When
did you start working with Tarkovski?
I got the chance to work with him in the mid-1980s
which was a tremendous opportunity. I had seen his films earlier and
was very impressed. Later when I was able to work with him myself I
thought it would be interesting to take the process a step further. I had
a sense of where he wanted to go but I thought his films we not properly
executed perhaps because of the lack of resources in
Russia.
What
was your method of working with Tarkovski?
Andrei requested this long list of sound effects,
page after page. There were over 250 different examples of sound effects
he wanted to work with. I realized this was not going to be possible.
There was no space left. The film was going to be crammed with a load of
diverging sounds to begin with I cut out half. Then I started working on
them. They were often spot effects.
In the dream, for example, he
wanted to make the ice fall down from the roof. Then there was water
dripping and various other ideas.
My contributions were the winds the
atmospheres and the environmental sounds.
The effect with the airplane was also Andrei's idea
and to make the glasses clink before the plane arrived.
Generally I set
out with a rather naive attitude because I never really know when my work
is actually started. It is not that I think it is difficult - I know
what has to be done - but somehow I have to start and then realize:
"This will turn into something. We can build upon this" But I could
never begin by saying "This is really good - this is the way to do it". I
have to put things into motion and the start working.
Could
you describe the main components of the soundtrack starting with the
woman's voice we hear in the
background?
This idea about the woman's voice that
permeates the film occurred to us early before the sound editing began.
Tarkovski wanted to listen to some old recordings of cow calls. These
herding calls were used to keep in contact with cows when they went
grazing into mountain pastures in Northern Sweden and afterwards when they
were gathered.
We thought of looking for these calls in the
Swedish Radio Archives but did not fins many that were recorded
realistically. There were those that had been arranged musically but
Andrei rejected those - he wanted it to be real and then we came across a
rather old recording that had been made via a telephone cable from Rättvik
in the country side to Swedish Radio in Stockholm. It was mastered on wax
cylinders. He listened to it - it was of very poor quality There was
crackling and static. But he still thought it was marvelous. In the sound
track, it was mixed into the outdoor environment with a certain amount of
reverberation so the quality did not matter.
The important thing was that there was this
woman and she comes into the film quite early and then she enters the
dream and that represents a connection with human emotions which of course
a contrast to the threat of war. Both Otto - the actor Allan Edwall - and
Alexander are in contact with her Otto seems to receive her call when he
suddenly collapses on the floor while walking through the house telling
strange tales. One never really discovers what is going on. Somebody asked
me long ago if this was a contact with God but I did not want to answer
because I do not know - I do not think so.
Sadly our collaboration was slightly
hindered by his illness which is why we never had many contacts during the
filming. Andrei's principle was - and he told me from the start that
during filming, his focus is always on the picture, while the sound comes
later. I agreed with this completely but the producer asked that I still
record usable sound on location, but when we arrived on the Swedish island
Gotland, the set was built in a bird sanctuary - in the month of
May, when all of Swedish fauna is breeding right there and the noise
is overwhelming - it defies description. You could not use the sound from
there.
During shooting, Tarkovski told me in
passing: "You know, Owe, in the end we must hear no birds" And I thought
to myself: "OK, fair enough". I knew I was wasting my time but I
still wanted good location sound for post-synchronization
purposes.
You
seem to have paid unusual attention to even the smallest sounds -
floorboards creaking
footsteps..?
I watched the last film Tarkovski made just
before The Sacrifice. It was called Nostalgia and shot
in Italy. It, too is a very special film, but what irritated me, as is the
case with other films is the way they treat natural sound - everyday
sounds like footsteps and environmental sounds- It is very poorly done.
Someone walking always sounds like "clic, clic, clic, clic" .
On a staircase, it is the same, only faster.
When we started work on The Sacrifice, we took an entirely
different approach - not two footsteps would sound alike and they should
have a life of their own.
Because the environment in The Sacrifice was recorded in this house situated in an exposed
area on a seaside heath there are naturally many elements that make the
house live. Those wooden house
where many things happen, has floorboards. Floorboards which sound
different depending on where on stands in the room. I decided to produce
these sounds at my own country cottage. It is an old, turn-of-the-century
house that has resounding walls and floors so all the footsteps were
produced by med that is, I physically walked in different pairs of shoes
even ladies' shoes, size 45. I did the foley in the film
myself.
Post-sync dialogue is often very flat, lacking in personality -
but in this film the voices have a remarkable dentistry
..?
The voices must be given their own character
so that you can experience them in their own personal environment. When
you move in a room, especially when you move three-dimensionally
that is, into the picture you experience a different reverberation. The
voice must develop, it must change. If you are speaking up or down
sideways or back the character of the voice changes constantly. Even if
the location recording is 100% and sounds even. you would still have to
work with spatial dimensions and reverberation in the mix. So if people
are at different points in the space every voice must have its own
distinct character its own reverberation. That is really to create the
sense of credibility and the right emotion. There are many ways to
achieving that.
Actually it is more difficult to achieve the
same variety outdoors because there is not as much reverberation in the
voice. But still, one experiences it as if there was a
distance. Sometimes it is a bit
like magic - in am not always sure how to do it but you have to do
something and it does not really take too much extra time to create a good
dialogue mix. I would rather spend more time on the dialogues than on
other sounds because you gain so much from it. Some things you can
do routinely and it can be a fast process but dialogue is no routine job -
it is difficult.
The experience of a dream is central to The Sacrifice
- how does the soundtrack articulate this
feeling?
In the case of the dreams, it was all very
evident. The main component is, naturally, the overhead flights in order
to conjure up threats of war, we had to crate a sense of great anxiety as
if a war was actually going on It is a composition of many Swedish jet
fighters with added bits of rumble and a few other things.
