The Third Work Symposium

The exhibition that I attended was called “What’s The Score?” and the presenters were David Barker and Pacho Velez.  They began by showing a clip from a movie called Il Castello (2011).  They focused our attention on three elements of sound, which were foley, ambiance and score.   They defined foley as something that draws attention to the center.  In the movie an example of this was the sound of the scissors cutting the boxes and the boxes being put down on the table.  Ambiance was defined as something that draws attention to the edges.  An example of this was the air conditioning unit in the film.  Lastly they defined score as something that relates a specific image to an abstract idea.  However, they also introduced a 4^th category of sound.  In the film you can hear the distinct sound of tape but you never see the tape on screen and are never shown what the tape is being used for.  This was their example of the 4^th category.   To explain the relationship of foley to ambiance we watched two slightly different clips from the film Pickpocket (2015).  In the first clip the sounds are soft and make sense in the world of the film.  However, in the second clip the sounds were extremely loud and disproportionate to the world of the film.  The footsteps were obnoxious and the sounds of doors closing were booming.   It showed that they way sound is portrayed in a film has an effect on how the film is perceived.  When the audience was allowed to ask questions or make comments, several people were extremely upset about the way foley was being defined.  Foley is usually defined as recorded sound that is shot after filming.  The presenters were using it in a completely different way.  I understood why people were upset about this but I also like that the presenters were trying to use words in a different way to convey their meaning.