his thoughts on the importance of sound in movies:

I think there’s a dictatorship of the image in all films, and I really like to challenge that. For me, sound is even more important than what you see on screen, in the way that it hits you. The emotional chords are much more sensitive to sounds than images, because they’re more abstract, and like smells they can trigger a much deeper understanding of things. When you see images, they’re very concrete. When you hear them, they’re abstract in the way they trigger your own emotional baggage. So I spend a lot of time looking for just the right sounds and textures for my films...

Sound Of Anime Ishida Hidenori LP Vinyl Record

Found these photographs of a sound effects LP called "Sound Of Anime Ishida Hidenori" on ebay.  Looks like an ARP 2600.  Ishida Hidenori is a giant in anime Sound Design, having founded Ishida Sound in 1971, which later became Fizz Sound Creation.  Wikipedia entry. 

 

You can see a photo of a bunch of their sound design audio tape reels on their current website:
http://www.fizz-sound.co.jp/.  The first ones have Dragon Ball written on the them!