Another sound component is the Japanese
flute. It is a kind of a long tube. we transferred it from a vinyl
recording. Strangely enough, Tarkovski wanted us to do a mix of the
woman's voice in combination with the Japanese flute and remarkably , it
worked.
Music was made out of two seemingly
unrelated components and there is another ingredient . There were ships'
horns in the distance that sometimes reach the pitch of the Japanese
flute. There is a number of different ships' sirens as well as lighthouses
that sound foghorns. So in the end, the dream is heard as a combination of
woman's voice, the Japanese flute and various ship sounds.
The filming took place in the summer and
autumn of 1985 and I was aware that Andrei wanted us to dub to revoice all
the voices, even those recorded in the studio because he could not
concentrate on the dialogue on location. He was only thinking in the terms
of visual composition. That was "OK", but later I realized how much
dialogue there would be in the post-synching and I knew that the actor
Erland Josephson, for instance found it very difficult to re-record his
lines He hates it. Allan Edwall, who had a large part and said
earlier when they were recording the individual lines that post-synching
is like having to eat one's own womit so he hated it
too.
I wanted to make life easier for these
actors so that the rec-recording of their voices would remind them of the
original filming. I thought this would work out better on a sound stage
where there is always a good atmosphere It is quite the opposite in the
dubbing theatre where everyone just wants to get away and you can not
concentrate. I suggested to the producer that we should do something
different: Actually post-sync on the sound stage. We were lucky, there were not many bookings in the
Stockholm studios at the time. Instead of having to work in a mixing or a
dubbing studio we did it on a film sound stage. We set up a microphone,
some lamps and some TV monitors. I had a video playback deck with the
film. We started rehearsing the lines Josephson being the first. I got him
to repeat his lines over and over, even before we recorded. A couple of
hours later he became quite relaxed.
There is a prayer in the film a rather long monologue
and he said "I would rather not redo it because I can never improve on
it". We persuaded him to try and the final version was even better
than the original.
Compared to Tarkoivski's other films the soundtrack
of The Sacrifice is very spare
..?
We all work in such different ways. If you
look at Russian cinema at the time The Sacrifice was made is
was so incredibly stripped down. There was this weighty story, music and
then, heavy effects. They did not use small effects to create an
atmosphere I understand what you are saying. You find this approach in
other countries as well, like in Italy.
Russia and Italy, for me at that time were
exactly the same. They post-synched all the voices and did not really
bother too much about the sound - It all sounded rather the same. There
were extremely few sound effects and then there was
music.
In the The
Sacrifice there is no music only the S:t Matthew Passion at the
beginning and the end. There is this woman's voice and the Japanese
flute.
Which is why all
the other sounds functioned as music instead. So it all grow into
something quite natural.
If
we had not arranged the sound like that we would have lost the strong
emotions of the story. It would have been much colder and less
meaningful.
It also normal that composers and musicians
want me to mix there music. They do not want me to get something
ready-made, that could be session as a pre-mix. That is only
right since the sound consist of
so many parts - each component is directly influenced by something else in
the film. It is like different musical instruments: different sound
effects and different atmospheres. It is precisely their interplay that
you want to project.
Can one actually work
with all that at the same time? You can
not always keep everything together you may have to work separately on the
music but from my experience I know what
is effective - what one should be wary of what has to be emphasized.
Primarily, how to achieve the dynamics, this change, the feeling that
something is happening. I see film as a homogenous product and none of the
components can live on their own. They are all interdependent. Film in its
highest sense, is a total experience of sound and vision.
I have tried take away the picture
completely and listen to the sound through headphones
It is very interesting
It is not something you would
expect
It is not at
all pointless
It is
contrary
It is
fascinating
Is there a recognizable "Owe
Svensson" style?
Yes it does actually exist even if I find it
a bit difficult to describe it myself. There is this guy in Sweden who
does the optical sound transfers he has told me many times that you
can tell even if one does not know when a mix is done by Owe Svensson.
Personal, I think the secret lies in this dynamic curve - the sound is
never the same. It is always changing and when it comes to transitions
they are often soft and suggestive. I strive for an emotional experience.
It is really about feeling but I can say that my way of working with sound
does not differ from the way other people work.
I have noticed one thing, which can be quite
irritating. Mixers tend to work with quite general levels where you have
dialogue at one level, music at one level and effects an
often very loud level but he sounds are always separate at different
levels. I think that in mixing, sound must always progress. Levers should
never be pre-determined. A voice, if you are talking one way - you should
hear it in one particular way. If you are louder, then you hear it louder
and so on. In my way of working, the sound must always live. Sound should
keep changing. It should feel
obvious and interesting without being aware of it.
When
you watch a film, you are not supposed to notice the
sound?
The sound should just be felt. It is not
about pausing for a second to contemplate the sound. The film is an
emotional experience where the sound comes at you. The valuable part of
working with sound is the very process, the development. As I said
earlier, I work very naively - when I am presented with a film first
I strip away everything and then start from the beginning identifying the
elements that will work effectively. If you are to create something with
sound I increasingly believe that it has to be achieved through experience
that is, normal social experience. The things that affect you in everyday
life.
I come across many examples of sound that I
find increasingly worthless because they do not give you anything. I
appreciate a good sound editor by his awareness of reality. Not all of
them are aware.
Sound varies from situation to situation.
One has to think of how to achieve the right atmosphere. For example, when
it comes to different seasons: - if it is afternoon or forenoon, -
if it is evening or morning.
What is
it that makes you recognize the differences between these specific
times?
This is what I mean by having an awareness
of reality. It is not something you can learn, you are born with it. Of
course one can always gain more experience but feeling is a question of
talent.
¡¡
From FILM
SOUND DESIGN & THEORY
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