Watching Master and Commander last Friday made me think about sound, because it was full of sound... waves slapping, canvas snapping, men's voices shouting, but also more subtle sounds, especially the inflections of voices.
I realized that I wasn't just hearing the sound, but feeling it. On thinking about it, two kinds of feeling: one, hearing the sounds of something being done 'on screen' made me feel that same thing being done where I was; two, sounds skipping directly to my nervous system or something inside that could feel.
Have you ever been lying on a couch and listening to other people talk, and as you get sleepier and sleepier, the voices are different, almost as if they've changed pitch, or as if the sound waves reaching your ears are slowing down?
I wonder if we can 'feel' sound because of its nature - soundwaves produced by vibrations, reaching our ears and passing the vibrations on to our eardrums and eventually to the brain. Those vibrations must be going down the spinal cord as well as up it, because I can feel them inside, almost as if the sound bypasses skin and physical touch to pluck some internal strings.
If hearing is like a multiple sense, it isn't unique that way... smell and taste aren't just related, they actually affect each other. It makes me wonder what those lightwaves are up to.
Maybe all this is extremely obvious to everyone else. Or just extremely stupid. Anyway, it intrigues me.
1 comment:
One of the best features of Master and Commander was the sound editing (the Academy noticed too). I loved the visual effects, which were far less intrusive than usual, but it was the sound that made the movie seem real.
Post a Comment