Fri 28 Jul 2006
A Darker Shade of Black…
Posted by anaglyph under Sound, Whimsy, Words, Work
[9] Comments
OK. I’m working (for free) on a small but very tasteful commercial for a major world charity. The sound is subtle but significant. At the very end of the ad, the pictures fade to black, and a simple piece of explanatory text appears.
This morning I’m playing what I’ve done to the director, an awfully nice but very intense chap.
“So, what do you think for the end when we fade out, then?” he asks.
“Oh, I dunno. Silence I guess. I thought that worked pretty well. Unless you want some other kind of thing there…”
He looks deeply thoughtful, and runs his hands through his hair.
“I was thinking, rather than silence, maybe we could just have, you know, the sound of nothing.”
“Uh-huh,” says I. “And that would be different to silence in exactly what way?”
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there’s a popular music duo who could have helped him with the sound of silence, but clearly that’s not the same
I doubt he had been thinking along such lines, but I did find some discussion about the nuances of “nothing,” all familiar to you I’m sure. I don’t know, seems like a contrived problem to me; silence = problem solved.
Then again, maybe he *was* thinking ‘cricket.’
Maybe he wants you to make the audience silent too.
I’m afraid I can’t help you with the sound of silence, but I’m always willing to help you out with The Sound of White.
I spoke to the reverend and suggested that should he need to make audiophile recorings of “Silence” that I would be willing to help. Nothing less than 192kHz/24 bit will suffice to capture the real nuances of “Silence”. As microphones add noise we can’t use them. The same goes for any pre amplifiers and Audio converters. Any cables in the chain will add noise so I will have to make some sort of jury rigged superconducting system. Anyone got some liquid helium?
I get back to you
Silence is sompm.
Nothin aint nothin at all.
Thats th diffrence btween em.
I love these kind of requests. Maybe he meant a low level atmos tone that fades down to…. well you know….
RaJ: Well, as you have seen by now, my ideas on this don’t represent footprints in new snow. It’s a hoary old problem. As for cricket, well, once I was a sound assistant on the cricket for tv and I can assure you, there’s not a lot of silence involved in that.
archshrk: The only quiet audience is a dead audience. I’m sometimes of the feeling that when we’re doing the sound mixes we should just run a low-level crisp-packet crinkling noise continually. With maybe the occasional mobile phone ring.
Audiophile: Hmm. It sounds like that would be expensive Do you have, like, a budget-rate silence? You know, like that sound when someone trips over the power cord.
Joey: But nothing is a lack of something. Which makes it something. My head hurts.