Extra Credit: Third Work

So I did attend the Third Work: Sound/Image Symposium and it was really interesting. All of its keynote presentations, and frankly what Third Work is all about is that it focuses on the importance and interaction of sound with visual mediums, like film. Third work is basically NOT what we normally find in movies -- film objects that are soundtracks plus image tracks. Meaning, directors will shoot a movie and then you add in the audio later. In a Third Work the sound takes on a whole new life. It becomes the narrative, the writing, the characters, the look and feel of the movies. It shapes and affects a film. Though the keynotes primarily focused on non-fiction media, something like a documentary for instance, I instantly started thinking about fiction.

What if you make a movie where characters barely speak to each other but instead the music does all of the talking and tells the audience the story? Alongside this class I'm also taking film music and an example we watched in that class is 2011's Drive. In that film there's barely any dialogue, and instead 1980s nostalgic disco music is played throughout most, if not, all of its run-time. When you actually examine the film and pay attention to what the music is doing then you discover a whole new world of filmmaking.

In our class I was also reminded of the 2nd project we did as the keynotes focused on non-fiction media. Just take a glance at how vital the music tracks we picked for our interviews are. They give certain flavor, character, and breath life into the interviews. The music tells the story. It is the main protagonist in a way.

Ernst Kernel's keynote at the Third Work was particularly interesting to me because of what he focuses on: editing and composing using unprocessed location recordings, which is just unique and fascinating in its own right. 2012's Leviathan is a short film he composed/mixed for and you can tell right away the role Kernel plays in that film. Throughout Leviathan, which is set on a boat and around an ocean, the camera dives deep into the water and you can hear how that all sounds. Life underwater just feels so different with Kernel's auditory take on the whole thing. Overall I just found the Symposium to really highlight and cap off a semester in which I learned quite a lot about audio and its use and importance in film.